Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Words of Questionalble Wisdom

By John Ballard


Another sand dollar from the Twitter beach.



  • "Such announcements should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous." W. Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.

  • "Democracy will be dead by 1950." John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of The Future, 1936.

  • "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote." Grover Cleveland, US President, 1905.

  • "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." Marechal Foch, Professor of Strategy, French War College, 1904.

  • "It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?" US President Hayes, after demo of Alexander Bell's telephone, 1876.

  •  "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." Thomas Edison, 1889

  • "TV won't last. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." D. Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

  • "Americans need the telephone, we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." William Preece, Chief Engineer, UK Post Office, 1878.

  • "Cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. Audiences want to see flesh and blood on the stage." Charlie Chaplin, 1916.

  • "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" H.M. Warner, co-founder, Warner Brothers, 1927.

  • "Good enough for [Americans] but unworthy of attention of practical/scientific men." UK Parliament Committee, on Edison light bulb, 1878.

  • "I am tired of this thing called science. We've spent millions..and it is time it should be stopped." S. Cameron, US Senator, 1901.


Idle thoughts...
Democracy didn't actually die in 1950 but the rise and coming dominance of trans-national corporations hatched and began proliferating about that time, modern recapitulations of colonialism.
Alternating current not only became the electrical gold standard, solar energy comes out of those panels as DC but must be converted to AC if the power company will buy it from the consumer (who also must convert it to use himself).
And the climate zombies are still around.
And still obdurate.



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