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Institutional Knowledge Today in the Umpteenth Year of "The Knowledge Economy": Do you want fries with that?

Institutional Knowledge Today in the Umpteenth Year of “The Knowledge Economy”: Do you want fries with that?

This item is produced (from a draft six weeks old) from the point of view of New Zealand with local circumstances in mind. Somehow, I’m sure, people in a couple of hundred other countries will be able to relate to it… The wonders of technological and economic progress.

Yesterday I and an elderly friend enquired about how to get a Total Mobility Card, available to over-65s and the infirm allowing…

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RAWHIDE!

RAWHIDE! http://wp.me/s9kLY-rawhide

Today maybe this western television series — filmed through its seven-year run (1959-66) in black and white — is best remembered for its theme song, and not even for its classic rendition by Frankie Laine but by nonsingers Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi of The Blues Brothers(1980). It seems a shameful travesty, as seen today — and I’ve been watching the entire run semi-religiously on the Turner…

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COWBOYS IN HOLLYWOOD

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COWBOYS IN HOLLYWOOD

COWBOYS IN HOLLYWOOD.

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COWBOYS IN HOLLYWOOD

Cowboys and American Indians have fared poorly on screen over the past forty years in the era of wookies and hobbits and other differently-normal humanoids. Even stalwart Clint Eastwood seemed to take the coming of Spielberg, Lucas and their acolytes to heart and The Outlaw Josey Wales(1976) was the last in his series of classic westerns, reviving his ruthless man-with-no-name character only for…

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Movie Star Popularity: measuring it

When movie stars were new as a phenomenon a hundred years or so ago, chosen by floods of movie patrons going specially to see them, fan magazines that had just started up as a way of telling romantic stories (true or false) about the public’s favorite “players” on film began trying to assess their relative popularity. Most favored across Europe were generally versatile character actors like

Asta…

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Screen Faces: The Doppelganger Effect

Screen Faces: The Doppelganger Effect

John Wayne and Robert Mitchum on the set of ‘El Dorado’, 1966

Back a ways when I was a little kid I was used to seeing Dean Martin on television via his weekly variety series. And he was in big screen westerns with John Wayne; and so was Robert Mitchum. Both Martin and Mitchum had what women called “bedroom eyes” in those coy times when demands of cock measurements were unheard of. (Incidentally,…

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New Zealand General Election: A Victory for... What?

New Zealand General Election: A Victory for… What?

There are some measurable reversals in the state of this nation. So, instead it is simpler to talk about –

A LIST OF DEFEATS:

* Democracy defeated:The winning party received 48.1% of the votes cast and has 100% of the power in what purports to be a proportional representation system. Under NZ’s one-house parliamentary system there are no checks and balances on the ruling party’s ideology, freed…

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PEOPLE POWER?

I suppose my first recollection of the phrase “People Power” was around 1986 when ingoing President Corazon Aquino quoted it in raising a groundswell of support promising to free the people of The Philippines from the dynasty of the Marcos family. It seemed like a good idea, and probably still is when carried out by idealists with a real sense of selflessness and self-empowerment and in the cause…

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Movie Review: "Breakfast At Tiffany's" (1961)

Movie Review: “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” (1961)

I have a confession to make. Until this afternoon I had never seen more than random snippets of Breakfast At Tiffany’s— but I have just watched the last hour and a half of it on the Turner channel. I’m hoping the original novel by Truman Capote was better; but I’ve never been a fan of glossy Blake Edwards movies. This comes across like it’s trying to be a sophisticated comedy but falls way short…

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MOVIE LEGENDS -- THE THREE GREAT BITCHES (of the screen): Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis

MOVIE LEGENDS — THE THREE GREAT BITCHES (of the screen): Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis

MOVIE LEGENDS — THE THREE GREAT BITCHES (of the screen): Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis.

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THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN DINOSAURS WALKED THE EARTH

THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN DINOSAURS WALKED THE EARTH

There follows a sequence of nonrandom musings and ramblings, added in time, which eventually might come together to form a point in the end, or at least pose a few questions.

Not so long ago people seemed to run the world and corporations bent over backwards to serve us — or at least made a point of seeming so. This was in living memory for some of us, and I’m in my fifties. I’ve just watched a…

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American Idol of 1959: Hottest Female Stars

American Idol of 1959: Hottest Female Stars

Connie Francis, sultry in stills, goofy in films.

1. Marilyn Monroe — now 33 after a dozen years in movies, but her first film in two years, comedy blockbuster Some Like It Hot from Billy Wilder and co-starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, is enough to put her back at the top around the world

2. Brigitte Bardot — the prototypical French “sex kitten”, turning 25 this year and now scoring hits at…

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HERO OF THE CAVE or BOTTOMLESS PIT? -- Just Askin'

Having caught some of a news item this morning, apparently set in a Germanic-speaking, alpine region of Europe, I learnt enough of the pertinent facts to be able to write about it from a philosophical angle.

It seems eighteen years ago a famous caver (they’re people who climb down a cave because it’s there) in Europe discovered this spectacularly “challenging” cave that goes down a thousand…

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BIGGEST DISC SELLERS IN U.S. FOR 1965

BIGGEST DISC SELLERS IN U.S. FOR 1965

Nineteen sixty-five was the year the Beatles relinquished a big gooey dollop of their kiddywink appeal for American tweenies to another English group, Herman’s Hermits, from Manchester. While the Beatles surrendered quite a chunk of their disc sales too compared with 1964, they moved on to more mature music and broadened their fanbase, “peaking” with Yesterday, of Elizabethan pedigree. Couldn’t…

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THE DUMBING DOWN OF US

THE DUMBING DOWN OF US

This is one of those unpalatable, indigestible ideas that has stuck in my craw many times before, often when I’ve just surrendered to bedtime sometime after midnight. Too often, I just roll over and drift off to sleep too lazy to rouse myself. Finally, it grabbed me on the right side of my waking cycle — 5.30am this morning — by the throat, and wouldn’t let go. I dedicate this to one of those…

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BIGGEST SELLING DISCS OF 1963

BIGGEST SELLING DISCS OF 1963

Ok, calm down everyone, following the deafening clamor that greeted my last post, “Biggest Disc Sellers of 1964″ — and ignoring the fact that most searches that got through were actually after a site called “Biggest Dicks Fellers” — I’ve answered the call to go a year even further back. (In relaying coherently the massive amount of research I’ve done into this burning question it is necessary to…

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