Culture and Society

5,000 hours of White House conversations

As a city cyclist, one of the banes of my existence is ridiculously large vehicles, particularly 4WDs. (SUVs in American parlance.) Many of their drivers seem utterly unaware of the poor visibility of these hulks, or indeed even of their real size – near had my shoulder taken off by …

The the all-you-can-eat subscription model — most prominently pushed of late by Napster with their Napster to Go service (all you can rent for $15 a month) — is not yet catching on, according to market research firm Parks Associates: Respondents in the recent Parks Associates survey Global Digital Living …

As many of you know, we had a “perfect storm” meltdown yesterday which put us offline for about 5 hours in the late-morning and early-afternon: hard drive failure, then complete computer failure. The odds against these things happening successively are staggeringly high, but it shows you that if it CAN …

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored this year’s Oscar contenders at its annual Nominees Luncheon Feb.7 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. 115 nominees from 24 categories gathered at noon for the traditional pre-Academy Awards fete. The big news was the announcement that the awards show itself will …

Hey, I’m at the tail end of the baby boom and you’ve been hearing all about how we refuse to grow old gracefully or cast aside our youthful ways, outlook, thought patterns. Generally this holds true for me: I’m as deeply entrenched in popular culture as ever, and I can …

Sadly, this solicitation no longer holds: “The worlds largest and most successful commercial recording facility.” “The completion of the Hit Factory in ’93, set a new bench mark against which many recording facilities will be judged well into the new millenium. The studios offer traditional recording techniques supported by innovative …

First off, allow me to preface the rather notable news that Volvo is announcing a contest to give away a seat on the Virgin Galactic spaceship during their Super Bowl commercial Sunday, by noting that Richard Branson is a dickleak. I have nothing in particular against the guy and his …

An American photographer and a Japanese poet met in a New York City café.

Two books about the horrible things done to girls, most often by other girls. One is the application of the label “school slut”. Now I think about it, every school, college and similar collection of adolescents or young adults with which I have been involved had a school slut, or, …