Friday, July 28, 2006

Addiction or Compulsion?



On Monday I walked into the campus bookstore for file folders and I walked out with file folders and 2 new books:

The Journalist and The Murderer by Janet Malcolm & Public Editor #1, by Daniel Okrent

I don't need any more books.My stack of Books To Read was 41 books high Monday morning. Now there are 43. I've read only 3 books since April. Plus months of barely touched New Yorkers, forsaken for the Paris Review, which I've half-read both issues, but then, that's only quarterly so you see I have a problem. I started in on a collection of Orwell essays on Monday and am still not done with the first.

Some of my lack of reading time can be attributed to a very dense summer session course, the reading for which was the equivalent of at least a few volumes.

But I'm about to start work on my masters project again and I'm not sure how I'll be able to get to any of these books.

Just picking out a few for my impending vacation seems daunting.

I avoid bookstores for this reason. Libraries are also dangerous places, but on my list of things to do while I am in Seattle is to Be In the New Central Library At Least Once Every Day. That's the "Living Room" of the library pictured above. I'm in love with Koolhaas' building, and perhaps I will take many books and curl up in one of the big nerf chairs and read lots and lots.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

The Longest To Do List Ever



In lieu of harassing my friends by sending them “we have to eat here” “and here” “and here” e-mails and then forgetting or being overwhelmed by all the great options we have when it’s time to chart new dining out territory - kind of how I used to walk into video rental places pre-Netflix - I’m dedicating this post as the To Do List: Places I Must Eat in NYC Before I Die.

Here's something I came across via gothamist today. There are so many reasons to be in love with this city, and a 24-hour Belarussian deli is one of them:

Belarus II, 495-497 Neptune Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-373-5595

New Food To Dos will appear (probably very) regularly in the comments here - feel free to share recommendations.

And if you wanna get serious about it, check this out.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

This Arendtian Thing

When co-conspirator nightgrapefruit talked about being a bit bored with her blog recently - "it's not really *about* anything" - and pursuing a trash blog, I panicked. I'm down with the trash blog - I'm angling for the sr. trash reporter position - but what I like about the slight random-ness of the current incarnation of nightgrapefruit is that when she's far away, or when weeks in the busy city go by without real time meetings, I can still visit and maybe see what's up, where she's been, or what she's been thinking about. I'm not a big fan of the more exhibitionist forms of personal blogs - I have this Arendtian thing about what belongs in public and what belongs in private....but I do like how ng's blog reflects her trajectory without indulging in exhibitionist declarations that amount to TMI.

I started here wanting to take public radio to task specifically and taking the idea of objectivity in journalism to task more generally. Instead WIWITB has been an intermittent mish mash of all kinds of stuff. I like the idea that my own blog could reflect my trajectory without subjecting friends and the idly curious to the more prurient details of my private life. I'm less interested now in critiquing what I love and hate about public radio. I'm far more interested in building a critique of the idea of journalistic objectivity and collecting examples of why and how the field can and should abandon its quest for balance and do its work much much better. For one thing, it's a quixotic quest, and not in a good way. More importantly, to paraphrase what someone once said to Tucker Carlson, it's hurting America.

But, I like that wall between public, and, well, semi-private. And since there is so much media criticism out there that takes on the broad spectrum of journalism, I very much like the idea of focusing on one aspect, especially outside the overly simplified context of right v. left, or Fox v. CNN.

So, bifurcation it is to be. This semi-private place remains Whatever I Want it to Be. So if I feel like pretending that cheese grows underground like potatoes, or want to write about how I am simultaneously repelled and attracted to all the posters of ShahRukh Khan that dot my nabe, or be outraged when the Bush Administration accuses the New York Times (not my favorite paper) of treason, or review my restaurant week experience at The Mercer Kitchen, that's here.

Personal Equations will be over at:

http://personalequations.blogspot.com

and will be up and running shortly. And since it is important to have a grand ambition - nothing half-assed about it this time around - it will take on the mission of Exploding the Myth of Objectivity in Journalism. Bookmark, visit often, and comment.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Nonaligned News Service Launches

From Al Jazeera -

"Developing countries have introduced an internet-based news service intended to provide an alternative to the Western media that they say is biased."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0689B772-774D-4C0B-A223-A3A9FE70393D.htm