Toluu

[ caught |n between ]

In search of a punchline, propaganda distorts reality. A Web notebook by Lawrence Aubrey Green, ne'er-do-well writer and information architect.

Shorter is BetterYesterday

Copyblogger - If you want people to read something, make it short and concise. By all means, and let us continue our slide down that slippery slope into illiteracy while we're at it. Yeah, shorter is better is good advice for a blog, but the larger picture is that it's becoming painfully obvious that Johnny--and Jackie, and even Lakeshia--can't read, won't read, and doesn't want to read, unless there are a lot of pictures next to the words. Basically, Johnny doesn't want to think. This will have dire impacts on our future. Time will tell. But at least I read.

Lawsuit: Marketing Blamed in Wal-Mart Trampling Death - Advertising AgeYesterday

Advertising Age - Security should have been better, but advertising also helped kill a temporary worker at Wal-Mart, according to a lawsuit filed by the estate and relatives of the 34-year-old man trampled by a pre-dawn Black Friday crowd at a Valley Stream, N.Y., store. I have sincere condolences for the Wal-Mart employee who lost his life in this tragedy, but advertising is not to blame here. According to Hoovers.com, Wal-Mart operates over 7200 stores and employs more that 2 million people, but this unfortunate incident happened at just one location. The fault lies with the people in charge of the local store: they clearly were not ready for the crowd they faced. Something needs to be done for the family of the victim, for sure, but advertising, for all its myriad ills, does not deserve blame in this case. It's not a frivolous lawsuit, but the claim needs to be tuned.

Pirates fire on US cruise ship in hijack attemptDecember 2

Yahoo! News - And the brazen attack also raises questions: What was a cruise ship doing in the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden? How many such targets are sailing these seas, and how can they be protected. Being a pirate is all fun and games when you're watching a Johnny Depp movie, or playing one on Halloween. It gets a little scarier and uncomfortable when gun-toting thugs try to board your luxury pleasure boat under the cover of gun fire.

Radical Solutions for a Crazy EconomyNovember 28

Alternet.org - We are in a severe recession, and now the recent readings of both the Producer Price Index and the Consumer Price Index show the beginning of deflation.