Archive for June, 2008

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Enough, fanbois

17 Jun 2008

SMH’s story on aspiring model Isobella Jade, who perfected the art of freeloading by coming into the New York Apple store every day for 18 months to check her email, should be headlined:

Isobella Jade topless - I get more hits this wayApple perfects the art of freeloading off fanboi journos for publicity

Here’s a picture of Isobella Jade topless. I get more hits this way.

And here’s a picture of Ms Jade from Mac Directory magazine, where the SMH stole adapted the story from.

Isobella Jade in MacDirectory story

I mean, seriously, the two hottest stories in the Aussie tech media lately are:

  1. Apple releases product
  2. Apple opens shop.

I can’t imagine there ever being two stories with a stronger public interest angle.

It’s fine to be a fan of a particular brand or product, sure. But when you let your religious devotion to the Cult of Steve cloud your editorial judgment, you’re doing your readers a disservice and discrediting your publication as a click-chasing whore.

Posted in marketroids, media, nerds, sensitive stuff about chicks, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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tl;dr

11 Jun 2008

Nicholas Carr writes in The Atlantic how the internet (not just Google, despite the title) is sapping our ability to read in depth long passages of text. On the intertubes we tend to skim and sample, looking for the quick win; the nugget of information that means we can stop reading. However, Carr finds this behaviour is spilling over into his non-web reading.

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

A colourful metaphor, to be certain. But was it a deliberate irony to publish all 4,100 words of this lengthy essay on the web without so much as a subheading? It’s almost as if Carr invites us to blanch at the vast slabs of text - too long; didn’t read.

Posted in techno-wankery, wordy things | No Comments »

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Was it good for you, ladies?

5 Jun 2008

As I write this, thousands of women around Australia are in the postorgasmic glow of having seen the breathlessly anticipated SATC movie. The SMH tells us that cinemas have reported being “compeltely overwhelmed” by the demand for tickets, as though the high-quality Aussie meeja hadn’t already given the bloody thing enough free publicity. “We haven’t seen this level of online ticket sales before except for the Harry Potter movie,” enthused Greater Union cinemas promotional manager Melissa Kesby.

Like we needed any further proof society was on the brink of imploding into the vacuum of its own self-obsessed fatuousness.

Posted in media, sensitive stuff about chicks | No Comments »

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Smart-arse Jewish scientists explain how sarcasm works

3 Jun 2008

A team of neuropsychologists from Haifa University have worked out how the brain processes sarcasm.

Dr Simone Shamay-Tsoory said language areas on the left hand side of the brain interpret the literal meaning of words and the frontal lobes and the right side of the brain understand the social and emotional context. An area called the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex then integrates the literal meaning with the social/emotional context, which will reveal any sarcasm.

People who suffer from autism or have had one of those parts of their brains damaged have trouble interpreting sarcasm - they tend to understand the statement literally - because they don’t pick up the emotional context or can’t reconcile the context with the literal meaning.

(Image courtesy of BBC)

Perhaps these parts of the brain atrophy through disuse, or can be removed through selective breeding. Which might explain Americans.

Posted in filthy kike propaganda, nerds, science | 6 Comments »