August 2010
17 posts
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How Different Animals Spent Their Summers →
Increasingly, I prefer subscribing to blogs run by people rather than big-media or commercial operations. Some days the pay-off is a great laugh—like Jeff Wysaski’s post of charts showing how different animals spent their summers (click link in title to go there).
There are six more charts, and all will make you laugh, which is the purpose of Jeff’s Pleated Jeans.
Do you have a...
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The Imperfectly-Priced Perfect Butt Boyfriend...
Have you ever heard of a “test” store? I hadn’t until yesterday (Aug. 25, 2010). Abercrombie & Fitch supposedly has one in downtown San Diego. Shopping there meant spending 20 percent more on a pair of sweatpants for my daughter than at another store a few miles away.
The story starts mid afternoon, when Morripopp found the perfect sweats at Abercrombie & Fitch Fashion...
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The Case for Curating Comments
Five days ago, I quietly turned on commenting two months after turning it off. Comments are temporarily back at Oddly Together. Perhaps this second stage of experimentation will lead to my making comments a permanent fixture or instead giving John Gruber the apology I promised should the commenting feature be permanently removed. I’m still wondering if John’s approach might be right.
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Darwin Was Wrong
Somebody at the BBC sure knows how to write a story lead: “Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.” Say what? I always believed Darwin was wrong—not that I’ll here pitch for Creationism. Darwin being wrong doesn’t make his major opponents right.
I saw the Beeb’s story, “Space is the final...
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My Pitch for a Truly Gruesome Vampire Story
This week I got PR email about new “True Blood” comics, and I received Rolling Stone issue 1112 with cast members from the HBO series on the cover. Suddenly, an idea came to me for a different, modern vampire drama. Here is the plotline of the story I’d tell:
Stefan has a problem. After years of being undead, he is, ah, dying. The vampire has contracted a virulent form of HIV...
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“In an interview published today in the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric...”
– Nicholas Carr, “Brave New Google” blog post.
Do you have a human-vs-the-machine story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.
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'The China Question' Revisited
In March 2009, I asked “The China Question,” highlighting shocking parallels between the 1920s and `00s (the “Naughties”). Both decades similarly started off and ended, with boom and bust. Other parallels show how quickly an empire collapses—the Brits during early last century and quite possibly the yanks during this decade.
I resurface the post in context of incessant...
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Old Media Should Pay Up If It Wants to Tumblr
There goes the neighborhood. Big media is invading Tumblr.
For weeks I had been meaning to blog about how old media might ruin Tumblr. I shouldn’t have waited. Monday’s New York Times story “Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr” raises the topic without rightly razing it. How could Jenna Wortham’s story have been any different, since The Times is among the...
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Things That Go Oddly Together #3: Books and Wall
Discarded Phone Books. Nearly a month has passed since the yearly phone book drop at my residence. Only two of the nine apartments claimed their Yellow Pages. It’s the sign of the times, eh? The Web offers faster and more relevant information. Phone books are relics, and printing them isn’t eco-friendly. These seven will be recycled later today.
Do you have story about waste that...
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