Obit: Naguib Mahfouz, 94, Egyptian Novelist

Mahfouz is the only Arab to have ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and was also the oldest living recipient of the award. A critic of Egyptian society and Islamic Fundamentalism, in 1994 Mahfouz, then 82, was stabbed in an assassination attempt over perceived blasphemy in his 1959 novel Children of Gebelawi. Media […]

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Portal to public domain videos online

This website provides nice orderly links to streaming videos of old films that reside at Google Video, Dumpalink, iFilm, and YouTube. The collection is a combination of works that are out-of-copyright (public domain), orphaned (obscure videos that are still under copyright but probably forgotten by their owners), and some that are more recent and possibly […]

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Obit: Mickey Spillane, 88, creator of detective Mike Hammer, hence also the writer of film noir classic, Kiss Me Deadly

No Mickey Spillane, no Quentin Tarantino. Spillane’s writing had an edgy toughness, some might say sadism, that seemed to dovetail with the alternately explosive and nonchalant method acting of Marlon Brando, James Dean, Dennis Hopper, Lee Marvin, and Jack Nicholson to create a new anti-hero archetype. A handful of his novels were made into movies […]

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It’s a series of tubes

Al Gore may have invented it, but it took Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to explain it to the rest of us. What is this internet thing? Well, apparently it’s a series of tubes. Senator Stevens gave his lucid description during debate on net neutrality legislation recently. Thanks to his insight on a complicated […]

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