{"id":442,"date":"2003-10-28T21:52:39","date_gmt":"2003-10-29T01:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/10\/28\/3-rings-and-an-internet\/"},"modified":"2003-10-28T21:52:39","modified_gmt":"2003-10-29T01:52:39","slug":"3-rings-and-an-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/10\/28\/3-rings-and-an-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"3 rings, and an (inter)net"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nHaven’t you ever wondered why 42 is the answer<\/a> to life, the universe, and everything<\/i>? Haven’t you wondered what the question<\/a> is? <\/p>\n

I<\/i> know! I know the question! At the library tonight, I browsed around in the November 1956 issue of Encounter<\/a>, the magazine funded by the CIA-controlled Congress for Cultural Freedom<\/a> in a bid to win Western Europeans’ hearts and minds during the Cold War. Encounter<\/a> was the kind of magazine<\/a> in which Albert Camus frequently published, but which would never publish Jean-Paul Sartre. Lots of smart stuff in its pages, but lots of directing, too. When I flipped it open to Dwight Macdonald<\/a>‘s article, Amateur Journalism; Notes of an American in London<\/a>, I had to stop and read. Tomorrow I’ll blog about Macdonald’s theses, which are really pertinent to blogging in some ways, but first this: among other things, Macdonald describes letters to the editor (which incidentally seemed a lot like comments threads in blogs) that debate topics over the course of days and even weeks. Topics ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, and included a discussion of the reason that circus rings are 42 feet in diameter. <\/p>\n

Get it? The answer is 42 because obviously the question is, “how big is the ring?” Monty Python’s Flying Circus — another clue? Douglas Adams was only 4 1\/2 when Macdonald described that circus ring discussion, but maybe he knew, maybe he knew. Life’s a circus. That’s all you need to know. That, and how to walk a tightrope. Piece of cake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Haven’t you ever wondered why 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? Haven’t you wondered what the question is? I know! I know the question! At the library tonight, I browsed around in the November 1956 issue of Encounter, the magazine funded by the CIA-controlled Congress for Cultural Freedom in a bid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}