Post mission blues. Been there ..read more

A few years ago I saw The Bad Seed (1956) which has now become a favorite of mine around Halloween time. While doing some internet searching on the film, I learned about the author of the book it is based on, William March. He died the same year the The Bad Seed was published which went on to become a successful stage play and later film. But before all that, he was a soldier in World War I and wrote a book based on that experience called Company K (1933). It is a strange book, a collection of 113 short chapters (many just a page or two) that describe some aspect of military life and war – the ..read more

I happened to see this inscribed on the Veterans’ Memorial outside of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. THE YOUNG DEAD SOLDIERS DO NOT SPEAK Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them? They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts. They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us. They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done. They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave. They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what ..read more

Viewers bring a lot of baggage to their analysis. Not everyone is straight down the middle – many lean paragon or renegade. “In Hastorf and Cantril’s study, Dartmouth and Princeton supporters viewing a film of a particularly rough gridiron struggle between their respective teams seemed to see two different games: The Princeton fans saw a continuing pattern of Dartmouth atrocities and occasional Princeton retaliations, the Dartmouth fans saw brutal Princeton provocations and occasional, measured, Dartmouth responses. In the Hastorf and Cantril experiment the partisans apparently saw a struggle ..read more

Via Mountain Runner. prop’a-gan’da 2. Hence : a Any organization for spreading a particulate doctrine or a system of principles. b The doctrine or principles thus propagated. c The scheme or plan for the propagation of a doctrine or system of principles. “Either everything, therefore, is propaganda, or nothing is propgaganda, so why worry?” The Propaganda of Propaganda ..read more

My first lie ..read more

But years on, when it’s in the rear view mirror and no one really cares, you’re just left with the rubble ..read more

I don’t know who recommended The Great Santini to me, but I only recently got around to watching it. The more things change ..read more

You want real innovation? Or something new? It’s not going to come from the algorithm. You’re going to need an auteur ..read more

“Context collapse creates an audience that is often imagined as its most sensitive members: parents, partners, and bosses. This ‘nightmare reader’ is the opposite of the ideal reader, and may limit personal discourse on Twitter, since the lowest-common-denominator philosophy of sharing limits users to topics that are safe for all possible readers ..read more