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May 17, 2003
The Shallowing of American Taste First tastebuds and palates fall to McDonalds, now the eyes, ears, and minds fall to Wal-Mart, according to this NY Times article (free registration required)...
"The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains ? they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD -- has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers...But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than a thousand books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales."
Add in Clear Channel Radio and sanitized text books, and all I can say is that the internet has come along at the time it's needed. With the fingers of big commerce all over our culture, the web can serve to reverse an old mega-trend to "high-touch, high-tech." With Wal-Mart, et al, touching our minds, we need to resort to tech to add some depth and breath to their narrow and shallow offerings.
posted by fpatrick at 8:29 PM PST - 45 comments
The Iconography of Saint Sebastian A terrific collection of images (14th to 21st centuries) in multiple media. For an interesting visual introduction to the development of iconography, see Augusta State University's rather no-nonsense
Christian Iconography, which breaks the subject down into major topics, individual saints, and so forth.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:11 PM PST - 6 comments
Sexual Secret Spurs Deadly Dilemma
Her daughter was known to most people as a cocky Southwestern Ontario pig-farm worker named Angelo, married to a 26-year-old woman named Elizabeth Rudavsky.
A very sad tale of a woman who had a
Gender Identity Crisis. Frankly, I can't imagine what sort of horrors both of these people went through. Is it possible that genetic testing will eventually prevent an identity crisis from happening? Is it even desirable? Is
this a true case of gender identity crisis?
posted by ashbury at 4:31 PM PST - 16 comments
Marijuana possession law 'erased' Possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana is no longer against the law in Ontario, a Windsor judge says in a ruling released yesterday that compounds the chaos over Canada's pot laws. And it's a long weekend too. (btw, Ontario is a province in Canada that includes Toronto).
posted by bobo123 at 3:59 PM PST - 23 comments
Genius goes online. A new website of Albert Einstein's scientific and other never-published travel diaries, various humanitarian statements, and his frequent pleas for peace, will be unveiled on Monday (May 19). The new site is the result of a collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The site,
www.alberteinstein.info. is scheduled to go live Monday, May 19, after 3 PM EDT. It's really a moment to look forward to.
posted by taratan at 9:04 AM PST - 1 comments
