Entries from July 2010
The Aborigines Might Have a Point About All That Being-Robbed-of-Their-Culture Stuff
Indigenous Australians in traditional costume: Modern white lady hoping to win a beauty pagent in “traditional costume”: Curtsy: Rueful Red.
Categories: Entertainment
Cook Porn III
We close on Friday. And you know what that means? Ohhhh yeahhhh.
Categories: Food
That Was England
This is England is a very good movie. I’d like to point out, though, that none of those people were voting for Maggie before the NF man came along. Ahem. Has anyone done any research why in the 60s – 80s, the British went so spectacularly batsh.t? I mean, you have your Mediterranean countries which […]
Categories: History
Gotta Love the Inevitable Eventuality of Tax Payer Dollars
This is amazing. All the artsy Brits in my Twitter stream have been moaning about the UK Film Council getting the axe, but then the author Ian Rankin mentioned this article as a “sharp and persuasive critique”. The Times – Good riddance to the UK Film Council, by Chris Atkins The real scandals, however, came […]
Categories: Entertainment
Absolutely the Funniest Item of the Day CCXLIV
Wheat & Weeds – Mad Men, Season 11
Categories: Entertainment
Plants vs Zombies vs Michael vs Jacksons
Those of you (most of you) who don’t play this game won’t get this, but this is OUTRAGEOUS: PLANTS VS ZOMBIES IPHONE PULLS MICHAEL JACKSON ZOMBIE, OTHERS TO FOLLOW It’s a vaguely Michael Jackson-looking zombie doing the thriller dance. What a bunch of GREEDY GUSSES.
Categories: Entertainment
Optimistic German Futurists?
Curtsy to Brett McS for this one: Magic of mobile phones and Wi-Fi foreseen 100 years ago A runaway success in 1910, the book has been reprinted 100 years later – again to huge acclaim. By commissioning experts in their respective fields, editor Arthur Brehmer ensured his book’s incorrect predictions were just as interesting as […]
Categories: History
Ghost Stories
Hmm, what to link to today… Corner – Wikileaks vs. Democracy It will take time to assess the real harm caused by this dump of some 92,000 classified documents into the public domain by Wikileaks. But as I argue this morning, the Obama administration’s warning that there would be damage seems highly credible. It’s hard […]
Categories: War and Peace
Two Annoying Hollywood Stars Do Top Gear
Well, Cameron Diaz is annoying. Tom Cruise is weird. But mostly he’s weird because he should be so very good. But then he’s weird and that makes him weirder. But when he’s on, he’s very good. Anyway it’s nice to hear this: The Sunday Times – Jeremy Clarkson talks cars, fighter jets and biscuits with […]
Categories: Sports and Leisure
About the Most Interesting Thing You’ll Read Today
Or this week. Or Month. Or, hell, it’s been a bad year: year. WSJ – Lost in Translation New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish, by Lera Boroditsky (professor of psychology at Stanford and editor in chief of Frontiers […]
Categories: People and Current Events
Something Interesting Is Going On In the Home Remodeling Business
We’ve been talking to these dudes, right, for redoing the house we just bought (kitchen, bathrooms, all unfortunately but lovingly done in the 90s). And the topic has come up of lead paint. One guy, a nice guy, quick to laugh, just became very quietly angry, tried to shrug it off, then said it was […]
Categories: Wildcard
A Story Sweet and Sad and Adorably Good
Telegraph – Wayward Alzheimer’s patients foiled by fake bus stop A German nursing home has come up with a novel idea to stop Alzheimer’s patients from wandering off: a phantom bus stop. “It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly […]
Categories: People and Current Events
Absolutely the Funniest Item of the Day CCXLIII
This is well done:
Categories: War and Peace
Absolutely the Funniest Item of the Day CCXLII
I love Kevin Spacey. I really do. I think impersonations must be the best kind of comedy. One doesn’t even have to say anything funny, just a good impersonation is enough to make everyone shriek with laughter. Why is that, I wonder.
Categories: Entertainment
Journalists Struggling to Cope With This “Democratic” Modern Age
Telegraph – Raoul Moat and the unacceptable face of Facebook In David Cameron’s clash with Facebook we can see the key cultural question of our time, says Jenny McCartney So, she goes from describing the elitist but responsible days of old journalism, where: Letters to newspapers that were full of violent views, or just plain […]
Categories: People and Current Events