In her good story in The Washington Post, Amy Goldstein noted that nearly seven in ten Americans believe the mandate should be repealed. That’s hardly shocking, considering that the public was not told much about the mandate, why it was necessary, what would happen if it weren’t part of the deal, how they would fare under such requirements, and what the alternatives were.
Dec
14
2010
Wonder when the Supremes (the court, not the pop group) will weigh in on the health care law.
Dec
10
2010
So, Beck’s “9/12 Project” is canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material that a healthy society had mostly flushed out of its system more than a generation ago, and injecting it right back in again. Things that had hidden under stones are being dug up and re-released. And why? So as to teach us anew about the dangers of “spending and deficits”? It’s enough to make a cat laugh. No, a whole new audience has been created, including many impressionable young people, for ideas that are viciously anti-democratic and ahistorical. The full effect of this will be felt farther down the road, where we will need it even less.
Dec
09
2010
Just a crooner serenading the audience and doing other stuff.
The Doors keyboard player, Ray Manzarek, said that Morrison only pretended to expose himself during a concert in which he brought a lamb on stage and talked about having sex with it, before concluding that it was “too young”, grabbed a police officer’s hat and threw it into the audience, and told fans to “love your neighbour ‘til it hurts”.
Dec
09
2010
As long as the people who were young at that time still live, the songs of the Beatles will evoke that period as poignantly and heart-stabbingly as the music of other eras still draws tears to other eyes. And as long as the Beatles themselves were all still alive, as long as people could kid themselves that there might be a reunion a final concert, one more album, that time in history was itself, still a little bit alive.
Dec
09
2010
As noted in the LA Times blog post, the deal is sure to upset traditional cable TV, satellite TV, and telecom operators, all of whom see Netflix and Hulu as encroaching on their turf1. The Disney deal comes after earlier Netflix arrangements with NBCand Warner Bros. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the largest single shareholder in The Walt Disney Company, and serves on the company’s board of directors.
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Well, these “operators” need to put a lot more flexibility into what they offer. ↩
Sep
08
2010
Nike Plus iPhone app; so far, so good.
A gorgeous day for racewalking so I did a little over an hour on one of the local trails. That was a little over 4 miles, which is plenty given there’s a 10K race coming up. Don’t want to get stale for the races.
So I did try out the iPhone Nike Plus App on the walk. And I have to say it worked well. If it lost the GPS signal, I wasn’t aware of it. Comparing the distance kept by Nike Plus and the Polar watch and shoe pod came pretty close, so I think the app works. It does synch to the Nike Plus site, which doesn’t have as many features as the Runkeeper one. But, hey, the app works and Runkeeper doesn’t all the time.
I was hoping the geniuses who wrote the app would have figured out how to track without eating large amounts of battery. Alas, they haven’t. Maybe some other app will, or maybe it’s not even possible.
Sep
07
2010
Nike iPhone app; what have I got to lose?
There’s a new Nike Plus app for the iPhone. I’ll probably try it out; at $1.99 the price is right. I mean, what the hell, I’ve tried most of the GPS running apps for the iPhone. And I’ve found them all wanting in some way or other.
Usually, my objection is they lose the GPS signal. When that happens, of course, the app is not useful. Unless, that is, I want to run down my phone’s battery at the fastest possible rate.
Of all of them, Runkeeper in particular has broken my heart on more than one occasion. I remember one time I was using it to pace me in a race when it lost the GPS signal. That would be bad enough by itself, but Runkeeper doesn’t tell you it’s no longer updating the GPS. It just keeps going and going, reporting your time is getting worse and worse.
I did read somewhere that the Nike Plus app would even work without GPS. That’s what’s got me keen to try it. I don’t know if it would work off of cell towers or what. But if it does keep track when out of GPS, that alone would be worth two bucks.
Aug
15
2010
Is the New York Times going to start doing that? “If you like this story on Barack Obama, you’ll also love this one on Hilary Clinton!” JAY ROSEN: Yes, the web allows news producers to know much more about the people who are using the news and they can therefore incorporate that into what they suggest to you. But there’s a danger there because we don’t always know what we’re interested in until we’re presented with it.
Aug
13
2010
Maybe giving Tumblr a whirl again?
I’ve been using Posterous for the past year or so for my occasional blog posts. I’d forgotten about Tumblr, but this largely positive review in MacWorld has me rethinking. Maybe I’ll use both for a while.
Aug
12
2010
If the past several years in the shadow of a war against terrorism have taught us anything, it is that, once available, surveillance technologies rarely go unused, or un-abused.
Aug
05
2010
Not every president — not even every successful president — has this kind of versatility. But Obama’s monotone manner has worn poorly. During the primaries, his cool detachment highlighted Sen. John McCain’s alarming excitability. As president, Obama’s rhetorical range runs from lecturing to prickly — the full gamut from A to C. His speeches are symphonies performed entirely with a tin whistle and an accordion. To switch metaphors, Obama is a pitcher with one pitch. He excels only at explanation. Initially this conveyed a chilly competence. But as the impression of competence has faded, we are left only with coldness.
Jun
10
2010
In response, what has materialized is an almost frantic attempt to deliver as many ad impressions as possible alongside original copy on the Web. Some news sources and blogs do a better job than others, but many show no regard for the potential impact on the viewing and reading experience. The ad men have bullied their way into art direction and copy. In the fight to survive, the due respect that a quality piece of content deserves goes by the wayside.
Jan
28
2010
The iPad’s time is coming, but it may be very far ahead.
So, When Do You Plan To Use the iPad?
Yeah, well I’m not sure about that. Subscribe to a Twitter list of magazines or newspapers, and you hold your own newsstand in the palm of your hands. Just like on the iPhone, but you don’t go blind from reading it.
Of course, if every publication goes paywall, there’s going to be a problem with this idea.
