NY Times: “Google sometimes operates in a way that almost seems to invite legal scrutiny.” 
I’ve now had HD for about a month now, and it’s a life-changer. I know it sounds weird, but you look at the world differently. The Discovery channel has really jumped on HD, they have a channel called HD Theater that is at least partly a travelogue, they sent crews around the world to take pictures in all kind of exotic places. And you sit there with your jaw on the floor, the pictures are so vivid, they’re even more colorful than reality, and they take you places you could never go on on your own, to mountain tops, underwater in a manatee swamp in Florida. And even prosaic places are beautiful. Yesterday they had a camera on a cow farm in Vermont. No voice track, no narration, just the sounds of nature and cows grazing. Incredibly captivating. This is TV as a meditation medium. Very different and very interesting.
Inside Google: “Ze Frank decided to help monetize his vlog by letting readers buy digital rubber duckies and other things on his pages, but Google did not approve.”
Highly recommend this Frontline report on Karl Rove from 2005. There’s a very distinct pattern to a Rove campaign, and it’s interesting to think how Rove is not in charge of the 2006 mid-term election, at least so far. It’s possible that the Democrats watched this show too, it helps explain why the Foley scandal is a the perfect antidote to Rove.
“Surrender and wave the white flag,” is the Rove slogan for this election. George Stephanopoulos asked the President to name a single Democrat who wants to surrender and wave a white flag. Hemm and haw. Thanks, that’s the right question. What a fucking coward. Why can’t we have an election where we talk about something other than Karl Rove’s marketing slogan. Bill Frist used the term on CNN later in the morning. Republicans are chicken.
October 22, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for the Frontline link.
I have always been interested in politics. I took many political science classses in the couple of years of college I had, and even now, my subscription list includes political links that I consistently read first.
Still – no – even more so, from my college years to now (in my 50’s) I believe the electorate deserves the politicians *they* put in office.
.
October 22, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Good old analog tv can be quite thrilling too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards
Enjoy
October 23, 2006 at 3:27 am
Re: newspapers and the internet
I recall being taught in elementary school that a newspaper article is supposed to answer six questions. Some things have changed since I was a kid, and the most important one is the internet. So I’d like to suggest that the traditional list of six should be expanded to seven: who, what, where, when, why, how and URL. For all I know, those traditional six questions are the journalistic equivalent of the Eskimos’ snow words, so let me put it more directly: reporters and editors, give me the *!%&@ URLs!*
Here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003696.html
October 23, 2006 at 10:09 am
Hmmm the jump from PAL to HD isn’t as great, every trip i’ve had to the states I always wondered why you put up with such poor quality tv for so long…