Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
More in my current semi-fascination with conspiracy theories, and which ones might be more true than others — I’m considering picking up You Are Being Lied To.
You Are Being Lied To acts as a battering ram against the distortions, myths, and outright lies that have been shoved down our throats by the government, the media, corporations, organized religion, the scientific establishment, and others who want to keep the truth from us.
If nothing else, it could be an interesting read.
An interesting piece about Alfred Neuman’s product endorsements. William Gaines is probably rolling in his grave about now.
I’m sure these were made with the best of intentions, but somehow these ‘Inspirational Sport Statues’ are just disturbing.
Cool ad from Apple on “…the back page of the Sunday NYT Magazine, which had an ASCII-art sillhouette of Beck’s head made up of the names of all the songs on Beck’s iPod, with some marketing copy explaining that Beck has a ginormous library of MP3s from which he loads 5GB at random onto his iPod every day. Then I opened up Kottke.org and there was a link to a PDF of the ad (minus the marketing copy), which is indeed cool.” The PDF file is here, the quoted text is courtesy of Boing Boing.
Some good news from NewsWeek, after the past couple years or so of dot-com ex- and im-plosions: according to their cover story this week, Silicon Valley is alive and well, and there are brighter days ahead.
Why my blog isn’t more personal: Boy and girl meet at a library, sparks fly. Boy and girl go on date to see a friend of the girl’s perform. After said performance, boy and girl go back to girl’s house and have light petting session. Before next date, girl does a Google search for boy’s name, and finds his blog — commenting on her lack of ability to kiss and his disappointment in not getting more frisky. Girl is upset and talks to her friend from the performance, who writes a column about the experience. Said column ends up getting posted on MetaFilter, and people commenting on the column quickly find the blog in question. Boy find out about public disclosure of his comments when he starts getting e-mails and comments on his blog, posts his initial responses — “Holy crap“, “Double holy crap“, and “Triple holy crap“. Much discussion ensues. However, from the posts made in Boy’s blog since this thing exploded, he seems to be handling his new-found infamy rather well.
A good in-depth article from the New York Times detailing the history behind Andersen’s part in the Enron/Andersen scandal. I’m no legal or financial expert, but I can’t say that things look good in the least.
So — would the BBC reporting that the CIA may have been involved in the Anthrax scare be a major scoop of hard-hitting investigative reporting, or merely conspiracy theories spilling over into mainstream media?
Having conflicting views about the U.S. — admiring its creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards — doesn’t mean you are ‘mixed up,’ to use Mr Olins’ phrase, it means you have been paying attention.
— Naomi Klein, in an article on the branding of America, something that in many ways has far too many overtones of Wag the Dog for me to be entirely comfortable with.