Culture
Sergei & Uncle Walt
Speaking of the Guardian … a piece in the Observer discuses how Walt Disney was a raving McCarthyite:
Disney had a ferocious temper, especially against people he saw as left-wing. He testified enthusiastically before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and detailed what he saw as communist plots to take over Hollywood. He branded some former animators […]
Pandora
Want to create your own radio station, one which plays music you like?
Pandora is amazingly simple to use: you enter the name of an artist whose music you like and it starts playing additional music similar to the one you listed. You can add more artists to the same “station” or you can create multiple […]
Champuru
I’ve been working way too hard lately, so I gave myself a mental mini-vacation by watching the entire two season run of Samurai Champloo (混沌武士, サムライチャンプルー). Samurai Champloo is by Shinichiro Watanabe who made my previous favorite anime TV series, Cowboy Bebop (see here). Wikipedia explains the name:
Its name comes from the Okinawan word “chanpurū” […]
Interestingness
I think a lot of the reason why we enjoy reading blogs so much is that what other people are reading, thinking, doing always seems more interesting than what we are doing ourselves. This Nancy comic from 1953 captures that feeling nicely:
(Found here.)
{Reading, Nancy, Blogs}
Closer
I’ve begun spending more and more time thinking about the implications of “fan fiction.” My graduate assistant last year told me she practiced English by reading Harry Potter fan fiction online. One of the larger sub-genres of fan fiction is called “slash” and refers to the homoerotic relationship between Kirk and Spock on Star Trek […]
Consuming
A lot of online activity is about establishing identity, and identity is largely equated with what people consume: what music they listen to, what books they read, what films they see, what games they play, etc. This can be useful. If we find someone whose tastes we respect we might find new things to consume […]
Hanukit
For the traveling Jew:
{travel, Menorah, Hannukah}
Sort of …
Like thousands of others, I’m hooked on The Show: a one year experiment in video blogging by Ze Frank, a web deisgner/performance artist who lives in Brooklyn. On The Media interviewed Ze Frank this past week.
While I enjoy the show, it is hard to pin down why. Although he is a very sophisticated writer and […]
Gandhi vs. Hoboken
Not having lived there for a long time, I don’t much write about Hoboken on this blog, but that is where I grew up. The setting for On The Waterfront, Hoboken was once a large shipping port. As a result, it has long been famous for its drinking establishments.
Below the fold is one of the […]
Existential Exodus
Existential Exodus is a book by a family friend. I haven’t gotten my copy yet, so I’ll just quote this Amazon Review by “Motorcycle Boy”:
Although one might get the impression from Surfergirl’s synopsis that Existential Exodus falls in the genre of “addiction fiction”, this is not the case. Henry defeats his drug addiction soon after […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
