Editorial & Opinion
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[ 3 Comments ]Posted on August 11, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, August 11th, 2008…or at least politely ask next time you want a picture.
It’s interesting that while Google spies on our cats, watches burning buildings burn without stopping to help, and generally invades our life with an utter disregard for privacy, it doesn’t want to be photographed itself. From the moment they chose the tagline “Don’t Be Evil”, I’ve been unable to think of them as anything but. And now, I have a personal reason. That’s me in the image at left, grabbed from Google Street View. No, I’m not going to provide a link; friends of mine who find it amusing will easily find the image, and the rest of you – if you care – are on your own. However, I am going to have a little fun with this. I have a camera, and there’s a Google office just blocks from my home. I think we all need a more intimate look at it. Look for some amusing images here soon…
DoublePlus Good: George Orwell’s Blog
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 10, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Sunday, August 10th, 2008Yesterday marked the first entry in George Orwell’s blog, an interesting project assembled by the Orwell Prize, the Orwell Trust, Political Quarterly and Media Standards Trust. They’re taking Orwell’s personal diaries and publishing them on line in WordPress blog format, posting entries in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were originally written. I personally [...]
Yesterday marked the first entry in George Orwell’s blog, an interesting project assembled by the Orwell Prize, the Orwell Trust, Political Quarterly and Media Standards Trust. They’re taking Orwell’s personal diaries and publishing them on line in WordPress blog format, posting entries in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were originally written. I personally look forward to reading what George had to say, even if it turns out to be a banal collection of daily personal observations. I also enjoy the ironic notion that if Orwell had in fact been a blogger with no paper trail, we’d probably never know exactly what he said at all because of today’s disturbing tendency toward Newspeak. Orwell’s book A Collection of Essays
The Meme Generation, Revisited
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on August 9, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Saturday, August 9th, 2008The temptation to RickRoll is overwhelming…
One of my first posts on Dissociated Press was a quick roundup of Internet Memes. The folks at Dipity.com have done a better job of this, and put it on a browseable, user-modifyable timeline as well. Still sadly missing from both collections: 1.) The man who was Borat long before Borat, Mahir, and 2.) The seminal Lee Jeans viral marketing campaign, RubberBurner.com (mirror of original site).
Schrodinger’s Catnip
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on August 8, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, August 8th, 2008Or: Why Ghengis Khan’s Yer Daddy
If you have a few minutes to actually do some reading on the web today (and obviously you do, you just read that), make sure to include cracked.com’s 5 Scientific Theories That Will Make Your Head Explode. “Prepare”, as they put it, “for a science course so mind-blowing, it’s written almost entirely in italics“. Included are Quantum Entanglement, Evolution, The Many Worlds Theory, The Universe Is Big, and one of my favorites: The Copenhagen Interpretation, which explains why “There’s nothing stopping a big floppy dick from sprouting out of your forehead right now; it’s just highly unlikely.” More likely to make your head explode are the comments after the article, in which lonely failed brainiacs enter serious dialogues on the validity of the theories mentioned in the article.
Okay, Smarty Pants…
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 7, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Thursday, August 7th, 2008..if you’re so smart, why are you wasting your time reading this?
So, you passed those MENSA tests in Reader’s Digest when you were a kid. You’ve got a college degree, and always do better than half the contestants on Jeopardy. You can do the NYT crossword puzzle in 20 minutes (okay, you can finish it on the day you started it). Well, I bet you can’t name the 100 most common words in the English language in 5 minutes, or name the world’s 50 largest countries in 5 minutes either. “But those don’t really test intelligence” you’ll argue. So go ahead, try the not-so-fun Mensa Fun Test.