August is turning out to be a rather exciting month. I know we’re still in June.

From today’s article Motel Rooms Become Home for Some:

With names like the Covered Wagon Motel and the El Dorado Inn, they look like any other modestly priced stopover inland from the ritzy beach towns. But walk inside and the perception immediately changes.

In the evening, the smell of pasta sauce cooked on hot plates drifts through half-open doors; in the morning, children leave to catch school buses. Families of three, six or more are squeezed into a room, one child doing homework on a bed, jostled by another watching television. Children rotate at bedtime, taking their turns on the floor. Some families, like the Malpicas, in a motel in Anaheim, commandeer a closet for baby cribs.

The image is from the accompanying interactive feature Instead of a Home, a Motel Room.

Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value. I suspect we will find that this necessity is actually liberating. The need to be valued by readers — serving them first and foremost rather than relying solely on advertising revenue — will allow the media once again to set their compass true to what journalism should always be about.

How to Save Your Newspaper

(somewhat related to the re: ink and newsprint entry)

Chinese New Year can get boring, and reading is much more satisfying than conversing. 

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – Head photo editors from AFP, AP and Reuters and their pick of the photographs they feel best represents the Bush administration. I like this and this.

From Seeing Eye to Eye:

While The Civil Contract of Photography’s value has been damaged as a result of such bitter tendentiousness, its argument remains breathtakingly inspirational: “The citizen of photography”—for instance, that vicious photo rapist the AP photographer—“enjoys the right to see because she has a responsibility toward what she sees.” It has always been my pride to feel responsible as I raise the lens to my eye in situations of misery and urgency; it has been my duty to feel, refine, and transmit that misery and urgency when it expresses itself to me in the archives of others. But although I believe in the Golden Rule, without reading this book I would most likely never have formalized what my photography ought to strive for: “When a photograph turns into a grievance, whoever articulates it becomes its civic subject.”

From here: “More powerful than the march of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.” – so true.

So this is kinda my way of bookmarking. I can’t believe the CNY holidays are almost over. And yet, my plan to clean up my room remains strangely unfulfilled. Spring cleaning is almost certainly irrelevant to people who live in the non-seasonal tropics. Why bicker with dust? Why fight against the all-so-natural descent into chaos? I want new Billy bookcases though, and that isn’t going to happen unless I throw my old ones out. And that won’t happen unless I throw a lot of stuff out. And that won’t happen until I buy a pack of trash bags and put things into them. There should be a ‘Clear All’ function I can write. 

function resetRoom(whose:Name) { 
var thisRoom:Room = this[whose];
for (var i=0;i<clearThese.length;i++) {
thisRubbish = thisRoom[clearThese[i]];
if (thisRubbish.useful ==1) {
thisRubbish.arrange(); 
}
else {
thisRubbish.remove();
} 
}

Real life is hard, but I feel much better after visiting here and here.

End Times – Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism?
Back Issues – The day the newspaper died
Bailing Out the Gray Lady – Can a Mexican billionaire rescue The New York Times?
Can CNN, the Go-to Site Get You to Stay?

It’s all a little worrying when all these articles start popping up one after another, even without you seeking them out. Newspaper Death Watch! The Print Media Are Doomed! Even before the economic downturn/recession/shithole, the print media weren’t doing that great. Now with everyone cutting corners, I wonder if more publications will shutter or if they do have digital versions, shift to an entirely digital presence. And, that is a little disheartening.

That sentiment is a little hypocritical – or ironic, if you’re feeling generous – since even though I am subscribed to the local rag (The Straits Times), I can’t remember when it was the last time I actually held the paper in my hands and read it proper (as opposed to just referring to it for movie screening times – but wait, I use the internet for that too. Hmm). I do still read the paper, albeit in its online form, but that’s been a lazy habit. The online edition of the paper, if you aren’t a subscriber to its digital edition, limits access to its articles and archives. And I don’t see why I would want to pay an additional fee to access the paper online, especially when I can pretty much access the same articles on AFP, AP and Reuters (news agencies where the ST frequently sources its articles from). You may argue that since I might as well change my ink-and-paper subscription to a digital one. Well, let’s see, the page where apparently the benefits of getting a subscription to STI (Straits Times Interactive) are listed is currently no longer available. It bodes well, it really does. But why not just give up the subscription altogether? It is a small world, and it keeps getting smaller, but I do like to know what happens in my proverbial backyard first before the rest of the world gets a whiff of it (if they do, ever, at all). And, local culture/customs/quirks/inanities just ain’t the same when interpreted or translated. Chope-ing seats with packets of tissue paper or umbrellas? Silly kids dancing around the Bugis water fountain? You kinda have to experience it to know how horribly annoying it can be. 

But I digress. So despite(?) my phony dismay at the prospect of more print media, especially newspapers, going on this long death march, I do wonder if this is an inevitable outcome, brought on by the changing habits of readers/consumers and the ever chang(ed/ing) technological landscape. How many newspapers can you go through in a single day? How many can you get access to or afford to buy? One might be a common answer in the past, but I should think that that is an obsolete figure now. Excluding news links that I find on blogs and news snippets from sites like Yahoo, I visit 2-3 news sites daily. And while I don’t read everything and anything, the fact that I can if I choose to (at a time of my choosing – be it a day after its initial publication, or a fortnight after) is strangely liberating.

I site-hop a fair bit; if I read something that interests me, I google for relevant articles on other sites. If it is of a topic that I have no prior or little knowledge on, I wiki it and often, a Wikipedia visit leads to many other google searches. Many more tabs of Youtube videos, forum discussions, interactive features etc appear on my browser window. If I do eventually return to the original article, I return hoping that my understanding of it is now more thorough. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t, and then, sometimes I find something new to read up on, but it’s all pretty fun. Can reading a printed newspaper do all that? Certainly. But the process is not as inituitive. I can’t right-click on a word or a name, click “Search Google for” and know that in a background browser tab, results pertaining to said word/name are being called up. I can’t bookmark an article (well, I probably can, but I am now trying to keep my living quarters in a stable state of disarray). I really want to see pictures of the ugliest dogs in the world. I don’t get the reference to a certain joke. I want to watch a movie trailer. By the time I get to a computer, I will have probably forgotten what got me there in the first place.  

Frankly, it will be a very legitimate cause for concern and worry if the local rag does cease publication (but really, I don’t see that happening). And I suppose I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who has not bought any physical copy of the newspapers she reads online on a daily basis, so the world sans a certain printed newspaper is likely to be one that I imagine would not have any real concrete effect on my immediate lifestyle. Unless its online edition dies as well. That might piss me off a little. However, I do realise that a substantial amount of revenue comes from print advertisements, and without that, it is unlikely that a newspaper, online or otherwise, will be even able to maintain/afford the same level of journalism and reporting. That, I guess, is the main worry. I’m not too concerned about newspapers dying (weeklies another matter though) and/or going exclusively online, I’m more paranoid about losing them altogether. Impossible? Right.

No solution desu.

Publisher Rethinks the Daily: It’s Free and Printed and Has Blogs All Over - hmm.

Much has been written/said about the inhumane finning and slaughter of sharks, but there is another animal facing pretty much the same horrendous fate – the dolphin. And for what? To preserve ‘traditional culture’ and for, well, pest control. If traditional culture involves such senseless cruel behaviour, then I say we should do away with tradition altogether. 

From Of Dolphins and Decency (on the Save Japan Dolphins site): 

While humans and all the other mammals breathe automatically, dolphins don’t have that automatic reflex; every breath they take is deliberate. When human beings fall into deep water, we drown because we lose consciousness and then, when the automatic reflex kicks in, we breathe water. Not so the dolphin. The dolphin will kill himself by drowning if he deliberately breathes water, but, more likely, he dies for lack of oxygen in his blood caused by not breathing at all. This suicide option the dolphin takes is another proof of his self-awareness, without which suicide would never even occur to him.

Related media:
Eyewitness to slaughter in Taiji’s killing coves
Youtube video (graphic content)
 The Cove  - a documentary on Taiji’s dolphin slaughters
Save Japan Dolphins

Of course, there has to be one: the Obama action figure. Comes with three (3) pairs of interchangeable hands. The suit is not fitting him very well though. (link via Jeansnow.net)

Despite my nose being a leaking faucet, I managed to catch most of the inauguration last night. What for, I guess some might say, well, it just seems unreasonable to blame the damn economy, the damn wars, the damn anything-that-is-wrong-with-the-world on a certain country and not be concerned with who’s governing that same country. Even though the inauguration is, well, just an inauguration. It was fun to watch, and I couldn’t help but snicker (cruel as that might sound) at Dick Cheney.

I was actually more impressed with CNN.com. Was watching the ceremony online since ten p.m., and the streaming was smooth as hell. Only until a little before midnight did the live video start to break a little (and then I just took over the tv outside). Why should I be impressed then? Considering the amount of traffic the site was getting, I was surprised I could even get to see any video. So maybe low expectations are the key to pleasant surprises, but for someone with a shitty internet connection (apparently, this computer gets the poorest signal among all the others at home), it was a very pleasant and welcomed surprise.

You will need Silverlight, but this is kinda cool. I wonder how many people will download Silverlight just to view that.

And the following is probably not the worst from the article:

Shocks fit well into the brothel business model because they cause agonizing pain and terrify the girls without damaging their looks or undermining their market value.

The Evil behind the Smiles