Tuesday, July 27, 2004
The true meaning of "feedback."
I've been a slacker lately, so (instead of paying my bills) I decided to do a little poking around for something stimulating to blog about. My goal was to locate a worthwhile, ongoing discussion about an interesting topic, so that discerning Hateful Things visitors might be encouraged to join in.
Trying to take the high ground, intellectually speaking, I Googled the string "george w. bush eats babies." To my surprise, there were no direct hits. I did, however, come across this little press release about Bush winning the World Stupidity Award, a two-year old honor inspired by the documentary film Stupidity by Albert Nerenberg, the founder of Trailervision (where you'll find, along with parodic movie trailers, a link to the Stupidity: The Movie website, which, so poorly designed is it, you should visit only if you enjoy high irony).
Continuing on, I decided to try being a little more positive and serious (hard to do simultaneously when you're bitter and sarcastic by nature), and my effort was rewarded when I found MIT's Tech Policy discussion board.
More than ready to dig in to a tasty meal of meaty conversation, I picked a link called "Adam's Reading List," thinking I might find something good. Adam has some interesting books lined up, including Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Linked, which is near the top of my own waiting pile. His list also included Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Secret Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else. I'd heard an interview with Johnson on my local NPR station, and he seemed like a wonderfully sincere man whose research was deep and fascinating. Still looking for that engaged and enlightening conversation, I decided to check out the discussion board for that book, and was (no doubt, due to my naivety) surprised to find that the commentary consisted exclusively of spam, with a significant emphasis on hot slut wives and various subsets of hot and/or wild nude teen girls.
Talk about stupidity. If nothing else, this proves that Barabasi's on to something. I'm sorry to say, dear readers, that I tried to find you an interesting conversation, but all I found was the internet, masturbating.
Trying to take the high ground, intellectually speaking, I Googled the string "george w. bush eats babies." To my surprise, there were no direct hits. I did, however, come across this little press release about Bush winning the World Stupidity Award, a two-year old honor inspired by the documentary film Stupidity by Albert Nerenberg, the founder of Trailervision (where you'll find, along with parodic movie trailers, a link to the Stupidity: The Movie website, which, so poorly designed is it, you should visit only if you enjoy high irony).
Continuing on, I decided to try being a little more positive and serious (hard to do simultaneously when you're bitter and sarcastic by nature), and my effort was rewarded when I found MIT's Tech Policy discussion board.
More than ready to dig in to a tasty meal of meaty conversation, I picked a link called "Adam's Reading List," thinking I might find something good. Adam has some interesting books lined up, including Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Linked, which is near the top of my own waiting pile. His list also included Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Secret Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else. I'd heard an interview with Johnson on my local NPR station, and he seemed like a wonderfully sincere man whose research was deep and fascinating. Still looking for that engaged and enlightening conversation, I decided to check out the discussion board for that book, and was (no doubt, due to my naivety) surprised to find that the commentary consisted exclusively of spam, with a significant emphasis on hot slut wives and various subsets of hot and/or wild nude teen girls.
Talk about stupidity. If nothing else, this proves that Barabasi's on to something. I'm sorry to say, dear readers, that I tried to find you an interesting conversation, but all I found was the internet, masturbating.
