| This year in journalism clichés |
[Dec. 23rd, 2011|01:00 pm] |
Politics: It was a year of "he said, she said" partisan bickering on Capitol Hill, with both sides of the aisle scoring political points, but there were no game changers, and it's too soon to pick winners and losers in the upcoming 2012 campaign. A parade of flavor-of-the-month Republican front-runners enjoyed a spike in the polls, but lacked staying power and struggled to reboot their lagging campaigns in time for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.
International: In cities around the world, long-suffering people took to the streets in peaceful protests against ruthless dictators. Facing brutal government crackdowns and media blackouts, they fought back with trending tweets and viral videos. In war-torn Afghanistan, most-wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden was slain in a midnight raid on his clandestine compound in the military stronghold of Abbottabad.
Business: It was a roller coaster ride on Wall Street, with profit-taking and sell-offs on mixed signals from leading indicators. Long-term joblessness due to the Great Recession dragged on, while in the Eurozone, diplomatic wrangling stalled talks over the beleaguered Greek economy. AT&T announced a blockbuster merger with T-Mobile USA, but regulatory hurdles left the fourth-largest carrier alone at the altar.
Celebrity: It was a year of fairy-tale weddings for some stars, heartbreak for others. Troubled celebrities Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen had brushes with the law and faced the court of public opinion, while other household names turned their fame to worthwhile causes, speaking out and raising consciousness.
(Ed. Note: The toughest challenge in compiling this was using the mother of all clichés, "roller coaster ride," only once.) |
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| Steve Jobs: So long, and thanks for all the bicycles |
[Oct. 5th, 2011|10:55 pm] |
 "Bicycles for the mind" was a phrase Steve Jobs used often in the early days of the Macintosh. The human body is not a very efficient machine. Horses, dogs, even giraffes use energy much more effectively to move around, leaving people somewhere down near the three-toed sloth. But put a human on a bicycle, and he shoots to the top of the list.
That was how he saw technology. Those of us who are old enough will remember all the buzz about "home computers" in the early '80s; the usual question was, "what would I do with one?" and the usual answer, "manage accounts and organize recipes." Even the folks who were most enthusiastic about computers still saw them merely as machines to calculate and collate.
Jobs was the first person to look at computers as a means to do things that we already wanted to do and things that we didn't know we wanted to do, and bring that to fruition. A bicycle for the mind. Twenty years ago, who looked at a computer and saw a video editing rig? A recording studio? A movie theater? A movie studio?
The remarkable thing about Steve Jobs, unique among technology pioneers of the time, wasn't just that he had a clear and compelling vision; it was remarkable that he had one at all. His rival, Bill Gates, made his goal "a computer on every desk," but didn't seem to know why.
In the products he brought to market, at Apple, NeXT and Pixar, Steve Jobs saw the engineer's pursuit of efficiency and the artist's passion for elegance as essentially the same thing. Under his leadership, the goal of Apple's products was in itself elegantly efficient: "It just works."
This is not to paint him in beatific terms, as some sort of high-tech Bodhisattva. He was, by the accounts of many who worked with him, kind of an asshole. That is the price of having a clear vision and dragging others along.
The fruits of that vision are far, far greater than Apple, impressive as that would be all by itself. Look at desktop computers before the Macintosh and after. At music players before the iPod and after. Music sales before iTunes and after. Smartphones before the iPhone and after. Tablet computers before the iPad and after.
In all of those technologies, Apple wasn't the first player in the game, but Apple drew a sharp line where everything changed. No one since Henry Ford has changed his industry more profoundly and enriched more lives than Steve Jobs, and whether you have a Mac, Windows or Linux on your desk, an iPod or a Sanza hooked to those earbuds, an iPhone or an Android in your pocket, you're carrying a bit of his legacy. Not too shabby. |
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| Why Redbox should buy Qwixter |
[Sep. 22nd, 2011|03:00 am] |
In spinning off its DVD delivery business, Netflix is clearly betting on the decline of DVDs. It's hard to argue against that long arc of the technological universe, but it's going to be a long time before everyone has broadband with sufficient speed and high enough caps to make streaming or downloading attractive. Rights-holders also make streaming a fragmented mess, with movies and TV shows split between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, and cable company and satellite pay-per-view.
Blockbuster was killed by a convergence of forces -- Netflix and other streaming sites among the technorati, Netflix DVD delivery for the cinephile set looking for obscure films, Redbox at the other end of the technological and pop-culture spectrum. No doubt the woes of the USPS, and the likelihood of less frequent deliveries and higher postage in the future, weighed in the decision as well.
So what if you could merge the convenience of Redbox with the depth of Qwixter? Picture this: You put a movie at the top of your queue. If your movie is at a nearby Redbox kiosk, the site tells you where, and you reserve it; if not, you specify where you want it sent, and you get a notification when it's there. When you return your movie, you can opt to snag one of the unreserved movies at the kiosk or wait for the next movie in your queue to be sent (or both, if you have a >1 disk at a time plan).
The only question I can't find an answer to is how often Redbox re-stocks its kiosks. If it's daily, or even every other day, then the distribution mechanism is in place to make it at worst a little bit slower than Qwixter. There's also the Jetsons solution, with movies deliverable in hours instead of days: Outfit Redbox kiosks with a DVD burner that dispenses self-destructing Flexplay discs. |
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| Is this democracy? No, it's Iowa. |
[Aug. 13th, 2011|12:43 pm] |
This weekend is one of the cherished quadrennial rituals of our democracy. Every media outlet from CNN to Beanie Babies Quarterly* has a satellite truck in Ames, Iowa, so that their reporters can do four live shots an hour on how irrelevant the Straw Poll is.
The straw poll is an easily rigged, endlessly gamed non-event that has a historically poor record of predicting who wins the Iowa caucuses, which are themselves a poor predictor of who gets the presidential nomination. I know this because CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, AEIOU(Y), Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, I Can Has Cheezburger, and BBQ* told me so. They also provided in-depth investigative pieces on who has the coolest tent (air conditioning is a big thing), and -- because it is a statutory requirement when a reporter goes to a state fair -- what kinds of crazy shit people are coating in batter and deep-frying these days.
This year, all of the buzz is over the new candidate who isn't there (Rick Perry, off declaring in South Carolina); the putative front-running candidate who is there but not participating (Mitt Romney, at the Iowa State Fair so he can rally his supporters to get out and not vote); and the non-candidate whose never-ending bus vacation serendipitously turns up wherever cameras are (do you really need to ask?). Then there is the field of sort-of contenders who are mostly interesting because some will likely become non-candidates after today's non-event. And Thad McCotter, whose name no one knows, which is a pity because it's a pretty cool name.
We face daunting challenges in This Greatest Nation on God's Green and Fecund Earth, and we need serious people to lead us in this time of trial. When the candidates scramble over each other to pander to the tea party faction of the Republican base, treating "tax" is such a dirty word that small nails are eyed with great suspicion, it's important to have the Fourth Estate on the case to ask the hard question: "Have you tried the fried butter on a stick?"
* I made Beanie Babies Quarterly up. If it actually exists, don't tell me. |
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| Intended consequences |
[Jun. 30th, 2011|12:16 pm] |
For a century after the Civil War, Southern politicians found no end of clever ways to keep black people from voting. Rather than fight head-on against the proposition that black citizens were, in fact, citizens, they devised "simple" restrictions like grandfather clauses, poll taxes and literacy tests, which they could use to keep blacks from voting while claiming, farcically, that wasn't their intention.
Taking a page from that noble history, anti-choice state legislators are passing regulations clearly intended to make abortion legal on paper but impossible in practice. In Kansas, the state where Dr. George Tiller was shot to death in church, the three clinics that perform abortions will have to close on July 1 unless they can comply with new "safety" regulations. These rules are uniquely applied to abortion; they do not apply if you go to a Kansas hospital for a heart-lung transplant.
The room where abortion procedures are performed must be at least 150 square feet. It must have a closet for janitorial supplies at least 50 square feet(!). The procedure room must have a temperature between 68 and 73 degrees, and the recovery room must have a temperature between 70 and 75 degrees.
Read that last one again. Assuming that these clinics don't have separate climate control systems for each room, the clinic has to maintain a temperature between 70 and 73°F. Any clinic that manages to jump through all the hoops -- and these are just a few highlights -- can have a license denied or revoked if a committed anti-abortion inspector holds the door open long enough to shift the temperature a couple of degrees.
Care to guess which political party passed this law? That's right. The one that promotes itself as the party of smaller government and fewer regulations. |
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| On eras and their ends |
[May. 12th, 2011|03:20 am] |
This American Life has a story on college students' celebrations of Osama Bin Laden's death. The gist of the piece was that these "millennials" have little memory of a time before 9/11; killing Osama took out their lifelong boogeyman. A student interviewed for the piece talked about her sister, who was in utero on Sept. 11, 2001, and would never know the fears she'd lived with for the last decade.
Nor, the piece implied, could we old folks understand. "It happened to us," one student said, in a statement of youthful narcissism with a grain of truth; for us, 9/11 was the beginning of a "new normal". For them, it's been just "normal."
But as I was listening, it dawned on me that I did get it. I got it because when I was that age, I was watching kids my age dance on top of the wall that split Berlin and the world into mutually hostile halves. I had never known a time without the threat of the communist menace and nuclear annihilation. In 1989, or certainly by 1991, I knew that my hypothetical kids would never know that fear. I liked the thought.
Forty-odd years before that, our grandparents' generation breathed a satisfied sigh, because the horrors of world war and the crushing despair of the Great Depression would never be visited on their children. They responded by having a staggeringly huge number of them.
The observation that this has happened before is followed, sadly but inevitably, by the realization that it will happen again. The Baby Boomers had a seemingly endless war and the looming dread of the draft, fears they escaped in a flood of sex and drugs. My generation had no draft and wars that were over in time for halftime at the next Super Bowl, but the sex and drugs would kill you. There was scarcely a decade between the fall of the Communist menace and the rise of the jihadist one.
The death of Osama bin Laden is not, of course, the end of terrorism. We knew nine and a half years ago that there would be no V-T day. Terrorism would not sign an instrument of surrender on the deck of a battleship. But a clandestine burial at sea is as good a place as any we will get to draw a line across the years, to say to the next generation, you, thank the gods, will never know what it was like. You will, no doubt, have your own fears, but you will not inherit ours.
One warm night, twenty or thirty years from now, I will be listening to a This Venusian life neurocast on my iPons cerebral implant. Iraglass 3.0 will interview a college-age kid. And she will be rejoicing because her children will never know the fear of rampaging zombie hordes. |
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| I see a pattern here ... |
[Feb. 8th, 2011|02:15 pm] |
Item: The "Protect Life Act," HR358, would allow hospital emergency rooms to refuse to terminate a pregnancy -- even if that refusal kills the pregnant woman. This would be, as far as I know, the first law that allows refusal of life-saving care in the name of "conscience," let alone in the name of "protecting life."
Item: Fueled by yet another wave of fraudulent hidden-camera videos, House Republicans are on the warpath against Planned Parenthood. PP offers cancer screening, HIV tests, contraception and advice on same -- and abortions, which account for 3% of their activities. That 3% is what matters to the House Republicans, who are pressing to cut off funding to PP and have not suggested an alternative provider for the other 97% of their services.
Item: The "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," HR3, has had one noxious provision cut out -- one that would fund abortions to victims of "forcible rape" but not, you know, all those friendly rapes. Still in the bill: Employers whose insurance plans cover abortion would lose their tax deduction, with the (intended) result that employers won't offer abortion coverage.
Item: During the lame-duck session of Congress in December, House Republicans killed a bill that would have committed the US to fight child marriages. The bill passed the Senate unanimously, but House Republicans feared that the NGOs receiving grants might fund abortions.
Conclusion: Republicans are perfectly willing to restrict women's access to health care in the name of restricting access to abortion. |
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| Remember the real victims |
[Jan. 17th, 2011|01:36 pm] |
Stung by criticism of aggressive political discourse, the right wing has reacted by aggressively playing the victim.
Sarah Palin is the target of a "blood libel"; the Washington Times describes the reaction as part of an "ongoing pogrom"; Pat Buchanan describes Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as targets of a "lynch mob."
Surely, no race in the whole sweep on human history has suffered as the right-wing talking heads have suffered. Where are the memorials? Where are the museums? Where is the day of remembrance? Where are the names carved in black granite?
On this day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., who was merely persecuted and murdered, where are the bitter tears for the millionaire white gentile pundits who have suffered the bitter sting of ... SHARP CRITICISM?
We must all do our small part to help the oppressed, to bring some light and comfort into their bleak, dark mansions. I suggest buying Ann Coulter's next book, which will no doubt be titled "GENOCIDE" in blood-dripping all caps. |
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