Month: January 2008

• The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry
  WIRED are still pretty solid Apple polishers, but this is still worth a read: the fact the Verizon and AT&T have both opened their networks confirms this was a game-changer.
  (tags: Apple wirelessphones markets business innovation iphone strategy technology)
• Five-Year-Old Boy Detained by the TSA
  but they were only following orders . . . .
  (tags: securitytheater risks airsafety politics)
• WTF?
  bewildering, to be sure. And an argument for the inheritance/estate tax, in any event. The only values he holds dear are the values of his holdings.
  (tags: taxation values wingnutwelfare hypocrisy corruption money arrogance)
• Because it works.
  Megan is who I would like to be when I grow up.
  (tags: values culture peace truth society)
• Daily Kos: Let’s have some fun in Michigan
  turnabout is fair play, and all that.
  (tags: 2008 electioneering politics)

[From Kashistan.JPG 642×650 pixels]

Theodore Deacon for the Seattle Opera Guild presents a preview of “Pagliacci” by Ruggero Leoncavallo. This Italian tragedy tells of the sufferings of a clown betrayed by his wife.
[From The Seattle Public Library: Branch Events]

This was interesting, if over-subscribed. The presenter said the library expected 15 people: I would guess 50-60 showed up. So the format of a guy presenting the story and talking through the musical highlights didn’t work as well as it might.
So many versions of this aria at iTunes, even the canonical recording by Caruso.
But I learned a few things regardless. Some of it was only peripheral to the music (Leoncavallo’s ego and temperament) but the idea of verismo opera, a slice of life with shorter songs, realistic (ie, common) characters, and best of all, blood, rings true to today.

[House Minority Leader Richard] DeBolt said there’s no argument: “Clear-cuts cause slides. That’s what happened in

our area.”

But he also said that other flood damage was caused by environmental protections, not logging practices. He said salmon-protection laws that require buffer zones of trees left standing near streams contributed to more flooding.

A habitat-conservation plan that was supposed to end long-standing environmental disputes around logging and salmon protection has been proved a “debacle,” he said.

“These are really important questions: Who comes first, the salmon or the humans?”

[From Politics | More talk coming on family leave | Seattle Times Newspaper]

When you hear someone make a proposition like that, a false choice, understand that they don’t give a flying $%^&*() about either option. They are a bought-and-paid-for tool of some vested interest. People and salmon co-existed for many years. The real choice is of salmon or institutional practices that destroy salmon habitat, disrupt their life cycle, and in some cases kill them as they swim, either through hydropower turbines or in irrigation ditches in eastern Washington farmland.

Am I the only one who thinks that Sony is like the anti-Apple? Apple takes average technology and puts a shiny UI on it, and people line up to hand over money that Apple has no reason demanding without wearing a mask and holding a gun. Sony, OTOH, takes the shiniest technology, puts an average face and cheap price tag on it, and then acts like the customers wear masks and wave guns.

[From Why It Won’t Work]

To me, “sustainability” means a situation in which your descendants are able to confront their own problems, rather than the ones you exported to them. If people a hundred years from now are soberly engaged with phenomena we have no nouns and verbs for, I think that’s a victory condition.

On the other hand, if they’re thumbing through 1960s Small World paperbacks and saying “thank goodness we’ve finally managed to pare our lives back exclusively to soybeans and bamboo,” well, that’s not the end of the world, but it’s about as appealing as a future global takeover by the Amish. [From Why We Love Bruce Sterling]

Speaking of petty, vacuous journalists acting like giddy munchkins,

Edwards — who, just one week ago, was 10 points behind Obama nationally among Democrats — is now only two points behind him. Less than a month ago, he trailed Clinton by 29 points. Now it’s 13 points. He is, by far, at his high point of support nationwide. Apparently, the more exposure Democratic voters get to Edwards and his campaign positions — and that exposure has been at its high point during his surge — the more they like him. By contrast, Obama is more or less at the same level of support nationally, even having decreased some since his Iowa win (for most of mid-Decemeber, he was at 27-28 points).
Yet to listen to media reports, Edwards doesn’t even exist. His campaign is dead. He has no chance. They hate Edwards, hate his message, and thus rendered him invisible long ago, only now to declare him dead — after he came in second place in the first caucus of the campaign.

[From Glenn Greenwald – Political Blogs and Opinions – Salon]

This whole idea of making the facts fit the narrative doesn’t end with pointless wars in the desert, apparently.