February 2010

When talent is a license to steal

February 12, 2010

I‘m a so-so writer, but I’ve never been even slightly tempted to plagiarize. There’s the integrity thing, of course. There’s also the certainty of getting caught, in the age of the Internet and in the fullness of time. All in all, I’ve considered it way too much to risk for the dim promise of unearned [...]

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Behold the one-man cloud

February 10, 2010

I signed on to Gmail this morning and was greeted by an invitation to join Buzz, Google’s bold foray into the social media wasteland. Naturally, I joined up. So let’s see: I now have a presence on Facebook, Posterous, Twitter, Yahoo, Blogspot, WordPress, Flickr, PicasaWeb and Walgreen’s. And Buzz. I’m sure I’m forgetting some. One [...]

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Not all is wonderful on the Web

February 8, 2010

I‘m just finishing up You Are Not a Gadget, Jaron Lanier’s paper-and-ink manifesto on what’s wrong with the Web 2.0, and with the culture it’s in the process of creating — or destroying. It’s a complex book, and a lot has been said about it, so I won’t spend a lot of time paraphrasing. I’ll [...]

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A farewell to pro football

February 7, 2010

Apparently there’s a major sporting event planned for this evening. I’m not sure where it’s being played. I could Google that, sure, but it would undercut the theme of this post. Which is: Why I no longer give a damn about professional football. When we lived in Philadelphia, I was excited about the Eagles. Watched [...]

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The Tea Party without tea

February 4, 2010

I don’t know what to think about this Tea Party movement. The most rabid will tell you it’s about fiscal conservatism, about the government spending us all into the poor house for decades to come. Hey, that part might actually be true. But if that’s the main concern, you’d think the movement would have found [...]

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What’s it all about, Gigli?

February 2, 2010

At some point I’m going to have to see “Gigli.” It keeps showing up in every “worst movie” list I see, and appears again in the 2009 Razzie Award nominees as compiled by Rotten Tomatoes. Since it was made in 2003, it’s nominated not for worst movie of the year, but worst movie of the [...]

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A look at what’s new on DVD

February 1, 2010

When you watch four movies in four days (part of my relentless quest to see all the 2009 Golden Globe contenders), you can’t help but rank them as a group even when they have nothing in common except the fawning sycophants in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. This week’s fab four: “Inglourious Basterds,” “Up,” “The [...]

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