“A columnist is either in the heating or lighting business. You can heat things up or shed some light — I fancy myself doing the lighting,” — Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times. An excellent interview from Editor & Publisher magazine with perhaps the best columnist working right now. Think Friedman can figure out […]
Continue reading... April 19, 2002
The Record Company as Loan Shark
Sometimes it’s hard to know who to root for. Roger Friedman at Fox News has a wonderfully reported piece today on the financial travails of Michael Jackson. There’s a fair amount of detailed information about how Jackson has for years been mortgaging this piece of property to pay off that loan, and so forth. The […]
Continue reading... April 19, 2002
The Only Man Who Didn’t Take the Options
The Yahoo! Yodeler is suing. Says they’ve been using his voice for years without permission, and only paid him about $500 for the initial session. I wonder if it was paid as a voiceover session or a music session….
Continue reading... April 19, 2002
Maybe Microsoft is trying to
Maybe Microsoft is trying to persuade people that they’re not so smart after all… Some of you probably know that the Microsoft anti-trust trial is still dragging on. There isn’t quite enough room here to go into the whys and wherefores of the current proceeding (and it’s late and I’m tired), but each side is […]
Continue reading... April 18, 2002
The Sun Rises
The Sun Rises It’s not every day that a new daily hits New York City. Hell, it’s not even every decade. The last one was New York Newsday, a laudable attempt to extend Long Island westward; it took a decade (and the sale of its parent company) for the suburban interloper to get beaten back. Now […]
Continue reading... April 15, 2002
Maybe they just need more
Maybe they just need more Jews… The California Department of Fish and Game has decided to shoot fish in a barrel. Sort of. Better than poisoning the reservoir. “There won’t be fish flying through the air, said spokesman Steve Martarano, but “it’ll still have pretty good bang for the buck.”
Continue reading... April 15, 2002
Reporters live for datelines like
Reporters live for datelines like this, from the Wall Street Journal of Monday April 15 (I’d put the URL here, but it requires a paid subscription.): INTERCOURSE, Pa. — James Spangler pulled up to the door of a prosperous Amish home one recent Friday night as dusk settled over the rolling hills of Lancaster County. […]
Continue reading... April 14, 2002
You know the prayer: “Lord,
You know the prayer: “Lord, preserve me from my friends. My enemies I can handle.” It’s not like Napster didn’t have enough troubles of its own. Now founders and investors are squabbling over the likely carcass.
Continue reading... April 14, 2002
The New York Times has
The New York Times has a story today about how the X-10 Nanny-Cam — widely advertised in a universally despised “pop-under” web page — can broadcast its image far beyond the boundaries of your home. Encrypting the image and thereby protecting the privacy of camera owners would easily be possible, but it would create a significantly […]
Continue reading... April 14, 2002
“I’ve seen the lights go
“I’ve seen the lights go out on Broadway I saw the ruins at my feet You know we almost didn’t notice it We’d seen it all before on Forty second Street” — Billy Joel, “Miami 2017” The idea that a set of spotlights should be part of a memorial to the dead and injured […]
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