---
title: Relevance
categories:
- personal
content-tags:
- me
- media
- personal
---

Jim captures the essence of [why I stopped following local news][1]: it favors the trivial.  During college I ended up relying on NPR to keep abreast of things.

But when I stopped commuting, I lost that radio-listening time.  Since I'd already taken to RSS feeds for most information streams, I eventually tried adding the BBC and Google News; there's no lack of seemingly important, well-filtered sources.  But as I was reminded recently trying to follow the [BBC Twitter][2], I just can't convince myself the news is noteworthy.  Like biting my fingernails, drinking cola, or eating meat, time away from the habit dispelled the urge.

I wasn't able to articulate my perspective until Brian did it for me: [it may seem important today, but most of the "news" is too transient to matter.][3]  Which explains why I can still be bothered with [social commentary][4], the [advancement of knowledge][5], and the [just damn interesting][6].

   [1]: http://jimski.nopaper.net/2007/02/05/in-the-zone/
   [2]: http://menti.net/?p=85
   [3]: http://stlbrianj.blogspot.com/2007/01/laziness-is-mother-of-perspective.html
   [4]: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/
   [5]: http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/
   [6]: http://www.damninteresting.com/
