Entertainment/Culture

Tony Allen at Millennium Park

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Perhaps not the most exciting video ever, here’s a quick, 45-second look at the environment at Millennium Park yesterday evening, during a free show by legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and his band. Once again, shot with Motorola Droid phonecam. This one is hosted on Youtube, because I wanted to get an idea of quality … Read more

The _____ of _____ mentioned in Orlando Weekly!

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Wowee!  My old friends published a mention of my book, along with a mini-interview, in this week’s Happytown column! Here’s the relevant portion: Not a day goes by in which someone doesn’t ask, “Hey, Happytown™, whatever happened to that Ask Ian the I.T. Guy? He sure had a nice ponytail.” In an effort to satiate Orlando’s … Read more

What’s the point of saving newspapers?

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This comes via boingboing.net today. After J-school, I’m more convinced than ever that newspapers (ink on dead tree) are pretty much doomed, with the exception of some niches — free papers, alternative papers, hyperlocal neighborhood papers. Even among my journalist friends, I can’t think of anyone that has an actual subscription to a dead-tree daily … Read more

State of the American Obituary report

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As many of you are probably aware, I’ve spent the last couple of months working on the Interactive Innovation Project for Fall 2009.  This is the capstone project of my year at Medill. The project has been about obituaries in print and online, and about how obituaries drive readership to local media outlets. One of … Read more

Pink Floyd’s moon landing jam session

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This is kind of interesting. Back in 1969, when man was first walking on the moon, Pink Floyd were in a BBC television studio, jamming improvisationally. There exists a recording, which has been mashed with some moon landing footage. Behold: According to David Gilmour: “At the time, Pink Floyd had been doing rather well. For … Read more

Should investigative journalism get a public subsidy?

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Another thing that came my way via the excellent Overcoming Bias site. The author of this piece, Paul Starr, is a professor of Sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, and he floats the idea that public subsidies of investigative journalism might be one way to combat the deluge of journalists that have given up … Read more

Trip to Fermi Lab

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The view from the 15th floor of the main Fermi Lab building
 

So on Friday, my health and science reporting class took a road trip to Fermi Lab, about an hour outside of Chicago.

They’ve got a particle collider there, and they smash protons and anti protons together to see what happens.

Over the years, they were responsible for the discovery of three primary particles, including the bottom and top quarks.

It was a fascinating trip, even though the weather was against us.  The campus is large, and primarily looks like prairie.  You wouldn’t know there was a particle collider there, unless you saw the huge earth birms from above.

Here’s a trailer for a PBS special that was filmed there called “The Atom Smashers”.  Bonus — the special was scored by Ghostly International’s Kate Simko.

Want to see some more pictures I took at Fermi?

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Douglas Rushkoff talking about his upcoming book, Life, Inc.

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Via @hrheingold: Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, author, documentarian, will be releasing his new book, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back on June 2nd. In this video, the author of Ecstasy Club, Coercion, and others talks about the new book. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon.