1. Things I Read
A. Online Article
“Blogging, Now and Then” by Robert Darnton, in the New York Review of Books‘ NYRBlog
How new, then, is bloggery? Should we think of it as a by-product of the modern means of communication and a sign of a time when newspapers seem doomed to obsolescence? It makes the most of technical innovations—the possibility of constant contact with virtual communities by means of web sites and the premium placed on brevity by platforms such as Twitter with its limit of 140 characters per message. Yet blog-like messaging can be found in many times and places long before the Internet…
Short, scurrilous abuse proliferated in all sorts of communication systems: taunts scribbled on palazzi during the feuds of Renaissance Italy, ritual insult known as “playing the dozens” among African Americans, posters carried in demonstrations against despotic regimes, and graffiti on many occasions such as the uprising in Paris of May–June 1968 (one read “Voici la maison d’un affreux petit bourgeois”). When expertly mixed, provocation and pithiness could be dynamite—the verbal or written equivalent of Molotov cocktails.
To appreciate the importance of a pre-modern blog, consult a database such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online and download a newspaper from eighteenth-century London. It will have no headlines, no bylines, no clear distinction between news and ads, and no spatial articulation in the dense columns of type, aside from one crucial ingredient: the paragraph. Paragraphs were self-sufficient units of news. They had no connection with one another, because writers and readers had no concept of a news “story” as a narrative that would run for more than a few dozen words. News came in bite-sized bits, often “advices” of a sober nature—the arrival of a ship, the birth of an heir to a noble title—until the 1770s, when they became juicy. Pre-modern scandal sheets appeared, exploiting the recent discovery about the magnetic pull of news toward names.
B. Book
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, a novel about Thomas Cromwell, a powerbroker in Henry VIII’s England. This novel has it all: an incredible (and historically-grounded, if not “true”) plot, fascinating characters, ridiculously good writing at every level from the sentence to the chapter, and the an ending that both closed the book and didn’t. Incredible stuff.
2. Things I Watched
A. Movie
The September Issue, the 2009 documentary about the production of Vogue‘s mammoth and influential September issue. I expected to like it okay, but I found it engrossing. Watching the magazine’s staff put together the magazine was interesting enough, but the politics at Vogue specifically and in fashion generally were gripping. Anna Wintour makes Thomas Cromwell look like a doofus.
B. Presentation
Designer Kacie Kinzer talking about her fascinating “Tweenbot” project, in which humans help a dumb but cute little robot navigate a New York City park. The idea is simple, but her execution of it and her exposition of it are brilliant.
C. Sports Video
The first 15 seconds are literally jaw-dropping. (We could have ski flying right here in the Upper Midwest, if Copper Peak near Ironwood, Michigan, were refurbished.)
3. Things I Saw
A. Stupidest Picture
“No Excetions,” in the “Teabonics” photoset on Flickr, a collection of misspelling or just dumb signs from Tea Party rallies.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/pargon/ / CC BY 2.0)
B. Sports Picture
From Boston.com‘s “Big Picture” set on the 2010 Winter Paralympics:
“Haitao Du #5 of China competes in the men’s standing 20km free cross-country skiing race during Day 4 of the Winter Paralympics on March 15, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. (Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)”
