Archive for the ‘Writing and Literature’ Category

A “narrative of impending tyranny”

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

There’s a great article on the Tea Party movement and then a great criticism of the article.

The Decade in One Infographic

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

NY Times - Picturing the Past Ten Years

Defend New Orleans

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Defend New Orleans is a fantastic blog devoted to New Orleans. Even though I’m not the hugest fan of the city, DNO’s passion for the city is infectious and gives a young, vital perspective on the city, one not rooted in Ante Bellum hokum. Check it out.

Shooting Airwaves

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Three years after I went to Iceland Airwaves for Stirred Up, our old designer Rasha went there to photograph it for Dazed & Confused: Making Airwaves. Cool!

It made me dig out my old Airwaves photos and go through them. Maybe I’ll do a big dump of them onto Flickr. Here’s Sabina Sciubba from Brazilian Girls:

sciubba

Moustache of Understanding

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Brilliant.

Delte Meninger

Friday, September 18th, 2009

This photograph I took in Helsinki last November during Slush can be found on page 200 of the Norwegian book Delte Meninger. I understand that it’s a book about participatory culture on the web. It’s all in Norwegian but regardless I’m tickled pink that they sent me a copy. Go Norway!

Hilarious Review of a Horrible Book

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

SF REVIEWS.NET: Watch on the Rhine / John Ringo & Tom Kratman ½?

Its badness, however, is far more ambitiously mounted. Morally, politically, and intellectually, the book is simply reprehensible. Because what it wants to do is give the Nazis — the Waffen-SS, no less — an extreme makeover. It wants us to accept them as misunderstood soldiers who did their duty under corrupt and evil leaders, whose true goal was simply the defense of their Fatherland, and whose rank and file consisted mostly of men of high integrity and scruples who were quietly appalled by the Holocaust and only too happy to tell Hitler and Himmler “fuck you”. And then it resurrects them in the present day and asks us to support them as the only hope for humanity faced with a ruthless alien horde.

And this is why military science fiction sucks, and especially anything from Baen Books. Though to co-author Tom Kratman’s credit, he does post lots of glowing ‘praise’ on his website. One of my favorites:

“Every word he writes is bad, and that includes “a”, “an” and “the”.”

—- Michael Weber, stay at home dad and egg connoisseur

New Liberal Arts

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

An interesting question, what are the new liberal arts. Of course, given my background, I strongly believe they needn’t come at the expense of the ‘old’ liberal arts.

Total Basketball

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

2009-06-28: I meant to post this over a month ago!

Malcolm Gladwell has a really fascinating article about underdogs using full-court pressing to win in basketball: Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath. He looks at the larger question of underdogs beating better supplied, prepared – whatever – opponents and how it is often because the former don’t respect the (unwritten) rules and are willing to just work a lot harder.

It’s not the same thing, but I think you could make a connection with Total Football.

That’s some fantasy!

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Jack Kerouac ran fantasy baseball and horse racing systems of his own devising for decades!