The Language of Politics

One of the texts that we'll be reading is called, "On Bullshit." Here are some video files of the author, Harry Frankfurt, responding to some questions about bullshit. You can watch the whole interview in Quicktime format here. For other formats, go here.

This looks like a cool website that will be very useful for our work:

Discourse DB is a new kind of site: a database that uses the power and ease-of-use of wiki technology to collect the opinions of the world's journalists and commentators about ongoing political events and issues.

Check it out here.

From Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Vancouver Olympics will own words like "winter," "2010" and "Vancouver"

Canadian Industry Minister Maxime Bernier recently introduced Bill C-47, the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act, through which the Vancouver Olympics are guaranteed exclusive public use of the following words: winter, gold, silver, bronze, sponsor, Vancouver, Whistler, 2010, tenth, medals, and games.

It's amazing how the Olympics have come to symbolize bullying corporate greed; overreaching, violent "security measures;" drug abuse and destruction of public facilities and low-income housing.