Paying respect to those who went before

This part of Survivor is such total bullshit. Totally lame. The only other thing that compares is when they have "loved ones" visit and they are get all teary and emo. (Like we don't have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who aren't getting a chance for a million bucks who would like to see their loved ones and who do have to worry about getting their arm or their leg or their head blown off.) Plus, spiritualizing their experiences is dumb.

Lots of Blogging On The Way

So I had a trip to the doctor Monday; end result of which is that everything is OK, but I am laid up for a while with plenty of time to watch movies, read, and blog.

Items of interest:

• H.G. Wells wrote an article in the 1930s about the idea of a World Brain. Excerpt: Both the assembling and the distribution of knowledge in the world at present are extremely ineffective, and thinkers of the forward-looking type whose ideas we are now considering, are beginning to realize that the most hopeful line for the development of our racial intelligence lies rather in the direction of creating a new world organ for the collection, indexing, summarizing and release of knowledge, than in any further tinkering with the highly conservative and resistant university system, local, national and traditional in texture, which already exists. These innovators, who may be dreamers today, but who hope to become very active organizers tomorrow, project a unified, if not a centralized, world organ to "pull the mind of the world together", which will be not so much a rival to the universities, as a supplementary and co-ordinating addition to their educational activities - on a planetary scale. The phrase "Permanent World Encyclopaedia" conveys the gist of these ideas. As the core of such an institution would be a world synthesis of bibliography and documentation with the indexed archives of the world. A great number of workers would be engaged perpetually in perfecting this index of human knowledge and keeping it up to date. Concurrently, the resources of micro-photography, as yet only in their infancy, will be creating a concentrated visual record. Few people as yet, outside the world of expert librarians and museum curators and so forth, know how manageable well-ordered facts can be made, however multitudinous, and how swiftly and completely even the rarest visions and the most recondite matters can be recalled, once they have been put in place in a well-ordered scheme of reference and reproduction. Sound familiar?


• Publishing 2.0 asks: Should Newspapers Become Local Blog Networks? Excerpt: Most newspapers are actually using blogs as platforms for daily online publishing — platforms that allow one person to publish a “mini-publication.” This got me thinking — maybe what newspapers should become in the digital media era is a network of local bloggers — some of whom are staff writers and some of whom are freelancers. Maybe most of them are freelancers. Maybe the full-time reporters are dedicated to beats like covering local governments, which require more time-intensive reporting to fulfill the Fourth Estate mission, but which can be supplemented by freelance reporting.


• Here's the Periodic Table of the Internet.


• Via Bookworm, playing cards to teach U.S. troops about Iraqi archaeology.

The Week in Review

Various items from around the Web:

• Via the newly blogrolled Slashdot, financial concerns for Wikipedia. The ♥G♥ got me a Wikipedia coffee mug the other day; Make sure to visit their store for other cool stuff.



• Jim Samples, the President of the Cartoon Network, resigned yesterday in connecton with The Great Boston Mooninite Scare of '07. What horseshit... So, I now have to ask, when will we see the resignation of Boston Mayor Tom Menino et al.? (Here's Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr's tribute to "Mumbles" Menino. Note: Carr said some stupid things himself about the whole ATHF thing too. Reason Magazine response here.)



Watch out Tom! Behind You!

• Analysis of vomit-inducing coverage of Anna Nicole's vomit-induced death compared w/coverage of Iraq, including attacks on U.S. helicopters over Iraq, the complicity of an Iraqi official in attacks on our troops, etc. Washington Post analysis of Anna Nicole as courtesan. Important! Make sure you take the time to read these two posts about the tragic death this past Thursday of a lovely young woman at a much-much-too-young age.

Saw CIA Movie; Conservative Praises Hippies; 1876 Harper's Cartoons; Unfilmable; Jigsaw Puzzles

Several items of interest:

• The ♥G♥ and I just got back from seeing The Good Shepherd, about the early days of the CIA. I liked it, even though Roger Ebert rogerebert.com didn't. More comments on this film later.
• Via Glenn Greenwald -- I thought these were some interesting observations by conservative Christian Rod Dreher, who is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News. Excerpt: The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government's conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President. I turn 40 next month -- middle aged at last -- a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully. I did not expect Vietnam. As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war. I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority. On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
• Here are a bunch of Harper's Weekly cartoons by Thomas Nast and others about the disputed 1876 presidential election. Here are the members of the Electoral Commission.
• A list (with explanations) of impossible-to-film novels. Excerpt: Remembrance of Things Past -- Also known as ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (which makes it sound like a Jules Verne yarn), Marcel Proust’s contribution to the world of literature is so difficult to film as it’s so damn long. The novel is divided into seven books, each one long enough alone! Although I’ve only managed to read the first two books, the entire volume seems to be autobiographical, about a sickly young man who aspires to be a writer, despite the distraction of 19th Century society. Proust’s novels incorporate the idea of scents, sounds, and certain objects pushing associated memories to the fore. Probably more suited as a TV serial, there have been a few films, mostly adapting one of the books. The best is Time Regained, starring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich. If anyone can do it: The closing moments of Terence Malick’s New World displayed the kind of editing that can summarise years in seconds with aesthetic brilliance. He’s the man for such a mammoth, ethereal task, though half of it would probably be shots of trees.
• LBNL, Jigsaw Puzzles: A Brief History.
  

Items

A few things:

• Watching a couple of interesting docs from The Disinformation Company; Iraq for Sale and The Cult of the Suicide Bomber. IfS invited a certain degree of skepticism -- For instance, to what degree was Gen. Karpinski just trying to rehabilitate her image? Didn't the contractors hired as truckers realize there was a war going on in Iraq? Isn't GOP skepticism of Democrat proposals just how things work? Anyway, here's Iraq for Sale on Google Video. I thought Cult was very interesting -- I'm almost done with it, and it's about an ex-CIA guy named Robert Baer (who was the basis for the George Clooney character in Syriana) going to various spots in the Middle East (with which he is quite familiar) and talking to the people that don't usually get interviewed in documentaries or newscasts.
• Are you a Wikipedia addict? Take this test and find out! (via MicroPersuasion.) Better wait until you have an hour or so to spare, because there are over 700 questions. Excerpt, with point-score for each yes answer:
  14. Have you told your significant other/parent something from Wikipedia while on the phone? (10)
  Was he or she impressed? (7.5)
  ... or bored? (-5)
  
  15. Are you someone who is considered a social outcast? (5)
  Because of Wikipedia? (50)
• Time Magazine's 100 essential albums or whatever, here. Excerpt: We researched and listened and agonized until we had a list of the greatest and most influential records ever - and then everyone complained because there was no Pink Floyd on it. And that's exactly how it should be. We hope you'll treat the All-TIME 100 as a great musical parlor game.