DoublePlus Good: George Orwell’s Blog
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 10, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
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 [...]
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
Will Obama Need a Dick Tuck?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 9, 2008 by admin in Politics
Or Am I Making A Mountain Out Of A Mole?
While a lot of people, specifically liberals, feel comfortable that Barack Obama’s smooth, articulate style will help him win against the stodgy, brain-fart-laden mannerisms of John McCain, let’s not forget America’s recent political history. Richard Nixon’s presidency will forever be a reminder that even a surly, humorless, sweaty-lipped used car salesman can run for president and win. Even when a legendary prankster like Dick Tuck is working against him. I say legendary, even though I’d never heard of him until yesterday. If anyone out there can find a photo of Mr. Tuck, I’d like to see it. The only image I could find (at left) is from the museumofhoaxes.com site. By the way, I STRONGLY discourage doing a Google Image Search for “Dick Tuck”.
The Meme Generation, Revisited
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on August 9, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
The 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).
Before the Music Dies
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 8, 2008 by admin in Music
I wonder if Don McClean did the soundtrack?
If you listen to pop music with any regularity and intelligence, you may have noticed an extremely high suck quotient in the major label releases of the past couple of years. This, while the quantity of really high quality indy material has grown almost exponentially and provided the artist with a higher income-making potential while unit prices plummeted. Well, someone else seems to have noticed too, and made a film about it. Perhaps a bit melodramatically titled, Before the Music Dies features interviews and performances with Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, Branford Marsalis, ?uestlove and a wide variety of others. The film promises to explore the phemomena of “the homogenous corporate product that is spoonfed to consumers and the diverse independent music that finds devoted fans online and at clubs across the country”. The teaser with Erykah Badu, left, is hilarious.
Schrodinger’s Catnip
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on August 8, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Or: 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.