To start on a superficial note: Naomi Klein, scourge of corporations and hollow brand iconography, is well-served by the publishing behemoth (Pearson PLC, as embodied by Penguin Books) charged with distributing her latest treatise, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Coming in a shade of yellow typically associated with radioactive and biological hazard […]

This week Google’s share price hit a record high this week, reaching $584.39 a pop (according to this impartial source), giving the “do no evil” outfit a market capitalization of 182.41 billion, roughly 9 times that of General Motors.The thing is, along with Google, the site I probably most visit is Wikipedia, the exemplar of […]

In the wake of Ireland’s

From Reuters: “President Bush thanked Minister Yang for China’s assistance in facilitating United Nations Special Envoy (Ibrahim) Gambari’s visit to Burma,” Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said.”It’s encouraging–China’s leadership is facing up the responsibilities concomitant with its emerging superpower status. It’s helping to put pressure on a corrupt autocratic regime […]

When a friend recommended the HBO series Flight of the Conchords (currently showing on BBC4) by claiming it featured “comedy songs that are actually funny” I was sceptical. I had visions of whimsical ditties fresh from an airing at the Edinburgh Festival, where alcohol and the slight hysteria of a live show commingle to extract […]

From the ABC news blog: “Bush’s UN Speech Full of Fone-eh-tick Pronunciations for World Leaders””[This] year, a glimpse of how the President sees his speeches was accidentally placed on the UN website along with the speechwriters’ cell phone numbers.Pronunciations for President Bush’s friend French President Sarkozy “[sar-KOzee]” appeared in draft #20 on the UN website. […]

When I was young and green I truly believed that having a No. 1 single and a spot on Top of the Pops was enough to retire on. This was before I learnt that the disposable income for a pop performer is, after various deductions by the record companies, managers, and assorted hangers-on, usually about […]

According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”If we keep Fitzgerald’s definition in mind, the comment from a judge (another one?) at the interminable Mahon tribunal that Bertie Ahern’s explanations about […]

It’s good to see that The New York Times has abandoned the irritating TimesSelect model, which required the web audience to pay a subscription to read columns from op-ed contributors such as Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman (check out Krugman’s interesting new blog here). Now the paper has moved to an ad-supported approach, not only […]

One of the more invidious preemptive strategies of the big players in particular industries is to fund “front” organizations supposedly charged with educating us about the messy side-effects caused by the very products its patrons churn out. It’s called being a “good corporate citizen.” So we have the drinkaware.ie website, which is developed by the […]