CNN is reporting that a 6+ magnitude quake hit northern Nevada this morning. Reading the story, however, I have to laugh at this quote:
“We have cracks in our walls,” Jane Kelso, who answered the phone at the Motel 6 in Wells, Nevada, told AP. Wells is 10 miles from the epicenter in sparsely populated eastern Nevada.
I’m thinking the reporter didn’t even mention the earthquake.
Interesting story by New York Times reporter Brad Stone (the reporter who broke the identity of Fake Steve Jobs) on the recent uprising at Digg. Slashdot founder Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda does a standup job in the interview explaining why Digg ran into the troubles it did and why the two sites don’t necessarily compete for the same audience.
Disclaimer: Slashdot is part of SourceForge, Inc., which is represented by my agency, Page One PR.
Rare are the times that a comment on a blog post makes you stop dead in your tracks. Such was the case this morning as I was getting my daily fix of Matt Asay’s posts over at InfoWorld’s Open Sources blog.
One of Matt’s articles this morning called out the RIAA’s influence peddling in Congress. Nothing earth-shattering, but informative nonetheless (he calls out his state’s senator, Orrin Hatch, who received $6,000 from the RIAA…an amount I suspect is more than Hatch has made as a songwriter).
Then I started reading the post’s comments. The third comment, by Peter Sysko, may be the single-most provocative comment I’ve yet to read in the blogosphere:
…i think its better that people in the world listen to the music that they want to listen to, rather than what they can afford.
Think about that for a second.
As a society, we’ve chosen to abdicate the value we place on art and culture to corporations — lawyers, really, when you think about it in the context of the RIAA and MPAA. We’ve chosen to let others determine the cost of admission to our exposure to cultural advancement.
Peter’s statement says as much about what’s happening today in software as it does about music. Proprietary companies — most notably Microsoft — are the RIAA/MPAA of software, clinging to business models that look backward instead of forward and seek to levy taxes on those that dare to challenge what they view as their monopolistic right to print money. The open source movement is doing to proprietary companies what MySpace, YouTube and other social media sites have done to the RIAA/MPAA: giving artists (in this case, software developers) a foundation to communicate, collaborate and sell to their customers without the arbitrary and outdated overhead imposed by those who are unable to adapt to the changing demands of their customers.
Well said, Peter.
Scrolling through my RSS feeds this morning, I notice there’s considerable buzz in the ether about 18 year old high school pole vaulter Alison Stokke. In a nutshell: she’s shattering state records, happens to be photogenic, and is now plastered all over the ‘net, i.e., American Idol hottie Antonella Barbra.
In one heavily-linked article, her father, defense attorney Allan Stokke, talks about how he surfs the web to protect her from potential stalkers. Well, that’s all fine and good…and what most of us would do to protect our children from society’s detritus if it were our daughters. However, maybe Allan Stokke should seriously reconsider resigning from his current profession (excerpted from feministing.com):
…Stokke’s father is the same guy who earlier this year defended a cop who jerked off on a stripper during a routine traffic stop. “She got what she wanted,” Al Stokke said, of the stripper. “She’s an overtly sexual person.”
I can imagine the dinner conversation at the Stokke table: “Yes, honey, I realize you feel this is an invasion of your privacy and you are hurt and offended, but, you know, it’s not really their fault. You are pretty and you did show the bare skin of your belly when you were breaking the records…and, I mean, c’mon, a “pole” vaulter? You pretty much deserve the attention.”
As the father of two daughters, it disgust me that I’m partly defined in the same demographic as Stokke.
I love science. Genetics saddled me with a bad case of follicle deforestation. Rather than comb-over, I shave the dome down to the skin. However, it now looks like there may be hope on the horizon:
“Hair loss in humans might not be irreversible, suggest scientists who have helped create new hair cells on the skin of mice.”
Of course, I’ll probably be 115 years old by the time any of this science will bless me with a full head of hair.
A sad day in comedy: Emmy-award-winning actor and Bob Newhart sidekick Tom Poston died.
I have to think they saw this coming:
Philadelphia authorities have closed at least 16 storefront fortune-tellers.
Bruce Springsteen sings a haunting song about the demise of once-great Asbury Park called “My City of Ruins.” He might as well have been writing about the city across the Delaware River: Philadelphia.
This weekend, 11 more people were murdered on the streets of Philadelphia, bringing the total number of people killed so far in 2007 to 127. At this pace, Philly is on track to overtake Camden (just across the river) as the country’s murder capital.
I’ve lived in the suburbs of Philly for about four years now. I’ve gone to Philly for concerts, for dinner, to see art exhibits. I’ve seen some of the good that this once-great city can offer. However, all the rock stars, Superbowl and World Series rings, restaurants or world-renowned artists don’t overcome the murder rap that Philly is increasingly becoming known for.
This is more than a crime problem for Mayor John Street. It is now a PR and economic crisis. Philly was on the way to a resurrection. It is time for Street, his police force and his PR counselors to act swiftly and overwhelmingly to put an end to the violence and restore confidence in Philadelpia.
I am lucky to have some really good, really close friends. I say lucky because three of them yesterday surprised me with an overnight delivery of deep dish pizza and cheesecake from one of the three most-awesome’ist pizza joints on the planet: Lou Malnotti’s in Chicago, Illinois (the other two are Benny Tudino’s in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Mama’s in Hackettstown, New Jersey). Now I have to decide whether to gorge and eat them all in one meal or space them out to savor their deep dishy goodness.
My friend Jeff would tell you he was just doing his job…luckily for patrons of this bowling alley, he does his job very well.
