Broadcast Brian

There’s a great NYTimes article extolling the virtues of the professionalization protocols I was sorta railing against in the previous post.  Here’s a link.

In my defense, I’m going to counter-intuitively err on the side of openness when it comes to journalism as my legal training makes me less forthcoming than the average individual.  As someone with access to journalistic education as well as professional indoctrination in the necessity of information management and protection, my instincts are such that I’m likely to be more ‘information control’ than information freedom oriented.  Consequently, when writing a persuasive piece about the need to preserve freedom of expression, I may be the type of writer to overstate the need to keep the door open.  Still, I stand by the idea that you can conduct your way out of this without confiscating the instruments.  A non-mandatory sign on to a convention that protects the rights of original content producers isn’t going to steal the violins as far as I can tell.

George Bernard Shaw said that all professions are conspiracies against the laity.  I was reminded of this recently by a NYTimes piece regarding the Kony 2012 controversy, and also by this article on Gawker, slamming the idea of a sort of badge of approval scheme for blogs and content aggregators.  During journalism school, I studied this topic and was rewarded with a deep respect for those who have fought against forms of imprimatur in the course of the development of journalism as a profession.  I’m also an attorney, which is arguably the most information control happy of the professions (though the Catholic priesthood competes, of course), so to consider applying similar concepts of credentialing to the wild and woolly vocation of being a journalist seemed a fascinating idea.  In the end, however, there’s a manifest incompatibility between the goals of journalism and top-down professional governance.  For one, journalism is, in practice, an expressive art, and our portion of the civilized world requires expressive acts to be freely undertaken by anyone; it’s arguably on par with other human rights in our society.  To most Americans there’s something anathemic about telling someone that they can’t make up a fictional story or report on what happened to them during the course of the day, or even to make up an adjective like ‘anathemic’ (all this outside of the classroom of course).

Training for journalists is desirable, of course, as inculcating values like objectivity, respect for the truth and doggedness in the pursuit of a good story benefit society.  That’s different than creating a monopoly on an expressive art relied upon by society as a whole to function.  Should some media producers prove unreliable, there needs to be a wildcatter type check to pick up the slack and get the ‘real’ story out.  That leaves open the door for the crazies, the trolls and the unpleasable, of course, but such annoyances are far more acceptable than having to carry a license to write or report.  The current system of competitively achieved respect by outlets that employ working journalists does a fine job of self-policing content right abusers; see Stephen Glass.

The content delivery system, as it presently stands, does allow a bit more pink slime into the system than the discerning news consumer might want to palate, but, again, the alternative system proposed by those described in the Gawker article would lead to an over-labeled content packaging system that would create an unnecessary barrier for content producers to hurdle even as technology is flattening the cost of publication.  If information saturation is the problem, then raising the bar on quality of content and clarity in marketing is the answer, not restricting the number of people who can express themselves.  Bring harmony to cacophony, don’t take away the violins.   Journalism is supposed to provide a safeguard against an over-controlled information delivery system, freeing the individual from the tyranny created by the conspiracy of professional information management and check against abuses of power by those ‘in the know’.  It’s fine to learn discretion from those who deal in controlled information, but, notwithstanding legitimate personal and public security and safety concerns, it’s not desirable to create a classified information society where there once was a public fount.

There’s a timely article in the KCStar about a trend of ‘dumping’ domesticated horses into the midst of wild ones in Missouri.  Link.  Beyond the fact that the domesticated horses have to suddenly learn how to forage for themselves, the wild horses often decide that they’re going to kill these ‘interlopers’ through concerted hoof to head action.  This isn’t sink or swim, this is forage and/or die (and also watch out for predator horses at the same time, which is certainly a natural occurrence that can’t at all have anything to do with anything ‘animal trainers’ are responsible for).  For each of these creatures, the world has included a long indoctrination period into rewarded behaviors and skill acquisition that is suddenly at odds with their very survival and make them prey for mobs (incorrect group designation on purpose) of untrained horses because they can be spotted from a mile away as different, and that’s what herd animals do: they prey on the different.  Put it another way: Imagine someone trained in brain surgery who’s suddenly dumped into a camp of survivalist hunter gatherers out of no fault of his or her own - they’ll at first be seen as a drain on the group with best case outcomes that include falling back on basic medical training to prove one’s usefulness, but that doesn’t explain expending such individuals in this manner; it’s wrongheaded and leads to an inorganic society.  Blaming the economy for this sort of cruelty isn’t going to cut it in any scenario, but at least we humans can sue if put into an analogous scenario by someone.  Please read the previous ‘Artificial Austerity and Its Discontents’ post for a non-animalized commentary on a penumbrally related phenomenon.  Great job KCStar!

Fox News has a report on a Media Matters memo (alliteration acknowledged) which would seem, from the description offered, to be evidence of an attempt by the media watchdog organization to harass reporters and producers from Fox news at their homes.  Link.  One of the reasons we have a professional media apparatus in the U.S. is so reports of events that impact our lives are created by people with the means to think and write clearly about the issues that face all of us.  Regardless of one’s opinion about any editorial slant by a news organization, including Fox, breaking down the civil barriers that separate professional and personal lives is a step that shouldn’t be taken lightly.  It is one thing to disagree with someone in the media, in, well, the media.  It’s another to advocate putting some sorts of signs in peoples’ yards to identify them as a Fox journalist, as signs in someone’s yard are often taken as threatening.  As far as I know, Fox News employees haven’t done anything to warrant that sort of response.  Please comment on this blog via the comment button if you feel that’s incorrect.

A new treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease has shown promising results in ‘clearing plaques’ from the brains of mice.  Link.  Scientists stressed that the results shouldn’t be taken as license for humans to try the drug, and that the results show only efficacy on an analogous mouse pathogen, not on true Alzheimer’s.

So, I’ve been building my law practice for a while now, and the experience of providing legal representation to people hasn’t been a demeaning or dissociative one, for me.  However, there have been some clients who seem to cling to an ancient view of an attorney as a mouth-piece: paid to say what the client says.  That’s simply not the case.  To illustrate the difference, I’d like to link to a very funny and in-depth post on gawker by an author who used a tweet for cash app to provide access to his tweet stream to anyone who paid.  Link.  In contrast to that impersonation invitation for cash offer, an attorney-client arrangement doesn’t entail one person substituting their point of view or literally putting words into another person’s mouth, or at least it shouldn’t.  Attorneys represent by embodying the role of the attorney, not by substituting their thinking or word formation processes for those of their client who pays them.  Like it or not, when you hire and attorney you’re dealing with a thinking and feeling individual who will often keep your interests at arms length even as they zealously advocate for the trier of fact to adopt those views as their own.  It’s a necessary technique for a professional advocate, and is far removed from renting out one’s digital footprint for others’ commercial use.  I’ve been in a position that required some flog type behavior online, and I have to say that is quite different than the practice of law, properly understood.  So, for new lawyers, don’t let them tell you you’re a word whore.

KC Mayor Sly James offered a wonderful quote summing up race relations in Kansas City: ‘We’re still stuck in stupid…’  Link.

I just found a wonderful piece on Slate about a question that I’ve asked myself at some point: How many spaces should one leave after a period.  Link.  I’m a classically trained typist and employ two spaces after each period as that is how I’ve been taught and how I’m going to go forth from here.  However, there’s an underlying efficiency and aesthetic argument that goes along with this choice.  Computer assisted typography allows each letter to have just the right amount of space.  Unlike typewriters, which use the same space for an M as they do an I, popular word processor fonts use just the right amount of space.  This hasn’t been true since hand-set printing presses.  According to the linked-to article, hand-setters would use extra space after a period to signify the end of a thought coinciding with the end of a sentence.  I like to honor that tradition and enjoy the aesthetics of a second space.  As this is the internet, of course, there are those who will disagree merely to seem disagreeable for whatever myriad reason the world births trolls.  A man’s choice as to how many spaces there should be after a period is a personal one, and exists within a realm of private autonomy, along with smoking, the choice to exercise or not, and what happens in the voting booth.  If asked to proofread, I will correct if someone doesn’t employ the two-space method, but it’s up to them to make the changes if they want.  In any case, I thought this a coincidence in strand of thought worthy of note.

Scientists have reportedly created three Chimera monkeys using the genetic material from six different ‘parent’ donor monkeys for each one of them.  The Chimera is a mythical beast that had the body parts of different creatures, and the word is used to describe living organisms that are made up of artificially created or naturally occurring mixtures of separate genetic material in one organism.  That doesn’t include the offspring of typical sexual reproduction, though there are rare occasions where humans may exhibit Chimerism, leading to aberrant genetic testing results.  Link.

The Maqaque monkeys are named Roku, Hex and Chimero.  Roku and Hex are Japanese and Greek for six, respectively.  Anti-cloning activists have, understandably, cried foul at this news.  Researchers claim that this experiment will pave the way to greater rewards for genetic and stem cell research.  As someone familiar with BSG, I can’t quite get over the use of the number ‘Six’ as their names.  I’m not saying these are cylon precursors, but wow does this bring bioethics to the fore.

In 1990, Carl Sagan suggested that NASA have Voyager 1 take a photograph of Earth from its vantage point, then 6.4 Billion miles away.  Here’s a link to that picture and to an excerpt, from Sagan, marking the occasion.  Just like the famous EarthRise photo from Apollo, The Pale Blue Dot photo gives any human being pause at how fragile life seems to be when viewed from space.  Earth appears not like the essence of substance and support like it does from our vantage point, but like a jewel hung in darkness.  Quite beautiful regardless of from whence one beholds it.