Interesting links for August 3rd through August 4th 2008:

• Chinese netizens rail against Great Firewall [watoday.com.au] – A look at the heavy hand of internet censorship in China and the lengths China’s netizens have to go to to avoid being blocked. A recent example shows a meme that the phrase “I’m just doing push-ups” after the line was used by allegedly corrupt communist officials. The meme is going strong, one example being these photoshopped images of a popular Chinese TV host doing push-ups in various locations across China.
• Kind Strangers, Comicons, and the People that Need a Hug. [Nathan Fillion MySpace Blog] – Nathan Fillion, sees the future in Dr Horrible (despite being Capt Hammer!): “I think it can be said that Dr Horrible was a tremendous success. More than just an incredible project to enjoy, but a more than important view of entertainment to come. This is the future, everybody. This is a window into how things will be when the control is finally wrested from the moneyed claws of big business and placed, nay, returned to the caring hands of the creators.”
• Postmodern path to student failure By Justine Ferrari [The Australian] – In a new anti-postmodernism book, The Trouble With Theory, by Gavin Kitching, “insight” such as this appears: ‘Students equate the way language is used with the meaning of words, so that the word “terrorist” always means a person using extreme violence for political ends, and anyone called a terrorist is actually a terrorist. But he said such thinking excluded sentences such as: “Calling these people terrorists distracts attention from the justice of their cause. “They have a very narrow idea of how we use words. (They believe) words have given meanings, and these meanings have certain biases or prejudices. If you use words, you have to accept the biases or prejudices – you’re stuck with them. That you can use words ironically is not something they can take seriously. Clearly that’s not true. We use words to refer to things, but we can refer to them ironically, we can refer to them sarcastically, doubtingly, aggressively.”
• Britney and McCain in 2008 – Barely Political [YouTube] – New running mates: John McCain and Britney Spears. Not the most technically exciting YouTube political mashup, but the rhetoric matches perfectly!
• Notes on Cult Films and New Media Technology [zigzigger] – Interesting thoughts: “My basic point is that the availability of films to own on videotape, disc, or computer file marks a transformation in the way audiences engage with the film text, and that this transformation makes the cult mode of film experience much more typical, more available to more viewers and to more movies.”