Culture and Society

I love these crazy old bodybuilders and fitness freaks – they carved out a niche in the culture when bulging muscles and a serious fitness regimen was considered freakish and obsessive, and they were inventors and entrepreneurs as well. The first “Mr. California” and inventor of the Universal exercise machine, …

Wharton says they are both full of shit.

With almost 19,000 posts in just over two years, I shudder to think how many dead links we have festering in our archives – imagine trying to fix them all. This sounds like a blogger’s dream come true: Peridot, developed by UK intern students at IBM, scans company weblinks and …

Nothing quite like The Onion’s 2004 Election Guide

Suddenly it dawned on those with a more progressive agenda than the current denizens of the White House that there are a shitload of young people out there who probably lean toward their way of thinking (“progressive” change is for the young and the old – people in the middle …

Duh. We’ve only been saying this for 2+ years: reduce the price of digital music and they will come. The online music downoad services are competing with free – no matter how many people the RIAA sues, free is not going to go away. BUT there are real COSTS to …

Power to the people – right on. Another online protest, and this one I am behind 100%. As I mentioned rather vehemently here, the ruling against NWA for violating copyright in the use of a three-note UNIDENTIFIABLE sample from Funkadelic’s “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” is a disaster. Downhill …

Jon Pareles of the NY Times put together an excellent list of resources for free, legit, digital music on the Internet – hey it’s the kind of thing big-time journalists are paid the big bucks to do: Epitonic The first and best place to look for any band with an …

How exceptionally cool is this? Um, exceptionally. OldVersion.com provides “heritage” versions of popular Windows-based programs that give you an option against being railroaded into “upgrades” that may not meet your needs or desires. They provide 489 versions of 51 programs. The service is free but donations are accepted. Why? Sometimes …

No, not another hurricane. We met artist British Chloe Cumming when she painted the exquisite cover for the Brian Wilson tribute album Box O’ Clox. Chloe informs us that her site has just been updated with paintings of the Beach Boys, various pro wrestlers, and other delights. Click the link …