There's Always Room for Jell-O and Beer

Seth Godin takes a philosophical look at a packaged food slogan:

Think about your schedule... is there room for an emergency, an SEC investigation, a server crash? If you took a day off because of the flu, is your business going to go bankrupt? Probably not.

So, if there's time for an emergency (Jello), why isn't there time for brilliance, generosity or learning?

Reminds me of an anecdote that made the email rounds when I was in college. You've heard this one: a teacher fills a large jar with rocks and asks the class if it's full. Of course, they say yes. Then, he pours sand into the jar, filling the gaps between the rocks. Again, he asks the class whether it is full. He then opens two cans of beer and pours them into the jar. They soak in, filling the jar to the brim.

The moral? In between the important things, there's room for a lot of little things. And there's always time to meet a friend for a couple of beers.

Protesting too much

I liked Jeff Jarvis' post comparing the new-media and old-media responses to Michael Jackson's death and the Iran election outcome. That distinction (new-old media) may not be meaningful for much longer, but as long as it is, thoughtful comparisons like this are welcome.

However, there was one paragraph that sounded a little shrill:

Since its birth, cable was the only way to stay constantly connected to a story as it happened, or allegedly so. But in the Jackson story, there really is no news. He’s still dead. All that follows is discussion and wouldn’t we really rather discuss it with our friends than Al Sharpton? Once the supernova of news explodes – taking down Twitter search and YouTube and jamming GoogleNews search – we probably to seek out TV, but it quickly says all it has to say and the rest is just repetition. If the Iraq War was the birth of CNN could Iran and Jackson mark the start of their decline in influence? Too soon to say.

I've worked for a handful of underdog publications, and one thing the underdog always has to do is - whether he's Pepsi or the Boston Herald - trumpet his own successes and call out every time the top dog stumbles. So if you say tut tut when Howie Carr mocks the Globe, what do you say when Jeff Jarvis, interactive journalism's spokesperson, mocks cable TV for something it hasn't even done yet?

-GM