On one hand, I suspect my FB page often looks like it belongs to a positive-energy, self-affirmation guru. I try not to flood it with platitudinal self-help warm-and-fuzzies, and try not to be new-agey, either. I try to post quotes that would be of interest to wide audiences. Still, once upon a time, that kind of stuff used to drive me nuts when I ( Read more... )

The ability to evoke emotion easily stands out as The Civil War’s greatest strength: From its opening shot of a canon silhouetted against a fire-orange sky and the use of the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote and the haunting Appalachian violin of Jay Unger’s “Ashoken Farewell,” Burns strives first and foremost to set an emotional tone ( Read more... )

“We have shared the incommunicable experience of war,” Oliver Wendell Holmes says at the beginning of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War. Burns could not have picked a more appropriate quote to start his film with, not just because it set a particular tone for the entire eleven-hour documentary but because it would describe the viewing experience ( Read more... )

"The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself had done."

-- Twain

Who would have ever guessed that Stonewall Jackson would one day end up hawking Coca-Cola?

Read on, Macduff, at Emerging Civil War.

"No question, the United States has brilliant, talented, exciting competitors; everyone wants to see them. But in hundreds of hours of coverage, there should be room in the spotlight, time in the schedule, for the rest of the world ( Read more... )

I just saw back-to-back commercials for Kaye Jewelers and Hershey Kisses. The Kaye's ad ended with their slogan, "Every Kiss begins with 'K.'" And then voila! there were Hershey kisses! But the best irony is that the Hershey ad ended with a slogan that something along the lines of a "one-of-a-kind kiss" inside every wrapper. So every kiss is the ( Read more... )

"thanks to blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the unholy marriage of cheap cameras and YouTube, we all have the potential to mount our own 'reality' channels, streaming our small, sparkly banalities to a world desperate for five seconds of disposable WTF." -- Sam Smith at S&R

S&R did a fantastic post today, with several of us pitching in, called "If I wanted America to fail...." It's one of the best things I think we've ever done. Check it out.Here was my contribution ( Read more... )

I wish I'd written this:

In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.

By Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune reporter
April 19, 2012

( Read on, Macduff--and mourn )