The Sky is Falling—December 18, 2008

This week: Who’s that digging in— ksssskssskskk
Typically, the role of government is to keep its citizens blissfully ignorant. Some call this optimistic. It uses contradictory statements about our educational system, military, global position and economic strength. Most are outright lies but become truths to mutter in the halls of Fox News’ offices.
Sometimes, the government panics. [...]

2008 Word of the Year: Overshare

[tip via Michael Zimmer]

The Sky is Falling—December 11, 2008

Every week, Draynd drops by to go all Chicken Little on some new fad or trend or actual catastrophe. He doesn’t really like anyone or anything, so everything is fair game including (apparently) defenseless Southeast Asian states. But that’s partly our fault; we only told him to leave India alone. They’ve been through enough.

This week: [...]

James Frey Interns at Gawker

I don’t know how many of you followed this today (or [pathetically] follow Gawker as obsessively as I do)…
Soon-to-leave-Gawker writer Sheila once tried to get Ryan Adams to intern for her, and wound up getting James Frey instead. Yeah, that James Frey. The love-to-hate faux-memiorist who totally maybe not actually had all that terrible stuff [...]

The Hypocrisy Smokescreen

I’ve always been very weary of the blanket “hypocrisy” accusation, especially as it relates to public figures and larger issues. It’s one thing when your boss slashes bonuses for the holiday season, claiming that in these rough economic times “we all have to make sacrifices,” and then proceeds takes home a fat check himself. It’s [...]

Simpsons Exposed, Banned

It’s not like I’ve never heard of slash fiction. I mean, I’m totally in favor of Kirk and Spock going boldly where no man has gone before…together. But this still threw me for a loop this morning…
Apparently, there are people out there making pornography out of Simpsons characters. Some of these characters happen to be [...]

Do Not Pass Go

Ars Technica: Online journalists now jailed more often than other media.

Obama, YouTube, and Privacy

You know how Obama is “bringin’ it to the people” via those Fireside Chat 2.0 things on YouTube? Well, besides it maybe kind of sort of being totally unfair (the addresses are uploaded to YouTube, MSN, and Yahoo!, giving smaller video hosting sights no respect and also placing the burden of bandwidth onto, mostly, YouTube, [...]

He said libraries!!!

Prez-elect Obama said the word libraries…and librarians everywhere freaked out (in a good way).
But, as Leonard Kniffel notes, it is a good thing the incoming administration has libraries in mind already, as states everywhere face huge budget shortcomings in 2009 and libraries will, undoubtedly, take large hits across the board.

The Sky is Falling—December 4, 2008

While the staff of SD&IF is, relatively speaking, in good health, things have been busy. Luckily, Draynd has no attachment to responsibility or time management skills and holds true to some form of consistency. We only asked he avoid discussing academia. We’ve decided to ignore scholarly pursuits entirely, following the government’s lead.
This week: They know [...]