This is another filler post just to remind my readers and the world I'm not dead yet despite the lengthy pauses between posts over the last few weeks.

My housemate's computer is back from repairs on the west coast and appears to be in fine shape, allowing me to get back to my thoughtful and blogalicious way of life. However, I'm feeling sluggish and peevish, cranky and sullen. Okay, not so much but still...

I've been spending fa-a-a-ar too much time ripping vinyl LPs to the computer. It's fun but sucks up spare time like a sponge, what with cleaning up the files, ID/tagging the resulting MP3s mostly by hand, etc. And I fear becoming the sort of person who bores everyone around him by posting to the blog every album I rip in an attempt to define myself through proclaiming to the world the music I listen to. That is not my idea of a socially integrated and balanced person. Maybe that's just me.

I'm still reading Chomsky's Necessary Illusions. I'm particularly interested in the whole Propaganda Model theory of media. Despite being written in 1989, the theory is applicable to how the media have treated the whole Iraq war. The following is from the Wikipedia link above:

First presented in their [Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's] 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product --— readers and audiences (rather than news) -—- to other businesses (advertisers). The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that finally gets published in news media. These five are:

1. Ownership of the medium
2. Medium's funding sources
3. Sourcing
4. Flak
5. Anti-communist ideology

The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded as being the most important.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.

Herman has gone on to join and support Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a group I positively adore.

That's enough for now. I have to ease back into this blogging stuff, build up my stamina. But wait! I need to post about watching Murderball! Great film, see it! It's out on DVD. Screw watching the Olympics; I'd pay hard cash to watch the Paralympic Games. Er, more on this film next time.