Muhammad Ali? Oh yeah, he was a great boxer, right? Said a lot of outrageous stuff. Boasted a lot. Dave Zirin remembers more and adds to the story. Zirin is sports editor for The Nation and author of several books about the political history of sports. This article was published in the Los Angeles Times …
Category: Is Pop Culture Actually Good for Us?
How Nutritious Is Your Information Diet?: Frugal Dad Investigates Media Consolidation
Many of us have intense and intimate relationships with our media sources, and we enjoy the sensation of the world at our fingertips. How many corporations mediate our access to that world? Do you know? Should we care? The blogger known as Frugal Dad argues that we should, and he expresses alarm that our media …
Not Wanting to Face It: Jenna Wortham Investigates “Facebook Resisters”
Despite all of the hype that Facebook receives, including the success of the film that tells its story, some college-age people—Facebook’s bullseye demographic—are consciously rejecting the site. Jenna Wortham is a technology reporter for the New York Times, where this article was first published in December 2011. Read it here: Wortham, “The Facebook resisters” The number of …
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Who Made This Mess?: David S. Meyer Follows the Blame Trail
While it seems safe to say that every person in the United States has been hurt in some way by the current economic situation, there is plenty of diversity in our approach to economic problems. Sociologist David S. Meyer looks at the Occupy movement and the reactions to it through the lens of blame assignment. …
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Seeing Stars: Chris Colin, “Rate This Article”
Did you “like” or rate something online today? Do you ever get tired of being asked to review products, restaurants, movies, and so on? In this essay from Wired, Chris Colin assesses assessments and reviews reviews. Colin is author of What Really Happened to the Class of ’93 and is a frequent contributor to the …
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A Sturdy Case for the Book: Johann Hari on Surviving the Age of Distraction
Are you easily distracted while read…Oh, wait, is that my phone beeping?…Sorry, now, where were we? Oh, yes, distraction and reading. Johann Hari is as enamored with technology as anyone else, but he argues that we need books in order stay connected to our true selves. Hari is an award-winning British journalist and columnist who …
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Large Caesar Salad – Email on the Side: MG Siegler, “I Will Check My Phone at Dinner And You Will Deal With It”
MG Siegler’s snarky title frames an ongoing drama in which we are all actors, willing or otherwise; day by day we redefine our relationships and our lives with new technologies. Siegler is a San Francisco-based journalist whose work appears frequently on TechCrunch, an online technology-oriented news source, blog, and information hub. He is a frequent …
Your Brain on Media: Steven Pinker’s “Mind Over Mass Media”
Steven Pinker, distinguished Harvard University professor, is one of very few linguists known outside of the discipline, and his five books written for a general audience have all been big hits. How the mind works was a New York Times bestseller in 1998 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, as was his 2003 book, …
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