Posts by author
Brian Spears
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More on the Oxford Comma
As of yesterday, the Oxford Comma was seen reenacting moments from Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail and generally acting like a spastic teenager. It is quoted as saying “I’m not dead yet,” “I feel happy,” and “I think…
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Saturday Morning Links
You ever feel like the invisible hand of the market has been touching you inappropriately? I don’t think there’s any place that feels emptier than an abandoned amusement park. These pictures of Six Flags New Orleans are really powerful. How…
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National PTSD Awareness Day
The poster person for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a war veteran, which isn’t surprising given that anywhere from 11 to 20 percent of veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are diagnosed as sufferers. But it’s not solely a…
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Who Do We Invite To The Orgy?
Tom Lutz at the Los Angeles Review of Books discusses Elizabeth Gumport’s essay in n+1 called “Against Reviews.” Lutz writes “Taste cultures do have something to do with circles of intimates, and the explosion of book clubs in recent years…
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Some More on Fair Use
MobyLives has extended the discussion Andy Baio started on his project Kind of Bloop, which I wrote about for The Rumpus on Saturday. MobyLives makes a good point when talking about one of Baio’s examples, that of the artist Jeff…
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Is the Gay Bar Dying?
June Thomas in Slate asks, in the light of the most recent victory for same-sex marriage rights for gays and lesbians and greater acceptance across American society, if the gay bar is in danger of disappearing. It’s an interesting question…
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Some Musings on Fair Use
I’m a bit of an anarchist when it comes to Intellectual Property, especially in the realm of art. I imagine that makes me a bit of an outlier, and I think my position stems, in part at least, from the…
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Science Saturday
That noise your dog makes? Humans had a hand in creating it. The tougher fuel economy standards recently put in place are a start but they’re not enough to either reduce demand for oil or create substantial reductions in greenhouse…
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Saturday Morning Links
New York made same-sex marriage legal last night. They’re the sixth state to take that step, and the largest so far. What are the rest of us waiting for? Take a rubber tree plant and hook it up to a…
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Leaked Mainstream Media Dictionary
Al-Jazeera has started a new project–an online dictionary of words and phrases the mainstream media (which I–though not everyone–would argue they’re a part of) uses when writing/talking about whatever the news story of the day happens to be. It’s either…
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Battling E-Pirates
What happens when a philosophy professor takes on e-piracy? He discovers that it’s not quite as cut and dried as he first thought. Let me be clear–the issue of whether or not his work was pirated is clear. It unquestionably…
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Is Me Really Monster?
Via McSweeneys: “When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can’t stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don’t think…