New Internationalist. The Peking Duck. Normblog. You know those lists of books you get hit with from time to time and of which, for some reason, there have been a lot lately?
In the last few days we have had '100 books to love' and 'The books we secretly love - our 50 favourite page-turners' from, respectively, The Sunday Times and The Times (both £). And before that there was the '100 novels everyone should read', and - with inflation - the '1000 novels everyone must read', and '100 Books To Read Before You Die'. There were also the 'top 100 books of all time' and the top 100 titles from the BBC's Big Read.
As well as plenty more. While I'm sure these lists are meant to be helpful, guiding us towards books we might want to try, they can also be a bit oppressive, don't you find? All of which is by way of introducing another such list of books that I recently fell upon and that has an interesting feature I want you to consider. That's it. Natalia Antonova. Liberal England. Davids Medienkritik. Let's face it: Media tend to over-report the most vile and extreme aspects of our society.
"If it bleeds - it leads" is much more than a cliche - it is a journalistic fact of life. The danger with the daily sensationalism is that it skews the viewer's perception of reality. In other words, a viewer is apt to believe that the world around him is a much more rotten than it actually is. Interesting thought experiment: What if you were a foreign correspondent...? Imagine you are an American correspondent in Germany. Beyond that - your editors oblige you to bring stories only on a narrow band of pet issues that they have predetermined are of "interest" to the readership.
The pet issues and big politics are all they want. The editors supplement your work by sprinkling-in stories cut-and-pasted from news wires on Germans behaving badly worldwide. Turn the mirror around... Now let us turn this script around. First Draft. Yappa Ding Ding. Abu Aardvark. Desertpeace. Syria Comment. Minispace - Live uit de Metropool van de Achterhoek! 09 Jul '12 - 22:11 Eupen - Belgium Concert of 'The Boomchickas'. 28 Mar '12 - 20:51 Amsterdam - Keizersgracht 15 Jan '12 - 19:39 Death Valley - California 29 Dec '11 - 20:02 Happy 2012 Let's hope things will get a bit more interesting here again .... 02 Oct '11 - 18:15 Kes Aalten - Nijverheidsweg - Kestrel 24 Sep '11 - 09:37 Deutsche gründlichkeit 17 Sep '11 - 14:29 Droppings Ede - Ginkelse Heide (67th Commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem) Ede - Ginkelse Heide (67th Commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem) Ede - Ginkelse Heide (67th Commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem) 14 Sep '11 - 09:18 A Night On The Town Kitty, Daisy & Lewis @ Melkweg Amsterdam 11 Sep '11 - 09:02 Wish You Were Here 20 Aug '11 - 22:34 One Careful Owner For those planning to live in Bodie for the new Gold Rush - this one's still free.
Verbal Jam weblog. Another Irani Online. Nothing is Sacred. Raed in the Middle. News for the rest of us. Z Magazine Top. Liblogs Latest blog entries. Left Turn - Notes from the Global Intifada. Iraq Inquiry Digest. Afghan Lord. EUobserver. Marelles: European Politics. Neweurasia.net. China Media Project. A Fistful of Euros. Gaza Mom. Dutch Blog Israel. Dahr Jamail's Mideast Dispatches — The Pakistan Policy Blog. Iraq Today. The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب. McClatchy. Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion.