Ryan Sholin

Category: Ideas

  • Blogsome Issues

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    Ryan Sholin
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    This blog is hosted, for free, by Blogsome, which appears to be run by a small bunch of folks in Ireland. The google ads on the left sidebar are theirs, and although I can remove them, I don’t bother, since they are letting me user their server space for free. Yes, I know I can…

  • Get Your War On

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    Ryan Sholin
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    JUST in case I haven’t mentioned it before, Get Your War On is the coolest thing on Earth. Okay, “cool” is subjective, but how about, “awesome-est.” Yeah, well start working on that writing style any minute now…

  • Social Security Flashers

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    Ryan Sholin
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    MoveOn‘s got a winner in their “Bush in 30 Years” contest — they were looking for a few good Flash animations to illustrate the social security “crisis” and proposed solutions. Check out the flashy goodness here.

  • How many white women can go missing in one news cycle?

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Via Romenesko, a set of stories highlighting the common thread in the most sensationalized missing persons reports of the last few years: white women seem to be vanishing left and right. The recent runaway bride ridiculousness is the point of departure, and the stories Romenesko links to point out that this sort of soap opera…

  • Knight/Princess/Dragon: More on the importance of story structure.

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Knight/Princess/Dragon. In business/marketing/advertising, Cluetrain/Hughtrain style: The story of your company sells your product. Tell us why your product will better hook us into our ideals, into our more efficient day, into ourselves, into our own narrative. Tell us where your product fits into that narrative we write for ourselves. In government/politics: The story of your…

  • All conversations are stories.

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    Ryan Sholin
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    SO – Yesterday I threw up my gut reaction to the Pat Tillman bamboozle, including some of what I wrote when the story broke. The reason the friendly-fire truth of the story was covered up? Because the “fallen hero” angle made for a better story. It plugs right into our collective unconscious mythic tagging system,…

  • On the lighter side: Kevin Smith blogs.

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Enough warblogging. Here’s something that will weigh a little less heavily on your soul(s) dear reader(s): Kevin Smith is blogging. For those who don’t know…ah well, you’ve probably seen one of his movies, or your brother or boyfriend or husband mumbles something about one from time to time, or you’re a full on Smithophile. Personally,…

  • Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire and the Army knew.

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Today’s Washington Post reports the Army was perfectly aware that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire, but covered it up.

  • Uncensored: Flag-Draped Coffins via Flickr

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    Ryan Sholin
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    The U.S. military thought that it would be easier to keep public opinion about the war in Iraq from degenerating into a Vietnam-type situation by censoring images of dead soldiers returning to the States. During Vietnam, the flag-draped coffins of the soldiers who were actually out there dying every day for whatever we fight wars…

  • Photo.net lives

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    Ryan Sholin
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    Apparently <a href="the pictures I posted (a few years ago) on photo.net were not sucked into the black hole of server rotation as I had previously assumed. Some of these were, in fact, sucked into the black hole of a deceased hard drive, so I’m glad to see them again. Now where’s that export to…