the aughts This week, the New York Times Magazine was dedicated to their newly traditional Year In Ideas thinkpiece. It's always a fantastic collection of new discoveries, shifts in ways of thinking, and products that we're likely to hear more about in years to come. It tries, in many ways, to be predictive; to isolate still-germinating concepts that will shape the world. I thought, therefore, that it made sense to see how they did. In the spirit of the end of the decade, I looked back at their first Year In Ideas released in December of 2001. Heavy on concepts that emerged following the terrorist attacks (such as "American Imperialism, Embraced") and the Internet ("Populist Editing"), the series was born at a fascinating moment in American history. (more...)

video Season's greetings from Glenn Beck! On his show that aired Wednesday, November 25th, the Fox News host asked his audience to imagine a terrorist attack on the United States, pretending that we'd "be as lucky as we were with the World Trade Center where everybody was gone or most people were gone." (more...)

video Last night, Countdown host Keith Olbermann named Beck his "Worst Person" in the recurring segment, which in itself is not news. But last night he used language that rarely, if ever, is used towards another person on a news program. After calling out Beck for "invoking 9/11 just to oppose health care reform," Olbermann ended by telling him to "Go to Hell." Wow. (more...)

Then living in California, I woke up eight years ago to the already-burning Twin Towers - a moment that would have seemed dream-like had it not been instantaneously jarring. A friend noted that only on noticing that the windows near his TV had grown dark did he have any indicator of how long he'd been watching the news. Like a growing number of others in a time obsessively concerned with the "digital divide", I went to my desktop computer to get more information. Unlike many others, though, I made screen captures of the sites as I visited them. (more...)