Category: Media

I am Going to Miss Spitzer’s Show

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They just got sold to Al Jazeera, and they will be replacing the lineup with one of their own:

It looks as if Current TV will soon be a thing of the past. Al Jazeera, the Doha, Qatar-based news broadcaster, has agreed to acquire the seven-year-old cable channel from its co-founders, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.

Hyatt announced the sale in a memo to employees Wednesday evening, confirming reports in The New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter that a deal was in the works.

“When considering the several suitors who were interested in acquiring Current, it became clear to us that Al Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current,” Hyatt wrote. “Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us.”

Al Jazeera plans to scrap Current’s programming lineup and brand, which never caught on with a critical mass of viewers, and use the channel’s subscriber base of 60 million households as the basis for a new network. A Current spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the reports.

I understand why the deal was made: Current has access to over 100 million eyes, Al Jazeera just a fraction of that, because of our culture of bigotry and xenophobia adopted following 911.

Time Warner has already canceled their contract on the change of ownership clause, but they already carry Al Jazzera, so it might just be that they don’t want to give them two channels.

Jack Klugman Did the Wrong Thing for the Right Reasons

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When actor Jack Klugman died recently, much was said about his career, but special note was given to his role in the passage of the Orphan Drug Act of 1983.

There can be no doubt here that his motives were good.  He wanted to see that diseases for which there was a limited number of sufferers, and hence limited profit, had drugs developed and produced.

Unfortunately, what seemed like a wonderful idea, subsidies and exclusivity granted to pharma, which had the added allure of providing a free market aura, has made things worse.

About ⅚ of the money spent on medical research is government money.  When one considers the subsidies present under the Orphan Drug Act, that number undoubtedly tops ⁹⁄₁₀ of the funds being from the taxpayers.

BTW, some of the Orphan drugs in question are such “blockbusters” as, “Abilify, Provigil, Vioxx, Botox, and Cialis.”

You see a similar effect with the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act and Colcicine, where a drug that had been in use for 3500 years (no that number is not a typo, the first documented use of the drug is from ≈1500 BCE) went from 9¢ to $4.85 a pill, a 5200+% increase.

The underlying flaw here is the idea that private business is an unalloyed good, so if there is something it will not do, the solution is to subsidize private businesses to do it, even when all indications are that having the government provide this function would provide the most benefit.

This is wrong, and we have seen nearly 40 years of this philosophy, it really became mainstream during the Carter years, has harmed society as a whole.

As If Facebook Did Not Suck Enough

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I’m sure you have heard of the Instagram thing, where they came out with new terms of service which said that they could sell your photographs, and you did not get anything.

It’s a classic Facebook move, but it really does not bother me, because I don’t “get” instagram.

If I want to funky things to photos I snap with my camera phone, I’ll do it on my PC on an old copy of Paint Shop Pro.*

That being said, I really don’t get Facebook either.  I appreciate its huge user base, and I signed up so that I could mirror my blog there, boosting eyeballs.

In the process I did reconnect with a bunch of old friends, but again, that’s largely a function of the user base, not the site.

One of the problems is that it appears that every upgrade makes the totality of the experience worse.

The latest innovation is that Facebook will be adding auto start videos to its video feed:

Get ready for video ads in your news feed.

 Facebook is set to unveil a new video-ad product in the first half of next year in its largest attempt to date to attract big swaths of ad dollars from TV advertisers, according to several industry executives who have been briefed on the company’s plans over the past few weeks.

 ………

 In what’s sure to be a controversial move, the visual component of the Facebook video ads will start playing automatically — a dynamic known as “autoplay” — according to two of the executives. Facebook is still debating whether to have the audio component of the ads activated automatically as well, one of these people said.

 On the desktop version of Facebook, the video ads are expected to grab a user’s attention by expanding out of the news feed into webpage real estate in both the left and right columns — or rails — of the screen. Facebook is also working on a way to ensure that the video ads stand out on the mobile apps as well, though it is unclear how exactly the company will accomplish this.

I guess that they decided that the whole anal probe ad server thing just wasn’t evil enough.

I do not get it. Are already running their server farms on power generated by incinerating harp seal pups, and claiming that it was “green” energy.

Isn’t that evil enough for them?

Damn, he needs to buy a white Persian cat and a bond villain lair, and be done with it.

*BTW, a big f%$# you to the folks Adobe® who bought the makers of the program, JASC, and shut them down a couple of years later, because they did not want the product, a fairly capable and easy to use image editor, they just wanted to shut down a competitor.

Megan “Math is Hard” McArdle is the Most Horrible Person in Punditry

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In her latest spewing (no direct link, ever) she suggests that we need to train school children to gang rush gunmen:

I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.

Ummm ……… You ignorant Randroid sociopath, you are are unaware of the physical capabilities of a 6 year-old child.

Let me illustrate this with pictures.

This is 8-12 6 year old children:

This is the worst ranked defense in the NFL, the New Orleans Saints:

While I could concede that the Saints (What is with those pink shoes and gloves) might be able to take down an adult armed with a wet noodle, those kids could not take down a llama, or for that matter, the Dali Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet.

Repeating for the benefit of the terminally stupid:

Children with llama
New Orleans Saints:
Dali Lama

And the Dali Lama, and the aforementioned 2 “l” llama,  are both more likely to take down a gunman armed with an assault rifle than are the children.

Why does this child or privilege and political patronage have a job?

If You Are Going to Watch Zero Dark Thirty, For F%$#’s Sake, Torrent It

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Because no one involved with the enterprise deserves a penny of money.

Glenn Greenwald rightly calls it a, “CIA hagiography, [and] pernicious propaganda.”

Spencer Ackerman, of Danger Room, admires the torture scenes and how they show moral ambiguity, but this is completely wrong.

You see, in a private letter to members of Congress Leon Panetta stated that torture had no role in locating bin Laden, though in public, he continued to defend the CIA’s torture directorate in public.

There is no ambiguity here. Our torture served no purpose but to satisfy the sadism of certain elements of the state security apparatus, along with people above them in the chain of command. **cough** Dick Cheney **cough**

There is no ambiguity. We did not derive actionable intelligence from torture. All we did was give Dick Cheney an erection.

FWIW,it should that the the European Court of Human Rights has officially declared that the CIA engaged in systematic torture. (See also here)

The fact that Obama and Holder have been complicit in indemnifying, and covering this up makes them more than reprehensible human beings, it makes them war criminals as well.

(on edit)

I am not suggesting that you torrent Bigelow’s other works, though I wouldn’t object to it.  I’m not gonna watch any of it.

There is One Man Who Can Challenge the Gun Lobby

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Jon Stewart doesn’t challenge gun ownership per se, but rather the sh%$ storm freakout accompanying Bob Costas’ comments on gun violence in the context of the Jovan Belcher murder/suicide.

He made the rather unremarkable observation that absent Belcher’s (legally owned) firearms, he and Kasandra Perkins might still be alive today.

The NRA, and its inadequately endowed paranoid ilk, want to make discussions of gun violence, and gun culture literally unspeakable in the media.

Big Brother is Arlington Hewes*

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Verizon has just patented a set top box with cameras that spy on you so that they can serve up targeted ads:

Verizon has filed a patent for a DVR that can watch and listen to the goings-on in your living room. In the application, the company proposes to use the technology to serve targeted ads appropriate to whatever you’re doing in the, uh, privacy of your own home—fighting, cuddling, or hanging out with your cats.

Verizon is far from the first company to think of this unassailably creepy use for a set-top box. Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 for recommending content based on people it recognizes in the room; Google proposed yet another patent for Google TV that would use audio and video recorders to figure out how many people in a room are watching the current broad

I am appalled by the very concept, and I am also appalled by the fact that the USPTO granted a patent for a television that spies on you, when George Orwell published this idea in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four published in 1949.

The estate of Eric Arthur Blair should sue.

*The President’s Analyst, James Coburn, Godfrey Cambridge, 1967. Arlington Hewes is the president of The Phone Company, which is involved in an evil conspiracy.

I Love Ed Asner*

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Ed Asner narrated a video for the California Federation of Teachers, which, among its images, had the 1% pissing on the rest of us.

Well, professional idiot Sean Hannity took offense, and he sent a producer to ambush interview Mr. Asner, who then offered to demonstrate the principal by pissing on the producer ::

Emmy Award-winning The Mary Tyler Show actor Ed Asner recently asked a Fox News producer if he could “piss on” him after he was confronted about a California Federation of Teachers video that showed cartoon rich people urinating on poor people.

Fox News host Sean Hannity and other conservative pundits first began attacking Asner on Tuesday after the animated ad that he narrated appeared on the federation’s website to explain how rich people used tax evasion, tax loopholes and tax cuts to become even richer.

On Wednesday, Hannity announced that he had sent an ambush producer out to confront the “left-wing Hollywood actor” outside his job at a New York City theater over the “disgusting hit piece.”

“I don’t remember a thing I said on it or a word I said on it,” Asner told the producer. “But I agreed to do it for California teachers. I approve this message.”

“There’s a part of it where talking about things trickling down and they have like rich people peeing on poor people,” the producer explained.

“How disgusting,” the actor snarked. “It should be reversed.”

“So you don’t remember that?” the producer pressed.

“Do you have any money?” Asner later asked.

“Ah, yeah,” the producer replied.

“Can I piss on you?” the actor quipped.

Heh.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

I Saw Skyfall Tonight

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Family was in town for Thanksgiving, so we all went to see the new Bond film, Skyfall

Daniel Craig … James Bond
Judi Dench Judi Dench … M
Javier Bardem … Silva
Ralph Fiennes … Gareth Mallory
Naomie Harris … Eve
Bérénice Marlohe … Sévérine
Albert Finney … Kincade
Ben Whishaw … Q

Skyfall is a very good movie, though I’m not sure that it’s good Bond per se.

It does not feel like a Bond movie. It feels more like a police procedural, with a bit of John Le Carre and the Bourne movies.

It’s very well done though, and much more character driven than any other Bond movie that I’ve seen. We do get a much more complete picture of James Bond, who he is, and why he is who he is than we have ever gotten before.

My initial impressions:

  • Daniel Craig is magnetic. 
  • Javier Bardem was wonderful to watch, but I wasn’t impressed by the character. As a Bond villain, he was a bit “meh”, and the attempt to graft in some sexual kinks seemed forced.
  • Albert Finney had a relatively small role, but it was important all the same, it provides a lot of the insight into Bond’s character, and he’s just plain fun to watch. (He is also clearly enjoying himself while on camera)
  • Ben Whishaw was good as a very geeky “Q”.
  • Ralph Finnes was a complex and watchable character.
  • Judy Dench was kind of playing Judy Dench more than she was playing “M”.

Recommended. I’d call it 8 out of 10.

No other blogging today.

Why Do Conservatives Keep Defending Child Rapists

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First, it was the Catholic Church, and now it’s the Conservative Party in the UK which is trying blame the victims and those reporting the abuse:

Downing Street has denounced “trial by Twitter” and a “silly stunt” by the ITV presenter Phillip Schofield who ambushed David Cameron live on air by handing him an internet-sourced list of suspected paedophiles – causing a shocked Prime Minister to complain of a “witch hunt” against gay people.

Schofield was forced to apologise after it emerged he had “misjudged the camera angle” and the names of several former senior Conservative politicians were visible on a card which he thrust into the hands of the Prime Minister before an audience of around 1.2 million. “You know the names on that piece of paper,” the This Morning presenter told the Prime Minister. “Will you be speaking to those people?”

The presenter claimed to have found the names of the Conservative Party figures in “three minutes” during a “cursory glance at the internet” for details of a scandal relating to abuse at children’s homes in north Wales during the 1970s and 1980s.

It’s been about 30 years since this all happened, so I’m not sure why they are going into full stonewall mode over this, unless a major Tory icon of that period, was somehow involved in the original abuse or the original cover up.

H/t Atrios.

Now I Know How HP Employees Felt When Fiorina was Fired

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Because George Lucas has sold LucasFilm and the Star Wars Franchise, meaning that he will no longer be able f%$# it up. (Ewoks, and the Star Wars Holiday Special, Jar Jar Binks, and midi-chlorians, anyone?)

Unfortunately, I also feel how HP employees felt when Meg F%$#ing Whitman was hired as CEO:

In the rare bit of news that could blow Hurricane Sandy off the map, Disney announced today that it had purchased Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion—and announced that the company will debut Star War Episode VII in 2015. “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers,” George Lucas said in the official announcement of the transaction, in what is a substantial understatement, given the creative quality of the prequels. “I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.”

Disney?  The f%$#ing mouse?

He f%$#ing sold f%$#ing Star Wars to the f%$#ing mouse?

Grrr………

Joke Line Is a Sociopath

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Glenn Greenwald watches Morning Joe so we don’t have to, and finds this lovely quote from Joe Klein (aka Joke Line):

“If it is misused, and there is a really major possibility of abuse if you have the wrong people running the government. But: the bottom line in the end is – whose 4-year-old get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”

(emphasis original)As Greenwald notes, this mimics the language used by the Times Square bomber and Osama bin Laden.

Fred Hiatt Goes Rogue

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The Washington Post editorial board called out Paul Ryan’s budget proprosal as 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag:

Finally, if you heard a glimmer of responsibility from Mr. Romney lately, think again: Mr. Ryan pulled back on it. Mr. Romney has been saying that middle-class families shouldn’t expect their tax bills to go down very much, if at all, because their lower rates would be offset by, yes, curtailing deductions. Fox News’s Neil Cavuto pressed Mr. Ryan on that score. “Was he trying to brace us for some bitter news?” Mr. Cavuto asked. Mr. Ryan: “No, not at all. . . . Middle income taxpayers get higher take-home pay.”

Mr. Wallace asked what Mr. Romney’s priority would be if his numbers didn’t add up and the reduction in tax rates couldn’t be done without losing revenue. Mr. Ryan didn’t flinch. “Keeping tax rates down,” he replied.

In other words, revenue-neutral would be nice. Lowering tax rates is the Republican priority, deficits be damned.

I am stunned. The Washington Post editorial board is ground zero of “very serious people” inside the Beltway wankertude, and they love people who want to sh%$ on the poor and elderly.

I’m wondering whose cheerios that Ryan pissed in.

H/t Paul Krugman.