?uestlove Has a Twitter Feed
Posted on February 5th, 2010 at 5:00 pm by Steve

?uestlove has a Twitter photo feed: http://twitpic.com/11d07s.

That is all.

Everything is OK!
Posted on February 3rd, 2010 at 4:29 pm by dr.hoo

“We are born alone, we die alone, and we use the Internet alone”
Posted on January 26th, 2010 at 1:08 am by Steve


Christine Smallwood, writing at the Baffler blog, examines the question, “What Does the Internet Look Like?” It’s a long way from the question to the answer, and the journey is well worth it.

After noting that many visions of the Internet rely on images of connectedness, she explores the essentially solitary nature of the Internet search:

We are born alone, we die alone, and we use the Internet alone. You may gather round the screen with friends to watch a video clip (turning the Internet into a television), or hang out while you play music on Pandora (turning the Internet into a radio), or post to your blog, or “comment” on someone else’s blog (turning the Internet into a roundtable, or a bathroom wall, depending). But these are subsidiary Internet uses. The essence of the Internet, the thing it does that nothing else can do, its Internet-ness, is the search. Comedian Dave Chappelle captured this with the skit “If the Internet Were a Real Place,” in which he loitered in a seedy mall like a modern Odysseus, ransacking CD stores, ducking into curtained rooms to indulge various temptations, and running away from spammers. Wandering around the Internet, the thing we are always searching for is the door—the exit ramp off the superhighway, the way home. But it’s hard to find. How do you know when you’re done doing nothing?

Please, read the whole thing.

(h/t to Dr. Hoo for noting that Thomas Frank is one again producing The Baffler in print!)

CES circa 1983
Posted on January 11th, 2010 at 2:54 pm by dr.hoo

With all the news chatter on the recent CES in vegas, here’s a look at some of the hottest technologies from 1983

I Know It’s Gauche to Quote Oneself, But…
Posted on December 22nd, 2009 at 9:03 pm by Steve

…I just can’t resist. This is something I wrote right here on this here blog-o-thingy waaaaaaaay back in October of 2008:

the Democratic Party is happy to use the efforts of thousands of dedicated volunteers to elect their candidate; don’t expect the Democrats to return the favor, when those thousands of people are demanding mortgage relief, welfare payments, and health care. The Democrats have demonstrated, time and time again, that they are firmly on the side of the corporate masters, and against the people.

I’m hopeful that, with so many people getting experience in organizing their fellow citizens during the Obama campaign, we’ll find it easier to work together to bring about greater economic and social justice. The big difference will be that, instead of working with the support of the Democratic party, we’ll be “out in the cold,” working against the entire corporate-political juggernaut. If you think it’s hard to fight the Republicans with the Democrats on your side, wait until they’ve ganged up on you!

Indeed. Even though Obama campaigned on a promise of a “public option” for healthcare coverage, the new Democratic bill contains no provision for a public option, no early Medicare buy-in, no cost controls on doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers, or insurance companies. Worst of all, Obama actually told the Washington Post this week, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”

In other words: we were sold a bill of goods. Obama’s campaign website promised “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan,” but now he denies ever having made such a promise. And the entire Democratic establishment is now turning on anyone who criticizes the bill; Glenn Greenwald takes note of what he calls the swarm of White House operatives, media professionals, and bloggers who deride

the bill’s progressive critics as insane [David Axelrod], crazy [Five-Thirty-Eight’s Nate Silver], childish [Time’s Joe Klein], idiotic and drugged-out, [CNBC “reporter” John Harwood] Naderite, purist [TPM’s Josh Marshall] liars [Ezra Klein] who — we now learn today — are the equivalent of “global warming denialists.” [Nate Silver again]

It’s like 2003 all over again, except the mud being slung is blue instead of red.

Obama also promised to run the most transparent administration in American history. He said that all of his healthcare negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN. Instead, he met in secret with pharmaceutical company executives and promised them there would be no cost controls on prescription drugs and no plan to allow the reimportation of medicines from abroad. In fact, this new bill even extends the patent protection on prescription drugs to 12 years, with an additional 12 years offered any time a change is made to the drug.

While the so-called “left” sees betrayal and a complete evisceration of real healthcare reform, the health insurance industry (and their investors) see a major windfall. Here are their stock prices since October 27, 2009 (the date that Holy Joe Lieberman pledged to filibuster any bill that included a public option):

The Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasiripour has all the details, including this summary of the numbers:

  • Coventry Health Care, Inc. is up 31.6 percent;
  • CIGNA Corp. is up 29.1 percent;
  • Aetna Inc. is up 27.1 percent;
  • WellPoint, Inc. is up 26.6 percent;
  • UnitedHealth Group Inc. is up 20.5 percent;
  • And Humana Inc. is up 13.6 percent.

I don’t post this to be cynical; I post this to remind myself and those few who might read this that national electoral politics are not the main avenue by which we can transform our lives and our world. No president, no matter how well-intentioned, can wrest control of the state from the hands of Wall Street and their symbionts in the Pentagon.

The Imperial Conquest of Wall Street
Posted on December 22nd, 2009 at 8:06 pm by Steve

Come to think of it, this would explain the $700 BILLION bailout of the banking sector…

You Were Hoping For…?
Posted on December 9th, 2009 at 11:34 am by Steve

HMO stocks rise as public option wanes in US reform

NEW YORK, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Shares of U.S. health insurers rose on Wednesday after efforts to overhaul the health system moved away from creating a government-run insurance plan long viewed as damaging to the industry.

That Reuters dispatch tells you all you need to know about the Democrats’ scuttling of the already-watered-down “Public Option.”

My belief in the utility of national electoral politics remains nearly nonexistent. Current events have done nothing to modify that opinion.

Bad service? There’s an app for that!
Posted on December 8th, 2009 at 4:07 pm by Mutt

AT&T recently posted a new app, “AT&T Mark the Spot,” which allows iPhone customers to use GPS to report the location of their dropped calls, poor voice quality, and so on.  (Via CNet News.)

I have to say that I’m on the fence about it.  On one hand, it is an acknowledgment that they need to improve their network, and actually a very clever way of optimizing their efforts.  On the other hand, I really hate systems that push the burden of poor service back onto customers.  I suppose that, as these kinds of efforts go, this is pretty innocuous.  It’s certainly better than selling customers IP-based femtocells, which I believe amounts to charging cellphone customers for the privilege of building out a network that they’re already paying to use.

What’s your opinion?

Wait, Those Weren’t Suggestions?
Posted on November 19th, 2009 at 4:50 pm by Steve

Mahatma Gandhi’s “Seven Deadly Sins” sound more like the Mission Statement for the leaders of the transnational corporations that dominate our society!

1. Wealth Without Work
2. Pleasure Without Conscience
3. Knowledge Without Character
4. Commerce Without Morality
5. Science Without Humanity
6. Religion Without Sacrifice
7. Politics Without Principle

Produce! Produce! Produce!
Posted on November 13th, 2009 at 12:04 am by Steve

No, that’s not a green grocer chanting… that’s friend of the blog MK, in an earlier incarnation as high school TV production teacher. This photo’s for him:

(For the record, that’s a billboard takeover in the UK by mob ster.)

Yeah, I saw it on The Daily What. Didn’t you?

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