New York Times :: Armies of Consumers: 1776's Secret Weapon?
Article

> Deceptively simple, [Breen's] argument goes like this: two
> and a half million strong and scattered along 1,800 miles of
> coastline, the colonists had little in common besides a
> weakness for what Samuel Adams derisively termed "the
> Baubles of Britain." When Britain imposed stiff taxes on this
> appetite for stuff — without granting any political represent-
> ation — Americans responded with an ingenious invention
> with instant and widespread appeal: the consumer boycott.
> By the time the First Continental Congress was convened
> in September 1774, transforming mass consumer mobili-
> zation into a successful political rebellion was a relatively
> straightforward task.

And wherefore conservatives should be careful about pissing off gays with gratuitous constitutional amendments.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 9:56 AM

New York Times :: Defiant Downloads Rise From Underground
Article

> More than 300 Web sites and blogs staged a 24-hour online
> protest yesterday over a record company's efforts to stop
> them from offering downloadable copies of "The Grey Album."
> A popular underground collection of music, "The Grey Album"
> mixes tracks from the Beatles' classic White Album with
> raps from Jay-Z's latest release, "The Black Album."

Cool album cover -- hippest the Beatles have looked in 30 years.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 11:07 PM

New York Times :: Now Preening on the Coffee Table: The TiVo Remote Control
Article

> The peanut-shaped TiVo remote is at once playful and
> functional. A smiling TV set with feet and rabbit ears, the
> company's logo, graces the top. Distinctive buttons like a
> green thumbs-up and a red thumbs-down button have helped
> the remote win design awards from the Consumer Electronics
> Association.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 6:47 PM

Newsweek :: Who Killed Jesus?
Article

> So why was the Gospel story—the story Gibson has drawn on—told
> in a way that makes "the Jews" look worse than the Romans? The Bible
> did not descend from heaven fully formed and edged in gilt. The writers
> of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John shaped their narratives several
> decades after Jesus' death to attract converts and make their young
> religion—understood by many Christians to be a faction of Judaism—
> attractive to as broad an audience as possible.

Will not see "The Passion." Jesus may have suffered for my sins. I'm not suffering for his. posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:59 PM

LA Weekly :: George Bush and the Treacherous Country
Article

> Nothing about Bush or his presidency makes sense
> without taking into account the theocratic psyche. Only
> once you consider the possibility that his administration
> means to “repeal the Enlightenment,” in the words of
> Greil Marcus, do Bush’s presidency and his conception
> of power, their ends and their means, become compre-
> hensible. Doubt is personally abhorrent to Bush;
> otherwise he couldn’t have assumed the presidency in
> the manner he did, with decisions and policies that from
> the first dismissed out of hand the controversy that
> surrounded his very election. This isn’t to suggest that
> his presidency is invalid, or to dispute the constitutional
> and legal process that produced it. It is to try and ex-
> plain how on the second day of his presidency — in what
> was his first major act as president — in such draconian
> fashion he could cut off money to any federally funded
> family-planning clinic that merely advised women that the
> option of abortion exists. This was more than just a
> message to the president’s evangelical constituency that
> he was undeterred by what happened in Florida in Nov-
> ember and December 2000. It was more than just a
> message to the rest of the country of the president’s
> contempt for it (which in part accounts for so many
> people’s intensity of feeling about him). It was, from the
> second day of the Bush presidency, a frontal assault on
> doubt.

Forward by Kelly. posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:51 AM

New York Times :: The Coming Search Wars
Article

> At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week,
> Microsoft, the software heavyweight, and Google, the
> scrappy Internet search company, eyed each other like wary
> prizefighters entering the ring.

Go Google!
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:34 AM