Media Time versus Real Time

"The crises of 2011 have underlined how media time stretches real time. The duration of an event in the public mind is a function of the total length of all broadcasts about that event."

I'm not sure this relates to memory in anybody's mind but mine, but I thought I'd link to this recent post for Yahoo! India by Girish Shahane called Fast Food and Smoking Guns in any case. He manages to state clearly something that at least occasionally this blog is supposed to be about. In some ways he is talking about something quite different--how media stretches our interest, but perhaps the inverse is true. When the media has left the issue our minds turn away from it as well.

In any case, Girish always writes thoughtful pieces, and here is a good place to sample his work. You can also leave a comment for him at his own blog, Shoot First, Mumble Later .

ANZAC Day

Although it's still Sunday here, I thought I'd post the link to Craig Sisterson's thoughtful piece about rising at dawn to celebrate ANZAC Day at one of its seminal places--the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey. 96 years ago on Monday, Australian and Kiwi soldiers landed on Gallipoli's shores. If you've seen the movie by Peter Weir, you'll know what happens after that. Whether or not you already know the story, it's good to hear it from a Kiwi perspective. Check it out here.

It's an excellent opportunity to check out Craig's very dedicated Kiwi crime blog as well.

The Firing on Fort Sumter--the 150th anniversary

I wanted to post something on this anniversary, and was prompted by this segment of the Rachel Maddow show.

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There remain many unhealed wounds of this war. I'm hoping that a reexamination may reopen the dialogue about them again. To that end, I'm planning on reading an interesting blog from the New York Times called Disunion, which chronicles the way it all fell apart.