A few weeks ago I asked a question: is the Huffington Post a force for good or a liberal sweatshop? In the wake of HuffPo‘s megamillion-dollar sale to AOL, it struck me as appropriate to question the ethics behind an allegedly progressive business operating in a fashion that was indistinguishable from the greedmongering corporate entities it professed to oppose. I
Read moreWe all have our favorite stops around the ‘sphere. One of the oldest and best progressive voices out there is Jeff Tiedrich’s Smirking Chimp, and while we don’t normally do this sort of thing, I’m asking everybody to pop over there today and, if you can, contribute to their fund drive. They’re talking a heavy beating financially, as are a
Read moreSome time back I mentioned that a group of us dirty hippie libruls have started a sports talk blog (because we love sports as much as we hate your freedom). Now, the same cast of ne’er-do-wells has launched an actual political site called, simply enough, Dirty Hippies (democracy, unwashed). Several of us here at S&R are members, and the site
Read moreOn several occasions we have pointed you toward the Poem for Tuesday feature at The Agonist. That weekly must-read is presented by Bruce Jacobs, who’s a fantastic poet in his own right. He’s our Poet of the Day at the Samuel Smith Poetry community on Facebook, and I thought I’d take a moment to point S&R lit lovers to his
Read moreHere’s another in our occasional unsolicited shout-outs to people and groups we like. You’re probably hooked into a variety of social networks, but Rock & Roll Tribe is a little different. It is, as the tag line suggests, a “community for kickass grown-ups.” Music is at the center of most conversations, but it’s more than that. It’s a social net
Read moreThis is the future – people, translated as data. – Bryce, Network 23 The future has always interested me, even when it scares me to death. I wrote a doctoral dissertation that spent a good deal of time examining our culture’s ideologies of technology and development, for instance (and built some discussion of William Gibson and cyberpunk into the mix).
Read moreIn addition to being a blogger and a marketing whore, I’m a poet. Actually, that’s what I enjoy the most and what I’m best at. Sadly, poetry doesn’t pay the way I’d like. Still, I do it because it matters a great deal to me. Lately I’ve been writing more and thinking more about how I can better promote my
Read moreThere are several ways of evaluating a blog’s place in the food chain. The one we’ve always paid the most attention to is Technorati, a search and ranking site that indexes well over 850,000 blogs. If you’re interested in learning more about how Technorati operates, you can review this overview at DollarShower.com. Anyway, as of this morning, Scholars & Rogues
Read moreA few days ago FCC Chair Julius Genachowski suggested that the administration was seriously considering abandoning the president’s uncompromising pledge to enforce net neutrality. Some suggested at the time that the comments had the vague odor of trial balloon about them. If so, the president found out, quickly and unequivocally, what folks thought. Some reasoned, some entreated, while others of
Read moreIn case you missed it, Eldrick Tont Woods, the world’s greatest golfer, has been up against some pressing PR issues of late. Pretty much nobody is arguing that he’s handled it well. Begin with the official record. While it’s not yet 100% clear what touched off the fateful events of November 27, 2009, everybody is denying that Elin was trying
Read moreOne of our original scrogue colleagues has passed away. Martin Bosworth, who helped us found Scholars & Rogues in April of 2007, was a central member of our community for our first year. He wrote frequently and energetically about progressive political issues of all sorts, and had a particular expertise in Internet policy issues. His death is a significant loss
Read moreTen years ago, at the turn of the millennium, Nostraslammy took a stab at predicting the 21st Century, with a promise to check back every ten years to see how the prognostications were turning out. Odds are good I won’t be able to do a review every ten years until 2100, but I figure I’m probably good through 2030, at
Read moreAmerica’s democratic ideal doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and in these cases it feeds our cynicism to the point where we’re tempted to conclude that the very possibility of true freedom is a sham. I know whereof I speak, because there are few people out there more soaked in bile than I am. Still, this whole
Read moreEver since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in
Read morePart 2 of a series; Previously: What Bell Labs and French Intellectuals Can Tell Us About Cronkite and Couric The Signal-to-Noise Journey of American Media The 20th Century represented a Golden Age of Institutional Journalism. The Yellow Journalism wars of the late 19th Century gave way to a more responsible mode of reporting built on ethical and professional codes that
Read more
lullaby pit 