The Wal-Mart spin machine April 9
Ever wonder how Wal-Mart can do so many terrible things yet always seems to come out relatively unscathed? You can thank the spin machine that their PR company for that. I just read an excellent article in the New Yorker about Wal-Mart and spin.
Here is the link to the article
For more info about what’s wrong with Wal-Mart I highly recommend watching “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices” linked below.
An Inconvenient Truth April 5
I just got through watching “An Inconvenient Truth” for the first time. If this movie is not a call to action on climate change I don’t know what is. If you have not seen it, do yourself and the world a favor and take 2 hours out of your day to watch it. Once you have here are some good places to go to start doing something about the problem of global warming:
http://www.climatecrisis.net is the home site for “An Inconvenient Truth”
http://www.nativeenergy.com is a site where you can offset your carbon emissions (for less than you might think)
http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/ another great resource to learn about global warming and what you can do to help.
Stumbleupon.com April 4
Anyone who has been to my apartment (and who hasn’t really) knows that there is one thing that we lack. One thing known as Cable TV. Now if I said that five years ago, you would think I was stuck hopelessly in the past. You would probably ask me “Hey Nathan, how’s that butter churning going?” or “Why are you stuck hopelessly in the past?”
But these days, what with the awesome raw power of the internet, my roommates and I can be seen for the trail blazers that we are. Lately we have been harnessing the beast that is the internet to fill the void in our lives that TV left (admittedly it is a pretty small void…more like a voidlet). So how do you do that? Well, you could be a sucker and buy one of those wacky Apple TV things and buy all your TV shows from Apple. We tried this for a bit… of course what ended up happening was we spent more on buying the Colbert Report and Daily Show than we would have had we just kept the cable in the first place.
You can go around to different sites like Youtube.com and Google Video, but your results are mixed at best. For every gem, you will have to sit through several duds. However, stumbleupon.com fixes that for you. You can watch video after video that have all been deemed “cool” by fellow stumbleupon users. But you can also specify exactly what type of video you want to watch. What ends up happening is you get a constant stream of really interesting videos that match your tastes. It also works for websites to… and can be pretty addicting. You stumble around the web finding cool sites that you would never have found on your own.
You can find click below to see some of the sites that I have given the thumbs up to in stumbleupon, or click the video banner above to see the videos.
American Cannibal April 4
I just got back from seeing American Cannibal over at Cinema Village, and I would recommend it to anyone who is fascinated by the craze for reality television in our society. The documentary follows a couple of smart, intelligent, and moral writers as they sell their souls to the machine that is Reality TV. Desperate for work they start pitching reality Tv show ideas only to be “successful” in their pitch of an idea for a reality show where people end up eating each other at the end. Their sellout mirrors our own as we seem to crave more and more reality with less and less substance. Anyways, this is a great film that deserves your support…so turn off Fear Factor and get down to Cinema Village to check it out!
Party Central USA April 4
Quite possibly the greatest and best sketch comedy group in the land is doing some new shows in NYC this month and you would regret it if you did not go. Don’t live in NYC? First off, why not? Secondly, get on a plane and get here, just…get here if you can.
For a small taste of what Party Central has to offer you can always check out their website, but seeing them live is an experience to remember.
Here is one of their videos just in time for tax day, again you can visit their website www.partycentralusa.net to see more.
Toondoo comic strip creator April 1
Well, as if there were not enough distractions in the day now you can make your own comic strip. Toondoo.com is a website where you can easily put together a strip in a couple minutes by dragging and dropping elements from a list. Here is my first attempt. Feel free to link to your own creations below!
