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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 6 June 2011
[tech] Information Overload, The Early Years … ‘But around 1500, humanist scholars began to bemoan new problems: Printers in search of profit, they complained, rushed to print manuscripts without attention to the quality of the text, and the sheer mass of new books was distracting readers from the focus on the ancient authors most worthy of attention. Printers “fill the world with pamphlets and books that are foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive; and such is the flood that even things that might have done some good lose all their goodness,” wrote Erasmus in the early 16th century…’
[tv] The Killing: In Cold Blood … The Guardian Profiles The Killing …
‘Lund’s appeal perhaps is that she’s not so much a woman in a man’s world as a traditionally male character in a woman’s body – a maverick like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and a frightening obsessive like John Wayne in The Searchers, though neither as self-righteous nor gun-happy as either. She’s a loner guided by a superior intelligence who pursues her investigation ruthlessly, stepping on the toes of town hall politicos and lame-brained bosses alike, treating her male colleague Jan Meyer as part-chump and part-servant, hardly ever sparing the feelings of Nanna Birk Larsen’s bereaved parents when she turns up, Columbo-like, with just one more question.’ 5 June 2011
3 June 2011
[royalty] The Queen Mother’s Little Note … “I think that I will take 2 *small* bottles of Dubonnet and Gin with me this morning…”
2 June 2011
[docu] How The ‘Ecosystem’ Myth Has Been Used For Sinister Means … Adam Curtis on the history behind self-organising systems … ‘Field Marshal Smuts was one of the most powerful men in the British empire. He ruled South Africa for the British empire and he exercised power ruthlessly. When the Hottentots refused to pay their dog licences Smuts sent in planes to bomb them. As a result the black people hated him. But Smuts also saw himself as a philosopher – and he had a habit of walking up to the tops of mountains, taking off all his clothes, and dreaming up new theories about how nature and the world worked.’
1 June 2011
[funny] Dr Johnson On Adam Curtis …
[web] How The Drudge Report Got Popular and Stayed on Top … ‘A big part of the reason he is such an effective aggregator for both audiences and news sites is that he actually acts like one. Behemoth aggregators like Yahoo News and The Huffington Post have become more like fun houses that are easy to get into and tough to get out of. Most of the time, the summary of an article is all people want, and surfers don’t bother to click on the link. But on The Drudge Report, there is just a delicious but bare-bones headline, there for the clicking…’
31 May 2011
[flight] What Happened to Air France Flight 447? … a report from the NYT from before the missing flight’s black box recorder was analysed … ‘On the Alucia this spring, as Woods Hole scientists scanned the first photos of Flight 447, they saw more than just landing gear, engines and wings. They also saw the bodies of at least 50 passengers sprawled across an abyssal plain at the base of the mountains. As they continued searching the area, they found a section of damaged fuselage not far away, large enough to contain more passengers. Members of the crew told me that a grim silence descended on the ship…’
30 May 2011
[crime] The Lazarus File … fascinating look at the investigation into a murder in Los Angeles from 1986 which has recently been reopened … ‘The detectives went back over the whole investigation-but this time with the assumption that they were looking for a female suspect. When they finished going through the case file, they had a list of five names, among them that of Stephanie Lazarus, who was cited in the original police work as John Ruetten’s ex-girlfriend, with the further notation “P.O.” Nuttall didn’t make anything of the initials until he called Ruetten, who told him that Lazarus had been a Los Angeles police officer.’
29 May 2011
[docu] Adam Curtis: The Rise of the Machines … Andrew Orlowski interviews Adam Curtis … ‘I’ve always wanted to make a film about managerialism. It’s impossible, because with managers nothing really happens. What I’m dealing with here is the ideology behind managerialism. Behind all this, behind the flipchart, is the idea that you’re nodes in a system, and ‘our job’ is to keep things stable.’
28 May 2011
27 May 2011
[dailyfail] Go Look: Pictures From The Daily Mail … a weird bunch of photos collected from the Daily Mail’s website (or as I prefer to call it now – 4chan for Middle England.)
[life] 9-eyes … A collection of captured moments from Google Streetview.
25 May 2011
[cartoons] Steve Bell On 30 Years Of Political Cartooning At The Guardian … ‘Nick Clegg, a rather poor clone of Cameron, who in turn is a tribute act to Blair, who is himself channelling Thatcher. And who was she channelling? Her father, Alderman Roberts, the grocer of Grantham town? Winston Churchill? Adolf Hitler? Beelzebub? Who can say?’
Bradley Manning’s Facebook Page … I can’t help myself but be fascinated by this archive of Bradley Manning’s Facebook Wall … ‘Manning’s Facebook postings are a vivid, if partial, portrait of his life in the military and of the political and social issues that he followed closely. They reflect his commitment to gay rights and defiance of the military’s ban on openly gay or lesbian soldiers. They track the anguish in his personal life. And they conclude with an entry, put up in Manning’s name by his aunt, explaining his arrest with a link to a WikiLeaks website.’
24 May 2011
[comics] The AV Club Interviews Chester Brown …
AV Club: Is there some reason so many cartoonists have such idiosyncratic political and social views? Peter Bagge is a libertarian as well, and Steve Ditko is an objectivist, and R. Crumb has his odd open marriage, and then there’s whatever Dave Sim’s got going on.
[tv] Grace Dent On Adam Curtis’ All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace … ‘And look at me, I’m so happy. Twitter alone has given me retinal migraine issues, RSI and cajoled me into believing I am a free-thinking revolutionary fanning flames of liberty in Iran, Libya and Syria, when in fact I’m just a woman in pyjamas, hugging an Intel Pentium processor, waiting for Ocado to fetch more olives. Up the revolution … oooh, have these got pimentos in them? Yum, yum, slurp.’
23 May 2011
FaceFacts … Jason Scott on Facebook … ‘[Facebook] is like an ever-burning fire of our memories, gleefully growing as we toss endless amounts of information and self and knowledge into it, only to have it added to columns of advertiser-related facts we do not see and do not control and do not understand.’
20 May 2011
[movies] The Monkees’ Head: ‘Our fans couldn’t even see it’ … The Monkees discuss their disastrous movie Head … ‘In retrospect, the marketing seems suicidal. Posters featured the balding head of the media theorist John Brockman and the slogan: “What is Head all about? Only John Brockman’s shrink knows for sure!” The so-called Monkees movie made no mention of the Monkees.’
19 May 2011
[horoscopes] Horoscoped … the most common words in star sign predictions from Information is Beautiful…
 18 May 2011
[space] The Blue Marble Shot … a look back at the first complete photo of a whole round Earth taken from space which might be the most reproduced photo ever … ‘You can’t see the Earth as a globe unless you get at least twenty thousand miles away from it, and only 24 humans ever went that far into outer space. They were the three-man crews of the nine Apollo missions that traveled to the moon between 1968 and 1972, six of which landed there successfully (three men went twice). But only the last three saw a full Earth.’
17 May 2011
[tech] The Art of Endless Upgrades … Kevin Kelly on an issue I’ve noticed too – I spend far to much time maintaining a few simple websites … ‘Keeping a website or a software program afloat is like keep a yacht afloat. It is a black hole for attention. I can kind of understand why a mechanical device would break down after a while — moisture rusts metal, or the air oxidizes membranes, or lubricants evaporate — all of which require repair. But I wasn’t thinking that the intangible world of bits would also degrade. What’s to break? Apparently everything.’
16 May 2011
[people] Five Reasons To Be Concerned Your Husband Is A Psychopath … from Jon Ronson … ‘In my book “The Psychopath Test,” I meet an enormously wealthy former Fortune 500-type CEO, Al Dunlap, to ask him which of the 20 Hare psychopathic traits he felt most applied to him. He instantly confessed to Grandiose Sense of Self Worth, which would have been a hard one for him to deny as he was at the time standing underneath a giant oil painting of himself.’
15 May 2011
[weird] Plague of US preachers falsely claim to be Navy SEALs … ‘Other common professions who tend to falsely and publicly claim they were once SEALs are politicians and sheriffs, according to Shipley. Sheriffs are typically elected in the USA, and so need popular support. These and clergymen are the kind of people he tends to out, rather than the more common type of commando-impersonator who is simply trying to impress a girl in a bar. “The pastor never thought anyone outside of his small community would see [his false claims],” Shipley said. “He doesn’t understand how the Internet works.” In America is actually a crime to misrepresent or exaggerate one’s military service record.’
14 May 2011
[books] Balancing The Books … Ed Stourton’s Book Storage Crisis … ‘Our dilemma is a middle-aged one but I suspect, on the basis of conversations with like-minded friends, a common one. Our books are taking over our house and, it sometimes seems, our lives…’ [via Feeling Listless]
13 May 2011
12 May 2011
[tv] The Most Stupid Quiz Answer Ever? … ‘Andrew and Vanessa – the contestants in question – had been doing so well in the Channel 4 game show. But then came the fateful Bannister question. In 1954, did he go into space, run a sub-four minute mile or become the first man ever to put the toilet seat down? Andrew and Vanessa ummed. They ahhed. Then, out of nowhere, Andrew had a breakthrough. Eyes burning with pure knowledge, he shouted “I think I’ve seen ‘Bannister’ written on a toilet!” Vanessa was more cautious, wailing “Who KNOWS this?” before eventually agreeing on the toilet thing as well.’
11 May 2011
[tv] Adam Curtis – All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace … promotional trail for Adam Curtis’ latest documentary … ‘WE DREAMED THE SYSTEMS COULD STABILISE THEMSELVES THROUGH FEEDBACK.’
10 May 2011
[comics] Howard Chaykin, Time and Time Again … Douglas Wolk On Howard Chaykin … ‘Chaykin’s ’80s comics are the work of an artist pushing himself savagely hard–especially Time2, an ambitious, densely packed 1986-1987 project that encompassed a one-shot comic book and a pair of slim graphic novels before vanishing.’
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