Sunday, August 24, 2008

A nation of thoughtless joiners?


Hat tip: NE Republican

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

BlogTalkRadio Host, Stephanie Davis, aka BostonPatriot, will cover DNC- RNC from JP's Doyle's Cafe

My very good and close friend Stephanie Davis hosts an BlogTalkRadio show named Boston Patriot Games. She'll be busy for the next few weeks, holding forth at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain. She's be watching and listening in both the DNC in Denver (8/25 - 8/26) and then to the RNC in Minneapolis (9/1 - 9/4). Her program starts each night at 8 p.m. and runs to 10 p.m. She's bringing new meaning to the term, neighborhood politics in the world of Web 2.0. Don't miss it.

Patriot Games Radio to Cover Democratic and Republican Political Conventions


By Patriot Games Media.
Stephanie M. Davis

Dated: Aug 19, 2008

Patriot Games Radio, a Boston-based Internet Radio program announces plans to cover the upcoming Democratic and Republican national political conventions. Coverage for both conventions will air live from Jamaica Plain's renown Doyle's Cafe. on air from 8-10 PM Monday through Thursday (8/25-8/28) The RNC will take place 9/1 - 9/4.

Patriot Games Radio is a Boston-based public affairs program airing live on the BlogTalkRadio network. The host, Stephanie M. Davis (a.k.a. Boston Patriot), interviews civic, political, and business thought leaders throughout the state and country. Past guests include Ambassador John Bolton, Frances Rice, Grover Norquist, George Mitrovitch, Barbara Anderson, and Jeff Beatty. The show's New Media format (http://blogtalkradio.com/patriotgames) includes a blog, a chat room, live phone call-in lines, and an archived Podcast of each segment. In keeping with its Citizen Journalism roots,

The show will be broadcast live from historic Doyle's Cafe, in the heart of Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. In keeping with its Main Street Media mission, the show has joined forces with a national network of credentialed bloggers, vloggers, and radio hosts to provide up to date coverage of convention developments.

BlogTalkRadio has been featured on ABC News, The Washington Post, Portfolio, Talkers Magazine, and The Street.Com. In July, BlogTalkRadio announced a $4.2 million dollar capital infusion from the Kraft Group, owner of the New England Patriots. The citizen broadcasting network can be found at http://blogtalkradio.com.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

On the reading list of tomorrow....


So many books, so little time for ....God? Michael Novak's No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers. He's no slouch.

The joys of my father's garden in East Boston

Why I'd like to study with Mario Rizzo someday

Having recently read Friedrich A. Hayek brilliant essay, "The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization" I would prize a class with NYU's Mario Rizzo. The syllabus for his class on Classical Liberalism is expansive. I trust it would be free of the Marxian cant that dominated my college days.

Why artists should read Joseph Schumpeter

Album or CD cover art, a victim of progress. Or should artists embrace creative destruction and make way for new media?
Designer Peter Saville, who is responsible for pioneering sleeve designs for Roxy Music and New Order in the Eighties, fears album art has had its day.

Speaking from his studio this weekend, Mr Saville believes that cover art is dead, not just because of technology, but because the youth culture in which albums once operated has changed: "We have a social disaster on our hands," he said. "The things that pop music was there to do for us have all been done... there's nothing to rail against now.

"When I was 15, in the North-west of England.... the record cover to me was like a picture window to another world. Seeing an Andy Warhol illustration on a Velvet Underground album was a revelation.... It was the art of your generation... true pop art."

Veteran keyboard player Rick Wakeman, once of the progressive rock band Yes, and now a DJ on the Planet Rock radio station, said: "With downloads and everything... it's just killing the whole art side of music stone dead. To be quite honest, unless you have 20-20 vision it's very hard to read anything written on a CD cover. There was something very special about [vinyl] albums... it's a great shame."

Record companies set aside up to £50,000 for the design of a leading band's album sleeve. The compact disc, launched in the Eighties, offered artists a much smaller canvas. Now, with the iPod, album design has shrunk to about a square inch, and the budget for its sleeve to about £5,000.

"Why would someone with so much talent... feel the need to promote herself by offending so many people?"

Tempus fugit. Madonna turns 50. Here are 50 facts about the irrepressible Madonna, a signature for the age. In may ways, Ms. Ciccone, is a visionary. But as Warren Beatty said she rarely wants to live off-camera. Why the lack of humility? Even as she acts nobly by adopting children from far off places, it's all about her.
"She is raising £1.5m for an orphanage in Malawi because "for the last few years I have felt responsible for the children of the world".
That's some burden to bear but Madonna's vanity obscures any true sense of self-knowledge.