08 February 2010

The Return of the Baffler

Thomas Frank’s excellent quarterly magazine returns with its 18th issue in 22 years.

A short interview with Bill Watterson

Why now? And why with the Cleveland Plain Dealer? I don’t know – but this is the first interview with the Calvin & Hobbes creator that I have seen since the definitive Honk piece in 1987.

» Return of the Jedi, Polish Movie Poster

Designer Witold Dybowski nails it.

05 February 2010

Print your own first edition of the London Weekly

Everyone has been talking about the new London Weekly – but noone can find it. Yet, I did – in a binman’s cart. Click through for the pix of every page.

01 February 2010

I mean not tolerated Popery

The US Supreme Court last week recognised that corporations have ‘free speech’ like natural persons and thus could not be barred from influencing elections through advertising. The argument, of course, is that corporations may have access to much more capital to use in advertising than the average, old-style, human-type person.

However, Douglas Rushkoff illustrates in this essay that this merely ‘makes law out of what is already happening.’

Rushkoff:

While corporations have enjoyed the benefits of personhood for over a century, they don’t suffer the main pitfalls: chiefly, death—but also despair, fatigue, and the need to feed their kids. They could outrun or at least outlast any effort to curb their influence. That’s how the railroads got to trample States’ rights to their own land, how GE got out of cleaning the Hudson River, and so on. They just wait, make a little progress, and then wait some more.

Although I share the unease with giving corporations free speech – what’s next, giving them the vote? – I can’t help but be reminded of Stanley Fish’s view in There is no such thing as free speech.

Fish, a Milton scholar, describes the poet’s Aeropagita.

Stanley:

Much of the Areopagitica is a celebration of toleration in matters of expression, for reasons that have now become more familiar to us: the more information the better able are we to choose wisely; the more information the better are we able to exercise our intellects so that they become more refined and perceptive. Another part of Milton’s argument is that when something is suppressed it does not go away. It just takes on a romantic underground life and flourishes rather than being brought to the light of day where it might be refuted. All of these are today familiar arguments and components of free speech rhetoric.

But here is the killer:

Stanley:

About three quarters of the way through the tract Milton says, “Now you understand of course”, and the tone in his prose suggests that he assumes that most of his readers have always understood this, “that when I speak of toleration and free expression I don’t mean Catholics. Them we extirpate”.

So, for those os us that cherish free speech but not, of course, for corporations: we mean not tolerated Popery.

30 January 2010

» The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary

:—

Citing usage from 1949, the OED calls this mark the dog’s bollocks, which it defines as, “typogr. a colon followed by a dash, regarded as forming a shape resembling the male sexual organs.” This is why I love scrounging around the linguistic scrap heap that is the OED. I always come across a little gold. And by “gold,” I mean, “vulgar, 60-year-old emoticons.”

Charlie Brooker on how to report the news

If you work in a newsroom and continue to do this, you have no excuse.

29 January 2010

Raise your Tom Collins' in toast - a JD Salinger round-up

The New Yorker has posted every story they published by Salinger from 1946 to 1965.

This sandwich has no mayonaise, a 1945 short story in Esquire.

The very satisfying NY Times obituary

A smiling photo.

28 January 2010

» The new rules of libel for Canadian bloggers (and other online types)

The Canadian Supreme Court decision of Grant v. Torstar Corp created a new protection for journalists, the “responsible communication on matters of public interest” defense.

But as these guys point out, you may not be automatically protected if you are a mere blogger.

» Helvetica cookie cutters

Mmmmm. Tastes modern.

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