Monday, April 29, 2013

Sunday, April 28, 2013

SHARP


I just added the website for SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing) to the History section of the list of links.

"Day by Day"


A version of this song was featured on tonight's Simpsons ("Pulpit Friction" [24: 18, 28 April 2013]).

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Eat More Kale vs. Chick-fil-A

I just saw this article on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruling in favor of Chick-fil-A vs. a Vermont entrepreneur who sells merchandise with the slogan "Eat More Kale." (Chick-fil-A's slogan is "Eat mor chik'n.")

I'll have more later. Until then, see my 29 July post, visit EatMoreKale.com, and don't forget to eat more kale!

A Debate on Same-Sex Marriage


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Georgie Fame: "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde"

I've never heard of either the singer or the song until today.

Monday, April 22, 2013

More on Ebert


http://www.gocomics.com/tedrall/2013/04/10

Update: Do I agree that Ebert liked only middle-of-the-road stuff? Not necessarily. Did Ebert always like Spielberg's movies? And if he did, why couldn't he and Armond White, who were mutually antagonistic, have that in common?

Movie critics don't have the role, so to speak, in the larger culture that they once did. Ebert is the last great mainstream movie critic (at least for now). I liked him, but for sheer erudition and prose style, John Simon is unparalleled. Not that I always agreed with his reviews.

1 May update: Nancy Nall has always loved him.

Kunstler: Aftershocks


Kunstler: Aftershocks

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Richard Heinberg on Twitter


Here is the Twitter of peak oil writer Richard Heinberg.

A recent tweet of his:

This is the Indiegogo page for his upcoming book Snake Oil: How Big Energy's Misleading Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future.


Saturday, April 20, 2013

Boratland

What's Chechnya? To most Americans, it's all Boratland.

See this map, for example.

20 April evening update: Bill Maher argues with professor Brian Levin about Islam.



The Chechens are an ancient and distinct people.



Park Avenue Logger

I found this tonight.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Skee-Lo




Ron Paul Starts Think Tank

Here.


I found this through Max Blumenthal's Twitter.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Boston Marathon Explosion

News broke on TV about 9:15 a.m. Hawaii time. There's already a Wikipedia article on the Boston Marathon explosion and Max Blumenthal, listening to a scanner, has been tweeting updates.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Louis Proyect's Latest

Two recent posts by Louis Proyect reaffirm why I regularly visit his blog. The first, "The Koch Brothers Hedge Their Bets," takes on fracking and more. And the second is a review of the documentaries American Meat and The Revolutionary.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Has Demand for Oil Peaked?


Here.



I've never watched it. But The Carrie Diaries is the most wonderful show of 2013.

A List of British Movies Yet Unreleased on Region 2 DVD


A list from IMDb.com of British movies and TV shows made in 1977 yet to be released on region 2 DVD.

One can get a sense of the time just before Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Heaven 17: "Fascist Groove Thang"

From their debut album Penthouse and Pavement (1981)

Sunday, April 07, 2013

All In With Chris Hayes: Should It be Moved to Another Timeslot?

This article details the ratings trouble All In and a new CNN show have encountered. All In is opposite ratings juggernaut The O'Reilly Factor. *Should it be moved to another timeslot? Or should it be left where it is and emphasize its difference from the Factor, the way The Rachel Maddow Show, opposite Hannity, differentiates itself from that show? (see below)





It's good to know they're giving All In a chance, the way networks used to give a chance to shows that weren't initially ratings blockbusters.

===
*I found out that Who's the Boss? first aired on 20 September 1984, the same day The Cosby Show premiered. For its first month, Who's the Boss? was broadcast on Thursdays opposite Family Ties (which immediately followed Cosby), and suffered in the ratings. The next month, it was moved to Tuesdays, where it stayed for several years, and the show became one of the top-rated sitcoms of the late `80s.

Wednesday, April 03, 2013


Max Blumenthal's New Book Goliath Release Date Pushed Back to June

Searching online for reviews of Max Blumenthal's new book Goliath, I found none. The book's Amazon page might explain why. The release date is now 11 June, for whatever reason.

Louis Proyect: "Thoughts on Harper's Magazine and Intellectual Property"

In which he finds Harper's not as relevant as it used to be. He recommends subscribing to n+1 instead.

Proyect mentions, but doesn't include a link to, this interview with former Harper's editor Roger Hodge, in which Hodge points out problems that potentially spell the end of the magazine.

4 April update: I posted a comment to Proyect's blog. I subscribe to Harper's and Bookforum. Will Harper's go defunct before my sub runs out in Nov. 2015? If I didn't subscribe to either magazine, and browsed them at the newsstand, which one would I be more likely to buy? At this point I'd say Bookforum ($4.95), with its many, many book reviews and edgy writing. Harper's ($6.95) is more of a mixed bag. Its "Easy Chair" and "Anti-Economist" columns are a play for the Washington relevance The Atlantic enjoys, and its choice of Readings is more predictable than what I remember from the `90s, when I first began subscribing. Yet the March issue has a lengthy report on the cost of North Dakota's fracking boom, a review of a biography on P.G. Wodehouse and a feature on adult animation coming of age with the fX show Archer. It's this variety of writing, and a certain remove from the buzz-chasing world of opinion magazines, that are among Harper's strengths.

No one magazine can do it all. What Harper's lacks, an n+1 might have. But n+1 lacks what Harper's has. So I read the (relatively) edgy and stodgy together.

The Art of Noise: "Peter Gunn Theme: The Twang Mix"


Food Waste



http://www.wjbf.com/story/21800863/laney-supermarket-gets-evicted#.UViR1FeXQ5I.twitter

Monday, April 01, 2013

Kunstler: "Are You Going to Entropy Faire?"

Here.

An excerpt:

While The New York Times focuses on the momentous issue of real estate sales in the Hamptons, Russia and China will build gold-backed currencies aimed at monopolizing the trade in mineral and energy resources, leaving America and much of Europe to freeze in the dark and sit on gasoline lines at the empty filling stations. For a while that will work to the East's advantage - until it becomes clear that the entropic contraction of industrial economies is for everyone as we veer into a literal world made by hand. That's right, sooner or later Russia and China will get theirs, too. But in the meantime they have the ability to make the story a lot more interesting.

There's plenty of suspense this Easter weekend as observers nervously await the breaking action, to find out how much the oft-cited fear of confiscation has penetrated the regional money centers around Europe. Slovenia, a fairy-tale republic somewhere between Austria and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, has been nominated by observers as the place most likely to be whacked by EU treasure confiscators. It owes about 10 billion Euros to the EU entropy cloud, with exactly zero chances of meeting its obligations.

Meanwhile, at the fifth annual BRICS* summit, held in Durban, representatives from the five member nations began negotiations to establish a bank to counter the influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

According to the MarketWatch article linked to above:

"Collectively, the five BRICS nations account for 42% of world population, 20% of output, and nearly all of current growth in the global economy."

(*BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Formerly known as BRIC until South Africa joined the bloc in 2010.)

Stuff You Didn't Even Know You Wanted

Cashmends