While funny it does make me sad. See The Daily Show’s take on George Bush’s take on Russia invading Georgia (the country)
PS- why does my hosting provide have a blog config that still prevents me from using embeds? This + my inability to influence NS and layouts may actually drive me away from this hosting provider.
Well- another year in my life has passed and it has been a good one. Here are a few of the highlights and you can read the older posts should you care about additional details:
Ah, it was a good year.
I can’t believe that May is done. It has been a bit of a whirlwind with birthdays (my brother and nephew to name two), people having kids or finding out they will have one (Mai & Peter, Amelia and Ben, Jen and Chad, and more that aren’t announced yet), goodbye dinners (J Scott and Carol, several for Lily, Jonny from Current, Eric Nordby from Current, and many others), work projects, and Alice wrapping up work.
There are a few things I wanted to blog but haven’t had the time for unique posts:
OK- that’s enough. Time to watch BSG and then get some sleep. Coffee with Alex @ 9AM is going to come very soon!
Have you seen this article about the right-wing cacophony that drove Dunkin Donuts to drop an ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf that was characterized as a keffiyeh:
“The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad”
The final paragraph of the article is craziness. I am happy to not know the crazy pundit they quote but this is a shocking level of pandering:
For her part, Malkin was pleased with Dunkin’s response: ‘‘It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.’’
Come on. Rachael Ray wouldn’t knowingly symbolize something related to a jihad. I think we all known this, right? Is anyone seriously calling her an apologist for jihadists?
Yeah yeah… I know after 8 years we’re all getting bored of discussing all the crap going on with this administration but apathy is the enemy (ok, one of many enemies) that keeps us from being shocked into action. How does this stuff keep happening? Because we let it. This week marked the 5th anniversary of the “Mission Accomplished” debacle. At this point my assumption is that we’ll be learning of the ways that this administration considers itself above the law for years to come.
I think it all started when went into Iraq to punish Al Queda… the two weren’t linked but this is what the government used as the justification for the action they wanted to take. I’m just glad Bush doesn’t have a grudge against CA or I might be living in a post-Katrina style refugee camp.
Check out this post called, “Congratulations, America … Children are Being Tortured in Your Name” and then tell me what you think. Here is the text of the post:
Congratulations, America … Children are Being Tortured in Your Name
Over the last 24 hours, news about U.S. torture has been leaking out:
- A former prisoner testified to Congress that he was beaten, hung by his arms for five days, subjected to electrical shocks and, “They stuck my head into a bucket of water and punched me in the stomach,” he said. “I inhaled the water. … It was a strong punch.”
- The FBI was so disturbed at what they saw at Guantanamo that FBI staff created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel at Guantanamo. For example, the head of the FBI’s national security law unit wrote in July 2003: “Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war”
- The U.S. military not only tortured prisoners for themselves, but also did the “dirty work” of “softening up” prisoners for Chinese interrogators
The U.S. has also tortured prisoners to death in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
Not bad enough for you?
Well, the U.S. has imprisoned 2,500 children since 9/11 as “enemy combatants”, in violation of the Geneva Convention against classifying children as POWs.
Still not disgusted?
Okay . . . Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh says that the U.S. Government has videotapes of boys being raped at Abu Ghraib prison (see also this and this).
This doesn’t come as a complete surprise, given that assistant deputy Attorney General John Yoo has publicly argued that the president can order the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
Congratulations, America. This is being done in your name.
If you’re not sick to your stomach by learning that your government has been killing and torturing people - including children - then you are a psychopath or a pervert.
Don’t try to tell me that torture is a necessary evil. It is well-known by professional interrogators that torture doesn’t work. Experts on interrogation say that torture actually interferes with the ability to gather useful information.
Side note- I still don’t understand how Guantanamo Bay still exists in the current form. How are we, the leader of the free world, allowing American run prisons to exist on foreign soil specifically to prevent the rule of American law? It makes it hard for me to criticize China, Egypt and others when our country claims to be the standard bearer and then does the exact same thing. That kind of hypocrisy has to make it worse.
Also- please don’t miss out on the irony of the recent senate hearings where American companies that respect foreign law in the countries they do business are coming under fire. Cisco, Yahoo, Google and others are being grilled for turning over documents to the Chinese govt in accordance with the local law. It is a complex issue but where is the protection for Americans in America when the Bush administration asks phone companies for records and recordings of our calls?
Ugh… I just get so crazed when I think about this crap.
Wow… I’m learning all kinds of things in my old age. Check out this article about NIN frontman Trent Reznor and their recent online music offering.
It is fascinating that the music industry is still fighting the move forward even with all the benefits it brings (less physical waste, real time tracking and cross sale opportunities, …). Actually, I guess the one group that loses immediately is the music industry or at least the parts that measure their value in CD sales. Still, time to get on board and get creative. I always go back to the Lawrence Garfield (Danny DeVito) speech from the movie Other People’s Money:
[In response to Jorgy’s speech] Amen. And amen. And amen. You have to forgive me. I’m not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say “Amen” after you hear a prayer. Because that’s what you just heard - a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called “The Prayer for the Dead.” You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn’t say, “Amen.” This company is dead. I didn’t kill it. Don’t blame me. It was dead when I got here. It’s too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We’re dead alright. We’re just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure. You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let’s have the intelligence, let’s have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future. “Ah, but we can’t,” goes the prayer. “We can’t because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to them?” I got two words for that: Who cares? Care about them? Why? They didn’t care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, “We know times are tough. We’ll lower taxes, reduce water and sewer.” Check it out: You’re paying twice what you did ten years ago. And our devoted employees, who have taken no increases for the past three years, are still making twice what they made ten years ago; and our stock - one-sixth what it was ten years ago. Who cares? I’ll tell you. Me. I’m not your best friend. I’m your only friend. I don’t make anything? I’m making you money. And lest we forget, that’s the only reason any of you became stockholders in the first place. You want to make money! You don’t care if they manufacture wire and cable, fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You want to make money! I’m the only friend you’ve got. I’m making you money. Take the money. Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll be used productively. And if it is, you’ll create new jobs and provide a service for the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves. And if anybody asks, tell ‘em ya gave at the plant. And by the way, it pleases me that I am called “Larry the Liquidator.” You know why, fellow stockholders? Because at my funeral, you’ll leave with a smile on your face and a few bucks in your pocket. Now that’s a funeral worth having!
I got the quote from IMDB as well.
It is specifically this line that I love:
And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure. You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.
Earth to the music industry… love your buggy whips!
Look at this line from the article:
While Radiohead has declined to offer actual numbers from its “pay if you want” experiment, frontman Thom Yorke has stated that “in terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever.”
That’s awesome news for musicians. I want to support them and feel their work should be honored. I do not want to be porked while doing it though. And I love that choice is coming to the market.
Next up… movie studios! Time to look at the music industry and jump ahead 10 years.
The subtitle of this blog makes me wish I could include Lisa Stansfield’s “All around the world” as the soundtrack to the post.
Good luck to Heidema’s friend. I’m sure your experience will be very different than how Heidema will remember it happening.
I love articles like this ars technica article about Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails testing out different strategies for engaging fans online.
I think the thing that just crystallized for me is that it is obvious why Trent wants to engage his fans. He has fans. The record industry has no such fans and therefore feels free to punish the people who pay their salaries. At NECX each of our paychecks came in an envelope stamped, “brought to you by our customers” and my favorite bit of retail training I ever got was at Software ETC and went something like, “The customer may not always be right but they’re always the customer.”
Seems like the people who sell us music need to remember (or learn for the first time) both of those points or they will quickly find themselves without the pesky burden of customers.
I was reading this post from Seth Godin:
Ordinary is cheaper than you
The folks who answer the phone at information and the airlines aren’t folks any more. They’re computers.
And the person taking your order at the drive-through isn’t in the same state as you. They might not even be in the same country.
It’s now clear to employers everywhere that they can hire ordinary, perfectly-acceptable staff for a fraction of what they have to pay you to do the job.
In other words, if all the best you can do is ‘good enough’, then why on earth should I pay you the benefits and wages that it costs to get you to do that work
And I can offer one reason why. Henry Ford paid his people more than the lowest rate for a couple reasons not the least of which was so that they could afford the products he sold. We keep going for the lowest price in goods and service and we’re surprised that we’re unhappy with the quality. Ok, that’s like an immediate return on investment. But if we keep pushing these things lower and lower eventually we won’t be able to afford the low prices on low salaries.
Now, I understand the point of Seth’s post… be better than ordinary. I do think there are many ordinary folks out there who are getting caught in the lowest price at any cost war and it is taking us all down.
Well, I was sent this link to Sarah Silverman’s new video and my best friend said, “Did you immediately go and view the EuroTrip video? One lead me to the other.” Gotta love that Matt Damon being a good sport in both instances.
Fay- this and the EuroTrip video are not good for Chris or anyone under 18. That’s my disclaimer.
PS- YouTube rocks.