Nicolas Carr asks: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?.” My experience is the same as his, and more. My writing concentration has changed, too. Blogging is more difficult than, say, three years ago. There is too […]
Category: Society
21 Accents
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k] She’s not English, but American—and amazing. Her accents go so oddly together.
The New Journalism
I had the below IM conversation with Nate Mook of Betanews after posting about PR blogging on my work blog. All times are Pacific (-8 GMT):
Joe says: (3:54:02 PM)
I couldn’t resist: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/developer/net_35_sp1_changes_your_expression.html
Nate says: (3:57:30 PM)
Saw that
Nate says: (3:57:31 PM)
Good post
Nate says: (3:57:40 PM)
I’ve been thinking the same thing recently
Joe says: (3:57:47 PM)
I’m really bugged about this.
Joe says: (3:57:52 PM)
Ah, good for you.
Mazda Does Right Thing
We couldn’t run the risk of damaging the brand name that Mazda worked so hard over the years to develop. Jeremy Barnes About the destruction of $100 million worth of cars.
Can I Have a Napkin, Please?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkYZ6rbPU2M] Improv Everywhere brings music and mayhem to a Los Angeles shopping mall. Their performance and the food court go oh-so oddly together.
Let the Bears Eat Bear Stearns
I agree with Gretchen Morgenson, writing for the New York Times. The Fed shouldn’t bail out Bear Stearns. The fed crossed a line by keeping afloat a major architect of the housing debacle.
I wrote my first blog post about the housing bubble in August 2005, a year after deciding not to buy a home in the Washington, DC suburb of Bowie. It was already clear to me in summer 2004 that something akin to a repeat of the dot-com bubble was taking place in the housing market.
Had we bought in 2004, we would likely hold a mortgage that exceeds the house’s reduced value. We could never have moved to San Diego.
It’s Not Alaska, It’s an Adventure
Jean McDermott cracks me up. She’s got a wry, dry sense of humor. Maybe the humorless can’t survive Alaskan winters.
Today, Jean posted a picture of her freezer and, separately, commented on the weather: “A couple days ago we got 10 inches of snow in one night. People up here walked around just beaming. Finally! The bumps in the ski, snowmachine, mushing and skijore trails would finally be smoothed out. No more skidding around on dirt! Not only that, but it has warmed up to a positively balmy 20° ABOVE so everyone is having a bit of a respite from having to put on so much bleeding gear every time one goes outside!
Scoble Scrapes Friends’ Trust
Robert Scoble has been the talk of the Web today, for getting booted from Facebook. Robert is back on Facebook now, but he shouldn’t be. Facebook suspended the former Microsoft evangelist blogger for a terms-of-service violation. He used a testing Plaxo tool to mine, or “scrape,” information from about 5,000 of his contacts. [Editor’s note, April 4, 2017: Three Scobelizer posts gone; links removed.]
You Phone Home, I Hang Up
Tonight, I removed Adobe’s Lightroom 1.3 from my computer. Maybe that makes me part of the so-called “tinfoil” hat crowd. I’m deeply concerned about Adobe collecting information, in apparently disguised fashion, from users of its products.
I don’t buy Adobe’s excuses. Creative Suite 3 isn’t freeware. People buying the software can pay as much as $1,800 (street price), depending on CS3 version. Adobe feels free to mine information from these customers, without even asking their permission? Shame on Adobe. I would remove Acrobat and Flash, if so many Websites didn’t use the software. I’m mad!
Environmental Question
I hear a whole lot of ruckus about global warming and carbon emissions spewed into the air. I have a question for the environmentalists—some of them extremists—pointing fingers of accusation: How much worse off is the planet because of you and your political maneuvering that ended US adoption of fission reactors in the 1970s?
Environmentalist FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about radioactive waste disposal was a major factor halting nuclear power plant construction in the United States. Meanwhile, many electrical facilities resorted to coal and, gasp, oil—fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide when burned.
I’m DRM-free, Baby
Last week I achieved my goal of becoming DRM-free before the end of the year. I have purged all the DRM tracks from my music library and replaced what I could—thanks to the Amazon MP3 […]
My Math Team Memory
One of my best friends (there were only two) from my senior year of high school tracked me down over the weekend. I had wondered about her for years. She’s back in Maine, although she […]