A few of my favorites:
The network isn’t virtual. It’s physical, and that matters.
The Cold War avante-garde, from R&D to D&D, the secret origins of hex paper, KAAAAHN!
All hail King Ludd.
Ben Franklin stars in the most kick-ass 18th-century action movie you never saw.
O for the days when the worst thing Americans had to fear was the demise of league bowling.
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:
Tyler Cowen and his readers discuss survival tips in case you are unexpectedly stranded in the year 1000 AD. Would it surprise you to learn that I think about this all the time?
Tags: Asides
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
3 responses so far ↓
1 The Elder Dan // Jun 11, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Cute thread but for the most part I gotta say, the commenters are mostly idiotic and perhaps just naive.
2 Rob // Jun 11, 2008 at 2:39 pm
True of most comment threads, alas. I keep trying to come up with a crafty scheme myself, but odds are I’d be dead in days.
3 Mark // Jun 25, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Interesting read. The comments show how urban we have become; most of the schemes involve going to a big city, and I would do the exact opposite.
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