Archive for 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Yeah Yeah Yeah. The Beatles Are On iTunes
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 18, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, November 18th, 2010The long and winding road to digital music sales for the Beatles began with one Apple, and ends with another.
The word is that the day before yesterday, after a decade long wait, the Beatles catalog finally became available on iTunes. Should we care? Well, Todd Martens of the LA Times has some reasons why we shouldn’t. Personally, you won’t see me rushing to download a bunch of Beatles songs for a price 30% higher than anything else on iTunes. But I’m not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other; I prefer you think for yourself. Except you may have noticed I’m playing a little game of trying to sprinkle Beatles song titles into what I’m saying, because I’ll make money if you follow the links and buy something. After a few sentences, you’d think I’d be getting better at it, but clearly I’m not. So I will stop now. But that silliness I just engaged in is an example of something you might want to ponder. Releasing this material on iTunes really means only one thing. Revenue. And for whom? Certainly not the two Beatles that many would agree were the cool ones. And certainly not Michael Jackson, who owned half of the publishing rights. No, in my opinion, this is the big lumbering thud of the money tree of the old music industry falling. It’s ironic to ponder that without the business model that devoured the Beatles’ profits as artists and fueled the decades of legal wrangling over them, the Beatles would probably not have even existed, let alone become the legend that they now are. And then, you wouldn’t be able to buy every song over and over and over in endless re-re-releases including absurdities like a $299 Apple-shaped USB stick
Indian Microcredit Industry About To Collapse?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 17, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010In spite of the feelgood vibe associated with microfunding for the economically challenged people of the world, no-one’s going to be singing “Tiny Bubbles” if India’s massive microlending industry bubble bursts.
 Even with microlending, there are always strings attached. |
Wow. Just when I had stopped worrying about how the collapse of Ireland’s economy might trigger the broader collapse of the global economy (it turns out Ireland’s economy isn’t dead, it’s just resting ), now I have to worry about the collapse of India’s economy. After watching America’s banking system get gutted by smart rich guys loaning tons of money to people to buy houses they couldn’t afford, SOMEONE should have noticed the potential for the same to happen with the massive microcredit industry in India. The parallels are actually rather remarkable, except the consequences are much more dramatic. This Globe And Mail piece politely refers to how the poorly-regulated microloan industry in India has resorted to “usurious interest rates and coercive means” to operate. Meaning they’ve apparently been operating much like the local loan sharks everyone was happy to see them replace. This has led to suicides by microcredit-bankrupted individuals who are now being urged by Indian legislators to “strategically default”. Which then gives the banks a fright, because they’re exposed to the tune of $4 billion on all of this lending. The tragic thing on the human end of this scenario? The worst of these overextended borrowers who are choosing suicide as a solution may only owe as little as $2,000. Too bad the Gates Foundation and others didn’t speak up sooner about how the microcredit model was so flawed. For a refresher on how this sort of crisis can play out, see the graphic below. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Johnny Can’t Read
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 16, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010Or write. Or think critically. Or contribute anything useful to society. But will probably make a good foreclosure robosigner.
I’ve longed for years to arrive at this point in my life. The point where I begin the early stages of my planned curmudgeonliness, and spend all my time complaining about “young whipper-snappers”, and how “by golly, we didn’t do things that way in MY day“. As a ninth grade dropout who remains without a degree but would have loved a different life in which I had either had less arrogance or more firm guidance as a teen with an above-average IQ, I’ve spent much of my adult life lamenting the sad de-evolution of education. The focus on test-score-driven funding and the creation of “degree mills” has left us surrounded by an amazingly dumb and inarticulate group of 18 to 24-year-olds. It’s vaguely appropriate that they’re already being called Generation Z, because their brains are obviously snagging a few. The recent flap at UCF involving widespread cheating was telling enough in its own way, and I think it’s already common knowledge that the students of the last couple decades confuse learning with the relocation of information. As is evident in the success of the term paper mills that have been making news since at least 2006. What is probably even more telling in the case of the Florida cheating scandal though, is the students’ reactions. They of course are trying to assert that cheating is “simply how it’s done these days“, and blaming the professor. I’m going to let this little bunch of morally decrepit miscreants speak for themselves. Being the cute little Digital Natives that they are, they’ve saved me some video embedding by doing it all on their school news website with a piece called UCF Students Give Their Side in Cheating Scandal With Video. I think you should pay special attention to the Quinn Confrontation video, brought to you by a young gentleman (or “fuckstick”, as a friend of mine referred to him) named Logan Herlihy. Herlihy is probably destined for success in cable news. He seems to be comfortable confusing news with vapid sensationalism, and as he says on his ModelMayhem page: “as cheezy as it may sound I really believe my body is my temple. I come from a great genetic line my grandfather and mother were both film stars and my mother and father were both international models back in the 70′s“. Reading that kind of self-assessment makes me think that while the educational system gets rid of that psyche-scarring “D” as a grade, we should add a new letter. “P”. For “precious”.
Oh. THAT’S What You Mean By “Political Convictions”
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 15, 2010 by admin in Politics
Monday, November 15th, 2010Reviewing a list of American politicians convicted of crimes makes it clear that there’s ONE thing both parties can agree on.
 We all know Washington’s a zoo, so it should be pretty easy to turn it into a jail. |
The other day I was talking to a liberal friend who was railing on me for not voting, saying something to the effect of “because we can’t let these criminals back in power“. This friend makes the mistake of thinking that I’m liberal mostly because I think the Bush administration was a bunch of liars and crooks. To me, this is just an observable fact. My friend got a little feisty when I suggested that Democrats were just as often guilty of crimes as Republicans, so we agreed to trust Wikipedia as a reasonably balanced source, since organizations like Judicial Watch and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are usually run by rabid astroturfing bastards from one side or the other of the aisle who do the double civic disservice of acting like watchdogs when they’re really lapdogs. An hour later, we had come up with some rough numbers and highlights. The rough numbers? Convicted Republicans since LBJ’s White House: 80-something. Convicted Democrats: 50 something. The numbers are hard to sift through the way they’re presented, but I’d hasten to point out that Nixon and Reagan skewed the totals quite a bit, but with what were essentially only two crimes: Watergate and the Iran Contra scandal. Below are just a few highlights. See the List of American politicians convicted of crimes for yourself for hours of Wikiphilic distraction. Read the rest of this entry »
Science Friction: Why Doesn’t Sci-Fi Find A Larger Market?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 14, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, November 14th, 2010Part one of our look at why sci-fi gets such a bad rap, with a look at four worthwhile science fiction films from the last few years that you may have passed over or not even heard of.
 Sunshine is just one of many great sci-fi films that get overlooked because of marketing. |
I’ve always been a little befuddled by the average person’s resistance to science fiction as a genre. I can understand why a person would be put off by the schlockier segment of this market, but every genre of fiction has a large quantity of commercial tripe from which you have to pick the better material. I would argue in fact that some of the greatest fiction of the twentieth century would typically be categorized as sci-fi: Arthur C Clarke
