Freeland's We Want Your Soul video is a cynical look at the american dream and keeping up with the joneses. Whether you agree with the point of view, it's still a pretty cool and amusing use of camera effects. (note: large quicktime on that page) [via
randomfoo]
posted by mathowie
on Sep 28, 2003 -
14 comments
The Elliot Avedon Museum and Archive of Games. Board games from a thirteenth-century 'Book of Games',
Inuit games,
card games,
row games,
puzzles,
ethnographical papers on games, etc.
A different kind of game at
Streetplay -
stickball,
hopscotch,
galleries, and
street games worldwide.
posted by plep
on Jul 16, 2003 -
2 comments
You've been in Japan too long when... A) ...you are not surprised to wake up in the morning and find that the woman who stayed over last night has completely cleaned your apartment, even though you'll probably never ever meet her again.
B) ...you are not surprised to wake up in the morning and find that the woman who stayed over last night has completely cleaned your apartment, even though you'll probably never ever meet her again.
C) ...your hair is thinning and you consider it "barcode style".
Or perhaps if you're unsurprised that such a historically isolationist nation is now so
uniquely and openly fascinated with the opinions of those who have moved to their land...wow. This is somewhere I must travel to.
posted by effugas
on Dec 17, 2002 -
68 comments
Cultural Commentary in 10 Easy Lessons "....there's an astonishing abundance of cultural criticism these days -- in magazines, newspapers, web sites, blogs, television....if you removed the five or 10 most abused forms of criticism, there would be a deafening silence. Or perhaps room for other kinds of commentary to grow..." With so much published and available these days. it's damn near impossible to sound original.
posted by Voyageman
on Dec 15, 2002 -
16 comments
Jorlon khaan bain ve? The first stop in Oissubke's trip around the online world is the
beautiful land of
Mongolia. Take a moment to leave the America-centric (not that there's anything wrong with that!) Web and see what the internet looks like from someone else's eyes...
I've tried to pick sites that provide unique and interesting insights into the Mongolian internet, not just whatever Google coughed up for "Mongolia". Unless this post particularly annoys people, I'll plan to continue my journey with Liechtenstein in a few days.
posted by oissubke
on Oct 21, 2002 -
28 comments
Does Beer Really Equal Democracy Equal The U.S.A? Max Rudin's somewhat wild assumptions only make this article of his more interesting. But is it true that beer in North America overtakes all the usual class, status and income boundaries? If so, it certainly sets it apart from Europe, where all the old preconceptions and habits still prevail and (at least in the Southwest) a glass of wine is always cheaper than a beer. So I guess the question here is: just how
political can beer be? [
As a chaser, the British expert Michael Jackson's list of the ten great beers of America seems authoritative and tempting, if a tad disloyal to the cask-conditioned real, live ales of England and Scotland...].
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Jul 15, 2002 -
20 comments
French culture in crisis ? After the
Vivendi Universal french CEO
Jean-Marie Messier fired
Canal+ chairman Pierre Lescure yesterday,
many questions arise in
France. Will Vivendi, through Canal+, continue to help French cinema the way Canal+ did in the past ? Is this the last straw in a long series of acts and declarations from Vivendi's CEO against "Franco-French cultural exception" ? Has The Man finally won in France ? What's to happen in all the other countries were Vivendi (or any of the BigCo) basically
owns the culture through local companies ?
posted by XiBe
on Apr 17, 2002 -
10 comments
French politicians polish cultural credentials. France's presidential hopefuls have begun pledging to defend the country's cherished culture, hoping to drum up support from artists worried that American films and music will steamroll finer French productions.
This rhetoric makes it sound like American films are picking up guns to massacre poor defenseless French culture. Maybe American films are so successful because they give people something that the "finer French productions" don't, and if so, then is that such a horrible thing? After all, we are just giving the people what they want, right? And if that takes money away from more artsy productions, then whose fault is that anyway?
posted by epimorph
on Apr 8, 2002 -
15 comments
Understanding what makes America tick "
The belief that America is exceptional, in the double sense that it is superior and that it is different...The United States had a mission, a manifest destiny, to change the world in its image. This conviction echoes down through American history....Other countries—France, Britain, Russia—have from time to time in their history felt a sense of mission, of carrying their civilisation to other peoples and territories. But in their cases it has been episodic and not deeply rooted—usually limited to when their power was at its zenith and usually clearly recognisable as a rationalisation for what they were doing for other reasons. In the case of the United States, it has been constant and central." [
Centre of Independent Studies in Sydney via
aldaily] American Exceptionalism. Mix it with sole super power status and massive military might. Should make it quite an intoxicating ride these next few years.
posted by Voyageman
on Apr 4, 2002 -
26 comments
"X-men: speed mutation" is a rich and fun analysis of issues of body, minority struggle, other-ness and the evolution of science fiction in the comic book and film idioms of the X-men. It may even argue that the X-men's overwhelming popularity is owed to something greater than stylized violence and skintight outfits: relevance as a cultural text.
"Immune systems are information systems. Biological space is pervaded and negotiated through exchanges of genetic data; biochemically, we are in a constant state of alienation from our "selves". ... The world of X-Men is inverted on its own processes and intertexts. Its gaze is focused on the technologies of the body and on the intersections between the body and the mind, the body and the self."
posted by scarabic
on Nov 27, 2001 -
1 comment
Make World event in October, Germany - about borderless digital culture, no doubt curated long before The Current Situation, but I'm sure will be rendered far more relevant as a result.
posted by blackbeltjones
on Sep 26, 2001 -
0 comments
The Hindu nationalist group Bajrang Dal name a puppy George Bush. This isn't meant to be a complimentary act... it's in reaction to their discovery that the Bushes' cat's name is India (short for India Ink). They've taken this as an insult to the nation, and have retaliated with the puppy.
I'm kind of curious about what this tells about Indian naming practices and significances, as compared to those in the US. Could someone more familiar with Hindu/Indian culture please enlighten me as to why they'd feel so insulted?
posted by jason
on Jul 26, 2001 -
36 comments
The Rise and Fall of the Geeks - Three years ago, they had the power to change the world, make a more than decent living and bask on highbrow success - perhaps a justified retribution after many years of world disdain and incomprehension to the geek community. It didn't last... and the article sheds some lights on the probable reasons.
posted by betobeto
on Jun 25, 2001 -
34 comments
Death by Information: "Does the word 'pedestrian' frighten you? Could you survive for an hour without a cell phone, laptop, or - even worse - a television?"
posted by Zeldman
on Apr 22, 2001 -
24 comments
Culture as Culprit. Myron Magnet is the author of
The Dream and the Nightmare, which George W. Bush has called the most influential book -- aside from the Bible -- that he's ever read. Is poverty in American less an economic matter than a cultural one?
posted by techgnollogic
on Apr 6, 2001 -
9 comments
Entropy in action, or a covert maneuver in the ongoing American war to implement anti-intellectual, low-culture values and destroy anything perceived to aspire to any qualities beyond the strictly utilitarian?
posted by rushmc
on Jan 15, 2001 -
11 comments
«Êtes-vous un mod ou un rocker?» At the earsplitting industry schmoozefest I attended this week (which I am forbidden to link to because I blogged it at one of my sites), I beelined toward the more interesting-looking people. One fella had a full-on
mod look. I listen to the show
Mods & Rockers on
CIUT, and I claim to understand
Blow-Up. But I was impressed as hell by an explanation of the origin of the terms
mod and rocker. It's the sort of cultural introduction I wish more people would write – after you teach yourself what a concept is, you document that self-teaching for others. Hey, it's the Internet gift kulcha, innit? (Also:
Mod films!)
posted by joeclark
on Jun 25, 2000 -
1 comment
