Microlog
246 Microlog entries tagged with ‘culture’
The way we love now: couples who meet online
Isn’t this the norm now? I know it wasn’t so much when Bee and I met, so we kinda had two stories going for a while, but come on, it’s 2012 now, this is how things are! Permalink ·
The Real Roots of Sexism in the Middle East (It’s Not Islam, Race, or ‘Hate’)
To equate sexism and/or misogyny with Islam is to ignore that it happens everywhere else in the world, at every stage of development, in every culture and belief system. And the excuses for it are so easily transferable. Permalink ·
Food’s Biggest Scam: The Great Kobe Beef Lie
It’s protectionism taken to a ridiculous degree, at the expense of those who put in all the hard work. And most in America don’t have the foggiest. Permalink ·
On The End Of An Era
Chloe Lum of Montreal neo-no-wavers AIDS Wolf writes about the demise of her band. I can see how it can be demoralising to invest so much “in something that gets next to no feedback”. But maybe we just need a new attitude to these things. Like, making the noises you want on your own terms, with no expectation that an audience will appreciate it. There’s a presumption that music is inherently commercial, insofar as artists at every level of the game produce art (whether on record or on stage) that an audience pays to consume, but I don’t buy it. Permalink ·
Would the last postmodernist please turn out the lights?
“In the end, consumer and celebrity culture defeated postmodernism by embracing it. When everything is ironic, nothing is ironic. If the movement was born on March 15th, 1972, it surely died on November 11th, 2011, when our very own Nama sold Andy Warhol’s silkscreen painting Dollar Sign in New York, having taken it from the property developer Derek Quinlan in lieu of unpaid debts. The Dollar Sign paintings were classic postmodern statements of the irony of a consumer aesthetic in which what we see in a work of art is the money it’s worth. Where’s the room for irony when the possession of such an image is embraced by one of the Celtic Tiger’s poster boys as a sign of his arrival?” Fintan O’Toole passing judgement. Permalink ·
Phoney politeness and muddled messages: a guide to euphemisms
“A culture without euphemism would be more honest, but rougher.” Indeed; directness has its place, but euphemisms make life, shall we say, colourful. Permalink ·
You Say You Want a Devolution?
“Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.” I’ve been saying this for years! Finally the world is catching on [c/o Fimoculous]. Permalink ·
The Complicated Ethics of the Unborn
“Human cloning… has proven especially troubling, ethically. The bans are fascinating, because they are effectively saying ‘we don’t know how to unravel the ethics of human cloning, so please don’t confront us with the problem.’” Permalink ·
One thousand diners: Britain’s biggest restaurant opens
Say what you want about gluttony, poor quality, etc: what the farmers’ market/street foodie crowd doesn’t get is that it’s about bang for your buck. I love the richer textures and flavours of superior produce, but it doesn’t half cost a bomb. Give me a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet with a gazillion choices any day. Permalink ·
20 predictions for the next 25 years
Some of these are just bullshit pie-in-the-sky futurism, but many others are just pragmatic abstractions of things already happening today (look how much has already happened this year, for instance). Permalink ·
Enthusiasms: Things That I Believe
These are mostly things that I believe, too. Permalink ·
How the Potato Changed the World
Added to the ‘Things I didn’t know’ file: tomatoes can be affected by potato blight [c/o The Morning News]. Permalink ·
Phil Gyford on asymmetry
The notion of seeing - and judging - others differently to ourselves. In other words: “I am infinitely subtle, complex and never quite what I seem; you are predictable and straightforward, an open book.” It’s particularly evident in US politics and culture at the moment. Permalink ·
Don’t Call Me Limey, Yank! Limey, Don’t Call Me Yank!
MeFi’s linguistics nerds have a field day. Permalink ·
HiLobrow on Objectography
‘We demand a great deal from our objects: that they be functional, that they be meaningful. And yet they also stand apart from us; like creatures at the edge of a clearing, they peer off elsewhere in feral disregard.’ I think the Japanese have a better understanding of objects in this regard (cf Matt Webb muses on tsukumogami). Permalink ·
Eating Your Cultural Vegetables
My view? There’s nothing wrong with being a dilettante if you engage faithfully with the things you pick and choose. Also, the distinction must be made between things that people like because they’re good, albeit an acquired taste, and things that everyone says they like but are really rubbish. But yeah, that thing about missing the last episode of Treme? I dropped off The Wire before the end of season 4, and I’ve just kept missing that train ever since. Permalink ·
The Net Generation, 1974-83
This is where I fit in, I guess. I think I got caught between two stools as I didn’t even have a computer till the very late ’90s. Permalink ·
Timeline of the History of Information
Only goes up to 1998. I think quite a bit has happened since then. Permalink ·
A brief history of Japan’s vintage railways
“Historically, the shape of rail’s introduction to Japan and its development into a tourism industry mirrors that of the West. Unlike the West, steam trains have taken on a symbolic strength that permeates the culture… Melancholy, wistful, an image of the voyage and sadness of life itself.” Permalink ·
The Grand Tour: Europe on fifteen hundred yuan a day
Always interesting to see things from an outsider’s perspective, so to speak. Permalink ·
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This is the personal website of MacDara Conroy, a production journalist, music writer and mediavore in Dublin, Ireland. Read more »
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This page lists all Microlog entries by MacDara Conroy tagged with ‘culture’. You will find many more entries sorted by month and by category in the Archives.
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