Categories
culture

The Perils of Paywalls

One of the most annoying things I have come across online is the tendency for some scientific and academic journals to percolate their content through paywalls. When this is done with journalistic news content, it is usually not difficult to find equivalent content freely available elsewhere. When this is done with academic reference or technical […]

Categories
advertising culture

What is the Function of Commercial Culture ?

  Digital television was progressively rolled out over a period of several years. I find it ironic that although I now have several dozen channels to choose from I still remain fairly exclusively interested in the content of about four or five non-commercial channels. I find myself for the most part irritated, distracted and annoyed […]

Categories
culture music poetry

Rap Wars: Mortality and Media Accountability

I recently saw the biopic “Notorious” which portrays the life of rapper Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. “The Notorious B.I.G.“). I have always been a little indifferent to rap and rap-culture but it was interesting to discover one interpretation of what happened in a famous conflict between rapper Tupac Shakur and “Biggie” the final result of which […]