On This Day
Douglas Adams: “the change is real. I don't think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn't becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it's very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don't bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day.”
Kevin Marks has another quote from Adams' article, and has posted audio of Douglas Adams reading the epilogue of Last Chance to See.
Andrew at In My Room has created a tribute site to the 'smack the penguin' games you've been seeing on the Internet.
Ethan Zuckerman: “for a citizen to function in a democracy, a free, engaged and critical press is essential. But from a developing world perspective, the mass media in the US and Europe is badly broken. Corporate consolidation of media, the blurring of the line between media and entertainment and the unspoken bias towards US government interests have combined to create a mass media that pays almost no attention to most of the developing world. Alternative media is of limited help in this situation - there aren't enough bloggers in eastern Congo to give us a sense for what's really going on, and none but the largest news agencies are able to pay the travel costs and insurance for reporters to cover these stories. The net result - we simply don't have information about parts of the globe relevant to world debate.” [via Jay]
Joy Press: “Larry David's TV alter ego is transparently modeled on his real life: a middle-aged man living comfortably on his Seinfeld fortune, married to an attractive younger woman, with lots of spare time on his hands. The couple is childless, but in a sense Larry himself plays the child and his blonde shiksa wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), the reproving mother. Where Seinfeld and his pals were overgrown adolescents who covered over their emotional disconnectedness with wisecracks and trivia, Larry regresses even further: He's like a bratty toddler who hasn't learned to put anybody else first. He won't sing "Happy Birthday" at a party ("I just feel self-conscious singing it," he whines), and offends his manager's wife by refusing to tour her new house. Curb's painful comedy follows that stubborn self-absorption through to its inevitable moment of disgrace, over and over again.”
There's also a longish (and inadequate) article about Larry David in The New Yorker.
japh on Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens: “with chapter headings like 'orwell and the left', 'orwell and the right', 'orwell and america', and 'orwell and the feminists' (to name a few), you know that hitchens is trying to cover all the ground. he succeeds in my mind, and with enough detail to leave you pleased with his arguments.”
japh on Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens: “hitchens has led a life of curious adventure and incident, all the while developing a world view based on being a contrarian. regardless of your take on hitchens and his views, letters is a worthwhile read. it reminds us of the fire and strong-mindedness of youth, and makes us feel painfully complacent in our everyday lives.”
Ian Bremmer: “One of our clients, a banker based in Frankfurt, didn't buy my take. He figured that in spite of all indications to the contrary, the absence of attacks was because Bin Laden had been killed, a fact that President Bush is unwilling to disclose until just before November elections, when it would be of maximum political benefit to him. I tried reasoning with him for a while, to no avail. Then I suggested that Mercury had also been in retrograde and that this was likely disrupting al-Qaida communications on the ground. Evidently astrology isn't as big in Germany.”
Third of five in a series.
undercurrent: “Hiphop is a moribund form, there's no escaping it. The omnipotence of glossed-up hiphop is a testament to the tungsten-carbide stomach of Kapital, able to digest anything and turn it into a procedural machine stamping out hollow gloss-encapsulated placebos. Hiphop is dead inside, but its shiny surface can be preserved indefinitely. Whilst over in the US proliferating crews shine up the surfaces, Dizzee faces the death of hiphop head-on. The mashed-up clunkatronic spasm of Dizzee is the sound of the meat inside the hollow shell rotting out. Paradoxically, after all the clinical gloss, it's like a breath of fresh air.”
undercurrent also links to an account of Dizzee Rascal upstaging David Blaine as the latter was being let down from his stunt in London (#26 on the list).
mark on the M.I.A. concert he attended: “I fully expected to be disappointed. Seriously. But I wasn't let down. Not one bit. It lived up to the hype. There was a visual loop from her "Galang" video running in the background, one backup singer and Diplo on the tables. She played pretty much every track off the new album, but $10 was clearly the standout, and when Diplo mixed in some Eurythmics beats underneath the place went crazy. Such a great show. The soundsystem was fantastic and the beats sounded so good live.”
Watched Sideways at the theatre.
One of the few movies I went into not knowing anything about, other than that the director was responsible for Election (which I've seen twice) and About Schmidt (which I have not seen yet). Paul Giamatti, who also starred in American Splendor as Harvey Pekar, was perfectly cast for this movie. He plays a very self-conscious writer type obsessed with wine, and while on a weeklong roadtrip with his college buddy, he meets someone he had met he had met previously a few times, and manages not to fuck it up as much as he could have. The scene on the couch outside Stephanie's place was my favourite. Maya is exactly the type of woman I would describe as "attractive", and Stephanie is exactly the type of woman I would describe as "hot".
Fergie "alone pretty much confirms their status as economic talent migrants."
Software that creates playlists based on the audio signature of songs you like.
"Beijing has indicated its opposition to the use of sanctions against Iran and emphasized that the dispute should be resolved within the IAEA framework through negotiation."
"The U.S. is becoming a Spanish-speaking nation" says his business manager.
"The media is now an accountability system for police and courts that may yet hold biases against Native peoples."
Should get more reader comments there (I'm sure the editors of The Thunderbird would agree).
