May 28
A Clarification for Steve
Steve (is he back from Africa?) B. wrote to point out, as an offended southerner, that the Mason-Dixon line refers very specifically to the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Of course Steve is correct in the exact sense (ref. Wikipedia), but not in the colloquial sense:
From 1820 onward the name Mason-Dixon Line came in general colloquial usage to mean the boundary between the free states and the slave states. It therefore included not only the original Mason-Dixon Line as surveyed by Mason and Dixon but also that part of the Pennsylvania/Ohio border from the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania to where the Ohio river crosses this border, the route of the Ohio River from that point to where it flows into the Mississippi, the eastern, northern and western borders of Missouri, and the 36 degrees 30 minutes parallel westward from the southwestern corner of Missouri
… so I stand by my colloquial usage :)
from http://www.johncletheroe.org/usa_can/usa/mas_dix.htm
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May 13
“You can take that road - and it may work for some of you. But at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won’t get you where you want to go; that in fact, the elevation of appearance over substance, celebrity over character, short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.
[…]
That’s a good motto for all of us - find someone to be successful for.” — President Obama’s commencement address at ASU
May 11
If you’re at all interested in the state of online video, this is 18 mins of your time well spent. Money quote: “I think a lot of these guys don’t really understand what it takes to program a Broadcom chip.” (at 16:00)
Slides and original post here.
May 4
Requiem for a dying newspaper industry
This weekend, Bonnie and I went to see State of Play (plot summary: cute cub reporter, grizzled old vet, black helicopters) at the Big Picture (once again, what an awesome place to see a movie).
In so many ways, the film is a requiem for a dying newspaper industry. The cub reporter is from the online division, the grumpy veteran’s office is filled with paper. The movie is capped off with sentimental footage of big newspaper printing presses as the final credits roll.
This morning, Om writes on Why the Kindle HD Can’t Save Newspapers and references an article from Clay Shirky that hadn’t crossed my desk yet:
There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke. […] It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.
I could have picked 15 other spots to quote as well. The article is fantastic, and if you are at all interested in the death of the newspaper industry, you should read the whole thing.
p.s. also this morning: Boston Globe almost shut down
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May 4
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard
Thanks to this dude I’ve never even met, I have this song stuck in my head now. Time to pass it on :)
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