Call me a grumpy old codger, but I liked the old way better. For one thing, I used to have at least a rudimentary idea of how a newspaper got produced: On deadline, drunks with cigars wrote stories that were edited by constipated but knowledgeable people, then printed on paper by enormous machines operated by people with stupid hats and dirty faces.

via The Washington Post

Ian Bremmer’s The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? is on the top of my reading list.

Festival in the Forest

This doc, directed by Alexander Klein, chronicles a 2008 fest in California’s Big Sur forest and includes performances from Beach House and Silver Jews.

via Pitchfork

Apps sparkle like sapphires and emeralds for people bored by the junky nondesign of monster sites like Yahoo, Google, Craigslist, eBay, YouTube and PayPal.

Virginia Heffernan, NYT

A few months ago, NYT editorialist Thomas Friedman summarized the Beijing Consensus concept:

The Beijing Consensus, says Bennhold, is a “Confucian-Communist-Capitalist” hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state, with a lot of government guidance, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that is capable of making tough choices and long-term investments, without having to heed daily public polls.

The analogy fits IMHO. Moreover, the analogy begs more insightful discussion than the shrill Doctorow or glib Gruber conversations.

Simply cannot be overstated.

“…Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.” – Walt Mossberg

Exactly.

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

via Wikipedia

via Philip Eddolls

Hi Rob,

The “stuff video” made a strong point about toxins in plastic etc. I thought that you would be pleased to know that your support of the Obama team is being felt in the world of food and drug containers. According to our consultants who do testing for the device and pharmaceutics industry, testing requirements for toxins in polymers have been strengthened in a major way. Under the Bush administration, for polymers with a history such as silicone rubber or titanium, we would put the material under the skin of a rabbit for 90 days and look for inflammation and redness. For plastics that had never been used before in the body, there are a comprehensive list of chronic toxicology and carcinogenicity tests conducted with cells or with living subjects. However, there was no required analytical chemistry component in any of these regulations.

However with the Obama administration we are now required to supplement the biology testing with very sensitive chemical analytical methods. There is an FDA mandated process for leaching all potential “extractable” materials out of the plastic (things like unreacted monomer, additives for mold flow) and then studying each of these extractables for toxic effects. The combination of biologic and chemical analytical methods is a much better way to assure that plastics do not carry toxic chemicals into the body.

Just wanted you to know that your very active support of the current administration has had a practical (albeit expensive) effect. We just came out of a meeting discussing our corporate position on this requirement and we are embracing it. It is the right thing to do.

Maybe there is hope,
[name]

Tremendous.

She replied, “Oh, the interpretive dance of typing.”

“Exactly”, I said, loving her more.

To the Editor:

By means of two legal fictions, that corporations are people and money is speech, the Roberts court has turned America from a democracy to a plutocracy.

Norman N. Holland
Gainesville, Fla., Jan. 22, 2010

And the runner-up:

To the Editor:

The justices have affirmed a core principle of Republican government: one dollar, one vote.

Stephen Bowles
Santa Barbara, Calif., Jan. 22, 2010

The effect of doing so underscores the iTablet’s disruptive educational innovation, bringing Wikipedia and Web to the fingertips of tiny hands, and creates a moral imperative to overlook the cost premium by consumers vis-a-vis substitutes.

The Tablet isn’t (thankfully) a computer or a phone; the Tablet is the bridge across the digital divide that is as much generational as economic. Apple would be well served to market it as such.

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Best line:

“One of the hot topics today is Twitter, but when we first went into the field and began interviewing, Twitter didn’t exist,” Ms. Rideout said.

via NYT