A few of my favorites:
What Batman, beefcake, birth control, and bootleg liquor have in common. Plus: Spicy Man!
Old, Weird Canada: The secret origins of Flin Flon, Manitoba, and my Mom.
John Hodgman, the primal scene of American historiography, The Muppet Movie, and how history judges a dream-thief.
The Ronald Reagan alternate history film festival.
The Greeting Card Octopus, Net Neutrality Moms, and the difference an apostrophe makes.
Most recent posts:
The unknowability of Ms Pac-Man; Major Wesely and Vietnam; the classic arcade “kill screen” and What Lies Beyond.
The Kinematrix has you: three alternate Victorian internets.
Plus the Jimmy Carterian Internet and the Millennial Pneumatic Tube.
Is John Hodgman the last observer of Gilded Age telephone etiquette? I WOULD NOT PUT IT PAST HIM.
Write up and reflection on THATCamp 2008, an excellent “unconference” on digital technology and the humanities.
In loose Borgesian categories:
Wow. That is the longest I have ever gone without internet access. Except, I suppose, from birth until 1993. I still don’t have internet at home—or a @%#$! telephone—but finally my office is equipped. You might think I could have logged in over the summer at the library or something, but come now: a grown man doesn’t blog standing up.
So. What did I miss in the last three months?
Interwob links to confound and bemuse:
The Henry Ford of Literature
Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, the huckster visionary whose mail-order superhighway paved the way for civil rights, feminism, the sexual revolution and the information age. Also, he may have been murdered by the FBI.
Great God, Where Is The Ship?
I don’t talk much politics here, but The Phil Nugent Experience is one political blog I can usually read without curling up into a ball crying. Also: “Drill, Baby, Drill”? Really?
Sex Magic Rocket Science
A biography of Jack Parsons, occultist and rocketeer, in comic book form.
Wikipedia Is Failing
Wikipedia (who else?) on the ways Wikipedia is failing. (But see also: Wikipedia is not failing; Wikipedia may or may not be failing; Wikipedia on problems solved by MacGyver.)
Pants On Fire
Mills Kelly is teaching a course this year that has me seething with jealousy awed respect: Lying About The Past, complete with a second term create-a-hoax practicum.
FDR's Men of Action!
Chef Julia Child, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., White Sox catcher Moe Berg, and the proverbial many more served in an “international spy ring” for the OSS during WWII.
Old Weird Google Map
Celestial Monochord goo-maps the Anthology of American Folk Music. What part of that sentence isn’t awesome? (See also.)
Happiness is Mandatory
Emo and goth to be made illegal in Russia? Don’t they know if we outlaw emo, only outlaws will be emo?
Speak In A Raspy Growl and Carry a Batarang
Scott Kaufman reports (without, alas, documentation) that Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale based their Batman on Teddy Roosevelt.
Mangler 2000
From the “We survived, didn’t we?” department: A paean to old, dangerous playground equipment. (But see Greg Downey’s astute response.)
Invisible elves make our site go:
© 2001–2007 Rob MacDougall
4 responses so far ↓
1 Rebecca // Sep 6, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Yay, you’re back. Was wondering if you’d wandered off to Canada and frozen to death or something…:)
2 sharon // Sep 6, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Nice to have you back!
3 adrienne // Sep 6, 2005 at 7:30 pm
Hey Fellow Has-Been, welcome home! I suppose I should call you Prof. Floyd now….
4 Rob // Sep 9, 2005 at 10:03 am
Thanks, all. Nice to be back, and good to hear from you. Adrienne, no need to be so formal: Herr Doktor Floyd will be just fine.
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