Phyllis Diller, Tony Scott, Gore Vidal, Sherman Hemsley,
Sally Ride, Whitney Houston and many other people who are household names died
this year and it’s not even September. I
fell into the trap of being surprised when I hear of such deaths and then I
realized I shouldn’t.
Continue reading "Deaths of Famous People Shouldn’t Surprise Us Anymore" »
Even the all-knowing Wikipedia doesn’t describe where applause originated. They say it’s as old as humanity. Basically, it came about as a noise-making action to signify approval for an accomplishment and it has become universal. But I’ve been noticing and thinking about why and how we applaud for things that happen. Obviously, we applaud for entertainment events like concerts and sports accomplishments, but there are so many other things worthy of applause for which we take no action. A chef makes a great meal and does not get applause, let alone a direct compliment. A kid gets an ‘A’ in her class and she gets no public recognition. (More often than not, she has to hide the fact that she got the ‘A’.) It comes down to emotion, surprise, and crowds watching something happen. Often applause is just given as a polite gesture for something that we don’t even like that much.
I suppose we can’t extend applause to consistently cover any good accomplishment. If people applauded in restaurants or at the dry cleaners for something delivered in a timely manner, the establishment would be a fiasco. We all know how rare good customer service is these days. It truly is applause-worthy. Hmm. Maybe applause would lead to better customer service.
For non-public, non-entertaining accomplishments, we sometimes give verbal compliments, but those can be tricky. Or at work, we resort to emails which can seem fake and they fill up inboxes. It would be great if one-on-one applause was OK. Why not? It can be done quietly. Then, nothing needs to be said either. No word-smithing required. No misinterpretations.
Sometimes applause goes too far. Standing ovations are over-used and they instill a sense of obligation from those seated. If you give a standing-‘O’ against your will, you are misleading the performers into thinking that you really like the performance and you have to get off your seat and stand up. If you don’t stand up to applaud, then you can’t see over those who are standing and you look like a grump who doesn’t want to compliment others.
Applause isn’t easy to know how to use and it sure can be hard to earn. It really depends on a few people starting it up and then others follow. But if they’re just following others, it doesn’t mean as much. It would be nice if you applaud after reading this blog post. Maybe record the video on your phone and email it to me.
+ Atul
Joe's hairshirt seems not to be bothering him so much this week as our Roundtabler of the week. He's focusing on something positive, not so high class but nevertheless important, at least to you. Which moments in popular culture meant a lot to you even if the critics would disagree? Click on over to Joe's blog, Hairshirt and write about the soda (I mean coke, I mean pop) moments that meant a lot to you. Whether it was a scene from Real Genius or a certain moment in "Chains of Love" by Erasure that just did it for you, share with the blogosphere.
+ Atul
I just purchased an MP3 player, the Creative Labs Zen 30 GB model which I like except that the user interface could be more intuitive. The sound quality and features are amazing though. I "ripped" songs from about half of my hundreds of CD's (at full quality so I can get the best sound at the expense of song storage). All this ripping reminded me of the media companies and their lawsuits against major copyright infringement offenders, (and the embarrassing lawsuits against kids). Stealing songs or movies is illegal, but these companies have partially brought the problem upon themselves. They were greedy and frequently charged outrageous prices for music, $17+ for a CD! So, of course music aficionados without lots of cash found alternative ways to get their favorite music. The answer was Napster. The free version of Napster is gone, but various peer-to-peer file sharing alternatives still exist. To me, piracy isn't as bad of a profit loss problem as software/media producers say. Some people 'steal' stuff they never would have bought in the first place so those instances of theft aren't lost income. Then, these 'thieves' often become loyal customers and ambassadors who spread the word and advertise the product for free (as in buzzmarketing). The message gets to some people that can afford to buy it, and would not have bought it in the first place because they would not have know about it. Potentially, those who stole a band's music will eventually get to the stage in their life where affordability stops being an issue. Then they can buy future CD's or software.
Hopefully the media/music/software companies will continue to innovate in how they deliver content and will not continue their greedy ways. If they lowered prices on music and software, fewer people would steal, and profits might increase. Again, I don't condone illegal free downloads because if all the profit goes away, fewer artists will produce content for us to enjoy and the quality might go down. But major media and content providing corporations must stop exaggerating the problem and begin doing a better job of adapting to technological and market conditions. To do so would only help their credibility and their profits.
+ Atul
Steph, one of the newer Roundtablers at her blog Incurable Insomniac is up this week and she talks about how she is being treated by people who know her now that she has become somewhat famous with her movie Mozartballs. That would be a nice situation to be in, but it makes you think who your friends really are. Before the days of mobile phones and cheap phone plans, I used to say I knew who my friends were because they were the ones that would pay to call me long distance. Now I'm not so sure. I still haven't come up with a new metric for that one. But I better hurry in case I become famous too.
+ Atul
It's Vincenzo's turn to be the featured post in this week's Bloggers roundtable. He was going to write about the Oscars. Thank God he didn't. I have probably only seen one of the nominated movies. "Brokeback Mountain" is one I haven't seen and it has brought homosexuality into the mainstream spotlight. His chain of thought led him to write about how the gay community might not want the pressure of being associated with certain cultural icons. It's an unfortuanate phenomena that many minority groups face. If you're a (relatively) small group, the actions of a few in your group can easily represent the whole minority community in the eyes of the majority. Just ask Muslim Americans or even people who look Middle Eastern about that one.
Well, have a read and enjoy Vincenzo's post...
http://vincenzos.blogspot.com/2006/03/cowpoking.html
+ Atul
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