Marisa Bowe and Ken Kurson
Yes. As you probably know, the Reader's Digest has a column called "Laughter is the Best Medicine." "LOL" stands for "laughing out loud," so yes, invest in LOL over LLY if you want the best medicine. But that wouldn't be as good for Lilly shareholders.
I was just reading in the New York Times about how CBS News is now devoting a ton of time to covering the superdramatic high jinks on its entertainment hit Survivor. I like this idea so much I can hardly stand it. Most of what passes for news is bogus anyway. Celebrities are already covered as if they are news. Media comments about media commentators about media are already covered as if they are news. Why not cover events that happen within entertainment as if they are news?
When we at Word were thinking about developing graphical online communities, one of my fantasies was that we could do a Talk Soup-like program in which we could show clips from the most entertaining moment of that day in our virtual world, thereby creating a sort of Mobius strip meta-reality pod. Then we made Sissyfight 2000, our graphical community game, and we didn't even have to do that--the players did it themselves! One player named their avatar girl "baba wawa" and went around on the playgrounds interviewing the highest-ranked players in perfectly pitched talk show parody form. Then she made screenshots of the conversations and published them on her fan site, sissyfightnews.com. It was hilarious. I was in ecstasy.
It's interesting when big mass media companies just go with the flow and give the public what it wants. You learn more when you do that and then figure out what people are getting out of it than when you try to control it and give them something "good for them." I'm sure it's no accident that Sissyfight and Survivor are paralleling each other. I think there is a naturally evolving form here in which the public is processing its understanding of the all-encompassing mediascape by creating these homegrown, science-fiction-y forms. They're not analyzing--they're in fact responding in a way that's much more nuanced and complex than mere punditry.
When I try to think about the Nabisco/Philip Morris merger, it all looks like a big Salvador Dalí painting executed by Andy Warhol. Maybe at bottom I'm just an old-fashioned surrealist, even when I think about business.
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Reader Response from The Fray (to be read after the final entry):
[From the Fray Editor: Ken, Ken you didn't need to mention homosexuality or abortion to encourage controversy--saying there are too many people and they live too long (Tuesday) worked just fine. Fray posters came out in force, bringing with them Spinoza and a 95-year-old grandmother. The post below was titled Don't tell me when to die Mr Kurson:]
What an ugly letter by Mr Kurson! How exactly is the premise that people should live longer demonstrably false? I like the idea of using government money to prolong life (especially my life, it's demonstrably true that my life is cool). We have a right and responsibility to know what makes us tick and we have a right and responsibility to use that knowledge to help people better enjoy their lives. If science produces a way for people to live longer, I will gladly participate. If you don't want to, Mr Kurson, then don't. I'd hate to see you go, but I won't interfere. Just don't go around saying that longer lifespans are demonstrably bad--it might not seem so biting on the abstract level, but it's hurtful to individuals who are dying and would rather live. Whether or not this new knowledge brings us a step closer to godhood remains to be seen. Even if the answer is no, or if the question is irrelevant, it does make me happy to see that we humans are so clever, curious and philosophical that we've finally started to figure ourselves out--if not metaphysically, at least physically.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click here.)
Since when are books not technology [Tuesday's entry]? I suppose Ken's definition of technology is any invention that makes people better off in a way of which he disapproves. But hey, if utter incoherence lets him live more comfortably in his savage little world, more power to him. Just don't make me live in it too.
--Ananda Gupta
(To reply, click here.)
[This is part of a much longer post, detailing the many ways in which the writer disapproved of Mr Kurson's views and disliked the choice of Breakfast Table participants.]
(6/29)
What was the last big discovery that had so many scientists crowing and so many empty talking heads yelping at some utopian moon [genome project, Tuesday]? Splitting the atom, yes? After so many decades, what wonderful benefits has that achievement provided to us? Good lord, I can't think of any. (Don't give me any jive about radiation therapy.) Is there no one who can analyze this situation in a realistic way without sentimentalizing about God or waxing rhapsodic about science? Give us a damn break. You're not going to see any benefits derived from geeks in labcoats mucking around with genes.
--tek
(To reply, click here.)
To tek: Humanity is richer, healthier, and happier today than ever before, largely because of scientific and technological advance. Please spare us the self-indulgent crap about lab-coated guys ruining life. In fact, it's been the damn artsy types (Hitler, Stalin, Mao--all prided themselves on their artistic abilities, none was a scientific or technical guy) who have been the architects of the last century's horrors. Where's the responsibility for that?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
[And this argument ran and ran--"had smallpox lately tek?" "No, how about AIDS?" "I feel quite the moron responding" "Trust your feelings".]
There's a huge amount of information in life other than DNA. Protein folding is one of the less complex and difficult. This is why Marisa Bowes is considering things that couldn't possibly be explained by DNA. I'm sure it's well for her to ask, but it's clear that the brain that questions the genetic code is extremely more complex than is the DNA that pointed it in the right direction.
What happens in the brain has crucial roots in DNA, yet its complexity and operation are far more ordered by the brain's environment, inside and outside of the body, than it is by DNA. You don't ask of anything as complex as a thought what its relation is to DNA without severe reductionism. The sooner the media learn something of the complexity of everything, the sooner we'll learn something of the complexity of what they usually report on. They've moved in that direction in the last 10 or 20 years. They still have a long way to go. One hopes the genome sequencing will take the media that way.
--Glen Davidson
(To reply, click here.)
[Ms Bowe responded to this post in her second Tuesday entry.]
(6/27)