What we missed in boston from the NYT.
Instead of scorning the event, the networks would do better by working with convention planners more closely. Both have plenty to gain... Ratings for cable news and PBS increased over the convention. If the broadcast networks had provided more coverage and given a sleeker presentation, millions more viewers might have been tempted to tune in. Conventions will never get huge ratings or make the networks money, but they only come once every four years.
I completely agree. They package things even more boring than the convention and it sells. Packaging matters. And saying that the news is "not consequential" is really protesting too much, when networks now create news whole cloth in the form of reality programming. Kind of weird that they are shying away from the ultimate reality show. Why couldn't they do a sort of political Real World or something equally ridiculous?
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Isn't it weird how the Woodward thing has sort of slid off Bush entirely? But everything has been sliding off.... just when I think they are missing the point, it turns out that the President is "strong on the war on terror" whether we see results or not. I still think that Iraq could hurt him, things could get worse (though I would prefer they get better and endure 4 More Years of Cheney). And Iraq could hurt him if god forbid there were another attack on US soil, or some American tourists were killed in Europe or something.
To do: A recent flurry of questions to the Perl-XML mailing list points to the need for a document that gives new users a quick, how-to overview of the various Perl XML modules. For the next few months I will be devoting this column solely to that purpose. -- XML.com's Perl XML Quickstart: The Perl XML Interfaces
A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows a remarkable turnaround in 17 battleground states where polls and historic trends indicate the race will be close, and where the Bush campaign has aired TV ads. Those ads say Bush has provided "steady leadership in times of change" while portraying Kerry as a tax-hiking, flip-flopping liberal...
I worried about this. To win elective office, you need name recognition and a fundraising machine. That's it. No policy, no ideas, no political party. Just two things. Our future, peopled with celebrity Governators and political dynasties, will make today's politicians look as wise as the Founding Fathers.
NPR Executive Vice President Ken Stern told The Post that the firing of Edwards was part of a "natural evolution" that had "to do with the changing needs of our listeners." What "natural evolution"? What does that mean? And what "changing needs"? Listen, Ken, my needs haven't changed. I still want news in the morning. I still want smart features. - from Cohen in the WaPo's "Empty Talk at NPR"
So I haven't posted for a million years, but then when I read that Bob Edwards is leaving Morning Edition , I have to say I was shocked and dismayed. I remember his shows with Red Barber. He's sort of the epitome of the NPR sound: folksy (in a good way and bad), and very old-school radio. So I'll miss him, ok?
I'm still undecided about the legal aspects of Grey Tuesday . I think if you wrote the beat, you should be compensated. Now, I know that Danger Mouse made it for fun, and wasn't trying to make money, but now, after all the hoo-ha, he could . So the posturing about how this is "art" rather than "commerce" is of a relative nature. (And I know EMI could put it under Creative Commons , but they haven't). If his art is not commerce just because there's no "product," that's a pretty thin reed to hang it on, especially because today's "illegal art" is tomorrow's Warhol greeting card. If Danger Mouse becomes even more famous, and the Grey Album becomes a product, who should be compensated? Clearly, if I sell a beat you wrote, you have a right to get that money from me.
On the other hand, people say, Danger Mouse is not competing with either Jay-Z or the White Album, he isn't taking any money away from them, so is it
Ron Paige says disagreeing with Bush = terrorism. Are these guys all complete tools? And why does the media allow Bushies to rant about "lobbyists" without a reality check?
"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms."
No, Ralph, stop. I'm quite disapointed that chose to run. Will he actually build a movement? Will he form a coalition made of Greens and young Dean supporters? Will he change the political landscape? Well, no, actually. Super-lefts want a candidate that lets them feel morally superior to Dems, but their litmus-test ideology actually accomplishes the destruction of the very things about which they say they care most. Having George W. Bush win, only to appoint the next supreme court justice (who will undoubtedly be anti-choice and Ashcroft-friendly) is not my idea of "progressive accomplishment." When the American left trains its eye on results, moral purity will be seen for what it is, the luxury of the marginalized.
Great piece by the always suprising Michael Lind in the new Nation:
For at least two decades, in foreign policy the neocons have been wrong about everything. When the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, the hawks of Team B and the Committee on the Present Danger declared that it was on the verge of world domination. In the 1990s they exaggerated the power and threat of China, once again putting ideology ahead of the sober analysis of career military and intelligence experts. The neocons were so obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat that they missed the growing threat of Al Qaeda. After 9/11 they pushed the irrelevant panaceas of preventive war and missile defense as solutions to the problems of hijackers and suicide bombers.... David Brooks and his colleagues in the neocon press are half right. There is no neocon network of scheming masterminds--only a network of scheming blunderers. ... If they now claim that they never existed--well, you can hardly blame them, can
Saw the Shins last night. The lead singer sings with humorless rigidity, in a David Byrne sort of way, but they put on a good show. Something about their airy/poppy sound reminds me of Men At Work, I don't know why. Maybe it's because their lyrics are kind of bitter, while the sound is bright and clean. Also noticed that the eyeglass frames I wear resemble frames worn by music geeks around the world. It's like the government hands them out to us.
I'm learning a lot from Near A Thousand Tables: A History of Food. I'm learning that I have this internal faith that certain foods "balance" each other, that eating greens balances meats, that eating grains balances greens, etc., a faith that is both ridiculous and time-honored: "The notion that diet should serve to preserve a balance between yin and yang is, essentially, a humoral theory: we have rejected humoral theories of Western origin, but those which come clouded with emanations of the 'mystic East' manage to retain their Western adherents."
More importantly I'm learning a lot about my own attitudes toward food. I'm afraid of my ignorance of what food is and where it comes from. Weird notion, but that's me.
Yes, yes, yes:
Identification and profiling don't provide very good security, and they do so at an enormous cost. Dropping ID checks completely, and engaging in random screening where appropriate, is a far better security trade-off. People who know they're being watched, and that their innocent actions can result in police scrutiny, are people who become scared to step out of line. They know that they can be put on a "bad list" at any time. People living in this kind of society are not free, despite any illusionary security they receive. It's contrary to all the ideals that went into founding the United States. -- from Bruce Schneier 's IDs and the illusion of security
So we saw the new Lord of the Rings , and realized about half way through that although the LOTR films are spectacular, wonderfully-rendered, and tasteful as hell, they are not really great films. No one is going to watch them twenty years from now. They'll resemble Bible epics of the fifties, or big-budget musicals of the late sixties: craftsmanlike but hopelessly tethered to their era. I mean, when was the last time you watched The Robe or Hello Dolly ? They aren't interesting to us now; they were "must-sees" in their day. Maybe Hollywood will always have movies like that, movies which are more about the shared experience of seeing movies than about the film actually being projected. Since the end of the studio system, the industry has relied on bigger and bigger "events" to draw people away from TV, and the advent of the post- Jaws blockbuster only sharpened that kind of marketing/distribution.
Nothing against Frodo, mind you, he and Sam were so bra
Since Georgia is about to ban the use of "evolution" in school ("replacing it with the phrase 'biological changes over time.'"), I have taken the time to highlight some other terms that America can do without, and the text that can replace them:
instead of gravity : "altitude change because there's a magnet inside the earth"
instead of star : "twinkling diamond in God's crown"
instead of horizon : "place where you fall over the edge"
Things I need to learn more about in 2004:
Use of primary keys to prevent duplicates
HTTP and TCP/IP
Creating mySQL index types of the right size
Importing and exporting mySQL data (i.e. without using a GUI)
Screen scraping with Perl
Drawing graphs with Perl
Database-generated DHTML menus
And I want to learn a lot more Linux, that sort of goes without saying. And configuring my mia soundcard so that it does all the wonderful things it’s supposed to do
I'm suprised that Grover Norquist's "taxation = Holocaust" thing that Richard Cohen writes about today wasn't more widely reported. I definitely missed it.
We've seen a lot of "my enemy is looking like Hitler today" lately. I recall that the idea of containing Saddam was likened to the Munich appeasement. But now it's getting a little wackier. Of course, Howard Dean supporters are brownshirts (how did I miss that?). And "neoconservative" is code for "Jew," which is also a new one . So anything is possible. I guess I'm just naive.
The more I learn about John Lennon, the more I find myself obsessing about his drug use, specifically where and when. Was he high when he recorded the vocal on "Tomorrow Never Knows"? Yeah, probably. He was definitely high when he met the queen. And during most of his adulterous courtship with Yoko. And while the recording White Album . And for most of the early seventies. OK, so most of his adult life he was either drunk or high. So I keep wondering: at which moments was he sober,and were those (as the Beatles' trip to India suggests) more productive than the other (high) ones? Was he straight when he recorded "I Found Out"? He sounds really mad, in a way you can't get when you're loaded. Or is that just who he was?
I'm looking at my new "The Early Beatles" wall calendar. January is, as you would guess, a shot of the four lads, approximately Please Please Me -era. Looking at John's eyes, I'm thinking, "dude, your eyes... y