Month: August 2009

Mommy Is Listening To Her Stories

Stefany Anne Golberg ponders soaps and what came before them:

The plots of soap operas are not only melodramatic; unlike any other kind of serial, they are written with no end in sight. This engages the viewer in an experience in which the pace startlingly mimics that of reality and plot itself is incidental. Like life, once a soap starts you’re along for the ride, never knowing how or when it will end. You focus on the characters’ daily affairs and less on the overall story.

Soap opera characters act in real time — day by day by day, just as you and I do — but theirs are infinite, fantastic lives. To quote Guiding Light’s “Gus Aitoro,” “Everything’s easy for me. Although next year might be a problem because I was legally dead, partially, briefly.” It’s no wonder soap operas have been so loved by women who stay home all day. The incremental timing of the narrative mimics daily life, even if the events don’t. There’s an immediacy to all the melodrama. (This might be the reason why there were so many protests when networks tried to replace the ugly rawness of standard video with the gloss of high-def). And while the content of the narrative sounds outrageous when summarized, it doesn’t feel as strange when you’re watching it unfold over time. Maybe you haven’t yet been divorced six times, but try to write the story of your life in three paragraphs and I promise you will be shocked at the theater of it all.

Be The Slug

Details profiles a modern-day caveman:

Daniel Suelo lives in a cave. Unlike the average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

Suelo has a blog that he updates at the public library, natch. The older I get the more I believe that simplicity of life is much more important than wealth. The only point of money is freedom. And yet, in this culture, it seems as if the only point of money is money. It kills the soul if all you believe in is capitalism.

(Hat tip: Reason)

The Ruins Of Belief

Robert Wright asks:

If I no longer believe in a personal God, looking down and judging me, why do I still feel guilt over my wrongdoings and shortcomings? Why do I still want some father figure (a God, ideally, though a resurrected version of my dad would do) to pat me on the shoulder and tell me I’ve done O.K. and can now go play golf for a millennium or so? Is godlessness not, in fact, as some born-again atheists seem to promise, a path to happiness? And, anyway, where did this need for forgiveness and affirmation come from?

Your Major, Your God

A new study looks at correlation between college majors and religious practices (or lack thereof). A few findings:

Being a humanities or a social science major has a statistically significant negative effect on religiosity — measured by either religious attendance and how important students consider the importance of religion in their lives. The impact appears to be strongest in the social sciences. Students in education and business show an increase in religiosity over their time at college. Majoring in the biological or physical sciences does not affect religious attendance of students, but majoring in the physical sciences does negatively relate to the way students view the importance of religion in their lives.

Thoreau complicates the data.

Letting The News Come To You

Wired's editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, spoke with Spiegel.comde about the changing media landscape:

More and more people are choosing social filters for their news rather than professional filters. We're tuning out television news, we're tuning out newspapers. And we still hear about the important stuff, it's just that it's not like this drumbeat of bad news. It's news that matters. I figure by the time something gets to me it's been vetted by those I trust. So the stupid stuff that doesn't matter is not going to get to me.

Norm Geras pokes fun at Anderson. So does Ad Age's Ken Wheaton, adding:

When you start relying on your own circle of friends or colleagues to filter all your news, you end up with a very myopic sense of the world. You might think that everyone is on Twitter, for example. You might believe that Facebook won the election for Obama. In short, you become the same sort of person who only listens to right-wing talk radio or the sort who only reads left-leaning blogs.

I think that misses Chris's point – which is that the new media has ended the authority of media institutions. People have learned to see the little men and women behind the curtain and would rather trust the people they know – or come to know online – who have always been in front of the curtain and honest about what their biases are.

Clinton’s Biggest Mistake

Joe Klein tries to gauge health care's chances:

At the end of his presidency, Clinton told me that the biggest mistake he made in trying to reform health care was pulling a pen out of his pocket during the 1994 State of the Union address and threatening to veto any health-care legislation that didn't achieve universal coverage. He had come to believe that the only way to get something big like health-care reform was to do it incrementally. Obama has been wise not to make any take-it-or-leave-it offers. He is still fighting for a comprehensive bill — and he still may get one. But he may have to settle for less.

"Something called health-reform legislation will pass," a prominent Democrat told me. "The political consequences of not passing anything would be too great." A bare-bones bill that reforms the health-insurance industry — insurers would have to accept all comers, including those with pre-existing conditions, at the same rates — is a distinct possibility. Expanded coverage, perhaps including the parents of children eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), is also probable. Most important for long-term reform, a system of health-care superstores — the wonks call them "exchanges" or "co-ops" — where individuals and small businesses can go to buy a plan, could be included.