January 2013

The plight of the "high-status/low-income" public intellectual
Masterpieces of 90's paranoiac cinema: They Live and The Matrix
Linguistic analysis can uncover Anonymous members
Mocking the father of (the term) "cyberspace"
How John McAfee out-smarted the entire Belizean government
"Rocket launchers" turned in @ recent LA gun buy-back photo op debunked
Even with less competition Barnes & Noble sold less books, media in 2012
 Homeschooling is gaining acceptance even among NYC bobos

December 2012

Jack Donovan on "Police State Liberals"
Contra expatriating
Reaping what you sow: SF murals being defaced by taggers
Soviet-era spy tech still spying on ex-satellite states
The long, strange (ego) trip of Anonymous member "Commander X"
Game show host talks about his sensory deprivation chamber experiences
 Obama should jail his opposition "like a third-world dictator"
Making brain cells from urine
Is it time to put a "may be dangerous to your financial future" warning label on graduate school?
 Experimental handcuffs under development can shock, inject drugs as well as restrain
Urban Outfitters buys garage sale clothes and resells them to hipsters
Items found between the pages of second-hand books
NTSB seeking to require black-box recording devices in all new cars
Defending the world, bankrupting ourselves
Small business owners, white collar professionals are today's kulaks
Amsterdam to create "scum town" neighborhood to exile its anti-social residents to
 Obama campaign still asking for contributions a month after winning re-election
Elites prefer to rule an impoverished citizenry to not ruling at all
 Fresh crop of "celebrity victims" making the mainstream media get real about SWATTING
 CA city official tells residents to "lock your doors" and "load your guns" after PD lay-offs

In a brave twist, Microsoft releases an ad for IE 10 that mocks those who hate Internet Explorer

Ferris State University prof opens a museum of "racist memoribilia"

I suppose this is a good idea. In our current cultural environment it is a good idea to keep physical media and artifacts from the Jim Crow days cataloged and exhibited somewhere, cuz you never know when someone will try to flush the evidence down the memory hole. Organized Jewry have successfully used this tactic to keep their guilt-trip inspired political and cultural influence going strong for half a century and counting.

Ideologues are a humorless lot

People' Liberation Army hottie!

"Satire must never be directed against the class whose aspirations you share - only against the enemy." - Chairman Mao criticizing La Chinoise, a film by Jean-Luc Godard in the novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March.

Empathy for others is not a major factor amongst the revolutionary types. Good tactical advice though.

EMU to produce Eastman's "Go, Dog. Go!" as play

My kids loved P.D. Eastman's book Go-Dog-Go. And now it is being produced as a stage performance. Seeing as how the book only takes about two minutes to read straight through aloud I wonder what the play will consist of?

Detroit becoming an "artist's haven, hipster's hotspot" says LA Times

Downtown Detroit could perhaps evolve into something interesting but only if they do something about all those icky, nasty neighborhoods (and the people that live in them) that surround it.

"Yet Detroit is evolving," says the LA Time's Andrew Bender, "not unlike late 1990s downtown Los Angeles. Cheap rents and an urban pioneering spirit are attracting young artists, and new restaurants, nightspots and even urban farms are serving this growing community and its hipster fans. It's still the early days, but change is palpable, even to the casual visitor."


Yeah well we've seen this sort of thing before Mr. Bender. The last time Detroit had a cultural renaissance back in the 1960's all the artistes and their parasites moved off to Los Angeles and New York  just as fast as their checks cleared. I'm not trying to be a buzz-kill here but there needs to be a sobering reminder of how things go in real life injected into this fog of optimism.

Steve Sailor doesn't have cable television; he has a life

"Anybody who doesn't have cable TV is a loser" (iSteve) "A simple rule of thumb is that if you don't have cable or a nice TV in contemporary America, you are a nobody."

Well by that definition then so am I.

Why bookstores don't work in downtown Ann Arbor any more

Short answer: The rents. The rents are high and the margins are too small. So say the current and former  Ann Arbor booksellers who were interviewed by Domenica Trevor for her Ann Arbor Chronicle piece about the economics of the bookstore business in Ann Arbor. Interesting conundrum. But I am sure that somehow or another the market will sort that issue out. It's the larger cultural change that worries me.

The sad reality is that books are becoming an expensive hobby like fine wines, exotic foods, horse racing, classic cars or Cuban cigars. For the class of people with lots of disposable income and intellectual refinement and who also have an interest in browsing around looking for books to read. Like the kind of people who browse estate sales and antique shops looking for just the right armoire for their guest bedroom instead of buying one from an Ikea warehouse outlet. The rest of us can just buy what we want off Amazon for our  Kindles or at the ground floor display at Barnes & Noble if we don't have a Kindle. Because for most of us time is money and money is dear. That's reality and it is indeed sad.

Fox News blogger tells us that Slashdot, Salon, Blogger, Chatroullete and Digg, among others are dying and doomed

"What seemed so fresh when you first registered", says John Brandon a Fox News technology blogger,  "now seems like a ghost town. What happened? According to Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg, site visitors routinely check the door to see if anyone else is leaving for better services. Like lemmings, they can pull up stakes and leave in a heartbeat. (Facebook, are you listening?) All you can hear are the crickets." [Facebook link in original]

I don't know about the rest of Brandon's analysis but the part about people being able to scurry away to someplace else sure is true enough. Anybody here remember Friendster, Napster, or Del.icio.us?  All of them and many more after being the hot new thing and the place to be on the web at one time not too long ago are now ghost towns or gone altogether.

Forshadowing an American race war?

That's what one movie review says about the latest in the hoary Planet of the Apes franchise The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I haven't seen it yet so I can't say that I agree with that view. At least in this case anyhow.  I but I will say that the whiff of such doings is in the air.

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41 % of NYC pregnancies end in abortion - WABC-TV on-line
Some believe this is a bad thing.
“[T]here is nothing most business people like less than free markets." - Reason.com
The truth about "crony capitalism"
Police drug-sniffing dogs "wrong" at least 4 times out of 10 - Chicago Tribune on-line
Nostalgia for old record shops - Untimely Meditations blog
Record stores, bars you can smoke in, independent bookstores, non-franchise coffee shops, and lots of other cool places are slipping away. And we're poorer for it too.
Obama's New Wall Street White House - The Nation
Otaku Nation: Sega Installs ‘Toylet’ Games in Japan’s Urinals - Wired.com
The games are needless to say short, since you use your urine stream to play them.

sign of the times...

Cultural "gem" or not Detroit can't afford a world-class symphony orchestra: So says Detroit News editor Daniel Howes in this recent blog post. He's right of course. But the bigger picture to my mind is that metropolitan symphony orchestras are a quaint left-over from the 19th century that we can safely ditch. If the DSO can't make it financially, just let it go.

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The second phase of the great American disillusionment with Barack Obama is complete - Washington Examiner
Fake movie trailer on youtube leads to actual movie - Wired

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How feds manufacture anti-government activity, so they can claim credit for crushing it -Lewrockwell.com (Will Grigg)

"When the stranger materialized a few years ago, nobody really knew much about him. He seemed like a suitably sympathetic figure and quickly ingratiated himself by offering whatever help he could. No task was too menial for him, and he had a way of finding just what the group needed right when it was required."

Why economists have gained in prestige and influence in recent decades while historians have become less influential - Harvard Business Review (via Brainiac)

A list of wasteful uses to which student fee money is put to in California - LA Times

Funny, but ah...I wouldn't think so if I had to pay it.

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College education for the post-literate society - Slate

Episodes of The Wire are the text for classes at Duke, UC Berkeley and Middlebury, amongst others.

Firefly's Original Writers Return To The 'Verse With New Classic Tales - io9

In graphic novel form (I.e.- a comic book)

Gene patents ruled invalid - Technology Review
The politics of food - International Socialist Review