Archive for 2009

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J.G. Ballard 1930-2009

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 22, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

One of my few heroes passes away…

I read very little fiction, and when I do, I’m drawn to either the thousands of classics I still haven’t read, or the less-conventional in contemporary fiction, like Salman Rushdie, Will Self, Martin Amis, or Michael Brodsky. Which is why I’m rather saddened by the recent passing of J.G. Ballard . Ballard is best known for his novels Crash and Empire of the Sun because they were both made into films (two of my favorite films, coincidentally). I remember when I first read Crash; I was told of the premise, and started reading it with considerable doubts about whether its premise of “auto crash eroticism” could work. To my surprise, about thirty pages into it, I found myself wanting to go crash a car myself, just for the sexual gratification! His use of words can be so compelling that unthinkable things can become thinkable. Which is for me a big part of the appeal of Ballard’s writing. As Martin Amis once put it: “Ballard is quite unlike anyone else; indeed, he seems to address a different – a disused – part of the reader’s brain.” As an occasional writer myself, the 2004 Times Online piece J.G. Ballard: How I Write was kind of an inspiration to me as a person who often writes longhand, and it also inspired me to write daily, and with a little discipline. Aside from a considerable body of work in the form of novels and short stories, Ballard also unrelentingly expressed clever insights about contemporary culture. One of my favorites is his observation (in the preface of the 1990 edition The Atrocity Exhibition): “…it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his mouth“. Although he was referring to the Ronald Reagan who had eventually become president in 1980, the observation was made in response to a question about his short work Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan which was written in 1967.

What Do Monkees And Gorillaz Have In Common?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 21, 2009 by admin in Music

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

They’d both go ape over the new Gorillaz documentary Bananaz

I’m sure there’s some deeper significance to the fact that in grade school, one of my favorite bands was the Monkees, and that many years later, one of my favorite bands was Gorillaz. One thing is for certain: I didn’t grow up much in the interim. During the little growing up I did do, I was exposed to a lot of live music and production (my mom managed a music store, and had a lot of connections at live venues). From an early age, I had plans to be a failed pop star who would later have a successful career as a producer. I had some definite success with the former, the results aren’t fully in on the latter. In any case, as a result I’ve never been a big fan of conventional pop music acts; some of my favorite artists over the years were production teams or their projects. Zang Tumb Tuum, Chemical Brothers, Brian Eno, and Thomas Dolby would be a few examples. Which is part of why I’ll never forget seeing the first Gorillaz video. I loved it from a creative point of view, but was almost ecstatic when I later found out that the cartoon characters were the band. Which should make the new “behind the music” documentary Bananaz that much more amusing. It’s going to be released on DVD in June 2009, and the trailer is featured at left, but you can view the whole thing on line now at Babelgum, Oo-oo!

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I Know You Don’t Know Jack, But Have You Met Seth?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 20, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion

Monday, April 20th, 2009

An attempt to bring a little intelligence back to our Monday time-wasters…

I had never noticed until yesterday the remarkable resemblance between the animated host of the web version of You Don’t Know Jack and the byline photo on marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog. Which is our odd segue into this week’s slightly brainier edition of our Monday Demotivators. We received a complaint last week that our little Monday tradition had “devolved from a thought-provoking Monday diversion into a desperate Flash game linkfest“. While that’s a fair observation, I feel obligated to point out that I’m pretty sure that that’s the whole idea here! All the same, I’m willing to consider the possibility that maybe we’re reaching the point that marketing guru Seth Godin calls The Dip, wherein it’s hard to tell if we’re just not pushing ourselves hard enough, or maybe it’s time to throw in the towel. Guess you’ll have to come back next Monday to find out. In the meantime, if You Don’t Know Jack, get to know him. It’s a simple game, but it requires a little intelligence to score well. Although popular as a computer game for over a decade, the TV version with Paul Reubens only lasted six episodes. For those who like a little word challenge to get the day rolling, try DeepLeap, “The Fast-Paced Time-Wasting Word Game!“. Kind of like Scrabble, except someone’s constantly shoving new letters at you. And kind of bridging (heh) the gap between using your mind and Flash game brain death, we have BridgeCraft, a cute, cute, cute little game in which you help little creatures called “Euwins” build bridges to help them rebuild their world. I find games like this rather annoying, so I think I derived more pleasure from just letting the Euwins drown by building faulty bridges. And lastly, for those of you who actually do enjoy Flash game brain death, we have Power Golf. Happy sandtraps, and Happy Monday!

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What’s Your Facebook Footprint?

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 19, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Does the green movement’s use of the web cancel itself out?

Last year we wrote about how Ford was having a Fiesta, and that you weren’t invitado. Well, they’re finally going to market the car next year in the states, and they apparently picked 100 bloggers from over 4,000 applicants to pump their product through social networking. Which all got me wondering. What is the carbon footprint of our time spent on the web? Well, apparently two Google searches produce the same amount of CO2 as bringing water to a boil on your stovetop. Some other examples: the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 was nearly 5 gigawatts, which is enough to power Las Vegas on the hottest day of the year. What about the trillions of spam messages sent annually? They consume enough electricity  to power 2.4 million homes, and release as much carbon dioxide as 3.1 million cars consuming 2 billion gallons of gasoline. Which begs the obvious question: if that’s the impact of spam, what about porn? Based on all of this, will the benefits of buying a Fiesta be undone by all the blogging and Facebooking about them? You decide. Current estimates would put Facebook’s overall carbon footprint at half of New York City’s (thanks mostly to all those photos you share!). That somehow doesn’t sound as bad as the fact that Avatars in Second Life consume as much electricity as actual Brazilians, but it’s still a hefty figure. Fortunately there are lots of Facebook apps to help you manage your carbon footprint. If you actually take this topic seriously and want to figure out your carbon footprint, there a plenty of resources like the LowImpactLiving.com Impact Calculator, and this WSJ article takes a good look at a few products and how their footprints are measured.

CNN Gets Punk’d By Ashton Kutcher On Twitter

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 18, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Will an Oprah endorsement kill Twitter before people know what it is?

I apologize in advance to any Twitter addicts reading this, the piece will almost certainly be longer than 140 characters. The fact that Ashton Kutcher punk’d CNN the other day, combined with Oprah’s first all-caps tweet (see below), spoke volumes about Twitter’s future. First of all, Kutcher really did punk the game, with donated billboard space. That’s not viral marketing, it’s germ warfare. And many would agree that an endorsement from Oprah is more like a command to a zombie army than it is an indication of the validity of something. I predict that unless Twitter either implements some amazing and broadly accessible real-time search (as has been suggested), or builds a more Facebook-like central site that incorporates additional social networking features, the service is destined to max out somewhere around the number of active crackberry users. If Twitter is all about sharing what you’re doing at any given moment, you have to remember you could get the same information about many Americans by just looking at that evening’s TV listings. And those same Americans are probably not texting very much yet. I mean, although a Google exec may be showing a lot of ignorance by calling Twitter just another e-mail service, these Americans we’re talking about are the same people that in a CNN poll responded to the question “Do you use Twitter?” with  6% saying “Yes,” 64% saying “No,” and 30% saying “What’s Twitter?” Read the rest of this entry »

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