"Today's Paper"

[With thanks to SL in NYC for the tip on FB, below a brilliant hypertext document. Text below from the 'Today's Paper' link on the front page of "The New York Times." Click on image to enlarge. Click the link while you can – we imagine it might not be active indefinitely.]


"The Fine Print
By Amal Maamlaji
Published: July 4th, 2009

This special edition of The New York Times comes from a future in which we are accomplishing what we know today to be possible.

The dozens of volunteer citizens who produced this paper spent the last eight years dreaming of a better world for themselves, their friends, and any descendants they might end up having. Today, that better world, though still very far away, is finally possible — but only if millions of us demand it, and finally force our government to do its job.

..."

Grand Central Freeze

[no doubt many readers of the Data Stream are already among the 7 million YouTube viewers of Improv Everywhere's Frozen Grand Central in the last month.]

"This is one of over 70 different missions Improv Everywhere has executed over the past six years in New York City. Others include the No Pants Subway Ride, the Best Buy uniform prank, and the famous U2 Rooftop Hoax, to name a few."

Among our favorites, The Best Gig Ever, brilliantly rendered on Ira Glass's "This American Life," a segment of their 2005 show "Mind Games": "A group called Improv Everywhere decides that an unknown band, Ghosts of Pasha, playing their first ever tour in New York, ought to think they're a smash hit. So they study the band's music and then crowd the performance, pretending to be hard-core fans. Improv Everywhere just wants to make the band happy — to give them the best day of their lives. But the band doesn't see it that way. Nor does another subject of one of Improv Everywhere's "missions."

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