Digital Culture Studies

This might be funniest for the Canadians, but Best Week Ever is giving out Alternative Awards for the US and European Figure Skating Championships. I like ‘least spined’ the best, and the discussion in the comments - how is it that, 20ish years after it left the theatres with a limited box office take, the movie The Cutting Edge still has so much pop culture relevance? Well, the Pamchenko, of course - the deadliest skating move ever attempted by a spoiled rich girl and her hocky-player turned figure skater of a partner from across the tracks. This is, of course, the movie being spoofed by Blades of Glory.

If I ever figure out what box my skates are in, I might wander across the street to the rink and throw a few solo Pamchenkos, just for old time’s sake :)

A Capella tribute to Facebook.

• Bloggers win the “Test the Nation” trivia challenge. First of all, I would be on any team headed by Samantha Bee. Second, how fun is Canadian television? Third, apparently every blogger in Canada was involved :)
• “What if scholarly books were peer reviewed by anonymous blog comments rather than by traditional, selected peer reviewers?” An interesting experiment over on Grand Text Auto.
• Watching the economy dump yesterday got you confused. This Modern World explains the global economy.

Just refresh the Google finance tracker page, over and over again. A great question on CNN - will the cure be worse than the disease? What I wonder is, how does the use of real-time web-based software change investor beliefs in the current tumultuous market? In ‘87, there was a news delay, and only professional traders knew exactly what was happening, minute by minute. But now we all know - does this benefit or harm the markets right now?

Need a moment of inappropriate humour right now? Sometimes tagging can be very, very funny. Case in point, on Amazon: Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment (Hardcover) is currently tagged ‘goatse’. You maybe have to be an innerwebs old timer to get the joke.

• Design Police. I just saw a blink tag working on a livejournal site last week. Proof enough that we need some enforcement around here. If you scroll through the pages (which is a very elegant design feature), page four has some nice “design stolen from” and “idea stolen from” badges.
• MyMap. Data visualization is so beautiful.
• USB desk vacuum. Hilarious and useful.

After clearing out more than 10,000 spam comments, although the email for this site is still non-functional (thanks, spam!), this site may or may not be working again. New design to come, but in the meantime, the last 3 things I looked at online:

• Top 87 bad predictions about the future. I will let you make your own flying car joke.
• iPhones ad parody, via Kottke.
• Flock - the ’social web browser’.

Man sues IBM over firing, says he’s an Internet addict. He is claiming protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Robot Bird Watchers? Having a hobby is easier than ever!

What? You mean the people in YouTube videos might be acting, or playing characters? Or advancing a personal agenda? No. No!

That was all a little depressing. End on a high note!
Letters from camp. I loved summer camp. Apparently, not everyone does.

Back in the day when I made websites, one of the hallmarks of a good site was a witty 404 page. It keeps users from getting upset when the site doesn’t work the way they want it to, and it is a way to flex one’s humour in what is usually a less than amusing venue. I don’t see a lot of 404s anymore - I think most people have a redirect to the index.html page for incorrect pages in sites, so I was charmed when I inadvertently typed in an incorrect livejournal address, and got this:

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