Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

well, the one I linked does seem to have a decent interview containing real facts - is it the physics, medical and technological ones which don't say a fucking thing?

oh LOL xpost

LHC finds 'interesting effects'

this article is worse than the headline, but the worst thing about it is that isn't some BBC reporting doing an act of daily journalism and hitting the pavement to get a story. it's based on a press release CERN felt moved to issue. why? i'm sure it's a perfectly good formulaic press release -> article job. my problem is the existence of the press release, and the choice of the journalist not to do something else with their day.

exactly

a guy from my course is now a LHC communications guy and I'm slightly worried he was responsible for that press release

Excellent: "Clumps of ash retrieved using double-sided sticky tape are giving scientists fresh insights into the recent Eyjafjallajoekull eruption."

this is just facile: "This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like "the scientists say" to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist."

attribution isn't "weasel words", and ffs what does he expect them to do, replicate the experiment in their newsroom?

No but I expect a science journalist to be able to tell the difference between a valid experiment with a significant effect, or a bullshit press release.

(tiny space-filling) article in the times last week said that scientists have finally validated general relativity's prediction that gravity slows time... so spending time in your basement will help you live longer. It said that the difference is in billionths of a second or whatever... "but scientists say that that figure is too small to have a real effect on people's lives". Thanks, scientists, would never have figured that out for myself.

but i thought if an astronaut went into outer space for 20 years she'd age less than if she stayed on earth for 20 years.. does this new finding cancel that out??

/jokes

/not really

special vs general relativity maaaaaan

or is it? time dilation due to gravity vs. time dilation due to velocity anyway. both v small unless yr velocity is close to light speed.

time dilation thru boredom

another 'problem' with bloggification, a small one, granted, is the duplication of effort. there have now been at least three reviews of 'the social network' in the guardian and it isn't even out till mid-october. the latest is by hadley freeman and... it's retarded.

Now, call me a heartless wench [that's right, it's a crowbarred in ferris bueller line that doesn't make sense], but the story of a nerd stealing a vague computer idea from a pair of wealthy twins called Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, as Zuckerberg was accused of doing, doesn't strike me as having the same dramatic hook as, say, saving the planet from imminent destruction, or escaping from the Nazis. It seems unlikely that Humphrey Bogart is weeping in heaven at the lost chance to appear in a movie whose Eureka moment is the creation of the "relationship status" function.

leaving aside whether that's such a stupid eureka moment... n/m in the wake of prr-gate maybe this is actually great and im the idiot.

prr-gate?

she used to have the world's cutest byline photograph

nah this is the world's cutest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/darraghmcmanus

how much of a dramatic hook does writing about such a film on commentisfree have? it seems unlikely that james joyce is weeping in heaven at the lost chance to write an article whose Eureka moment is "a film is silly".

the core point, that the two films-about-facebook don't really deal with what's interesting/bad/creepy about facebook itself, is pretty sound? but yeah she spends way too much time going 'thesocialnetwork has quite a boring story all things considered'. It'd be more interesting if she'd managed to sum it up in a pithy paragraph the way she summed up Catfish.

Can't be doing with all this weeping in heaven

what does she actually like? i don't give a shit if hadley freeman thinks facebook is "a bit rubbish" cos i am almost 99 per cent certain anyone whose dislikes are tedious has nothing more interesting going on anyway.

and personally i love facebook, so there!

the core point, that the two films-about-facebook don't really deal with what's interesting/bad/creepy about facebook itself, is pretty sound? but yeah she spends way too much time going 'thesocialnetwork has quite a boring story all things considered'. It'd be more interesting if she'd managed to sum it up in a pithy paragraph the way she summed up Catfish.

― no szigeti (c sharp major), Wednesday, September 29, 2010 12:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

well no, because she's (as per) gratuitously glib and dismissive; the film does deal with what's interesting/'bad'/'creepy' about fbook! but so what? it's hardly to be compared with the destruction of the world or the nazi menace.

ilx: guardian blog 'gratuitously glib and dismissive'

a film is more than its story, but even then: a 19-20y.o. kid inventing (?) s.thing that goes on to have half a billion users and becoming one of the world's richest men, that is sort of intrinsically interesting, before you get to what the film actually does.

why does guardian have blog :-(

Everything has a blog now.

:-(

that's kinda problem when for most newspaper film coverage, a film is its story xps

Should newspapers get more bloggy, or deactivate their blog websites and exist only in paper format?
Will blogs ever be ‘as relevant’ as newspapers?
Will blogs ever go to ‘print format’, or is that part of the business just a ‘huge financial burden’?

I don't despise her writing or anything (it is a bit meh, which is why I've really not commented either way before) but I've never seen the cuteness of which you speak - she's all thin, stringy hair, with kind of average looks. Perhaps that's just what a certain kind of guy finds unthreatening and therefore winsome.

Newspaper coverage of arts is also blighted by the whole 'media partner' phenomenon.

she's all thin, stringy hair, with kind of average looks

:(

To contrast, here is one of my colleagues at a fashion week - I could have chosen from several v. attractive peeps to make my point, but maybe I'm a bit spoiled for choice.

http://www.fashionconfidential.co.uk/~/media/FC/Test%20images/JAR%20PARIS.ashx

There's so much weirdness to unpack in the last few posts it's kind of terrifying.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00041/fellaini_280x420_41323a.jpg

*spluttering tea over computer*

Sorry, but my colleague is hott and your footballer is nott.

Eye of the beholder innit

I don't despise her writing or anything (it is a bit meh, which is why I've really not commented either way before) but I've never seen the cuteness of which you speak - she's all thin, stringy hair, with kind of average looks. Perhaps that's just what a certain kind of guy finds unthreatening and therefore winsome.

Newspaper coverage of arts is also blighted by the whole 'media partner' phenomenon.

― are you robot? (suzy), Wednesday, 29 September 2010 12:50 (13 minutes ago)

nah she is legit cute, you've probably seen her thin stringy hair irl or else yr being unkind or str8 racist or something

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/contributor/2007/09/28/hadley_freeman_140x140.jpg

can't imagine she's unthreatening/winsome....but yeah probably not threatening

Average and ugly are not the same thing, and please shove any racism accusation back up whichever orifice of yours it was pulled from.

And then twist your fist.

jesus u retard, i trust yr not ~actually~ racist against white ppl

the guardian have really gone to town on the liveblogging, it won't be long before the kids will be saying 'if something happens but gu didn't liveblog it, did it really happen?'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/sep/15/tony-blair-katie-couric/print

i know it's lol old etc but it's difficult to see how this stuff works financially

Think we're on a slippery slope when we get into "this girl is average next to <6ft tall woman with model looks>" even without the insinsuations of "oh I suppose *A CERTAIN* kind of guy finds it unthreatening". Maybe that's just me.

you gotta expect sniping if yr first reply about a piece of journalism is a ref to their cuteness, usually i'd be doing the sniping tho

No I think there are other people who find her unthreatening too

xpost

Normally I wouldn't condone looks-ist sniping but given Ms Hadley's own attitude and remit I think it's fair play to be honest

Ha how many other British cliches insinuating common sense can I throw in there

Never actually read a Hadley Freeman piece as far as I can tell, the bylines alone usually scream "awful space-filling G2 fodder".

xp That response was as helpful as the racism accusation (it could be inferred from your post that anti-Semitism was at play in my appraisal of HF's looks, which makes me spit nails at 200mph). There is only one person who I'm in danger of being unkind to right now, and that's you.

Tracer - I'm normally not in the fray of who looks like what, but to be slated for essentially saying someone's 'average' is a bit silly.

MDC - my colleague has just started doing the shows and already the Streetpeepers of this world are like FOLLOW THAT FRO.

this thread is fucking horrible.

huh i am more on-board with the 'i guess a certain type of guy finds this unthreatening' inter-ilx sniping than with the need to assert that a female journalist is Not Cute.

Is Ms Freeman particularly known for looksist sniping of her own? my abiding memory of her fashion column is the one where she talks about Christine Hamilton and dressing to please yourself.

nah i wasn't implying antisemitism, i don't think thin, stringy hair is in the list of antisemitic stereotypes/slurs!

I dunno, right in the first graf there she says "women think spaghetti straps are somehow sexy because they show more shoulder flesh, when in fact they just look rubbish and droopy (and that refers to both the dress and the breasts beneath it) and, frankly, cheap and nasty."

Kind of leaves the door open.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Puppy_Koons_Bilbao_frontal.jpg/450px-Puppy_Koons_Bilbao_frontal.jpg

agreed jim

a woman saying that spaghetti straps on heavy dresses look cheap and nasty leaves the door open to calling her stringy-haired and average-looking?

does not follow.