Let’s hear it for traditional media
Wow, a month between updates? Amazing. Doubly so, considering that it’s less than a year to Election Day.
Last weekend I took some time to prune my RSS and Twitter feeds. If we’ve exchanged emails or worked together, don’t worry — I was pruning people who didn’t know me and probably didn’t care whether or not I was following them anyway.
I read fewer weblogs, too. I am a shadow of my former social media self.
The problem with television
OK, time to get Hell out of the top slot here.
Yesterday I called and cancelled my satellite television, just like I said I was going to do in June. The plan is to use Netflix, iTunes, interesting podcasts, and maybe some DVD purchases and rentals for our evening entertainment.
Breast Cancer Awareness Cravings on Facebook
I remember in elementary school when a bunch of kids would come up with some sort of joke and decide not to let me in on it because I wasn’t cool enough. I thought those days were behind me, but thanks to Facebook I can live them again.
Go on ladies…and let’s have all the males guessing! It’s time to confuse the men again (not that it’s really that hard to do
) Everyone knows it makes their brains work wonders on what we’re talking about!! The idea is to choose the month you were born and the day you were born. Pass this on to the girls only and let’s see how far it reaches around.
That’s the newest “suggestive status” game in a chain that’s involved bra color and where you stow your purse. This one has people writing status messages like…
Continue reading “Breast Cancer Awareness Cravings on Facebook” »
Fatigue
Timothy Burke has a lot to say about political debate, some of which describes quite nicely how I feel about the issue at the moment. I don’t post as much about politics here any more because I don’t read as much about politics.
Here, I’ll let you read this:
Canceling the satellite
After being without cable television for several years we ordered satellite service when we moved into our house. When the two-year contract period is up, we’re going to cancel.
There’s actually nothing wrong with the transmission service that isn’t also wrong with, say, cell phone companies. They got the television signal reliably to our door. They came out and fixed problems on the rare occasions that we had them. That’s not the problem.
The problem is what they’re sending. I feel like I’m paying wine-of-the-month club rates for a six pack of miller and two cases of ding-dongs.
Bloody-mindedness
Sometimes it is better to mock than it is to approach with nuance. Thers of Whiskey Fire explains why:
One of the things I learned in grad school was that any argument about anything can be “won” if you’re willing to be bloody-minded enough … it takes acres, miles, tons, metric assloads of blogging to refute even the most obvious nonsense if you’re engaging with a seriously committed asshole. It’s a very heavy load.
Eight Years Ago…
And for very little payoff. It’s reduced my blogging somewhat, but before I start arguing (or posting) about bullshit I’ve overheard I’ve started asking myself a few questions. Like: Am I likely to persuade this person? Is anyone persuadable in the audience? Does the opinion I’m arguing against rise above paranoid fantasy?
If the answers to those are all “no”, I let it slide. It makes things a little more boring around here, I guess, but it does preserve my time quite a bit better, in that I no longer have to research things that someone with two functioning brain cells ought to be able to put together on their own.
Easier said
I don’t normally read Copyblogger, but I someone linked the “rule of 24” on Twitter and I was curious. So I clicked through. Copyblogger Larry Brooks starts badly:
Sometimes the biggest problems have the simplest solutions. Want to lose weight? Simple. Consume fewer calories than you burn each day. Improve Your Writing Overnight With The Rule of 24 – Guaranteed
>facepalm< If that’s Larry’s idea of a simple solution …
You simply can’t pick a better example of “easier said than done.”
This post was not written on an iPad
This post was not written on an iPad. You know this because the iPad cannot be used to create. Iit is merely a cynical content consumption device. So I certainly did not pair my bluetooth keyboard to the iPad, open up the WordPress app, and write this post.
Other things I did not do today with my iPad include beginning the wireframes for an iPad application on the iPad itself, because the iPad is merely a cynical content consumption device. I also did not do any research for anything I might write, or scope out scientific visualization applications, or download a fun drawing app for the Sprout to play around with.
I may feel as though I did all of these things, but I almost certainly did not. Because the iPad is a non-functional, silly, giant iPod Touch designed only for the consumption of content and not its creation and everyone with half a brain knows that.
I was also not sarcastic today. Not in the least.
Retire Ronald
There is a movement afoot to pressure McDonalds into getting rid of their mascot, ranking Ronald alongside Camel’s cartoon, the Marlboro Man, and Spudz.
I’m not a fan of commercials targeting children, but it happens. Are we really trying to make the fast food companies “more responsible?” Or are we just trying to find ways to make their lives difficult and their product unappealing? Looking over the “Retire Ronald” site I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.
I don’t think they think any advertisement of the product they sell would be responsible enough; I think they believe selling the product at all is irresponsible.
And while nicotine and alcohol are powerfully addictive drugs, I’m not convinced that fast food belongs in this category anyway. I mean, we limit the sale of those substances to minors. Are we going to make fast food joints adult only?
When I was little, Arby’s restaurants all had giant hat signs. Some still do. That was very appealing to me as a kid — maybe those need to go as well.
It’s not right to sanitize the culture for kids. It’s good to have some spaces that are completely ad free, but out there in the larger world kids and adults mingle. And kids eventually — assuming they’re not strangled by the Hamburgler — turn into adults. Adults who need to understand how to navigate in a world filled by manipulative messages and less-than-truthful advertising.
Shouldn’t we — parents and teachers — be teaching kids how to deal with these kinds of things instead? Critical thinking is a skill. The kids need some chance to practice it.
Should government get out of business?
Is it really true that the best thing the government can do for business is just get the hell out of the way? I don’t think so. I don’t think most businesses think that way either. I mean, the Republicans had a golden opportunity to operate that way for well over a decade, and yet we saw explosive growth both in government spending and in no-bid sweetheart deals going to private businesses like Haliburton.
Beyond infrastructure, government provides businesses with legal frameworks that protect them and their interests. Here are some of the things that government laws and regulation provide for businesses that they absolutely depend upon:
- Patent law
- Copyright law
- Enforcement of contracts
- Anti-corporate espionage laws
- Disclosure requirements for acquisitions and mergers
- Personal liability protection through incorporation
There’s also infrastructure they don’t have to worry about as much.
- Fire protection
- Police protection
- Transportation networks
- Water and sewer services
- The Internets
- Cheap and reliable mail service
And if you’re Wal-Mart (for example) you can pay your employees crappy wages and depend on the government to keep them healthy and fed enough to continue to work for your crap wages. (Wal Mart employees often still qualify for medicaid and other poverty-level government services).
Of course, there’s also all the wonderful regulatory laws that are great for keeping small operators from ever competing with you—broadcast regulatory law, for example, makes it really difficult for me to take on broadcast monopolies.
Just for the corruption value alone, if there was no government business would have to invent it. Which is—if you think about it—if not the reason government was invented in the first place, at least one of the reasons it still exists. Government is not a parasite on business. In fact, it’s often the other way around.