Recently, I came across a private community that had a single access point for entry and five speed bumps. These bumps were on slopes and may have, at one point, been painted white, and were very difficult to see. One was marked by a tiny road sign that indicated it was there, in one direction—to people leaving the community. The first speed bump was located just feet from the entrance, making it difficult to react to when you turned in, and it was completely redundant on the way out, since the exit was bounded by a stop sign. So drivers had to slow down for the speed bump before they slowed down for the stop sign immediately after. Why was it there?

Florida would have speed bumps on nominally public roads. Where I drove, the Fort Lauderdale area, most public roads were huge 6 to 8 lane monstrosities. There were no speed bumps there, or there would have been blood, but turn off any main thoroughfare and you wouldn’t know what you were going to encounter. Often it was cul-de-sacs, and often those cul-de-sacs were littered with speed bumps designed to keep traffic bobbing up and down at 10 miles per hour, between bumps of course.

I know the idea is safety. They design roads with speed bumps in areas that have pedestrians, especially children. But again, speed bumps punish good drivers. Dangerous drivers may be discouraged by them, but they’re not learning to drive better because of them.

There is an article in The Atlantic describing why driving in America is so screwed up by people trying to make things safer. Because of the ubiquity of signage and prohibitions, we’re creating drivers who react slower and don’t use foresight to consider driving conditions.

Consider the stop sign. It seems innocuous enough; we do need to stop from time to time. But think about how the signs are actually set up and used. For one thing, there’s the placement of the signs—off to the side of the road, often amid trees, parked cars, and other road signs; rarely right in front of the driver, where he or she should be looking.

Then there’s the sheer number of them. They sit at almost every intersection in most American neighborhoods. In some, every intersection seems to have a four-way stop. Stop signs are costly to drivers and bad for the environment: stop/start driving uses more gas, and vehicles pollute most when starting up from rest. More to the point, however, the overabundance of stop signs teaches drivers to be less observant of cross traffic and to exercise less judgment when driving—instead, they look for signs and drive according to what the signs tell them to do.

The author, John Staddon, is from the UK, where they use traffic circles instead of stop signs at many intersections. I’m not a fan of traffic circles, or roundabouts, but this may change my opinion:

Roundabouts in the U.S. are typically large. But as drivers get used to them—as they have in the U.K. over the past three or four decades—they can be made smaller and smaller. A “mini-roundabout” in the U.K. is essentially just a large white dot in the middle of the intersection. In this form, it amounts to no more than an instruction to give way to traffic coming from the right (that would be the left over here, of course, since the Brits drive on the left).

This makes perfect sense. Roads don’t have to be widened, and it trains drivers to be cautious at intersections. Late at night, when I’m crossing service roads with traffic lights, I still slow down going through them, because, even though I have the right-of-way, drivers on the service road act as if they’re on the actual highway. Too many times, I’ve seen drivers blow through those red lights as if they weren’t there.

The article concludes with this, “…U.S. traffic policies are inducing a form of inattentional blindness in American drivers,” and I couldn’t agree more. Yes, I am advocating for fewer signs and “safety” features on the road. Driving is something that takes skill and constant vigilance, and it’s time for both drivers and traffic laws to grow up.

The clergy are muttering
kind words to themselves
Holy invocations fall leaden
in front of their feet

The pews are all empty
The audience left
and coughs echo
flat on the marble

The temple is greying
into morbid disuse
It’s puffy
and soft in the middle

It never ran swiftly
nor sprung from the bed
And now it just moans
about this ache and that

The incense is burned
and the body is sacrificed
but no one is saved
and no one is blessed

Instead, I find myself chuckling at this article from Newsday about a group of kids arrested after one of them was found with an “apparent ‘caustic liquid’” on his clothing. Because one of the group may have said something about “blowing it up,” this vague threat lead to four arrests and bails in the $60k range.

So here’s a case where I can say, “Boy, times sure have changed,” and think wistfully back to childhood, where one of my friends, in junior high school, could bring a glass beaker, filled with a clear liquid, covered with tinfoil, and sporting a taped label saying “Dangerous: ACID.” He was not stopped the entire day, even though he displayed it at various times, including leaving it on the lunch table, during which a couple of other friends and I would mercilessly tease him about carrying “acid” in his bookbag covered with a flimsy piece of foil.

This is a true story, so I will not name my friend on this blog. Suffice to say, he knows who he his, and so do most of my friends, and so does the Mock Trial club from that year; because, the beaker was not filled with “Dangerous: ACID”—it was filled with a pint of Vodka. Oh, it sill cracks me up that the “acid” got no attention from anyone, but when a dozen kids were later caught in the girls’ room with their dixie cups, it became the crime of the century.

Times have changed, though. These kids, today, in the mean-streets of Levittown, may have actually had an acid, since the ‘caustic liquid’ kid’s shirt was burned, but I do believe that the authorities are over-reacting, as these four were going to be as successful in their “blowing it up” as the Mock Trial kids were in getting their booze on, all those years ago.

There’s a program out there in the wild that can download and install itself if that checkbox is checked. It’s possible that the payload is helped along by the Flash vulnerability; I’m not sure, but keep in mind that many websites are using Flash ads that are served from 3rd party servers. Even if you trust the site, the ads may be from nefarious sources.

There isn’t really an easy way to turn Flash off on Safari, unless you remove the plug-in from the /Library/Internet Plug-ins/ directory. Firefox has an extension, called NoScript, which is very customizable (you can block Flash, but not JavaScript, for example), and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, the payload from before installs a plug-in into the /Library/Internet Plug-ins/ directory that changes the DNS server that the Mac uses to resolve domain names. Basically, it means that typing in http://macphoenix.com may send you to a totally different site, or worse, if going to a banking or bill paying site, it may send you to a site that looks exactly the same, but is controlled by thieves. One of the bad DNS IP entries was 85.255.113.138. There was another IP number, but I didn’t record it. If you have a DNS entry pointing to the above, though, it’s a server in the Ukraine that will send you to whatever it wants to, not where you want to go.

The plug-in disguises itself, so it’s impossible to know what it’s named. The solution was to remove every plug-in from /Library/Internet Plug-ins/, restarting, and (after checking that the DNS changed back to the original number) installing trusted plug-ins like QuickTime and Flip4Mac. But remember, the first line of defense is turning off that preference that should not be turned on in the first place.

Update: In response to a comment by Antonio, allow me to clarify. There are exploits to javascript (and now apparently Flash) that can make Safari download something without the user being aware. With the Open “safe” files after downloading checked, the download can potentially contain an installer that can load a trojan onto your machine. It’s simply keeping the porch door open allowing raccoons to eat the pet food in the kitchen. As for usability, the only benefit to Open “safe” files after downloading is saving the user a double click on legitimately downloaded files.

Lately, they’ve been slowing the load time of my site down significantly. It’s taken 13 to 14 seconds for my home page to competely load, which is ridiculous over a cable modem. Sometimes, the sites that I grab the data from have slow downs, but those are temporary and never last more than a day or so, but my home page has been loading slowly for at least two weeks.

I could have just disabled the two scripts, which I eventually did, but I thought that I could figure out the problem, and, stubbornly, let my page load slowly for days.

Since both scripts were slow, I knew that the sites themselves weren’t to blame. Also, since I have the Google Ads, which loaded fine, I knew that it wasn’t my hosting company throttling external connections. It was something with cURL, which is a method for calling external data into a script. If anyone is having a problem with cURL, this is what helped in my case:

If you have a url in the form of a domain name, e.g. wordsmith.org, cURL has to look up the IP address via a lookup table. Sometimes, as in my shared hosting situation, those tables get corrupted or really large or whatever, and it takes cURL some 10 seconds to look up the address. The solution is to give cURL the IP address in the script, e.g. 216.12.219.209. Then there is no delay from resolving the IP address. It’s exceedingly logical, but I didn’t think of it, since I tend to ignore IP addresses. I found it on a discussion site.

This is a really boring post, but I’m hopeful that someone on the great big internets will find it helpful.

First, we have the scary Iranians who won’t take good old dollar bills for their tainted oil anymore! There is a long-standing fear when some company or supermodel won’t take money in US Dollars anymore, but it’s irrational. Iran is certainly using it as propaganda, however. It sounds very scary.

The only thing it reflects is that, since the dollar is falling, anyone who sells something by contract will want to minimize loss between the time that they sell something and the time that they get paid. So Oil Producer sold 1 barrel of oil on Monday for $100, but didn’t get paid until Friday. If the dollar fell .1% by Friday, Oil Producer lost 10 cents because the $100 was now worth $99.90. When the dollar falls, it makes sense for any international company to try to get paid in a stable currency.

But it doesn’t affect the price of oil or whether or not our currency is falling. There are several reasons for that, the biggest being that our trade deficit is too high, but not because companies want to get paid in another currency. If oil were priced in Quatloos, and our dollar was falling, it would still be more expensive for us to buy oil.

America is not permitted to do business with Iran, in any case. Iran, as the CNN article notes well after the scary lede, has been divesting itself of dollars for years. This makes sense. When you can’t buy something from the merchant, why keep the scrip?

On the second meme, CNN provides more laughs with an interview with the head of Shell Oil. Bet you thought that the $7.8 billion profit was excessive. Well not according to John Hofmeister:

Look at our revenues and our income for the last quarter. If we had made $7.8 million on $114 million of revenue, nobody would call that excessive, because that’s 7.5 percent. We made $7.8 billion profit on $114 billion revenue — same 7.5 percent. So to me that is not an excessive number when banks and pharmaceuticals and IT companies earn a whole lot more.

Okay. For no reason in particular, I want to write out the zeros in 7.8 billion. Please indulge me. $7,800,000,000. Only eight zeros! Damn that .8! But Mr. Hofmeister is correct. In 2004, Shell Oil was only the 5th most profitable company in the world, while banks like Citigroup and HSBC, IT companies like General Electric, and that famous pharmaceutical, ExxonMobil earned a whole lot more.

Anyway, the main thing here in the CNN article is the idea that America must drill more oil in order to meet the supply, and by implication, help lower or stabilize the cost of gas at the pump. This is false. Oil is sold on market that is worldwide. If oil is extracted in America, it is still sold on this worldwide market. We have something on the order of 4% of the known oil underneath us. If we extracted ALL OF IT, IMMEDIATELY, it would raise the amount of oil on the market by 4%. Since we consume about half the world’s oil, one can figure that it would save us about 2% to purchase that oil.

Of course, all things aren’t equal and there is a cost to extracting, refining, and shipping that oil or gasoline. It also actually can’t be extracted immediately. It would take years. Additionally, there is no reason to expect that any other oil producing nation won’t adjust it’s output to keep oil the same price, since that would be in its best interest to keep the price stable and it can sit on their reserves as long as necessary. However, once we extract all our oil, it’s gone forever, leaving us in a weaker position than before we drilled the oil.

What does it do for us then, if we drill for more oil? It makes money for companies like Shell Oil who make profits on drilling, refining, and shipping oil and gasoline. It isn’t so strange then that the president of Shell would advocate drilling for more oil. It isn’t so strange that President Bush would continue his call to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, as he has done for 8 years now.

Finally, the last meme is the political pandering calling for a summer of tax-free gasoline. This is another bad idea. The way that John McCain wants to do it, it would amount to a tax break for oil companies. You know, the same companies that earn around $7.8 billion dollars EVERY THREE MONTHS, because the supply of gas is maxxed out. We’re paying as much as we can because it is high demand, but the supply can’t be raised. If the tax rate is dropped, it will raise demand, but there is no more gasoline to be had, which will cause the price to shoot up! Hey presto! More money for Mr. Hofmeister.

Hillary Clinton’s plan sounds more palatable to your average socialist, since it would pay for the tax relief by increasing the tax on the oil companies. Except, hey! once again, remove the tax at the pump and increase demand which will drive up prices. It doesn’t help consumers one bit, and the increase in taxes that the oil companies pay would be offset by the huge run on the tax-free cost of gasoline.

So, OPEC may continue to accept dollars, we may open up protected parkland to oil drilling, and we may have a tax-free summer at our gas pumps, but not one bit of this will help consumers. The only thing that would seem to help our falling dollar and the price of gasoline is to reduce our demand for oil.

When is that meme going to start floating around our oil-slicked stream of consciousness?

John McCain is a rich, old white man, who believes women shouldn’t have equal pay. (Ironic, since his second wife, an heiress, is the one who financed his political rise.)

Straight-talkin’ John McCain embraces the Confederate flag, Bush’s tax-cuts, and agents of intolerance when it becomes necessary to court the racist, rich Evangelicals that vote Republican.

John McCain wants to keep us in perpetual war with a group of people he knows nothing about.

Anti-lobbyist maverick John “I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to” McCain’s campaign is run by a cadre of lobbyists.

Straight-talkin’ John McCain violated his own campaign finance law, gaming the system so he could pay for his campaign using public funds if he lost the primary.

Man-of-the-people John McCain missed almost 60% of the votes in the Senate since January 2007. He’s still missing a majority of the votes after clinching his parties nomination. In second place is Senator Tim Johnson who suffered a brain hemorrhage in December 2006.

McCain is not populist. He is wealthier than either Democratic candidate; a true 1%er who is not concerned with working conditions or the trials of everyday life. His base is Washington media types, who share his wealth and aristocratic tastes.

McCain is not a maverick. He votes with his party over 88% of the time, slightly less than Republican stalwart Trent Lott, but more than Republican stalwart Orrin Hatch.

McCain is not a straight-talker. He has flip-flopped on issues ranging from abortion choice (was for it, now against it) to campaign finance (was for it, now against it) to tax-cuts (was against them, now for them). These are not the changing opinions of a man who has learned from past mistakes. These are the pandering of man who feels he is owed the presidency, and he will say or do anything to get it.

John McCain is George W. Bush’s choice for president. John McCain is status-quo, failed policies, out-of-touch, elitist. Why would any American vote for him? Why would any American vote for 4 more years of failure?

Well, it’s pretty good this time around. It easily beat McDonald’s Filet o’Fish. The fish is a single piece of whitefish, flaky and moist, with no fishy aftertaste. The batter is crispy and tasty. They put a variant of tarter sauce on it, obviously made with garlic powder. Keep this in mind if you’re looking for something mild—you’ll probably want to hold the sauce.

I didn’t have mine with cheese. It really doesn’t need it. I don’t know if they just slap a cold slice of cheese on the top like they do with their burgers. That would be a shame, because it would take away from it.

And Wendy’s is still using those buns which are a step down from their old potato-flour buns. They got rid of them shortly after my first review. I know. Four years is a long time to hold onto a fast-food ghost. But I really stopped going to Wendy’s after they got rid of the potato buns.

I don’t know if it’ll be around after Easter. But it was pretty good, and if they keep it on the menu, I won’t be so reluctant to eat there in the future.

In our last episode of TMX, I had sent Rich “Starship Troopers,” by Yes, and he sent me “Ready Lets Go/Music Is Math,” by Boards of Canada. Here is my response to “Ready Lets Go/Music Is Math”:

Excerpt from “Music Is Math,” by Boards of Canada.

I tell you Rich, the initials B-O-C will always represent Blue Oyster Cult, which is more of an effect of my age than it is of personal preference. I like Boards of Canada, certainly much more than Blue Oyster Cult.

But to the tracks at hand. “Ready Lets Go” is a short little bit, at just under a minute. I like the film-strip sound quality to it, and the three repeating tones make me think of an old radio network’s call tone. “Ready Lets Go” was more evocative to me than “Music Is Math.”

I wanted to really enjoy “Music Is Math,” since whenever I hear that title, I say, usually aloud, “Music IS math!” The first three minutes were building up to something. It was slow and leisurely, which surprised me, since you’re so into music that you can dance to. But I understand when you get into a groove, so I was anticipating something really big.

And then we hit the 3:30 mark, and the song failed. Sorry. It just failed. I really didn’t like the last part of it. The mood shifted from open and expansive to claustrophobic. I don’t know if that last minute or so is a bridge to the next song or a theme used later in the album, but it was just didn’t belong there.

Still I like Boards of Canada. I like trance-y music. But “Music Is Math” just didn’t do it for me.

Well, bummer. Let’s see what Rich thought of “Starship Trooper”:

Excerpt from “Starship Trooper,” by Yes.

Now I’ve got a pretty random musical past. The first record I ever bought was Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick’s “The Show.” The first cassette album I owned was Run DMC’s “King of Rock.” My second cassette was “Big Generator” by Yes, and I loved it. (Cassettes number 3 and 4 were Bon Jovi, “Slippery When Wet,” and Belinda Carlisle “Heaven on Earth”—but that’s not really something I’m proud of.) Ahhh, “Big Generator.” The bass lines were so groovy, the drums punchy and tight, the production was so big and 80s. It had super-catchy hooks and great harmonies. Add to that the almost beat-box intro to “Big Generator,” the track, and I was right at home.

Now I know Yes gets a lot of flack for being too prog-rock and Jon Anderson’s higher register vocals grate on some, not unlike how some people either love or hate Geddy Lee’s voice, and how Rick Wakeman’s synth solos can sound a bit like he’s practicing scales. I remember reading in an interview a great diss that went something like, “Rick Wakeman is excellent at playing scales. Do you know who else is good at playing scales? My twelve year old daughter.” Classic. Oh yeah—others balk at the length of the songs. Nine minutes and twenty three seconds? No problem. I’ve got 173 songs in my iTunes library that clock in at 9 minutes or better, so it’s right at home.

In spite of what detractors say, I really can vibe on the Yes sound—they are tight musicians, and even though their songs are sometimes sonic mazes riddled with odd time signatures and more sections than your average pop song, it doesn’t land them in the same category as Rush or Dream Theater. The songs tell some great stories and the music builds some fantastic soundscapes while not being too indulgent with groove-breaking fills and solos.

I was definitely digging on “Starship Trooper.” While it’s far from the first time I’ve heard the song, it was cool to revisit it with some critical listening.

Next week, I send Rich “Rock and Roll,” by The Velvet Underground. Will Rich be able to handle a five-minute track with basically one stanza repeated three times as sung by Lou Reed?

Framing, I thought, focused on a particularly narrow, and often anomalous, aspect of a larger issue, in order for its partisans or detractors to influence those who are not quite as informed or vested. But I’ve begun to change my view of framing. In very devious hands, framing can narrow a point of view in order to let thieves and scoundrels have their way with everything else that we’re no longer focusing on.

We have this in the “waterboarding” debate. It seems like a perfectly framed issue. Its defenders even coined “waterboarding,” since that sounds less like torture than, oh, let’s say, “water torture.” (As a less-PC child, I remember we called it “Chinese water torture.” Maybe kids in China are now calling it “American waterboarding” when they spray hoses and water guns at their friends during the summer.) People who are, rightfully, aghast at the thought of torture, argue that waterboarding should be banned, while defenders say it is barely a form of torture at all.

Meanwhile, we’ve lost sight of the greater issue, which is how America is conducting itself in matters of law and justice, both at home and abroad. This invariably happens when an issue is framed. Framing is not always a bad thing, because it helps people who are not totally vested to make some sense of a very large and complex issue. However, my argument here is that the defenders of waterboarding are not defending waterboarding at all; they are distracting and misdirecting us all specifically by framing the debate around waterboarding.

It’s simply this: Take an offensive, but not unthinkable, method of torture and put it into the public’s collective head. Sure, it simulates drowning, but no one actually drowns. We even subject our own military to it to train them against this effective interrogation technique. If it saves us from another terrorist attack like 9-11, it will be totally worth it.

But if America has actually waterboarded a dozen men, I would be surprised. Wait. Let me rephrase that. If America has actually waterboarded a dozen men to gather intelligence during an interrogation, I would be surprised. It is a non-issue to our government. However, by focusing on this, we continue to ignore the systematic destruction of laws that protect us from our own government. If the defenders of waterboarding succeed in convincing us as a nation that waterboarding is not torture and/or it is necessary for the security of our country, they have won a small victory, but the larger victory will be that the small, framed issue will be settled and obscured the real problem.

The active act in framing security and freedom in the time of terrorism into a debate on waterboarding was done solely to distract the public from the loss of habeas corpus and fourth-amendment rights, and the government hiring mercenary armies not subject to American or international law.

And thinking about this, I began to understand that framing isn’t specifically issue-centric. Because framing hyper-accentuates a point, it leaves everything else around it in shadow. Masters of framing can frame places and groups and people. They use framing as a test-bed to launch larger campaigns. And sometimes framing entails framing in another sense.

Tonight, CBS is “bravely” telling the story of disgraced Alabama governor, Don Siegelman. (Bravely, in quotes, because they are putting this story up against The Oscars, which means no one will see it until it repeats. If it repeats.) Siegelman was convicted of seven counts of public corruption in a trial that prompted Scott Horton to write in Harper’s:

… I have spent over a month looking at this case. I have spoken with a number of journalists who covered the trial, pulled out and read the transcripts, talked to figures involved in the case. And I have received tips and messages from Alabamians who are trying feverishly to spin the case one way or the other. My conclusion: I have no idea whether in the end of the day, Mr. Siegelman is guilty or innocent of corruption. But that the prosecution was corruptly conceived and pursued and that the court proceedings were corrupted, almost from the outset: that is already extremely clear. This is not a prosecution of a political figure for corruption. It is a political vendetta, conceived, developed and pursued for a corrupt purpose.

Siegelman is a Democrat and was literally framed by Karl Rove. Framed, in the sense that Siegelman faced up to 30 years in jail for one count of bribery, one count of conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud, four counts of honest services mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. (His sentence was 7+.) Framed, also, in the sense that Rove used this as an audacious test to see if his machinations were nimble enough to escape public scrutiny. It is, after all, just Alabama. Who would notice? It was a successful test of his power to eliminate political foes by any means. It was framed to seem innocuous. (What, another public official accused of bribery? Yawn.) But the larger issue was shaded underneath: Don’t mess with the Republicans.

Remember this when Democrats take the presidency in 2008. The machinery of Republican domination, started after Nixon, has been in place for a long time, and Clinton’s impeachment (another framed device—they knew they were going to lose, but it positioned many operatives) was just a test run, which succeeded in taking off impeachment for an extraordinarily corrupt administration.

Give me a break! I’ve got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won’t last a round against the Republican attack machine. He’s a poet, not a fighter. (via TPM)

I wasn’t really an Obama supporter, but I did think he’d have a better chance against McCain than Clinton. But it’s this type of talk that makes me really, really despise Clinton and her campaign.

Okay, I drink the occasional latte, and, boy! would I love to own a Prius, but ’the hell about Birkenstocks? I mean, if you’re gonna make fun of my generation correctly, you should at least use something that we wore, like Doc Martens. I mean, maybe there are hippy-dippy kids wearing Birkenstocks, but they’re far more likely to vote for Kucinich or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Obama is my generation and younger, not hippies from the 60s, which is apparently what ol’ Tom there is fighting.

And trust funds? OMG. I’d like to take a look at the average salary of Clinton’s supporters versus Obama’s. Ever hear the thing about Bill Gates walking into a bar?

After a couple of hundred years, our leaders are doing their best to end our terrible experiment with democracy. The Senate passed an unnecessary bill granting the federal government ability to spy on us with no oversight. This bill also give telecom companies, like AT&T, immunity from prosecution for helping the federal government spy on us without oversight, while it was illegal. Kings are not ideal leaders for representative democracies, but a large portion of idiots in this country want one anyway. Currently, the House of Representatives is holding back the passage of this bill into law, but I’m sure it is just a matter of days until the King gets his bill passed and his 5 or 6 business buddies all sigh with relief.

It’s the cynic in me that sees commercials for products like the Kinoki footpad or the Riddex pest control system, and says, “we’re all doomed.” Kinoki is a pad soaked in vinegar that claims to rid the body of poisons and toxins. This makes sense as evolution has left the human body without a liver. Riddex keeps pests away through the miracle of digital-pulse technology. You plug it in, and it sends some sort of electric signal through your home’s electrical system. Apparently, bugs and rats are fine with 50-60 Hz, but send a digital pulse at some unknown frequency, and they go packing. It is all so reasonable. I’ve read reviews that said that the ultrasonic version of Riddex was crap, but the electric modulation one (that’s the less sci-fi term for digital-pulse) really works. Well, I’m convinced. Let me buy two, because, according to the ad, the pulses only work for about 2,000 sq ft, so each floor of your home should have one. How those digital-pulses can leap from circuit to circuit, but cannot go floor to floor, I can’t explain. Luckily, both Riddex and Kinoki will send me a second batch of their products ABSOLUTELY FREE. All I have to do is pay shipping and handling. Sounds like a deal.

But the parent company of Riddex made some $2 million last quarter selling their bunk. I’m sure Kinoki is experiencing similar success. It takes me a second or two to see the flaws in these ripoffs, but many people are taken in by them. Instead, I’m a sucker for sob-stories and emotional appeals. Luckily, all I have to do is shut off my compassion, and I won’t fall for scams based on them. That seems like a fair trade. I won’t care about my fellow men, so I don’t get taken, and my fellow men can continue to get suckered and feed my cynicism. It’s a great way to maintain the status quo, and eventually decay into ruin.

This one is at the top:

Wall Street seesaws in early trading
Stocks slump at opening bell amid continuing investor uneasiness before bouncing back.

Emphasis mine. This one is further down, but reflects the current trend:

Wall Street tumbles for a second day
Wall Street tumbled again Wednesday, with investors uneasy about the health of the economy and earnings after disappointing reports from big names like Apple and Motorola.

I’d also like to point out that Apple had its best financial quarter ever. Ever. I’m not sure how that’s disappointing. I guess if you’re a news organization aligned with Microsoft, the best financial news ever from its competitor would be disappointing.

But going back to the way MSNBC reports on financial news, specifically on the stock market, I’ll check in a couple times a day, and if stocks are going down at one point, the headline will read something like, “Investors shaky on Fed meeting.” If the stocks move back up, the headline will read “Investors show confidence on Fed meeting.” And the article itself will stay the same. It’s totally ridiculous.

Meanwhile, my investment advice: Run for cover! The whole dang thing is gonna crumble on down!

Basically, the networks are training me not to watch their programs until after they’ve been cancelled and released on DVD. I’m no MBA, but it seems like a short-sighted business strategy to me. I mean, consider the case of Firefly. The Fox network was sitting on what, in retrospect, could clearly have been the next major sci-fi franchise, with years of syndication and spinoffs and action figures and all the rest. But someone thought it was a better idea to kill the show in its infancy, and what we’re left with is a DVD set of some of the finest episodic television ever produced, a cliche-ridden, so-so movie, and a lingering sense of promise unfulfilled.

I really don’t like teevee anymore. Even shows which I enjoy, I don’t like to watch first-run, because I’m anti-authoritarian and don’t like networks determining when I should watch something. Case in point, Monk on USA. I enjoy the show, but I do not appreciate in order to see a new episode, I have to carve out an hour on Friday night.

Yeah, yeah. TiVo. Whatever. Another monthly fee; another $300 to get the damned thing in the first place.

All I know is it’s over for television networks in the same way it was over for record store chains in the late 90s. At some point before MP3, there was no compelling reason to buy CDs from record stores. They charged too much. There was nothing compelling about the physical space or the snotty teens they hired at minimum wage to help you. Amazon and CDNow charged a couple of bucks less and had a huge catalog. Most people didn’t know it, but stores that, uh, towered over the suburban landscape were dinosaurs waiting for the dust to settle. Television feels like that now. Networks broadcast a tremendous amount of filler and crap, and it’s work to seek out the 1% that’s actually watchable. I go online and find what I want almost instantly.

Instead of working for the viewer, they’re working for the shareholder, and so we get a writers’ strike that was never necessary. The networks and producers are so worried about saving a few cents per product, they let their shows rot on the vine.

Honestly, good riddance. In five years, we’ll see what replaces the network. I don’t think its out there yet. YouTube, iTunes, OnDemand. All close, but the way these things make money, or don’t make money, seems like outdated-thinking. What ever it is, if it destroys the way we get our news and entertainment, I’ll be all for it.

Back in the 90s, the tech press all but wrote off Apple. Well, actually, a lot was writen about Apple, but it all entailed how Apple should sell off their properties and close shop. When the iMac came out, starting the annoying and inexplicably continuing trend to name everything “iWhatever,” the press began to turn, ever so slightly in Apple’s favor. But old habits die hard, and now that Apple is really on top of their game, the old tech-heads can’t admit defeat. They’re still warning Apple to sell off the hardware business, to merge with Google (nee Sony), to license their software. It’s crazy.

Mostly, they do this for the hits. Apple partisans are a vocal group. We learned how to use the internet shortly after the DEC users, but long before everyone else was on it exchanging Windows viruses via email. We read articles about Apple voraciously, positive or negative, so anything that discusses Apple is going to get a magnitude more hits than not. The best way to get hits is to call Apple users “fanboys.” Also, call anyone who points out illogic arguments and mistakes in your article an “irrational fanboy.”

But bad press or no, Apple is doing pretty well for itself. Before the iPhone came out (grrr… iPhone), the tech press was insistent that Apple better produce one or the company would go down in flames. Now that the iPhone is out, and successful, the tech press is thrilled to warn Apple of its impending doom.

When the rumors about the iPhone surfaced (three years before the actual release date), I wasn’t confident in Apple’s ability to pull it off. In fairness, I am never sure that whatever Apple does is the right thing. I second-guess that company more than the tech press. “iPod?” I said in 2001. “The world really needs another MP3 player?” Anyway, when Apple released the details of the iPhone (6 months before the introduction), I thought that maybe it would be a decent phone. Surfing the web on it, though? Why bother?

Finally, the iPhone was released, and I’m apathetic about it. I’ll wait for the first revision, I said. But when my Nokia died, I rushed out to get one, because I am an Apple fanatic. The experience of the phone is far better than I could have imagined. I’ve used this phone more in two months than I’ve used any other phone. Mostly, that’s because I don’t like to talk to people on the phone, but the iPhone has a camera and web access. Huh. Guess putting a browser on it was a good idea after all.

Anyway, here’s a photo of a place I drove by in Brookhaven town, taken, of course, with my iPhone.