Some thoughts on social status, and the old media theorists' idea that everyone will get a share of fame in the future...

• If you're a Latin American child living in the United Sates, you'll get no national media coverage, but possibly a mention in the local paper, if you are murdered in your own home by an insurgent. 
• If you're homeless...  you'll ( Read more... )

    I'm not usually a fan of advertising, but occasionally some group of film-nerds-turned-commercial-shills throws together something that I have to tip my hat to.  This is one such item.  References to old films score them some points, and I always get a chuckle out of stories in which some superstitious assumption of supernatural involvement ( Read more... )

It's come to my attention that Americans living in Tennessee have passed a law making it illegal to publish any image which will "frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress" (source).

Note to America:  Tennessee was one of those states that you occupied during the USA's 1846 invasion of Mexico and then never departed from.  Bad ( Read more... )

.... 2011-05-22 06:00. I notice that they're still here. Yes, them.

I was told that they'd be leaving, but they're incontestably still around, looking vacant and disappointed at the same time (which is normal for them... although I'm sure some of them are a little more slack-jawed than usual this morning).

Thus, I'm forced to draw the ( Read more... )

"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." ~ Warren Buffett
   Having heard people claim that the Tea Party has established a foothold in Toronto since the election of Rob Frod, and having read that die-hard conservatives are trying to capitalise on the opportunity to start a ( Read more... )

This is one of those stories that could have turned out very badly...  but once you think about it, actually turned out for the best.

Man accused of speeding into pack of cyclists jailed in southern Brazil

SAO PAULO - A motorist accused of running down dozens of bike-riding activists in southern Brazil has been detained.  A police statement says ( Read more... )

     I've stumbled across an op-ed in the Eagle, a student newspaper at American University, entitled "Dealing with AU’s anti-sex brigade" and written by Alex Knepper.

It's... well, it's one of those things that has to be read in order to believe that it made it on-line.

If the author hadn't displayed such resentment toward the idea of date ( Read more... )

   So, I was surfing the net on Friday and came across the website of Forbes magazine, and something jumped out at me.


( Read more... )

Some people in Canada have adopted the very American habit of bitching that government censors things, and whining about freedom of expression (I laugh at them because whining about freedom of expression is often the only thing that most of such people do to exercise their freedom of expression, but that's another story).

So it's pretty ( Read more... )

Shopping with guns
by THANE BURNETT, QMI Agency
April 24, 2010 2:00am

NEW BERLIN, Wis. - There's some bother near the broccoli, but the concern is not from customers, who seem oblivious to armed people moving through their supermarket.  The tension is from staff, who track the armed duo and the journalist who's in pursuit.  Neither holds a ( Read more... )