Author Archives: Editor

Weird Tales: ‘Late Night TV’

by Editor | 7 Comments

CandlelightWeirdTalesLogoBy Heidi Logothetti
Heidi Logothetti was born in Northern California and attended Santa Clara University. She currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and works in Washington, DC. She is an omnivorous reader, enjoys hiking, and loves old movies and anime.

Today’s weird little tale concerns a woman and her television.  What’s the TV saying? Listen. It has something on its mind.  Through the chatter and between the channel surfs, is it trying to say more than you think?

Adult Themes – Not Intended for Young Children

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Iran: A Nation of Bloggers

by Editor

Created by Hendy Sukarya, Aaron Chiesa, Toru Kageyama and Lisa Temes as a student production, this film offers interesting information about the revolution of young people in Iran who have made the repressive Islamic nation the third largest nation of bloggers in the world.  It is very well done and packs a good informational punch.  Young bloggers getting their words out from under the watchful eye of an extremist religious government is admirable.  But a nation that becomes a fanatical religious state run by clerics who kill people for speaking out cannot be trusted even a little.  That goes for its young bloggers too.  I am wholly unconvinced by the urge to ‘freedom’ in Iran.  It requires a fire much stonger than a blog to burn religion out of a government.

Is Amazon Run by a Simpleton?

by Editor

Tim O’Reilly has posted quotes from an interview with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

“We’ve co-evolved with our tools for thousands of years,” he says, explaining how ease of Kindle buying changes behavior.

“Reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device….It’s a myth that multi-purpose devices are always better…. I like my phone… I like my swiss army knife too, but I’m also happy to have a set of steak knives.”

“I get grumpy now when I have to read a physical book….The physical book has had a great 500 year run, but it’s time to change.”

Hmmm.  First of all, anyone who uses the expression ‘swiss army knife’ in a conversation is skating on very thin ice because if he actually owns one he understands perfectly well that those things are not ‘multi-purpose’ at all.  And no army in the world carries them.  Secondly, if Mr. Bezos is grumpy when he has to read a physical book, he should get out of the bloody book selling business.  What a simpleton.  During Amazon’s entire history of steady growth as the Wal-Mart of the internet, I have never heard Mr. Bezos utter a single intelligent or captivating remark.

Thirdly, I think it is very clear that Mr. Bezos gets grumpy whenever he has to read anything at all.

Bob Dylan Needs a Blog

by Editor

This is Bob Dylan with his typewriter.  I got the image from a nice blog called Daily Dose of Dylan.  I know Mr. Dylan really likes playing his music everywhere and I sure like listening to him when he does it.  But I have a message for him too: Hey, you with the boots, you really should make a blog and write in it.  Not a fake one.  A real one that you write for on a laptop in airports and stuff like that.  Or on long bus rides.  That would be something I’d read.  I always wonder what a blog by Jack Kerouac might have been like had he been around to write one.  I don’t want to die without knowing what a Bob Dylan blog would be like.

Iran Protests Are Irrelevant

by Editor

The rallies and protests in support of opposition presidential candidate Hossein Moussavi or current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran are totally irrelevant.  The president of Iran is purely a middle-management position that reports to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenie who is an Islamic religious leader of a theocratic state.  The protesters in the current uprising are arguing for their votes to be counted in a meaningless election which does nothing but support a theocratic regime that rules the entire country by their interpretation of the word of god.  The religious government of Iran completely suppresses anything that might pass as free speech, it treats women like animals who have no rights and who count as only one half of a man.  It also threatens to wipe other nations off the face of the globe.

If I were a crowd of a few million protesters in Iran (after all, crowds often act as a single entity), I would not bother about protesting presidential votes.  I would remove the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Counsel completely and by any means necessary.  I would eliminate the religious government entirely.  Only then would the protests have any meaning.  Only then would there be any possibility of a free election.  And only then would I take the protests seriously.  It’s all or nothing, folks.  If you don’t like your government, get rid of it.  Meanwhile, you’re just a side-show.