Wednesday, September 25 2002
Wednesday, September 18 2002
Hello Cruel World: Blogs and Tunes One Year Later
. . . (S)houldn't we be celebrating our collective vain, ironical stupidity just to bug that humorless sobersides Osama bin Laden and his fellow fanatics?
Cosby Redux
The root of hip-hop generation displeasure with The Cosby Show was not simply that the show wasn't 'political', but rather the show did in fact serve the political function of diverting attention away from the harsh realities of Reagan-era social policies.
Wednesday, September 11 2002
The 2002-2003 Season Part 1: Same Old, Same Old
Reliving the '80s is perhaps the perfect metaphor for what the networks have in store for us this season.
Wednesday, September 4 2002
The Schizophrenic Collide-a-Scope
Commercials not only serve as the sort of national archives for domestic events and values -- the town crier, if you will -- but advertising is one of the ways that popular culture actually manages to persist.
Wednesday, August 28 2002
Glastonbury Blues
I purchased a tent, a sleeping bag, a packet of baby wipes, three packets of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka.
Prague: A Dual Heritage of Beauty and Sacrifice
Prague shows the world that sacrifice is not futile, that evil can be fought and ultimately, defeated.
Admit You’re Happy, Dammit
Receiving several queries from members who felt that they had been discriminated at their workplace for being 'too happy' (one can only imagine what happy feats incurred the wrath of their employers), Johnson also contacted the ACLU in efforts to curb happiness discrimination.
Wednesday, August 21 2002
Racing Down: Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species
If society is to bear the costs of over-population -- social welfare, medical care, daycare centers -- then society has the right to regulate procreation.
Wednesday, August 14 2002
Titanic Efforts, But UK Acts Fail to Bridge Great Divide
Once our groups struck the Union Jack at the summit; now they stumble among the loose scree of the lower slopes.
Wednesday, August 7 2002
A Random Walk Down Pirate Street
Indeed, American book pirates of yesteryear are pretty much the same as Asian tape pirates today. The captains of industry hate 'em, but why else do you think damn near every citizen of Jakarta knows the lyrics to Don McLean's 'American Pie'?
Dracula’s Revenge
At a lunch with two members of the Romanian Senate the discussion moved from NATO admission to Dracula Park.
Wednesday, July 31 2002
The Myth of the Right to Life
Public hospitals, state pension schemes, and police forces may be needed in order to fulfill society's obligations to prolong, maintain, and improve our lives, but fulfill them they must.
Wednesday, July 24 2002
Northerns and Westerns
Both the Northerns and the Westerns tend to have an outlaw as their main protagonist . . .
Hollering Therapy
Confederate soldiers utilized the Rebel Yell to put fear into the hearts and souls of the Union Army. It also made them happy, I suspect, to holler in the woods.
Wednesday, July 17 2002
Ham and Eggs: On Experimental Film and Foreignness
Americans don't like to feel estranged at the movies. The movies are our home turf
Wednesday, July 10 2002
Lad Mags and Dangerous, You Know: The Risk That Rolling Stone Takes
Anglo Visions -- Lad Mags and Dangerous, You Know: The Risk That Rolling Stone Takes -- In the hands of the new breed of editors, style and gloss, surface and glamour, beat everything: bigger, deeper, harder, harsher matters cower in the shadow of the flash, the superficial, the vacuous, the ephemerally amusing.
Colour It Wild : David Goldblatt Turns Over a Colourful Leaf, in His Seventies
The tones that the sun inflicts on our spaces are often neither rich nor filled with gentle gradations.
In the Main It’s More Than the Mane
. . . (F)or all its post-war success, its unrivalled rise from the ashes, Japan views itself as the national equivalent of Charley Brown.
