Nunc Scio

Due to some out-of-town business, blogging will be intermittent to non-existent until Friday, June 22. Randomness will resume in the AM. Hope to see you back.

Interesting article on the Academy Blog about the political legacy of Tony Blair and New Labour’s skill at creating a winning brand. Blair was brilliant at connection with voters, and despite the dual albatroses of the Iraq War and the Cash-for-honours scandal, his techniques remain salient in British politics. Funnily enough, the leader of the [...]

Ladies and gentlemen, there will be no encore. Animal rights activists have freed Bulgaria’s last three dancing bears. Bulgaria was thought to be the last country where a shuffling bear was considered entertaining. The terpsichorean brown bears will now ‘cool their heels’ in a mountain sanctuary. An apt turn of phrase, since dancing bears-in-training are [...]

Corporate Pranksters The Yes Men hoodwinked the Go Expo Energy Conference on Thursday, posing as two speakers from the National Petroleum Council. Instead of lecturing on a new Canadian/US energy policy, the two activists warned of the coming collapse of oil supplies. As a solution, they advocated the use of ‘vivolium’- a petroleum substitute made from [...]

The critic- the great arbiter of public taste- is under attack after a landmark court ruling in Australia declaring a review defamatory and allowing the reviewee to sue for damages. The case concerns a negative review of Coco Roco, a now-defunct Sydney restaurant, written by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Mathew Evans. The owners of Coco [...]

There’s a brilliant piece by Matt Taibi on the Adbusters site about why the American left is so ineffectual. He likens the progressive ‘movement’ in the US as ”a skittish, hysterical old lady, one who defiantly insists on living in the past, is easily mesmerized by half-baked pseudo-intellectual nonsense, and quick to run from anything like real [...]

The town council of Delcambre voted unanimously to ban low-riding pants that reveal even a glimpse of *gasp* underwear. Said Delcambre Mayor Carol Broussard: “If you expose your private parts, you’ll get a fine of $500″. Leaving aside the hilarious prudishness of considering underwear as ‘private parts’, the new Delcambre law raises an issue that [...]