> From: Gregory Wharton <jgw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Patachon wrote (my comments infra):
>
>> of course. number of death= event magnitude and spatial distance =
> mileage.
>
> Well, yes. But part of the point I was trying to make is that importance is
> modified downward proportionately (maybe even exponentially) by distance,
> not upward. You were saying something about importance having to do with
> "deaths X distance." That would mean that one death on the moon would be
> more immediate to the attention than one next door, rather than vice versa.
> I was just trying to get the operator right. That's all.
NO, this formula, as I wrote it too simply and you very exhaustively, just
means one death near is supposed more important than 10000 far away.
one death on the moon enters the second law, of "unfrequent" or rare events,
like the human biting some dog's ear described partially hereunder.
>
>> there goes the following law: if a dog bites some human's ear, it's not
>> news, but if an human bites a dog's ear, that's news. Then What 's the >
>>immediacy or value significance factor there ?
>
> Well, importance and newsworthiness are not the same thing, as anybody who
> watches CNN or reads the New York Times can tell you. The most important
> events (speaking objectively in terms of long term impact on the most
> people) only rarely make the news, while very trivial things repeatedly
> occupy numerous column inches on the front page or take the most minutes on
> Headline News. Newsworthiness can also have a lot to do with unexpected
> events and unusual events, even if these events are of essentially no
> importance whatsoever (such as "Man bites dog.") That's entertainment (and
> politics, for that matter--the two being more or less equal in modern
> society), not importance.
Of course, the notion of importance is mostly regarded as a filtering factor
in the newscaster. One death on the moon seems for him , meaby not for
tibetan monks, more important than the death of some neighboor. And such
importance, the "essential" factor ( the events everybody should know) also
relates to the public of the mediatizer, the sponsors of his work, the
teamwork aspect when selecting items for the front page, some balance
between positive events (always the rare ones) , yellowish ones (like the
Diana or Clintonian stories...) and the supposedly plain informative ones.
THose should be aparted from the commentary or opinion's manifestations,
who are then beginning the manipulation of the common observer,if the
commentary is presented as plain information.
Then newsworthiness is passing over the important facts as they should be
just "transmitted" . The capacity of the observer/reader to discern the
facts between the interpretation he's presented is not present in the
majority of the mediatized public.
>
> Related to this is an interesting observation made by Deborah Tannen in "You
> Just Don't Understand: Women and men in conversation." The male equivalent
> of gossip is consuming and discussing news. The news serves more as a
> social bonding force for men than as an actual functional part of informing
> consent in society. If you think about it in those terms, the frequently
> bizarre publishing decisions made by news agencies and journalists make a
> lot more sense. It puts the whole thing in a much more appropriate
> perspective, and explains why so few women seem to read newspapers on a
> regular basis.
interesting// but women are working in publicity agencies, "making" the news
in the media's daily work, eventually machofootball ones,and some changes
still occur. I would say that the females instead of some nespapers probably
read more specialized magazines. And I'm not sure the newspaper reading is
the only fideidigna source of info. Many look at the tv for info, and many
man read only the sports pages of their newspaper.
>
>> same kind of importance factorisation applies to history. only historians
>> remember let's say the millions of deaths from bubonic pleague some
> centuries
>> ago. (You quoted the time factor in your answer: I didn't , purposedly)
>
> Quite right. Historians value past information disproportionately to most
> people, so they pay a lot more attention to it. Three thousand years ago,
> an entire civilization was wiped out at a stroke in the Mediterranean as the
> result of a volcanic event. Nowadays, few could even tell you which
> civilization it was, let alone care that it happened. That, as they say, is
> human nature.
then when will the world "forget" (wipe out) the wtc events ? must we
forget, as religious practices are used to oblige us to do, forget the
events and also forget/forgive/perdon/ the actors ? The bad ones also ? Who
could forgive Bin Ladden ? The day some public person declares that on some
important media, I think our world will receive another shock. But why NOT
such forgivness ? Terrorism is in many aspects a response to the absence of
comprehension, equal or better conceived repartition of power and of human
"social intercourse" even with our so efficient actual media.
If the mass majorities in the western hemisphere woud have known better the
way of thinking/living of northvietnamese, muslim, palestinian or Aborians
(North american indians) or Somalian a.s.o. tragic events would have been
avoided. History should have learned to many that after tragic events, the
intelligence (interlegere, read inside), forgivness and comprehension leads
to new and better relations ,like now in the vietnam/northamerica
relations.
Nobody ever completely wins the wars.
War on terror will never be won by pure force.
Is human psychology and behavior in need of such oblivion, as in some
dreaming (asleep by night) so everybody can clean his brain from daily bad
impregnations/impressions and restart freshly the machinery the next day ?
and the disproportionate value given to past events by some specialists
might be compared to some scientific studies of
micro/nano/quemical/physical events of wich the vast majority of most people
doesn't care of. They just look at the names of the Nobel prizes laureates
to recognize if some is from his own country or county. The distance
factor...
But in some way history is between an exact and an human science, and
therefore has much more diverse facets, and is for many really necessary to
understand our actual world. It should be a must to attain some knowledge of
the muslim or Palestinian world, for westerners. If not, how would
Chicagoans or Chihuahans learn about those ? And more if a priori they don't
CARE of those ? Education ? No time or just $$$ for that...
Even the media need historians to re-locate the events. Everytime you learn
some new facts about a tragical events, the first image seen is generally a
map. after that, if the commentator is good and his sponsors give him enough
time, he could try to explain some background ( history) to his audience.
unfortunately, general public info is too frequently centered on small talk
events. I bet 80 % of the general US public doesn't know where is
tchechenia, and certainly more ignore Pompei. But The purpose is to try to
reduce the "desinteresting factor" caused by the long distance if the theme
is supposed to be interesting or important by the media producer.
The imagery calls for the attention of the viewer.
But finally those ignorants(?) are the ones who drive our bus or are
soldering our cars.
Who need actually a universitarian to chauffeur the scholar bus ? It seem
"reactionnary", but there is a huge problem to discuss also there.
I still wonder if the cuban HUT designer was a plain soldadoraso or an
eminent staffer.Eventually an architect, but I doubt.
Some journalist should ask Rumsfeld during the next press meeting. If I
don't see him , just tell here.
?¼?
> Patachon wrote (my comments infra):
>
>> of course. number of death= event magnitude and spatial distance =
> mileage.
>
> Well, yes. But part of the point I was trying to make is that importance is
> modified downward proportionately (maybe even exponentially) by distance,
> not upward. You were saying something about importance having to do with
> "deaths X distance." That would mean that one death on the moon would be
> more immediate to the attention than one next door, rather than vice versa.
> I was just trying to get the operator right. That's all.
NO, this formula, as I wrote it too simply and you very exhaustively, just
means one death near is supposed more important than 10000 far away.
one death on the moon enters the second law, of "unfrequent" or rare events,
like the human biting some dog's ear described partially hereunder.
>
>> there goes the following law: if a dog bites some human's ear, it's not
>> news, but if an human bites a dog's ear, that's news. Then What 's the >
>>immediacy or value significance factor there ?
>
> Well, importance and newsworthiness are not the same thing, as anybody who
> watches CNN or reads the New York Times can tell you. The most important
> events (speaking objectively in terms of long term impact on the most
> people) only rarely make the news, while very trivial things repeatedly
> occupy numerous column inches on the front page or take the most minutes on
> Headline News. Newsworthiness can also have a lot to do with unexpected
> events and unusual events, even if these events are of essentially no
> importance whatsoever (such as "Man bites dog.") That's entertainment (and
> politics, for that matter--the two being more or less equal in modern
> society), not importance.
Of course, the notion of importance is mostly regarded as a filtering factor
in the newscaster. One death on the moon seems for him , meaby not for
tibetan monks, more important than the death of some neighboor. And such
importance, the "essential" factor ( the events everybody should know) also
relates to the public of the mediatizer, the sponsors of his work, the
teamwork aspect when selecting items for the front page, some balance
between positive events (always the rare ones) , yellowish ones (like the
Diana or Clintonian stories...) and the supposedly plain informative ones.
THose should be aparted from the commentary or opinion's manifestations,
who are then beginning the manipulation of the common observer,if the
commentary is presented as plain information.
Then newsworthiness is passing over the important facts as they should be
just "transmitted" . The capacity of the observer/reader to discern the
facts between the interpretation he's presented is not present in the
majority of the mediatized public.
>
> Related to this is an interesting observation made by Deborah Tannen in "You
> Just Don't Understand: Women and men in conversation." The male equivalent
> of gossip is consuming and discussing news. The news serves more as a
> social bonding force for men than as an actual functional part of informing
> consent in society. If you think about it in those terms, the frequently
> bizarre publishing decisions made by news agencies and journalists make a
> lot more sense. It puts the whole thing in a much more appropriate
> perspective, and explains why so few women seem to read newspapers on a
> regular basis.
interesting// but women are working in publicity agencies, "making" the news
in the media's daily work, eventually machofootball ones,and some changes
still occur. I would say that the females instead of some nespapers probably
read more specialized magazines. And I'm not sure the newspaper reading is
the only fideidigna source of info. Many look at the tv for info, and many
man read only the sports pages of their newspaper.
>
>> same kind of importance factorisation applies to history. only historians
>> remember let's say the millions of deaths from bubonic pleague some
> centuries
>> ago. (You quoted the time factor in your answer: I didn't , purposedly)
>
> Quite right. Historians value past information disproportionately to most
> people, so they pay a lot more attention to it. Three thousand years ago,
> an entire civilization was wiped out at a stroke in the Mediterranean as the
> result of a volcanic event. Nowadays, few could even tell you which
> civilization it was, let alone care that it happened. That, as they say, is
> human nature.
then when will the world "forget" (wipe out) the wtc events ? must we
forget, as religious practices are used to oblige us to do, forget the
events and also forget/forgive/perdon/ the actors ? The bad ones also ? Who
could forgive Bin Ladden ? The day some public person declares that on some
important media, I think our world will receive another shock. But why NOT
such forgivness ? Terrorism is in many aspects a response to the absence of
comprehension, equal or better conceived repartition of power and of human
"social intercourse" even with our so efficient actual media.
If the mass majorities in the western hemisphere woud have known better the
way of thinking/living of northvietnamese, muslim, palestinian or Aborians
(North american indians) or Somalian a.s.o. tragic events would have been
avoided. History should have learned to many that after tragic events, the
intelligence (interlegere, read inside), forgivness and comprehension leads
to new and better relations ,like now in the vietnam/northamerica
relations.
Nobody ever completely wins the wars.
War on terror will never be won by pure force.
Is human psychology and behavior in need of such oblivion, as in some
dreaming (asleep by night) so everybody can clean his brain from daily bad
impregnations/impressions and restart freshly the machinery the next day ?
and the disproportionate value given to past events by some specialists
might be compared to some scientific studies of
micro/nano/quemical/physical events of wich the vast majority of most people
doesn't care of. They just look at the names of the Nobel prizes laureates
to recognize if some is from his own country or county. The distance
factor...
But in some way history is between an exact and an human science, and
therefore has much more diverse facets, and is for many really necessary to
understand our actual world. It should be a must to attain some knowledge of
the muslim or Palestinian world, for westerners. If not, how would
Chicagoans or Chihuahans learn about those ? And more if a priori they don't
CARE of those ? Education ? No time or just $$$ for that...
Even the media need historians to re-locate the events. Everytime you learn
some new facts about a tragical events, the first image seen is generally a
map. after that, if the commentator is good and his sponsors give him enough
time, he could try to explain some background ( history) to his audience.
unfortunately, general public info is too frequently centered on small talk
events. I bet 80 % of the general US public doesn't know where is
tchechenia, and certainly more ignore Pompei. But The purpose is to try to
reduce the "desinteresting factor" caused by the long distance if the theme
is supposed to be interesting or important by the media producer.
The imagery calls for the attention of the viewer.
But finally those ignorants(?) are the ones who drive our bus or are
soldering our cars.
Who need actually a universitarian to chauffeur the scholar bus ? It seem
"reactionnary", but there is a huge problem to discuss also there.
I still wonder if the cuban HUT designer was a plain soldadoraso or an
eminent staffer.Eventually an architect, but I doubt.
Some journalist should ask Rumsfeld during the next press meeting. If I
don't see him , just tell here.
?¼?