September 2009
The Polanski Uproar - Room for Debate Blog -...
As for France getting all exercised about California moving forward (and the prosecutors there haven’t just let this go for 31 years), who are the French officials to criticize us as a nation and tell us how to deal with our criminals? Too bad for Bernie Madoff that he wasn’t as smart as Polanski. He would have taken his wife, brother, nephew, sons and their families and a billion or two and gone...
Meet the Hazzards [A rough guide to the US bailout...
An August 30 New York Times article, “As Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit,” gives the impression that taxpayers should be happy to have made $4 billion on the deal, as if our checks were in the mail. But when the government became Wall Street’s bank, it wasn’t just $700 billion of TARP money that flew north to Wall Street. TARP was but a small...
People still unemployed, houses still getting...
From The New York Times: MARKET PLACE: Looking at 5 Digits, Again, for the Dow Crossing 10,000 means clearing a symbolic hurdle, even if it’s one the Dow industrial average first vaulted a decade ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/business/29place.html Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
G20 PROTESTS: Men In Military Fatigues Snatch...
via huffingtonpost.com Astonishing. I can understand not wanting to get into a random unmarked car. Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Photoshopping Illegal? France Set to Regulate...
via mashable.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
What's the Matter With Cultural Studies?
via chronicle.com “For what kind of impact has cultural studies had on the American university as an institution over the past 20 or 25 years? The field began in Britain in the late 1950s with a Marxist critique of culture by Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, as the British New Left broke with the Communist Party’s defense of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Williams’s...
Best Buy and Verizon Jump Into E-Reader Fray, With...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/technology/internet/23ebooks.html?_r=1 Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Google Finally Enables Push Gmail for iPhone and...
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_finally_enables_push_gmail_for_iphone.php Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Netflix Awards $1 Million Prize and Starts a New...
via bits.blogs.nytimes.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
The Smart Set: The Reel World [Inglorious Bastards...
Chaplin and Lubitsch played with Nazis, too, but they worked as farceurs, using comedy to warn of catastrophe; they didn’t carve up Nazis using horror-film flourishes.” In Denby’s eyes, Tarantino will exploit any subject matter, even the most serious of real-world issues, in the name of schlock. via thesmartset.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Stop the Sex Scare in Sports
As Tommy Craggs of Deadspin writes, “Great athletes tend not to come from the vast middle of human life. They’re all freaks in one way or another…. But Semenya has nevertheless been portrayed as some lone oddity on the margins, like some Elephant Man of sports, with everyone obsessing like Victorian scientists over the presence of a couple internal testicles. It’s...
Expecting flu assistance, reserves get body bags...
via theglobeandmail.com I thought they were called “reservations”, not “reserves” (which makes me think of military personnel). Is this a new PC term I’m not aware of? Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Michael Moore, Capitalism’s Little Tramp
Even the miners, whom Mr. Moore invited to bring attention to their bitter two-month strike against the mining giant Vale Inco in Sudbury, Ontario, looked wide-eyed at the spectacle last Sunday. via nytimes.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Obama meets with Canadian prime minister...
Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
First Detailed Photos of Atoms
This is the first time scientists have been able to see an atom’s internal structure directly. Since the early 1980s, researchers have been able to map out a material’s atomic structure in a mathematical sense, using imaging techniques. via insidescience.org I’m guessing that if we looked carefully at the theoretical assumptions being made here we may just find our...
Asustek Eee Keyboard coming in October
The Eee Keyboard is a standard-sized computer keyboard with a built-in computer and 5-inch touchscreen on the right-hand side of the board. The device is designed to connect via wires or wirelessly to any device with a display screen, such as monitor, an LCD TV or a digital projector. via news.idg.no I totally dig this. Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
It’s Time To Sink The Pirate Bay, and Replace It |...
via torrentfreak.com A sad day, really. Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Usain Bolt vs. A Cheetah - By Eileen Jones -...
via exiledonline.com He’s fast, but would probably get eaten. Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Canadian Shield by Breathe Owl Breathe...
via emusic.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Streetscapes - Under Park Avenue - When Vanderbilt...
via nytimes.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Facebook becomes Twitter
Facebook to let users tag friends in status posts http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_11704/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=wTldSvtG Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Can a Hip-Hop Morality Clause Work?
But what if a respected, legendary black MC, who’s dedicated two decades to the fight against rap-related violence, like, say, KRS-One, proposed the same concept? Would the response be any different? via thenation.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
The Gnosticism of Gift and Commons: A Corporate... →
“Or to put it another way: As long as you avoid improperly ventilated war zones...”
– http://thesmartset.com/article/article08040901.aspx
Safe or Sorry? - Extended Service Warranties
Not surprisingly, however, the odds favor those who sell ESCs over those who buy them. Warranty Week estimates that while consumers spend $15 billion a year on ESCs, ESC administrators pay out only $3 billion a year in claims. In part, this is because ESCs are pre-paid repair contracts rather than insurance products. via thesmartset.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
"The illegality of property was seperated from the...
In Discipline & Punish, Foucault establishes a historical distinction between the development of the juridico-political traditions of illegalities of property, and the illegalities of rights. Arising with the development of the bourgeoisie, the lower classes were more likely to be involved with the illegalities of property, while the bourgeoisie were able to skillfully manipulate the gaps in...
Uploading the Avant-Garde
From The New York Times: THE MEDIUM: Uploading the Avant-Garde Could all that stuff on YouTube be … art? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06FOB-medium-t.html Posted via email from T H I N K | Comment »
Ikea is changing its font to Verdana - causing...
via guardian.co.uk Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Why Cooking Matters
We need radical thinking, but we don’t need a revolution. We don’t need an overthrow of capitalism. Nor do we need to become vegetarians. We need not become spartans. We’re just going to have to learn how to cook. via thenation.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess
via wired.com Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »
Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars
In short, Google has taken a group of the world’s great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore. via chronicle.com Posted via web from Quinn’s posterous | Comment »