The death of TV

Ever since Japan's horrible earthquake, the vultures at CTV News, CBC News, BBC news and many other news stations available on my TV have predictably latched on, chasing the sensational headlines like crack addicts chasing the pipe, providing 24-hour coverage for sadists who need to know all the calamitous details of other people's misery in the comfort of their safe living rooms. The toxicity levels of the television programs are starting to make me noxious.

If the TV news were informational and constructive at all it wouldn't bother me, but I shake my head at how consistently neurotic and obsessive these "newscasters" are at spinning everything into even bigger negatives than the world already is wrought with. While I'm usually pessimistic about a lot of things, television is giving me a Mr BadNews overdose now on a consistent basis. They've naturally latched on to the stories of damaged nuclear reactors after the earthquake and now want to make us all afraid about nuclear meltdown à la Chernobyl. But even if the dreaded worst happens, what could any viewer do about it? In what way does this news inform most of us? All it does is enrage while disempowering us as we are left clueless on how to seriously budge the giant corporate machine or aid the damaged world by any realistic and meaningul way.

If I want balanced coverage of a particular topic or to learn about something other than the Japan earthquake today (like, say, those poor people in Libya still fighting for their freedom that we all forgot about, hmm?), the internet supplies more information. I find myself instinctively turning off the TV altogether and being online. If one feels they want to help, yet again, that information is online. This is strange because, being in my mid-30s, I grew up with TV but I'm now wondering why anyone bothers with that dumb box anymore. It's just static noise. Two and Half Men again? No, thanks. Even Charlie Sheen knows it's shoveled manure so he can't be all that kookoo.

In the past decade especially, I feel like TV has become an antiquated medium for bitter old people with no taste. I google for the information I want when I need to seek out a more balanced picture of world events. I'm resourceful enough to find better shows and movies online instead of being subjected to repeat after repeat on TV.

There's probably little point to my post today other than to remark on how hopelessly irrelevant television has become to me and I'm suspecting, most of you too. I suppose this still has relevance at least to modern sociology and the topic of paradigm shifts. I celebrate TV's destruction (or to be more detailed, the complete assimilation of television into the more expansive, diverse and versatile internet medium).

The Pompeiian diet of the poor

When reading the article Pompeii skeletons reveal secrets of Roman family life on the BBC website and the part about the diet of the poor, we're told that the diet may not have been so impoverished as one might assume. This reminds me a lot of the theory of the original affluent society.

Despite some criticisms against the idea of a relatively more leisurely ancient lifestyle in comparison to our hectic modern environment, one can hardly pretend that the excessive modern urbanization that we now have hasn't led to a large segment of our population being all too dependent on other entities to handle food gathering and production, sometimes to the point of crippling dependence. Afterall, how many of us city-folk pick our own berries, fish our own trout or grow our own radishes? Most have lost this ancient knowledge.

We most often go to grocery stores and buy the items we need. Yet we can't do this without first earning monetary tokens from someone else. We therefore struggle in dead-end, highly demanding, even mentally or physically toxic jobs just to acquire the means to obtain food and shelter. Our complete inter-reliance on apathetic strangers through a multi-layered economic system for even the most basic necessities is somewhat unique to modernity. And it's precisely our lack of personal autonomy in so many ways that makes us, in a manner of speaking, "less wealthy" than even our Roman antecedents.

We shouldn't feign too much shock at the notion that the poor in ancient times may have had a healthier diet than what we're capable of or are willing to supply our most vulnerable population despite all our showy technology and superficial symbols.

An old children's tale for the modern era

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny (by Tomas Nilsson)

You all need to check out this amazing video above. It's the famous tale of Little Red Riding Hood with a modern media twist. When I saw it, I was struck by how clever it is in conveying a story without words and, what's more, in a highly non-linear way using a fun, visual barrage of data. (Did I just say "a fun, visual barrage of data"?? Yes I did!) It'll all make sense when you click play.