Slager and the Catlady have apparently concluded the internet is a lost cause, and only subjects them to ridicule. Yes, they're already proven idiots. See below(*).

Of more immediate concern are the 20 road sign Beer Coaster Contest winners, those 'anger flashcards' that each evoke a nasty backstory.

Turns out, the cost is prohibitive. One hundred sets of 20 coasters come to a staggering $500. (.25 x 20 x 100 = $500)] So maybe cocktail napkins are in order instead. Or maybe something else altogether. Think on it, please. We need ideas!

In any case, take a look when you get a chance.

20 images - each 435px x 435px, in .png format - located here:

https://warehamwater.cruelery.com/beercoaster/

The same images are also here:

https://warehamwater.cruelery.com/beercoaster.zip

---
(*) Excerpted from 'Tabloid Network'
© Bill Whitehouse, 1992. All Rights Reserved.

"No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."

(H.L. Mencken. Notes on Journalism. The Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 19, 1926)

Familiar enough, until you examine its context. Appearing in the last paragraph at the end of a reflective Sunday column, the quote concludes...

"The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable. The tabloids, seeking to force such things upon them, will inevitably alarm them and lose their trade. The journalism of the future--that is, the mob journalism--will move in the direction that I have indicated."

Mencken was right, of course. It did. The tabloid press was still in its infancy, but he recognized its innovations -- a format that was easier to print, easier to distribute, easier to carry, easier to read in crowds and easier to digest -- were uniquely suited to a profitable mass market of the lowest order.

Mencken might just as well have inserted Television for Tabloids, as he did later in other ways for radio and movies. If he were still alive, would he see the same dismal potential in networked computers?

"What [plain people] are interested in is drama," Mencken counseled tabloid magnates. "The thing presented to them must take the form of combat, and it must be very simple combat, with one side clearly right and the other clearly wrong. They can no more imagine neutrality than they can imagine the fourth dimension. And when they see drama they want to see it moving."

Or do you prefer your nilhist tonic Teutonic? Mencken was, after all, just first generation German-American. Shiller was the genuine article.

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

Against fools, even the gods fight in vain.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-11 to update URLs

Last edited by billw (2008-12-12 09:27:46)