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• We The People

  As surveillance achieves new acmes in invisibility and intelligence, George Orwell’s insights in Nineteen Eighty-Four continue to grow in I-told-you-so prescience (sorry Big Brother). Penguin has decided to reissue the author’s dystopian classic, along with his other down-with-totalitarianism text, Animal Farm. The covers are designed by propaganda appropriator-artist Shepard Fairey, who imbues them with a striking, Soviet-style austerity.
  
  But lest we forget, tomorrow brings BBQs, firecrackers, and all sorts of red-white-and-blue revelry as we celebrate 232 years of independence. The Fourth has always been a symbolic date, and, throughout our everybody-for-themselves history, has always been a opportune day for declarations. Here are a few of the best:
  
  1845: Henry David Thoreau decides to be society-free and self-reliant and begins his two-year experiment at mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin near Walden Pond. During this period, he writes the transcendentalist classic Walden.
  
  1855: Walt Whitman publishes twelve of his poems, calling the collection Leaves of Grass. It begins with the famous lines (and a lovely life philosophy):
  
  I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
  And what I assume you shall assume,
  For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
  
  1881: “The pride of the swift, growing south," the Tuskegee Institute opens, with Booker T. Washington as its first principal.
  
  1939: Retiring because of the deadly disease that would bear his name, Lou Gehrig gives his beautiful, “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech to the fans at Yankee Stadium.
  
  1996: In an attempt to band the world together against a single cause, the film Independence Day invents man-annihilating aliens. Ironically, the world bands together in its intense dislike for the movie.
  
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  • Date: Jul 03 2008
  • Posted by JasonJudeChan

• The Work Of Criticism In The Age Of Cinematic Reproduction

  While acknowledging the discrepancy between the populism of the movie-going public and the elitism of most movie-reviewing critics, Erik Lundegaard employs some creative math and clever charts to convey that (surprise, surprise) well-reviewed films do better at the box office.
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  • Date: Jul 01 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• YouTube Revolution

  Here at GOOD HQ, we have oft marveled that Evolution of Dance, a truly insipid video of a man doing various popular dances of the 20th century, is the most watched video on YouTube. For a long time, it seemed that nothing could unseat it. However, now the video of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is within less than a million views. If we all put our hearts together, we can change history and make a new video reign supreme on YouTube. You can be a part of that. Please. Watch. Added bonus: The song and video are awesome. Don't hate.
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  • Date: Jul 01 2008
  • Posted by Morgan Clendaniel

• The Front Lines Of Fashion In Sierra Leone

  Adama Kargbo was born and raised in Sierra Leone, but moved to New York when she was 12. After graduating from the famous fashion design program at Parsons, she returned to her home country, ravaged by a desperate and brutal civil war, to launch her high-end line.
  
  Sierra Leone isn't the first place you'd think of finding couture, but the country is changing. According to filmmaker Eric Becker, who helped with her first shoot, "It is a world of rural, mud hut villages where cell phone ring tones mix with the sound of baying goats, where chiefs have business cards and gmail accounts. ...where the bottom—still brutally victimized by the trappings of poverty—has begun to connect to a global world at a rapid pace." In this context, Adama's case of reverse brain-drain makes more sense. And while fashion might not heal the wounds of civil war, it may help Sierra Leone realize a more beautiful future.
  
  
  Adama's line, called Aschobi, is based in Freetown.
  
  
  Adama had only one model for her shoot. She found the other two girls at a local ex-pat bar.
  
  
  Adama's clothes give traditional African style an urban twist.
  
  
  Photos by Henry Jacobson
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  • Date: Jul 01 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• NYC Crime Still Just Like In The Movies

  If you thought good old-fashioned gangster action, hit men, people seeking bloody retribution for wrongfully-offed comrades, and the use of phrases like "rubbed out" were all just the dramatic devices of classic cinema anymore, you were wrong. These things still happen in New York City. Sometimes to people we've heard of. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who famously bit part of a guy's ear off in 1997, has been accused of paying $50,000 to have two men killed, possibly connected to the murder of his friend and bodyguard, whose nickname, by the way, was "Homicide." Tyson denies any involvement at all. Deliberations at the federal trial begin this week. Fun fact: growing up as a delinquent in Brooklyn, Mike Tyson had been arrested 38 times by the time he was 13. Another fun fact: Did we already mention he bit part of a guy's ear off back in 1997? Image: Still from Godfather, Paramount Pictures
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  • Date: Jul 01 2008
  • Posted by alexandra_m

• Punctuation's Not Dead

  Just before the weekend began, Slate ran a thoroughly satisfying piece on the disappearance of the semicolon in modern writing; it gave us pause.
  
  Today, Neatorama links to the work of Matt Sutter, an artist who assembles his "Typewomen" from the letters and objects of various fonts.
  
  UPDATE: Apropos of something, we'd like to add Allison Wilton's emoticon book via Josh Spear to this post.
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  • Date: Jun 23 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• George Carlin RIP

  The legendary comedian George Carlin, famous for his stand-up comedy, especially the "Seven Dirty Words" routine, died of heart failure on Sunday at age 71.
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  • Date: Jun 23 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• Juneteenth

  Today is Juneteenth, a day that celebrates the abolition of slavery in Texas in 1865. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed in 1863, it wasn't until Union soldiers marched into Galveston and announced the end of the Civil War that slavery was officially terminated. Since then, as yesterday's Time piece nicely explains, the portmanteau of a holiday has become a "de facto second Independence Day...and a first step toward inclusion in the greater American Dream."
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  • Date: Jun 19 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• Belgians: They're Taking Our History

  OK, first, a Belgian company called InBev up and buys Anheuser-Busch. Now, a Belgian inventor named Paul Otlet has invented the internet in 1934. Pretty soon they'll own basketball, jazz, and the American Dream itself.
  
  Thanks, Avery.
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  • Date: Jun 17 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• What's Your Number?

  So, apparently on MySpace, if you're a really hot (and underage?) girl, you can develop a large fan base of other MySpace users. And then someone might try to make a fake MySpace page using your pictures. Or some people, knowing how hot girls' MySpace pages can be successful, will make up a fake girl using pictures found on the internet. To prevent this, the geniuses over at MySpace require the hotties to read their ID number into a camera, proving they are a real, flesh-and-blood girl. Here is a video of some of the highlights, or, as we like to call it, a fresh new sign of the impending apocalypse. Via Gawker
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  • Date: Jun 16 2008
  • Posted by Morgan Clendaniel