Scott Woolley on Broadcast Bullies:
For decades the radio industry has crushed incipient competitors by wielding raw political muscle and arguments that are at once apocalyptic and apocryphal. Radio station owners, who formed the National Association of Broadcasters in 1923, have won laws and regulations that have banned, crippled or massively delayed every major new competitive technology since the first threat emerged in 1934: FM radio.Speaking of Old Media Empires, J.D. Lasica interviews Jack “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Valenti
In the struggle between humanity and technology, humanity is clearly getting its ass kicked.Published in May with little fanfare, the 315-page paperback is a compilation of more than 100 true stories of technological blunder and misfortune. Some of the stories are bizarre, some are pathetic -- but all are highly entertaining.
Mary Schmich is spot on, as she eats away:
Should the media covering the Republican National Convention attend a million-dollar party thrown by the city of New York and TimeWarner in a spectacular shopping center in Columbus Circle?This seems to be related (via instapundit)Should we chow down on endless free food from some of New York's priciest restaurants?
Should we gobble up the free Republican National Committee Media Welcome gift booklet--the one that gives us discounts at Borders, Bose and Tumi, and complimentary espresso in the cigar lounge at Davidoff and a free traditional shave with shaving cream purchase at the Art of Shaving?
Should we accept freebies that on ordinary days we would understand were as forbidden as plagiarism?
Should we do this even though we report mockingly on the luxury partying of the political parties?
Should we shrug off our own conspicuous consumption, paid for by someone else, as part of doing business?
Well, it doesn't matter what you think. It's done.
Thousands of media types, swirling free martinis and chattering up a cyclone, swarmed through the shops of the towering new TimeWarner Center Saturday night.
Oh, look, there's Wolf Blitzer. And some CEO of something. And that woman--isn't she somebody?
Catherine Yang, Moon Ihlwan and Hiroko Tashiro summarize the woeful state of true broadband in our "advanced" nation (true broadband is not the slow internet connections available currently (DSL or cable modems; Korea & Japan have economical services with speeds up to 40X ours). I've commented on this problem a number of times.
Tammy Baldwin's campaign is running ads online, including this one on Taegan Goddard's political wire site.
The ad links to a fund raising page (the link includes source and type information.
Words fail me, today.
I took a number of photos during a visit to Philadelphia's generally well done National Constitution Center. Four times, I was told that neither photos, nor videos are allowed. I asked how it was that the National Constitution Center would prohibit photos or videos. A manager was called and told me that:
Some of the materials are copywritten and that flash photography could be harmful to documents. I agreed that most people don't know how to turn off their flash when shooting in AUTO mode, but I've visited many, many places where photography is permitted without a flash (including the Philadelphia Museum of Art).My better half, Nancy whispered to me that today was not really the day to get "thrown out of the National Constitution Center". Perhaps I should not be so surprised, when I read things like this.
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
India, Afghanistan and the United States are just three of the nations holding general elections in 2004. Though far flung on the map, electoral decisions in one of these countries will reverberate in the others, argues Steve Coll. In a three-part series of essays for NPR, Coll reflects on the political links between America, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and the shadow that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network cast over the approaching fall election season.
Coll is the author of Ghost Wars, a must read for anyone interested in US South Asia policies.
Sandra Ward on our declining interest in radio (I completely agree with is article):
IT'S HARD TO SAY EXACTLY WHEN radio started to lose the love and the power and the magic celebrated in that 1975 rock anthem, but a good bet would be 1996. Landmark telecom legislation back then unleashed a powerful wave of consolidation that left the airwaves cluttered with commercials -- and investors set up for disappointment down the road.Though many radio stocks soared seven- or eightfold during the merger frenzy, the excitement proved ephemeral. The stocks came back to earth with a thud, and the industry has since reverted to its former status as a generator of steady but unspectacular returns, with revenues growing little more than the economy as a whole. Worse, there's increasing concern that radio is entering a long-term decline, the result of new competition and technologies and changing consumer tastes.
Younger adults -- the key targets of radio advertising -- have clearly been losing their ardor for the medium. By one key measure, the number of listeners ages 18 to 34 has declined by about 8% in the past five years, as portable digital-music players, Internet radio programming and other innovations have started to take hold. And while the dollars spent on radio advertising have been essentially flat for the past few years, competing media like cable TV, the 'Net and outdoor advertising have been gaining steadily.
"It's over," Larry Haverty, a media specialist at State Street Research and Management in Boston, says of radio stocks' big run. "Something good happened in the 'Nineties; something less good has happened in the '00s. Every retailer is blowing its budget on advertising and radio is not getting any of it. If they don't get it now, they're not going to."
Clear Channel Communications, the big daddy of the industry, has seen its share price fall by nearly two-thirds since 2000 -- including 17% in just the past year. Citadel Broadcasting is off 33% this year and Cumulus Media is down 29%. But investors have by no means given up; the group is trading at multiples to cash flow that are higher than both their historic norms and the valuations of other media companies.
Investors, along with radio executives, may not be facing up to the full extent of the industry's challenges. While radio has always weathered past threats -- video did not kill radio's star, as a group called the Buggles prophesied in 1981 -- things could really be different this time.
Across the country, listeners are changing how they choose to receive music and news and talk radio. They are turning to portable music players like Apple Computer's iPod, streaming audio over the Internet and the emerging field of satellite radio to hear what they want, when they want to hear it.
Anne Kershaw, a 46-year-old lawyer who travels weekly between her home in Tarrytown, N.Y., and an office in Richmond, Va., bought an iPod in May, partly because "there is no decent radio station in Richmond. I was tired of being preached to." She still uses the radio -- but not in the old way. By attaching a transmitter to her iPod and setting it on a certain FM frequency, she can play the 983 tunes she has downloaded to the iPod through the radio, whether at home or in the car.
Music downloading is one of the "fastest-growing digital phenomena ever," says Forrester Research Group. It predicts download services will generate more than $200 million in revenue this year, $40 million higher than forecast and up from just $36 million in 2003. In all, some 35 million U.S. adults have downloaded music, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit initiative.
Trends like that are causing companies to reassess advertising choices, to ensure they're getting the most bang for their buck. Accountability and return on investment are the priorities in advertising right now, and it's hard to say radio is providing much of either as listeners start tuning out. Among all people older than 12, only 14.6% are listening to radio during an average 15-minute period, down from 16% in 1998, according to Arbitron.
About the only bright spot: niche programming. Radio operators that provide Spanish-language, urban or religious programming are seeing ratings improvements and gaining share. Advertisers are starting to notice: The nation's largest advertiser, consumer-product giant Procter & Gamble, struck a multimillion-dollar pact in June to sponsor the Tom Joyner Morning Show, the most widely syndicated African-American show in the country, with eight million listeners.
Companies specializing in niche programming, such as Florida-based Spanish Broadcasting and Maryland-based Radio One, which is focused on the urban market and also has cable operations, could offer some trading opportunities. But many investors already have flocked to such stocks, leaving the valuations high compared with those of other radio shares.
BY AND LARGE, the industry's revenue prospects remain quite grim, even though the economic recovery has been under way for two years. Robert Coen, media-spending forecaster for ad giant Universal McCann, had expected 7% growth in national radio advertising this year. The figure is running below 1%. He thought local advertising -- the source of 80% of all radio revenue -- would show a 6% jump from last year. Instead, it's closer to 4%.
Any thoughts that radio advertising would rebound after the Olympics, which is a television-dominated event, and ahead of the election are fading in the face of weak September ad sales. The current softness comes on the heels of a capricious second quarter, when radio stocks had the rug pulled out from under them yet again. After ad revenue began to pick up in the first quarter, bookings in May, typically the best month of the year, fell off a cliff as advertisers, auto dealers in particular, canceled spots. The reason some gave for cutting back: Business was so good there was no need to advertise.
Only recently have radio executives begun to own up to the fact that the dynamics surrounding the business have changed.
Radio titan Mel Karmazin lost his job as president and chief operating officer at Viacom this year not simply because of personality clashes with Chief Executive Sumner Redstone. It was also because he failed to realize the ground was shifting, and continued to cheerlead a strategy that was no longer working for Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting, the No. 2 radio operator behind Clear Channel.
Ted Forstmann's investment vehicle, Forstmann Little, brought Citadel public exactly a year ago, hoping to capitalize on the strategy that propelled radio stocks in the wake of deregulation: Use a strong share price to snatch up properties and slash costs, boost revenue and increase earnings and cash flow. Forstmann's timing was way off. Citadel shares, which came out at 19, have lately been trading at 15. Instead of buying radio stations, Citadel has announced plans to buy back shares.
In another sign of the times, San Antonio-based Clear Channel, with annual revenue of $8.9 billion, announced this past summer it would reduce the number of ad spots it runs per hour. It also stopped reporting weekly sales data to Miller Kaplan Arase & Co., which tracks radio-network ad revenue, on grounds that the reports were useful when times were good -- but not now. The data create "volatility in the financial markets by inviting exaggerated interpretations of normal sales cycles, and puts the radio industry at a competitive disadvantage to other media sectors," the company said.
Many operators are still hoping the good times will return. Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey continues to talk up the case for consolidation, declaring at an industry conference in Manhattan in June that "consolidation will continue," that it will "pick up as the economic expansion continues" and that there are "compelling reasons to create scale in this business now."
At the same conference, David Kennedy, president and chief operating officer of Susquehanna Radio, maintained that the slump in radio "is a cyclical thing rather than a secular thing," and Rick Cummings, president of the radio unit of Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications, agreed.
"I don't think the sky is falling, just slowing down," adds Mary Catherine Sneed, chief operating officer of Radio One. She says the industry is in a "recovery mode," but that it might take two years to "see what kind of recovery" this is.
Investors, too, seem reluctant to let go of the past. Despite the huge price drops in recent years, the valuations of many of the stocks are richer now than in the past. The group's enterprise value (market capitalization plus net debt) stands at about 15 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda -- well above historic levels of about eight to 10 times. Investors typically use Ebitda to determine a radio company's valuation because it better reflects how the companies manage their operations.
Radio looks expensive compared with not only its own past, but also with other media sectors. Media giants such as Disney, News Corp. and Time Warner trade at Ebitda multiples closer to 10. Among radio companies, Citadel trades at 17.5 times; Cumulus at 17 times and Cox Radio at 14.5. You get the picture.
Little wonder that some top investors are tuning out. "Why pay more for radio if it's only growing in line with national averages?" says Mario Gabelli, longtime media investor and founder and principal of $27 billion Gabelli Asset Management, who is shunning the sector. "Radio as a medium isn't worth 18 to 20 times."
The best hope for investors may be increased stock buybacks and the possibility that some companies go private. Like Citadel, many radio operators have come to see buybacks as one of the best uses for their still-considerable free cash flow. Clear Channel initiated a share-repurchase program for the first time this year, and that may be only the beginning. Bear Stearns estimates that in the next five years, Clear Channel could buy back 34% to 39% of its shares, Entercom could buy back up to 32% to 37%, and Cox Radio could buy back 21% to 26%.
That marks a huge shift from the boom years, when industry leaders were spending their capital on one acquisition after another. For a sense of the scope of that activity, just look at what Clear Channel did. It bought its first radio station in 1972, and 23 years later owned only a total of 43. Yet in the year following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the number of stations owned by Clear Channel quadrupled. At the end of last year, the company, founded by two Texans -- one a Harvard MBA and the other an auto dealer -- controlled some 1,182 radio stations in the U.S., not to mention a radio network.
Wall Street jumped for joy at all the consolidation. The buying spree kept investment bankers happy, and investors often scored big. The Telecom Act, which basically let any company enter the communications business and any communications business compete against any other, also helped usher in entirely new categories of advertisers. All manner of Internet startups and cellphone carriers started buying air time. Drug companies also took to the airwaves in droves to promote their products in dramatic fashion.
Suddenly, staid radio stocks had a fast-growth glint to them that caught the eye of momentum investors, those swashbuckling types willing to pay a premium for a stock as long as quarterly earnings and cash flow continue to rise.
Multiples on radio stocks soared to the stratosphere from more modest historical levels. As the companies grew in size and might, managements envisioned capitalizing on their new clout by commanding higher ad rates. And ads started to crowd out programming: It became typical to run 15 to 20 spots an hour, many back-to-back.
The years "1996 to 2000 were a music bubble defined by Lowry Mays [chairman of Clear Channel] and Mel Karmazin [then of Viacom's Infinity unit]," says Gabelli, referring to the acquisition strategy pursued by the two radio giants to garner 30% of the market between them.
Then Wall Street's larger bubble burst. And the radio bubble really burst.
What had been music to the Street's ears was lost on listeners. That is, if they bothered to listen at all. More people may be driving to work than ever before, but most prefer to chatter on cellphones during the rush hour or fire up an MP3 rather than endure the endless commercials and shrinking playlists on their radios.
Advertisers began to balk, too, as their promotions were drowned in a sea of spots. Pricing discipline went by the wayside, as radio operators cut generous deals to keep advertisers in the fold. So much for the theory that industry consolidation would lead to higher and firmer pricing.
And just as swiftly as dot-com ads surfaced in the boom years, they vanished after the bust. No new advertisers have emerged to fill the void. Radio's more traditional advertisers, such as retailers and automobile dealers, are cutting back or rethinking their strategies. "With 30% to 40% of all car sales enabled by the Internet, auto dealers aren't getting a run for their money on radio," says State Street's Haverty.
He says local cable television and the Internet are much more formidable and effective competitors to radio than they might have been in the past. The 'Net will figure out how to do local advertising, he contends. And there's no question cable's clout has increased with consolidation.
Consider, says Haverty, that Comcast is now the sole cable provider serving the Boston market, whereas five years ago there were four cable companies. And Comcast, the nation's largest cable-TV operator, has made no bones about going after local advertising, targeting an increase of $5 billion in local ad revenue. Earlier this year, Comcast expanded a service that lets advertisers tailor ads to certain target audiences based on geographical location or programming preferences.
"We assume Comcast will have an impact, as will the Internet," Cummings of Emmis said at the conference in New York, sponsored by radio-ad firm Interep. Cummings called for a "new cooperation" among radio operators "because the enemy isn't each other but local cable and Internet."
The death of radio has been heralded many times. Yet since its introduction to the mass market in the early 1920s, radio has survived -- and thrived -- because no other medium has been able to match its formatting flexibility, its local appeal, its immediacy and its low overhead. Not until now, at least. Cable companies, commercial-free (though fee-based) satellite radio, MP3 players and other digital wonders may at last be giving radio a run for its money.
Many radio investors and executives dismiss the threats of advances such as satellite radio. They note that while the two satellite leaders, XM Radio and Sirius Satellite, sport a combined market capitalization about equal to that of the top five, pure-play radio outfits, they together are losing about $700 million a year, in marked contrast to radio's solid cash flow. But that kind of analysis is missing the larger point: Consumers have changed.
"It may not be a change in radio's value, it may be a change in consumer demands and taste," says Kurt Hanson, CEO of AccuRadio.com, an Internet radio site and publisher of RAIN, the Radio and Internet newsletter, which focuses on radio's malaise. "Consumers maybe got tired of the 300-song play list. That's not a change in the radio product, but a change in the perception of the product."
Now it's possible, via the Internet, to hear a 3,000-song playlist from a U.K. station or 1,000 songs from a country-music station in the U.S. It's even possible to get streaming music over a personal digital assistant such as the Treo. Says Hanson: "It's not years down the road, it's here."
While the nation's radio operators yearn for the good old days -- Sinatra, anyone? -- listeners are increasingly doing it their own way.
Thomas Hazlett summarizes the path our politicians must take, to support economical high speed (not the slow products we have now) broadband adoption. There is no greater economic issue for Wisconsin than this:
In the mid-1990s, Korean policy-makers set out to inject competition into local telephone service. They enacted rules allowing rivals to challenge the erstwhile state monopoly, Korea Telecom. Yet, by mid-2004, KT still accounted for 95% of local phone lines.A failure? On the contrary, Korea's policy has proved a smashing success. Because, as an additional lure to attract phone entrants, the government ended regulation of advanced telecom applications. The result: While competitors largely avoided (regulated) voice services, they invested billions to create new (unregulated) high-speed Internet networks. The broadband technologies unleashed by telecom rivals forced KT to modernize its network, which now serves just half of the high-speed market.
And that's a big market: 78% of Korean households subscribe to broadband, the highest penetration rate in the world and well over twice that of the U.S. While broadband via standard cable modems and digital subscriber line (DSL) services are available for about $27 a month, households paying about $52 a month receive lightning fast 20 mbps VDSL service -- connections sufficient to receive live high-definition TV. In short, the apartment dweller in Korea enjoys the same level of Internet service as the largest corporate customers in
the U.S. All this in a country of 48 million which, in 1979, had just
240,000 phone subscribers.
I've posted a summary of the US Senate election candidates here. The primary election is September 14, 2004. VOTE!
Toshio Fuji shares a nicely done Quicktime VR Tour of Tokyo's Urababa area.
Noah Adams talks with technology correspondent Xeni Jardin about a new method of digital music trading. Using so-called MP3 "blogs," music fans trade and comment on songs that are often unusual twists on familiar favorites. A yin to this yang.
Omar Wasow talks about the illegal methods to enhance performance, and how athletes try to fool drug tests.
Where do the "extra embryo's go? Kristen Philipkoski takes a look.
Dave mentioned Madison's wonderful farmer's market today. Here are some of my favorite photos.
The original blogger, Dave Winer is driving to Madison, hopefully arriving later this week. Dave's site, scripting news spawned a revolution in personal journalism.
I'm hoping to organize a dinner (Sunday?). Email me: zellmer at mailbag dot com if you are interested.
Thomas Palaima says the ancient Greeks lived intimately with the brutality of war, unlike present times, when many American civilians are shielded from the effects of the war in Iraq.
Nice to see the DOJ carrying water for Hollywood. Surely there are more pressing matters. Our tax dollars at work.
Alex Tabarrok takes us back to the future, via 1900:
There is a widespread prejudice against the newspapers, based on the belief that they cannot be trusted to report truly the current events in the world's life on account of incompetence or venality. But in spite of this distrust we are almost altogether dependent on them for our knowledge of widely interesting events....The function of the newspaper in a well-ordered society is to control the state through the authority of facts, not to drive nations and social classes headlong into war through the power of passion and prejudice.The source? The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology (JSTOR) by one Delos Wilcox writing in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.... July 1900.
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. (AP) - Hundreds of local residents and some from across the nation have turned out to provide a vast array of free aid since Hurricane Charley ravaged the area on Aug. 13.The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that as of Friday 77,000 households had registered for disaster relief in Florida. The Red Cross is preparing 125,000 meals a day and says an estimated 2,200 families have been housed in shelters.
But it is the unofficial aid stations that have become a lifeline for many people.
Hurricane victims need travel only a few blocks on some major thoroughfares before seeing hand-lettered signs offering free water, ice, sandwiches, diapers, blankets and toiletries. Many Good Samaritans just pull up at the first big intersection they see to distribute their aid.
I thought it would be more difficult, or maybe more complicated, but it was neither. A transplant surgeon called from the University of Minnesota this morning to tell me they had a cadaver kidney for me (I’ve been on the transplant list for four-and-a-half years). “I’ll pass,” I said in a quiet but steady voice. “Call the next person on the list.” The physician wanted a reason. “I’m still working out some ethical issues with the whole transplant business.” There. It was out before I had a chance to even think about censoring myself.
Spud Hilton takes us on a journey with the Hippie Bus:
It's 5 a.m. and my left leg is wedged irretrievably between a couple of Brits, who are spooning in somnolent bliss as our strangely loaded bus trundles through the Sierra foothills.Everywhere are bodies on mattresses -- a tangle of blurry-eyed Brits, shaggy-headed Germans, curled-up Kiwis -- languorously sprawled as if acting out a page of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, only with more clothes.
If such a scenario sounds far-fetched, it shouldn't. With the presidential election less than three months away, such tactics are gaining momentum, as organizations attempting to influence the election are betting the necessary votes are hidden within consumer databases.Activist groups including MoveOn.org, along with the major political parties, are spending unprecedented amounts of money to find out where you shop before trying to sell you on their candidate
Dan Neil's review of the new Toureg SUV Diesel version provides some useful background on Rudolph Diesel's invention, along with a discussion of biodiesel fuel.
Johnny Winston, Jr. sent a note today about a wonderful event that the 100 Black Men of Madison are holding:
The 100 Black Men of Madison's 8th Annual Back To School Picnic will be held on Saturday August 28th from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Demetral Park on Commercial and Packers Ave. This event will be held rain or shine.This year’s picnic will feature the distribution of over 1,600 backpacks filled with school supplies to help needy elementary and middle school students get off to a great start.Children must be in attendance to receive a backpack and they are distributed in a “first come, first served” basis. In addition, hamburgers, hot dogs and other treats will be served. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and the Madison Fire Trucks will also be there.
For the first time, The 100 will work in conjunction with the Madison
Department of Public Health to provide toothbrushes and well child clinic
information.The 100 Black Men of Madison, Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) not for profit service
organization. The Back to School Picnic is sponsored by include Oscar
Mayer, Kraft, Target, Office Depot, Famous Footwear, Anchor Bank and
Jansport.For more information please contact Wayne Canty 608-285-6753, Darrell
Bazzell 608-263-2509 or Micheal Boulden 608-285-6036.
Robert Sawyer takes a look at our lives in 2014:
Your cubicle will have a smart wall of its own, giving every worker the appearance of having a window; yours might show real-time footage of Lake Louise, assuming that global warming hasn’t melted the adjacent glaciers and flooded everything. And no matter which office chair you sit on, it will adjust automatically to your body’s proportions.Of course, we’ll all live in an enhanced reality. Today’s bulky virtual-reality goggles will have been replaced by contact lenses that overlay textual information on your vision; the lens will be in constant communication with the computing powerhouse in your wristband. You’ll never be in the embarrassing situation of not remembering the name of an acquaintance you happen to run into; facial-recognition technology will identify the person, and provide you with all pertinent details instantaneously.
There's been a fascinating discussion online regarding John Kerry's Vietnam war record statements vis a vis the media's attention to President Bush's Vietnam era National Guard service (Note: I'm no fan of either one). The story illustrates, however, the terrible condition of many major media organizations.
I always thought the purpose of news organizations was to inform (perhaps that's an idealistic approach) the thinking public. Thank God for the internet, and our ability to route around these outages (the first blogger, Dave Winer, started largely because the tech press infrequently got things right).
"The bias is pervasive. As the Media Research Center, a media watchdog, pointed out, ABC, CBS and NBC did 75 stories on charges Bush was "AWOL" from the National Guard. They did nine on claims Kerry fibbed about his war record. Biased might be too kind a description."
Another useful perspective: Jason Zengerle on the state of the George W. Bush joke.
UPDATE: This link has been passed around a bit. It's interesting to see who is having a look.
Katie Fehrenbacher on Japan's interesting cell phone accessible food safety database:
hey’ve already got a functioning beef tracking and data system by which the consumer can locate their steak’s species, sex, stats, place-of-birth, farmer in charge, and location of the farm, all from a ID number on the beef packaging via any Internet connection. Now the fish business is the next food item to get the treatment and DoCoMo Sentsu (subsidiary of NTTDoCoMo) partnered with the Marine Fishery Systems Association to create a 2D barcode tracking system for all fish
Wisconsin Public Radio's Home page tells the story:
NOTICE: Due to rights issues, the Ideas Network internet streaming service cannot carry the BBC and CBC programming from 11:30pm to 6am weekdays and 12am to 6am on weekends until the conclusion of the Olympics on September 1st. Our live streaming for the Ideas Network will be off the air during these periods.This absurdity, due to NBC's broadcast rights deal with the IOC (International Olympic Committee), is yet another example of how the media has had its way with our politicians.
Backpacking around Europe in 1985 (!), I spent some time in the region featured in the Sunday Times Travel Section: Bavaria's Chiemsee. I remember the beauty, serenity and history. The Prien hostel I stayed in was pleasant enough. One of the highlights is Herrenchiemsee, one of "mad" King Ludwig's enourmous castles. Eric Pfanner takes us there.
New Mexico's Bernalillo County once again sets a great example for Dane County: Free WiFi (Wireless internet access) throughouth the 10-story courthouse. The WiFi network is intended to reduce juror frustration with waiting to be called for cases and to provide fast internet access for lawyers and judges as well. VOIP (Voice over internet protocol, or internet phone calls will also be supported on this wireless network).
North Carolina plans to install WiFi in all 100 of its courthouses. New York has similar plans.
Albuquerque provides free airport WiFi - while Dane county plans to eventually offer fee based WiFi access at MSN. This is a great example of our political leaders failing to embrace important new technologies that benefit everyone. Wisconsin needs pervasive true highspeed internet access. I've written extensively on this problem here and here.
The Olympic absurdity continues. Athletes are prohibited from blogging. Support your rights. Support the EFF.
Wired covers this issue as well.
JoongAng Daily on the wrestling match between the old media and blogs at the Olympics. Via Scripting News.
Monica Davey talks politics in the Dells.
The cause of imperialism, weakened for a time by the fall of the European and Soviet empires, has found new advocates. The fact that the 21st century imperial power happens to be the United States of America, whose independence from colonialism was declared 228 years ago, seems not to matter. The neoconservatives' project to position the United States as the world's dominant power -- and to use that power to govern in venues chosen seemingly by them alone, and collectively where reasonably easy but unilaterally where necessary -- has been advanced and saluted.
Terry Gross interviews Dr. Rowan Gillies, president of Doctors Without Borders, just back from Sudan. Donate.
Tyler Cowen's interesting talk before the Institute of Culinary Professionals:
If you look at Mexican food in this country, a lot of it, of course, is not eaten by Mexicans at all. It is eaten by Americans. But consider the Mexican food eaten by Mexicans. Well, who are the Mexicans, for the most part, who are currently coming to America? They tend to be fairly young, and they tend to be male. So take a group of young men, say ages eighteen to twenty-five, put them together in large numbers and let them eat. What do you get? Well, some of it is quite excellent, some of it is not so great, but you get something very different than the native cuisine. Let's say you performed this thought experiment with France. Take a million Frenchmen, male, ages eighteen to twenty five, bring them to the United States, let them loose, have them eat. You are not going to get classic French cuisine.Via Marginal Revolution.
Matthew Wald on the UW's "little" nuclear reactor:
The University of Wisconsin's nuclear reactor is an unassuming little model, operated (on Tuesdays and Thursdays only) by students in T-shirts and shorts. In the last few months it has been used to identify the source of pottery shards from an ancient settlement in India, to test whether heart stents work better if they have been irradiated, and to study the water and gas balance that would be present in a future generation of power reactors.But its fuel is weapons-grade uranium. If it were stolen, experts say, it could give terrorists or criminals a major head start on an atomic bomb.
And Wisconsin is not alone. Five other university research reactors around the country use weapons-grade fuel, even though the federal government has promised for more than two decades to reclaim their uranium and substitute a less enriched variety that is closer to the kind that commercial power plants use.
120 Yen via cell phone for a coke? Now available in Japan.
Officials from several newspapers have recently confessed to fudging their circulation numbers. Slate editor-at-large Jack Shafer talks to NPR's Noah Adams about why media officials would do such a thing, and what it could mean for public trust of the press.
Adam Hanft has some useful suggestions that would help all of us evaluate health care costs.
The industry could address this by employing this very notion of pricing transparency. How much of its premium income gets passed through to its members and their doctors and hospitals, versus how much is overhead and profit? Imagine how much better consumers would feel if they understood that HMOs exist to collect premiums from everyone in order to redistribute the money to those who need it. Essentially, it's a major re-education campaign.This is a model that the non-profit world has adopted, as scandals such as the United Way mess focused attention on what percent of a contribution finds its way to those who need it. Indeed, these metrics have become part of their messaging strategy.
Witness the Copyright Gap in its full majesty. In the UK, Digital Radio has been live at the BBC for about three years now. As the BBC says, “Digital Audio Broadcasting gives you far greater station choice, better reception & clarity of sound with no re-tuning.”Yet meanwhile, in the country that invented both the radio station and the transistor, digital radio is stuck. Among other problems, the FCC is contending with the RIAA’s arguments that, absent proper controls, digital radio would be “the perfect storm” for the music industry. Digital radio, the RIAA believes, must be prevented from causing the “enormous damage wrought by peer-to-peer piracy.” On Monday, the RIAA filed a new letter reiterating that the “threat” from digital radio is “real and imminent.”
John Crumpacker on bad press behavior in Athens.
For years the old neighborhood pool was the best place to cool off on hot summer days. But across the region, cities have had to close those old pools because of expensive repairs and declining attendance. In a day of air conditioners and cable TV, pools don't serve as community gathering places much anymore. But now city leaders are trying to attract a new generation of swimmers and splashers with more exciting pools.
James Lileks fears a "catastrophic fashion meltdown", not seen since the 1970's:
"Does this make you want to spend money? No, didn't think so. Sell your Marshall Field's stock. The fools are back in charge."
The Wisconsin State Journal Editorial page says that it's time for a new baseball commissioner. No doubt, he should have left long ago. Additional background.
Steve Coll's excellent book, Ghost Wars, is featured on NPR's All Things Considered this week.
Stephanie Hemphill discusses the growing demand for organic food and the implications for farmers:
People are choosing organic food in a big way. Sales of organic food have been increasing steadily. You'd think having more demand for your product would be great. But for people who grow organic food, it's a mixed blessing. When you can't supply as much as the customer wants, it can be difficult. Some farmers are trying creative ways to fill the demand.
NPR's Robert Siegel talks with NBA legend Oscar Robertson about the future of American basketball and if individual skill, rather than team cooperation, is detrimental to the sport
These days, the air inside many homes is more polluted than the air outside. That's because everything from pets to gas appliances to paint and cleaning products contributes to indoor air pollution. Most homes contain an alarming number of chemicals, and modern homes are built so tightly that they tend to trap the bad air inside.
Romuald shot a beautiful VR scene of an erupting volcano, from the air via an ultra light.
Interesting South Dakota blog platform on monopoly media reform.
The Wisconsin State Journal Editorial page has a useful summary of pressing economic priorities:
A useful interview with Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark.
I haven't watched much of NBC's Olympic coverage, but the few minutes I've seen have been awful:
Joshua Brauer offers up some suggestions for NBC.... (via scripting news)
UPDATE: Ann Harrison on the futility of NBC's internet censorship (live internet video streams are available in other countries).
"Ultimately it will fail," said Len Sassaman, a privacy-technology researcher. Once the American Internet viewing public realizes that U.K. Web surfers are watching better Olympic coverage than they are allowed to see after forking over their credit card, said Sassaman, they will look for better ways to access those images. "Bandwidth has gotten a lot cheaper over the years, so it is not so far-fetched to think that someone will set up proxy servers in Britain that would do this."
Steve Clemons on an example of the structural corruption in government (Clemons cites an example of ex CIA director James Woolsey, whose wife is a director of Fluor corporation (recipient of $1.6B in Iraq contracts). Another example is Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, whose wife, Linda, is a lobbyist who mostly represents airlines, aircraft makers and other aviation-related interests — all of which have a steady stream of issues before the Senate.
From Inc Magazine online: Notes and comments on a potential flat tax.
After his tax breaks, President Bush is toying with the idea of eliminating the IRS and income tax altogether. In lieu of this, a flat federal sales tax would be institutedOur tax system is a mess and in dire need of a complete re-think. Let's start the process.
Monica Davey talks with some Wisconsin voters on the upcoming presidential election:
"Honestly, I don't know what to do," Ms. Zavala said as she wandered near Lake Michigan clutching the hand of her young granddaughter. Ms. Zavala voted for President Bush in 2000 and says her relatives still adore him. Never far from her thoughts, though, is that her son-in-law is a soldier, and so her uncertainty keeps growing."Now, when I look at it, I think Bush misled the people about Iraq, and I feel sad for all the families, for all these soldiers that had to die," she said. "But then I don't really know what Kerry would do about it either." Ms. Zavala stopped, then finally said, "I guess I can only wait and see what happens."
There lies a central complication for the campaigns as they fight for a state that gave Al Gore just an ounce more support than George W. Bush four years ago. From working-class neighborhoods in Racine in the southeast to the pine- and fern-covered hills near Lake Superior, voters speak of factories that have closed, schools short on money and health insurance beyond reach.
Scott Simon remembers Julia Child (Audio)
A very Madison scene, from Monona TerraceMap
Jonas Carlson shares a beautiful Quicktime VR scene of the convent church of Varnhem in Sweden.
Reason posts a useful interview with John Perry Barlow (currently vice chair of the EFF):
Every existing power relation is up for renewal with cyberspace, and it was only natural there would be an awful lot of fracas where cyberspace met the physical world. EFF has been the primary mediator on that border. We have been very successful at protecting against excessive government encroachment into the virtual world.Copyright and intellectual property are the most important issues now. If you don’t have something that assures fair use, then you don’t have a free society. If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
Susan Fornoff writes about Topher Delaney's healing gardens:
Lavender flanks an antique French urn that serves as a fountain in one corner; lemons climb on the two antique French gates that delineate the garden's three "rooms," each with a terra-cotta colored bench designed by Philippe Starck.There are tomatoes growing; bay, rosemary, a rose bush, nasturtiums, too. Aloe and opuntia elaborate on the medicinal theme, and jasmine surrounds the base of the visual centerpiece, an Italian fountain surrounded by a shelf of Haifa limestone.
"This is very beautiful stone, from Jerusalem," Delaney says. "You see it in very lovely homes; you never see it in a hospital." She looks around. "This is as good as it gets in the most fancy house you could ever find. This is as good as it gets."
Interested in the Floriday Hurricane? Visit these blogs:
via instapundit
The Hertz airport shuttle brought a must unexpected surprise today. The inquisitive driver asked if I was flying to Denver. No, I said, San Francisco was my destination. "It will be 40 degrees cooler there than it is here in Phoenix." I replied that it was 107 last night, when I landed.
"My place is wonderful, and cool. I have cottonwoods on my property which provide a very pleasant shade. In fact, during June, I put up a hammock under the cottonwoods, setup a fan and slept outside at night with my three golden retrievers. Beautiful."
Where might this paradise be?
"50 miles west of Phoenix, 2 miles north of I-10, the other side of the White Mountains. I bought the 10 acres 50 years ago for $250.00 (!). I bought it and planted those cottonwoods." My annual property tax bill is $60.00. Those golden retrievers keep an eye on the property during the day.
How's the commute?
"I drive 65 (the I-10 speed limit is 75). I arrive before all those people flying past me."
I asked if civilization has encroached on his paradise?
"There's no one within 5 miles."
With that, I continued my journey to San Francisco.
San Francisco's Ferry Building recently re-opened after an extensive (and well done) renovation. I took a walk through the building and snapped these photos recently.
I noticed a growing selection of soy milk products in one of the establishments.
Interesting ideas, certainly worth discussion:
We propose a simple change that will fundamentally alter the way people buy health care. All individually purchased insurance and out-of-pocket expenses would become tax deductible for persons who have at least catastrophic insurance coverage. The tax deduction could be taken by persons who claim the standard deduction on their tax returns and those who itemize deductions. All purchases of health care would receive the same income tax treatment.With a level playing field, workers will no longer have a tax incentive to take their compensation in the form of expensive health insurance with low copayments and will shift to health plans with higher deductibles and higher coinsurance rates. Market forces will ensure that the insurance premium savings will be passed on to workers in the form of higher money wages. Just as workers have borne the burden of rising health care costs, so will they reap the benefits when costs are brought under control.
Local Cable TV monopoly, Charter Communications reported higher-than-expected subscriber losses for the second quarter, according to Peter Grant.
I recently thought about adding direct tv or charter cable to our home - largely for the Olympics (we don't watch a whole lot of TV). I found the direct tv customer service folks to be excellent, while my charter interactions were not great (lots of rather hard upselling). I really only wanted local channels, espn and msnbc. They don't evidently unbundle. Bummer that unlike other parts of the world, we won't be watching live Olympic internet streams.
Ellen Messmer on the substantial health care costs/risks of keeping Microsoft Windows systems patched
According to Network World: 'Amid growing worries that Windows-based medical systems will endanger patients if Microsoft-issued security patches are not applied, hospitals are rebelling against restrictions from device manufacturers that have delayed or prevented such updates. Device makers such as GE Medical Systems, Philips Medical Systems and Agfa say it typically takes months to test Microsoft patches because they could break the medical systems to which they're applied. In some instances, vendors won't authorize patch updates at all.' This is the typical patch vs. crash problem. Unfortunately, the stakes here could be human lives.
Amy Chozick reviews the controversial use of shrub roses (9 million sold last year), cross bred to require little maintenance
he new varieties are controversial, with some long-stem-rose purists saying that even planting them is cheating. Still, shrub roses are now the fastest-growing segment of the rose market, with the nine million plants sold last year accounting for 30% of all rose sales -- double the market share for shrub roses in 2002, according to the American Rose Society."These kinds of numbers are unheard of for roses," says Keith Zary, director of research at wholesale rose distributor Conrad-Pyle, which sold 1.8 million of its "Knock Out" red-rose shrubs in 2003, up from 135,000 in 2000, the year it introduced the variety. Historically, a popular rose wouldn't even hit the half-million mark, he says. At Jackson & Perkins, a nursery based in Medford, Ore., shrub-rose sales are up 6% this year, and the nursery's multicolored "Garden Ease Rose Blankets" -- $39.95 carpets of color that bloom into the fall -- are now one of the company's biggest sellers.
Verne Kopytoff summarizes recent disclosures regarding google's popular adsense advertising program:
Google is among the Internet's biggest destinations for advertisers. The company had nearly $1.5 billion in revenue last year, 95 percent of which came from advertising.Targeting the pitches
Underpinning Google's business is AdWords, a program that allows advertisers to make targeted sales pitches alongside search results. For example, a shampoo company could choose to advertise for queries that only include the words "hair," "dandruff" or "split ends."Google also runs the ads on partner Web sites including America Online, Ask Jeeves and Earthlink.
Ford is running a Mustang blog (rather quietly at this point). Interesting angle on promoting their new sports coupe. I don't think they should run this off of the mother ship's domain (ford.com). Peter Delorenzo thinks that Ford has many, many product problems, including several new models due this fall:
But by any measure, the upcoming Ford 500, the Fusion and the Freestyle sport wagon are not only uninspiring to look at (in spite of being built on the outstanding Mazda6 platform architecture), but they're going to be indistinguishable from their competition. These new cars may be perfectly competent, but as we all know by now, being merely good enough just isn't good enough in this business anymore.Related, sort of, article by Thomas Content on Detroit's health care cost problems.Ford continues to make great waves and have fun with their feel-good "heritage" cars, but their passenger cars appear to be falling behind before they even hit the starting gate.
Ford desperately needs a Grand Slam home run - a "standard" Ford that possesses all of the attitude, heritage and legacy of performance that its greatest passenger cars once had. And no, I'm not talking about some Yester-Tech Nostalgia Rod here, but a contemporary automobile that unapologetically says "Ford" in the very best possible way.
Ford executives continue to watch their car sales plummet (the July figures just in were dismal again), yet they dismiss and deflect any criticism by suggesting that when they get their new products "on-line" - everything will be all better again.
But at some point, it needs to sink in at Ford that consumers have actually gotten used to the fact that Ford has nothing to offer them - and that when Ford finally says, "Here you go, folks, check out our brand spanking new product lineup!" - a lot of people will just keep right on walking by.
Meanwhile, Wes Raynal reviews the new Corvette (C6).
This weekend's All City Swim Meet's final event had a very exciting last heat. Watch the excitement in this 12.5MB Quicktime Movie. Check out the results, photos and many more video clips here and here.
Jon Lauck spoke recently to the Souix Falls Rotary Club about media monopolies and the implications to the democratic process.
News, Links, Live Internet Video Stream, Results and Archives.
How ironic, given that Madison's All City Swim Meet is available via internet video stream, that Non US internet users will be able to watch the olympics online, via streaming video; while captive American sports fans are stuck with cable/broadcast TV.... Anick Jesdanun summarizes the money and politics behind this absurdity (I'd be happy to pay for a real time video stream).
After conducting trials involving about 100,000 homes during the past two games, the International Olympic Committee is permitting more than a dozen broadcasters to show video of the Aug. 13-29 Olympics online.But the footage will be highly restricted to protect lucrative broadcast contracts, which are sold by territory -- $793 million paid by NBC alone. Web sites must employ technology to block viewers from outside their home countries, so U.S. Web surfers won't benefit from the BBC's live coverage. They'll have to settle for highlights posted after NBC broadcasts, which are already largely tape-delayed.
On top of that, U.S. viewers must verify their identity using a credit card from Visa -- an NBC advertiser -- though they will not be charged.
Not a Visa cardholder? You're out of luck.
iTunes gets political - Barry Ritholtz
Interesting contrast to local business climate views. I've said a number of times that Wisconsin politicians must make aggressive true broadband (not our current slow dsl/cable services) deployment the priority.
Stacy Forster summarizes record Wisconsin special interest spending
Aside from the biennial budget, the so-called taxpayer bill of rights was the most lobbied bill in the session, representing 10,631 hours of lobbying, most of it this year. That was nearly equal to what was spent on the next nine most lobbied bills, according to reports filed with the state Ethics Board.During the first six months of 2004, special interests spent $11.4 million, or 30% of the $37.8 million.
Madison's All City Swim is underway. The site features results, photos, videos along with a look at past all city events (including those held at B.B. Clarke Beach!).
Jeff Richgels nicely summarizes a recently announced federal electronic medical records initiative and long time, successful Madison Tech (soon to be Verona) firm Epic Systems.
The downside of these sort of deals is that success requires lobbying and dealmaking with many interested (and moneyed) players.
Henry Allen on Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's death.
Highly decorated retired colonel David Hackworth on a CPA Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Inspector General Report on 8.8Billion that is MIA:
In Iraq, $8.8 billion is MIA. Serious dough even for the big spenders in Washington, D.C.A pal in Iraq slipped me a draft Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Inspector General (IG) report dated July 12, 2004, that blisters the CPA for giving the missing billions to Iraqi ministries without appropriate controls.
David Isenberg nicely summarizes our losing approach to "broadband adoption (DSL/Cable Internet access. Keep in mind that residents of Japan and South Korea can purchase internet access with speeds 10 to 30X ours at comparable rates). This is the real economic development issue for Wisconsin.
All City Swim, with nearly 2000 participants is being held at Fitchburg's Seminole Pool later this week (Thursday to Saturday). This year's event includes some interesting features:
Philip Greenspun summarizes his ideas for a reasonably low-cost standalone house.
Brian Murphy writes:
BARRING A MAJOR METEOR STRIKE, by the time you read this, Australian Shaun Murphy will have completed his eight-month, 16,000-mile circumnavigation of the United States, completely gasoline-free. Murphy is trying to show the world that gasoline, that stuff we’ve loved, wasted and purchased so cheaply for 100 years, is not necessary. To do so, Murphy is crossing the country in a variety of vehicles powered by everything from soybean oil to electricity generated by the methane of cow dung.Murphy’s rides have so far included just about the whole catalog of wheeled unconventionalism. Electricity—generated through what Murphy calls clean sources like hydro, solar and wind—powers the three-wheeled Corbin Sparrow, the TZero sports car, a converted Volkswagen Beetle, a converted Pontiac Fiero, a few battery-powered motorcycles and one solar-electric canoe (that’s right, a canoe). Biodiesel powers a VW Golf, a near-10-second quarter-mile dragster, two Hummers and the TV crew’s Ford F-650-based motor home. Ethanol produced from corn powers an airplane in which he flew. The “Human-Powered Car,” meanwhile, has four seats with everyone cranking to make it go. That one didn’t cover much of the 16,000 miles.
Jane Jacobs has published Dark Age Ahead (Random House, 2004), in which she targets "five crucial weaknnesses in the foundation of contemporary life in the West" -- one of which is "dumbed down taxes."
Author, activitist, social theorist and renowned urban planner, Jane Jacobs defined an increasingly influential way of looking at cities by opposing "slum" clearance and "suburban sprawl," and advocating the "restoration" of urban centers. Still in print 40-plus years after publication, her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) revolutionized urban planning.
Jacob's later works explored her fundament ideas for different perspectives: urban economics in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), and political philosophy in Systems of Survival (1992). More recently Ms. Jacobs argued that economic life obeys the same rules as those governing the systems in nature in The Nature of Economies (2000).
About her latest work, Publisher's Weekly wrote "Witty, beautifully written--the culmination of Jacobs' previous thinking, and a step forward that deftly invokes a broader philosophical, even metaphysical, context." Via Taxprof.
T.R. Reid writes from Arizona:
"Some states have oil. Some have coal. Here in Arizona, we've got sun," said Hansen, a vice president of Tucson Electric Power Co., as he squinted through heavy-duty sunglasses. "And now we're using that resource to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."On an utterly shadeless expanse of high desert plateau near the New Mexico border, Hansen manages America's largest solar-powered electric generating station. It looks at first glance like a long, long row of windowpanes propped up to face the sun. In fact, each "window" is an array of photovoltaic cells that generate electric current when exposed to the light.
FOUR SURPRISES IN GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY by Nicholas Eberstad identifies some interesting global demographic trends:
