#81: Great News!
Happy Friday!
After last week's plaintive cry for positive journalism, this quarter's cover story of Positive News couldn't have been more apt: Progress: The Great Untold Story of Our Time by psychologist Steven Pinker. Not naive rose-tinted optimism, but a fair-minded reflection of the 'real' state of the world today, and full of sensible corrections like the following:
"Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is. News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a journalist saying to the camera, “I’m reporting live from a country where a war has not broken out” – or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up.
As long as bad things have not vanished from the face of the Earth, there will always be enough incidents to fill the news, especially when billions of smartphones turn most of the world’s population into crime reporters and war correspondents."
I don't think I'm mistaken when I say that this 'bad news' is overwhelmed by the good in our lives, contrary to what might be reported.
Starting with the fact that The Bike Project's comedy fundraiser Jokes and Spokes raised a ridiculous £22,744 so they can carry on getting refugees cycling.
Thumbs up!
OUTPUT >>
As you may have noticed, this mailing list is the engine room of my blogging. Here's some you might have missed:
...COMING UP...
A meeting tonight to find out about refugees in Athens: I'm looking for leads if you know anyone who might be able to help?
Edinburgh Festival Works In Progress Galore: Susan Harrison and Adam Hess (who worked on Foiled this year - legend!)
9 days to go! Book your FREE tickets for the recording of our laugh-out-loud sitcom at St David's Hall in Cardiff on 23 June and 24 June
Now On: The Victor Frankl 5-a-day Book Club!
Membership Criteria: Read 5 pages a day of Man's Search for Meaning to complete the whole darn text in only 28 days. I'll be tootling through the text at just 5 pages a week, so you've got plenty of time to catch up.
Day 7, p41-45
Today's 5 pages are largely concerned with food, notable for its paucity in concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Frankl recounts the daily menu:
[T]he daily ration consisted of very watery soup given out once daily, and the usual small bread ration. In addition to that, there was the so-called "extra allowance," consisting of three-fourths of an ounce of margarine, or of a slice of poor quality sausage, or of a little piece of cheese, or a bit of synthetic honey, or a spoonful of watery jam, varying daily.
The result was that the inmates quickly 'looked like skeletons disguised with skin and rags', as their bodies started to devour themselves.
As you can imagine, the topic of food was always on the brain and the way the inmates disposed of their daily allowance, such as it was, became a matter of hot debate.
Frankl decided to divide his ration up into even smaller portions. Although such measly morsels would never satisfy him, it meant he could save something for the most ghastly part of the day: the awakening.
[A]t a still nocturnal hour, the three shrill blows of a whistle tore us pitilessly from our exhausted sleep and from the longings in our dreams. ... One morning I heard someone, whom I knew to be brave and dignified, cry like a child because he finally had to go to the snowy marching grounds in his bare feet, as his shoes were too shrunken for him to wear. In those ghastly minutes, I found a little bit of comfort; a small piece of bread which I drew out of my pocket and munched with absorbed delight.
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Share your thoughts by replying to this email, or adding to the comments on my blog. We will continue next week...
In other news, I've been getting very excited about eating plants. According to research by the British and American Gut Projects, the healthiest guts belong to people who devour at least 30 different types of plant every week.
Challenge accepted!
Much love,
- dc
CREDITS
David Charles wrote this. When not writing this, David co-writes BBC Radio sitcom Foiled, does copywriting for The Bike Project and the Elevate Festival, and volunteers for refugee youth club Young Roots. He is almost always available for work. Lazy sod. davidcharles.info // @dcisbusy
What the? Via Kottke.org