Culture and Society

Amazon.com Inc. announced today that it will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a July 16th concert headlined by Bob Dylan and Norah Jones, and hosted by Bill Maher. The “Amazon.com 10th Anniversary Event Presented by Chase” will be streamed live from the Amazon.com gateway with the Dylan and Jones performances, …

A meeting at the intersection of Art and Commerce.

a fine example of powerless people exercising power in meaningless places.

Next up for Paris Hilton: a handoff from Carl’s Jr. to its corporate sibling Hardee’s, as her infamous, lubricious swimsuit-Bentley-running hose-burger orgy TV commercial goes east to launch the new Spicy BBQ Thickburger, topped with Tabasco-spiked BBQ sauce and Texas Toothpicks (insert joke using “spicy” “thick” and “hot” here). The …

A team of astonomers announced the discovery of the most “Earth-like” planet yet found outside the solar system, revolving around a star named Gliese 876, just around the interstellar corner, 15 light years away in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. About seven-and-a-half times as massive as Earth, with about …

...the Epcot centre is a symbol of increased American isolationism because, get this, he says "it prepackages culture into bite size pieces of stereotypical servings." I don't know what the hell that is supposed to mean, maybe he's talking about the food.

Update on “Xingolati, (pronounced Zîng-gō-läh-ti) – Groove Cruise of the Pacific,” headlined by the tuneful and mysterious Flaming Lips, fresh off their piratical SpongeBob soundtrack appearance. In addition to performing live on the boat in one of their few scheduled performances for the year, the Flaming Lips will screen their …

WARNING: AMONG THE MANY FOODS AND DRINKS THAT HELP CAUSE CHILDHOOD OBESITY, MILK HAS JUST BEEN ADDED TO THE LIST. Here’s the link from Yahoo! – http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050606/hl_nm/milk_dc_1. (Can’t link for some reason) Well, it hasn’t been added to the list, but this study does try to scare parents into lessening …

The Chinese government Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has announced that all websites — including blogs, forums and chat rooms — located within its borders have to register with the government by June 30 or be shut down. Commercial sites face fines of up to one million yuan ($120,000) if …

Batman Begins (trailers here), which opens in traditional and IMAX theaters June 15, is an an “intellectual action epic” which “respectfully ignores” the four previous Batman films and tells the story from the dark mythic beginning once again with more character and less whizbang action than its big-budget predecessors, according …