Super Bon!

and Carrie still leads 7-2-2.

But here’s a question: is it a coincidence that the well-meaning but meddlesome bureaucrat is named Lynn McGill? I think not.

(Charlie Bertsch and) I give you Bad Subjects #74: Intermedia, which features contributions from a few familiar faces and some new ones. It’s also got some of my favorite features of Bad Subjects issues in years past — “open” contributions, interviews, and of course, an article on the Christian right.

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Fred’s visit was outstanding. His talk was animated, the room was packed, the dinner was lovely, etc. etc. Except that the first night he was here, our sick cat puked on his coat, which had fallen to the floor in the middle of the night. So I had to lend him one of my old winter coats, which was comically large on him, but since he’s so tall he could pull it off. I should have taken a picture. Anyway, he said that he felt like me walking around Montreal. I replied that he was simply taking up all the space to which he is entitled.

This week will be another light one for blogging. We’ve got another guest speaker coming in that HPS series I linked to in my last post, and I’m off too on Wednesday to NYU to give a talk in the Music Department’s lecture series entitled “Recalibrating the Sound of Music.” I’m planning to read a short statement in support of the striking students before I give the talk. I’ll post it here.

And now for an academic entry.

Another one-off piece has appeared: “Transportation and Communication: Together as You’ve Always Wanted Them,” in Thinking With James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History, eds. Jeremy Packer and Craig Robertson, 117-35. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. I haven’t done a run-through for typos but I will say that the layout is beautifully done and the book as a whole looks great. So nice job, Peter Lang. Especially interesting is a 2-part interview of Carey by Larry Grossberg, which has Carey laying some interesting things out in public for the first time — his relationship with other faculty at the Institute of Communications Research (hint — he has unkind things to say about Herb Schiller), the emergence of “cultural studies” as a term and concept in the 60s US, long before it was known in humanities departments, and his reading of McLuhan’s Understanding Media while it was still a report to the Department of Education, to name three. I would say it’s a “must read” for people interested in the intellectual history of Communication Studies in North America.

Today and tomorrow, I have the pleasure of hosting Fred Turner, who’s here to give a lecture to a combined HPS and AHCS audience. His new book on the roots of the digerati in the Whole Earth Catalog, is forthcoming from U of Chicago Press.

Yes, I was a geeky teenager with friends who had Commodore 64s. There’s a great spoof of Bush playing Zork here.

If I had the time, I’d do a Paul Martin version.

>HOLD HEARINGS

Yesterday was “national answer your cat’s question day.”

I hope you did. If not, it’s never too late.

is that if I knew how to change the colors of the blog to Black and Gold right now, I would.

but for the record, my honeymoon with the Globe&Mail has officially ended. I cite the following unforgiveable infractions:

–attributing the Boxing Day shootings in Toronto to a problem with “fatherless” families for dark-skinned immigrants. That kind of thinking should sound familiar to Americans (Moynihan report, anyone?) but it is lame and ignores the specific social conditions in which many disaffected youth now grow up. All those Mike Harris cuts to social programs? There’s something to be said about chickens and roosting.

–endorsing Stephen Harper for Prime Minister with a bunch of “it’s time for a change” crap. Some changes are stupid and wrong. We’re looking at a PM who opposes same-sex marriage, will launch an attack on the Canadian welfare state (remember Tommy Douglas, the guy who was voted “greatest Canadian” last year? he got it for building socialized medicine in this country. guess what Harper will dismantle?), and who actually says “God Bless Canada” at the end of his speeches. And here I was thinking that phrase sounded so absurd that nobody here would say it with a straight face. Also, this whole “Harper’s changed” in six months is utter crap. Harper has a new hairdo. He has new handlers. He is not a different person or politician. And his cabinet will demonstrate that.

I will give Harper one thing, though. He is more intelligent than George W. Bush. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, though. Anyway, the honeymoon with the Globe and Mail is over.

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In other news, yet another tape of Osama bin Laden appeared today. The second sentence of the article says “it proves that he is alive.” I have got to get that manuscript out.