POLIWOOD: Is Avatar Avatrocious?
Archive for 2010
January 9, 2010
BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple Empire.
CLAIRE MCCASKILL: “We should have a conference, and C-SPAN should be in there.”
BOINGBOING: You Will Become Mentally Ill in 2013. I predict more diagnoses of “sluggish schizophrenia.”
THE PARTY OF Big Business? I like this: “I’ve always thought that regulatory risk is a lot like having Tony Soprano for a business partner. The U.S. government, our stand-in for Mr. Soprano in this analogy, may not have interests that are directly congruent with that of the business owner (as David Scatino found out in season 2 of The Sopranos), but there’s no better ally to have if you want to discourage competition.”
POPULAR MECHANICS ANNOUNCES ITS Editor’s Choice Awards at CES. Yeah, now I’m kinda wishing I’d gone, especially since it’s so cold here. But I had family duties, and a law review article to write.
ED MORRISSEY: Is Gruber the Armstrong Williams of the Obama administration? “Heads should roll for this, and Orszag’s should be the first, and that’s not just because he’s managed to screw up for the entire year. This is not incompetence — it’s corruption.”
KEPLER’S HUNT for new earths. Faster, please.
IN THE MAIL: From Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.
REASON TV: THE REAL WORLD DC: HEALTHCARE REMIX.
From the comments: “If I have my way, it’ll be canceled on November 2.”
A READER SENDS THIS FROM THE WASHINGTON POST on how it’s now possible, but still very hard, to get a handgun in D.C. (Via Dave Hardy, who comments: “I never thought I’d see the day when articles like this would be allowed in the Post…” Though there’s still room for progress, especially in D.C., the gun-rights example disproves the belief — common in many circles — that rights lost to government can never be retrieved. They can be, if people are willing to fight for them. Better, of course, not to lose them at all. And yeah, I know this article is from last fall.)
WHERE U.S. HEALTH CARE RANKS NUMBER ONE: Isn’t ‘responsiveness’ what medicine is all about?
SCOTT BROWN: Winning “the battle of the blogosphere?” That’s not where elections are settled, but it’s something.
MEGAN MCARDLE LOOKS AT THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE BUST. “One of the most persistent narratives of the recent crisis portrays a nation of unsophisticated home buyers led astray by greedy bankers. Supposedly those bankers were willing to write risky loans because they intended to pass them on to some unwary investor. But this explanation falters in the face of a legion of failing commercial deals. Prospective landlords had all the expertise they should have needed to put a fair price on properties—and the majority of lenders who were originating loans for their own portfolios had ample incentive to perform careful due diligence. The best explanation for the calamity that has overtaken us may simply be that cheap money makes us all stupid.”
CAROL SHEA-PORTER GOES ROGUE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM: “One thing is clear: Unless Sen. Harry Reid and President Barack Obama back down on the excise tax in the health reform bills being merged in a secret conference committee, Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter will not vote for the final bill. And that’s not the only feature of the final bill Shea-Porter is likely to oppose.” I guess she can read a poll. I wonder if we’ll see more defections like this?
WILL COLLIER: Government Health Care: Like Your Local Cable Monopoly On Steroids. I don’t trust Comcast with my liver.
NEVADA: Harry Reid Hits New Low In Poll.
HMM: La. politician who cast a national spotlight on slow early federal response to Katrina resigns.
Democrat Aaron Broussard resigned Friday as president of Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, saying through an attorney that he wanted to “clear the air” amid a federal probe of alleged government corruption. . . . Broussard gave a searing account of Katrina’s destruction on NBC’s “Meet The Press” soon after the 2005 storm, blasting the federal government’s early sluggish response.
He also was heavily criticized for sending parish pump workers away before Katrina hit and flooded thousands of homes.
Stay tuned. (Via Dan Riehl).
UNEMPLOYMENT: 10% IN 2010. Plus some not-very-serious advice on how to deal with it.
Remember: 2010 is the year of lean and mean.
UPDATE: Why things don’t look as good as they did in 1982.
SCOTT BUDMAN: The Swagger Returns To The Consumer Electronics Show. And me not there this year . . . .
ADAM KEIPER: Richard Feynman, The Futurists, and the Nanotechnology Initiative. “So far, none of that federal R&D funding has gone toward the kind of nanotechnology that Drexler proposed, not even toward the basic exploratory experiments that the National Research Council called for in 2006. If Drexler’s revolutionary vision of nanotechnology is feasible, we should pursue it for its potential for good, while mindful of the dangers it may pose to human beings and society. And if Drexler’s ideas are fundamentally flawed, we should find out—and establish just how much room there is at the bottom after all.”
I’ve written on the PR battles in the past, here.
MORE ECONOMIC GLOOM, FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES: Jobs gloom hits west’s recovery hopes. “Grim jobs market reports on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday highlighted the ongoing human cost of the credit crisis and kept alive concerns over the sustainability of the recovery. In the US, news that the economy shed another 85,000 jobs in December dashed hopes that a quickening labour market turnround could add momentum to the rebound and make it more robust. Meanwhile, eurozone data showed unemployment hit 10 per cent in November – matching the jobless rate in the US. It was the first time that eurozone unemployment has hit double digits since the introduction of the single currency a decade ago.”