Keith Olbermann has his Edward R. Murrow moment!
Regular readers will remember how I rang in the new year lauding Olbermann in these pages. Well, he's at it again and he's even more gloves off -- and his target is a much bigger and more important fish. I know it's only cable but still, MSNBC is no Pacifica...
Check it out here.
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Via PopURLs.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Greatest. Movie. Pan. Ever.
I haven't seen Barry Levinson's Sphere and the review to the left (click on it to read it, and boy is it worth reading) doesn't exactly make me want to. But the review sure explains a lot.
By the way, this isn't exactly worksafe. You have been warned.
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People frequently ask me where I find all this stuff. Well, below I tip one of my not-so-secret sources.
One of the most exciting developments of the last year or so is the rise of "collaborative filtering" sites that aggragate the best and most referenced URLs on the Web. This is a very Web 2.0 idea, the idea of using the collective intelligence of millions of Web users as a filter to find the best and most important sites out there at any given time. Sites like digg, del.icio.us, slashdot, and metafilter make it easy to track the global brain -- or at least keep up with whatever the digerati is reading from moment to moment.
PopURLs is a fantastic site that collects the best links from a half a dozen collaborative filters, along with the hottest videos on YouTube and iFilm and some of the most viewed new photosets on flickr.
PopURLs is always one of my first stops on the Web when I have time to kill and an appetite for the new.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Bizzaro's Promo
Magician and fellow blogger Bizzaro of Why Am I Stuck In Magician's Hell? has posted his new promo online and it's a blast. I've been in magic for a very very long time and it's rare for me to see a promo that actually makes me want to see the magician.
Check it out here; the boy's got talent!
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The Power of Nightmares
Yikes! It's been awhile since my last post! Ah well, time flies when you're having fun. I had surgery for a hernia a couple of weeks ago, so I've been kind of preoccupied with that. My Dad came for a visit to keep me company while I recovered, so that was fun having some one-on-one time with him.
At any rate, here at last is the information on how you can see the documentary I alluded to in my last post. It's a three-hour BBC documentary by Adam Curtis called The Power of Nightmares and -- bless the 'Net again! -- it's available to watch for free right now on Google Video.
I first heard about this extraordinary series when Andrew O'Hehir of Salon gave it a glowing review, calling it the most important political documentary of this decade, and perhaps of my lifetime.
O'Hehir goes on to say:
And as for broadcast on American television, I'm told that will happen, let's see, approximately 5,000 years after pigs first begin to fly across the frozen wastelands of hell. It's probably illegal not just to watch, but also to read about or think about. You and I are both committing treason right now.
Essentially, Curtis' thesis is that the current technique of the American political system is to promulgate fear of a largely non-existent terrorist threat. The Power of Nightmares starts out in 1949 when an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb, studying in Colorado, is horrified by the decadence he sees around him and winds up as the spiritual founder of Islamic Jihad. In parallel at the University of Chicago, professor Leo Strauss, a German Jew who had fled Hitler and settled in the U.S., is experiencing a similar reaction and founding the neo-conservative movement. Curtis' great insight is that each of these two extremists needs the other to justify their own existence.
The Power of Nightmares includes interviews with many of the key players over the last fifty years. Curtis demonstrates time and again the ways in which high-level members of the U.S. intelligence service and the White House exaggerated or simply lied outright about the capability and threat of the enemy. He accomplishes this through a darkly satiric web of stock footage from all over the place (the ridiculous state of legal clearances, as O'Hehir points out, is another reason why this might never show in the U.S.). The Power of Nightmares is a grand, sweeping effort -- a blast to watch, and if even half of Curtis' argument holds water, very very damning, too.
Part One: "Baby It's Cold Outside"
Part Two: "The Phantom Victory"
Part Three: "Shadows in the Cave"
By the way, here's the BBC's blurb on the 3-part documentary, in which they sum it up thusly:
In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.
I urge you to check out this amazing documentary before it disappears from the Web.
At any rate, here at last is the information on how you can see the documentary I alluded to in my last post. It's a three-hour BBC documentary by Adam Curtis called The Power of Nightmares and -- bless the 'Net again! -- it's available to watch for free right now on Google Video.
I first heard about this extraordinary series when Andrew O'Hehir of Salon gave it a glowing review, calling it the most important political documentary of this decade, and perhaps of my lifetime.
O'Hehir goes on to say:
And as for broadcast on American television, I'm told that will happen, let's see, approximately 5,000 years after pigs first begin to fly across the frozen wastelands of hell. It's probably illegal not just to watch, but also to read about or think about. You and I are both committing treason right now.
Essentially, Curtis' thesis is that the current technique of the American political system is to promulgate fear of a largely non-existent terrorist threat. The Power of Nightmares starts out in 1949 when an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb, studying in Colorado, is horrified by the decadence he sees around him and winds up as the spiritual founder of Islamic Jihad. In parallel at the University of Chicago, professor Leo Strauss, a German Jew who had fled Hitler and settled in the U.S., is experiencing a similar reaction and founding the neo-conservative movement. Curtis' great insight is that each of these two extremists needs the other to justify their own existence.
The Power of Nightmares includes interviews with many of the key players over the last fifty years. Curtis demonstrates time and again the ways in which high-level members of the U.S. intelligence service and the White House exaggerated or simply lied outright about the capability and threat of the enemy. He accomplishes this through a darkly satiric web of stock footage from all over the place (the ridiculous state of legal clearances, as O'Hehir points out, is another reason why this might never show in the U.S.). The Power of Nightmares is a grand, sweeping effort -- a blast to watch, and if even half of Curtis' argument holds water, very very damning, too.
Part One: "Baby It's Cold Outside"
Part Two: "The Phantom Victory"
Part Three: "Shadows in the Cave"
By the way, here's the BBC's blurb on the 3-part documentary, in which they sum it up thusly:
In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.
I urge you to check out this amazing documentary before it disappears from the Web.
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