Last night I was packed into a school hall with a bunch of my neighbours — not because we’d been evacuated from earthquake-damaged homes like the afflicted of Canterbury, although they were on our minds — as part of the audience of a very clever, well-written and well-delivered ‘romp through the pages of our history’. [...]

Wow, I thought the ‘It came from Wasilia’ profile on Sarah Palin by Todd Purdue was eye-opening. She also came off pretty badly in that book I hoovered up over a wet weekend Race of a Lifetime … but read this piece from the current Vanity Fair – ‘Sarah Palin: the Sound and the Fury’. [...]

The thoughts I’ve recently shared in these pages about the operations of certain very smooth salesmen have sparked a reaction of sorts. Oh dear. As might be expected, there are indications of some outrage and hurt feelings in the spruiker’s camp … and questions being asked, notably: Ouch! What the hell? What can we do [...]

Spotted on a bike ride with my son yesterday … Gee, what was wrong with ‘Howick Police Station‘? Is this newspeak really better? “Run, Jimmy! Run to the Community Policing Centre!” Er, nope. (…and what, I wonder, do they call a Fire Station these days?) Any other examples? + Update:  A thought occurs — maybe [...]

Oh boy. John Stewart (in fine form) revs up on the plan to locate an Islamic community centre (Mosque) two blocks from the site of the World Trade Centre. I like his take, as usual … and his roasting of the Fox News phoneys on their lack of consistency. And then there’s a squirmy/bad taste [...]

What’s coming up for discussion with the new media/old media/social media/internet marketing debate is: how important is ‘original material’? It’s an issue not just for the Rupert Murdochs of the world: original, quality content for news media — actually any media — is expensive to produce on anything like an ongoing and quality basis. It [...]

Recent events have seen me revisiting a theme (or meme?) of this blog — and central to my own thinking: WHY SHOULD one speak up about perceived wrongdoing? Let me start by saying this: Life is complicated. Sometimes people and things can appear to be one thing on the surface but as you look closer, [...]

Rachel Madow telling the truth to Bill O’Reilly … gee she’s good at this stuff! Spot the pattern: Rather than contribute to a debate about ‘the facts’ Madow asserted about him and Fox News, (e.g. ‘This is why what she’s saying is wrong…’) Bill O’Reilly merely whacked Madow’s sincerity (‘you have to be kidding’) and [...]

This is a very good article/profile by Miranda Sawyer from The Observer (via NZ Herald) of this complex artist M.I.A. Worth reading. I personally like this kind of semi-gonzo journalism: While Maya is talking, I think: she’s nothing like I expected. She’s gentler, more smiley, more discursive. Still, it would be easy to pull out [...]

A WHOLE lot of wisdom in one bite-sized blog post from Dave Pell, internet superhero: That’s an apt description of the new national pastime: Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and making determinations and judgments without a full set of facts. When confronted with the realtime web’s constant flow of incoming information, who has time for [...]