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Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

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Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#91

Post by tcpekin »

logicrook wrote: post #80
myNXTact wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? This isn't a newspaper article, it is a nonfiction story. Bloomberg contains sections of their magazines written in your format; I always skip them. I prefer the long-form stories.

Honestly, why? After reading a few of them, I was completely sick of this format. It appears to me as information-free fluff, written in a very generic style. What do you like in this format? I genuinely don't understand how it can sell, but if it does, there must be something?

It can also be fun to read something that just isn't parsed down to the bare facts. For example, in my opinion, [0] would be much less interesting without the benefits of long form journalism.

[0] http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#92

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

netinstructions wrote: post #75
SeoxyS wrote: post #69

I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits I see are: - Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure. - Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result. Given the very slim chance of them even finding the plane and learning anything useful out…

> Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result. Well Wikipedia says a Boeing 777-200ER costs $261.5 million[1]. That's about double the cost for the search. If it's possible to prevent even one future mishap as a result of learning anything the cost is justified. Besides closure is important for the families and friends of the passengers. Especially with crazy art…

I don't care about the cost of the tin can. It's worth far more than that to find out why the accident happened, and if it was an equipment failure, do something to the rest of the tin cans so that it doesn't happen again.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#93

Post by underwater »

gaur wrote: post #17

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede. I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

Is it really important information? Knowing the answer doesn't change anything about your life.

I consider it to be interesting information. And the author has chosen to tell you an interesting story instead of just a fact fact.

If the goal was to show you something that would satiate the need to be interested then I think the story does a much better job.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#94

Post by logicrook »

tcpekin wrote: post #91
logicrook wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, why? After reading a few of them, I was completely sick of this format. It appears to me as information-free fluff, written in a very generic style. What do you like in this format? I genuinely don't understand how it can sell, but if it does, there must be something?

It can also be fun to read something that just isn't parsed down to the bare facts. For example, in my opinion, [0] would be much less interesting without the benefits of long form journalism. [0] http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...

It seems that most often the pieces that try to be too literary (or too story-esque) tend to distort the facts to best fit the narrative (or rather the narrative fallacy). Doesn't that worry you?

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#95

Post by eslaught »

tcpekin wrote: post #87
baddox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm much less forgiving of the format. Every example I've seen has been a colossal and seemingly deliberate waste of the reader's (my) time. Even when it is reasonably skillfully written and contains information on a subject I'm interested in, I vastly prefer the writing style of, say, Wikipedia.

Why not just read for the pleasure of it? Do you every read anything from The New Yorker, or Esquire, or The Atlantic, etc.? There can be great stories that are enjoyable to read, while still being nonfiction.

No, I think GP is right. Compare a typical long-form piece to e.g. a textbook. A well-written textbook has much more information, but still organizes it in such a way so that you can quickly understand what you're getting into. By comparison, I find that long-form journalism typically buries this information so that even if there is a meaningful summary, you have to build it yourself (and obviously you can only do this after having spent the time to read it in the first place).

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#96

Post by baddox »

tcpekin wrote: post #87
baddox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm much less forgiving of the format. Every example I've seen has been a colossal and seemingly deliberate waste of the reader's (my) time. Even when it is reasonably skillfully written and contains information on a subject I'm interested in, I vastly prefer the writing style of, say, Wikipedia.

Why not just read for the pleasure of it? Do you every read anything from The New Yorker, or Esquire, or The Atlantic, etc.? There can be great stories that are enjoyable to read, while still being nonfiction.

My point is that long-form journalism isn't pleasurable to read. The writing style is incredibly belabored, and I am fairly convinced that this is the intention of the authors. It clearly works for many readers, but not for me, and I wish there was always a clearer upfront distinction between traditional news articles and long-form articles.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#97

Post by stephengillie »

underwater wrote: post #93
gaur wrote: post #17

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede. I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

Is it really important information? Knowing the answer doesn't change anything about your life. I consider it to be interesting information. And the author has chosen to tell you an interesting story instead of just a fact fact. If the goal was to show you something that would satiate the need to be interested then I think the story does a much better job.

When someone offers one thing but provides another, it's called bait-and-switch.

When someone says they'll do one thing but do something else, that's lying.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#98

Post by julianz »

mikestew wrote: post #46
samstave wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what? Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute? (Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data once a plane has reached its destination successfully)

I was thinking about this on a motorcycle trip to Alaska. For $250 one can buy a consumer device that updates my location via satellite every few minutes to display on a web page. $35/month, and they have cheaper plans. Were I to have been eaten by a bear, or splattered by a semi on the Dalton Highway, my wife would have at least known where to recover the body. Any yahoo with $250 and a shipping address can have one…

Which satellite would it talk back to? There's no coverage over that part of the Southern ocean. It's ridiculously remote and nobody is out there.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#99

Post by pm24601 »

rwhitman wrote: post #55

The MH370 tracking problem is unfortunate but what I'm most fascinated by in all of this is the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans. A plane crashes in an area with no landmass and we lose it. We've overfished many species to near-extinction because we completely failed to understand exactly how many fish there actually are. The sea acts as a natural eraser for hu…

You don't need to understand something to destroy it.

You don't need to master something to wreak it.

Sadly, our ignorance is doing both.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#100

Post by 7952 »

rwhitman wrote: post #55

The MH370 tracking problem is unfortunate but what I'm most fascinated by in all of this is the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans. A plane crashes in an area with no landmass and we lose it. We've overfished many species to near-extinction because we completely failed to understand exactly how many fish there actually are. The sea acts as a natural eraser for hu…

> the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans.

That is symptomatic of our child like relationship with the environment. We are deeply dependant but have little understanding or agency.

It is obvious that high fish stocks will allow more catches than near extinction levels. Catching 1% of 1 billion is better than 40% of 1 million. Yet we continue to treat fish as a short term commodity to be exploited.

We may lack mastery of the planet, but that is no excuse for burying our head in the sand. We have a huge impact and we cannot just opt-out of that.

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