American Masters: Ahmet Ertegun

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PBS’s American Masters:

“I think it’s better to burn out than to fade away… it’s better to live out your days being very, very active – even if it destroys you – than to quietly… disappear…. At my age, why do you think I’m still here struggling with all the problems of this company –
because I don’t want to fade away.”
-Ahmet Ertegun
More than most in the $5 billion-a-year global industry he helped build from scratch, Ahmet Ertegun loved the rhythm and the blues. He loved the rock and the roll, jump and swing, and all forms of jazz. More than anything, he loved the high life and the low. When he died at the age of eighty-three on December 14th, about six weeks after injuring himself in a backstage fall at a Rolling Stones concert at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan, the world lost not only the greatest “record man” who ever lived but also a unique individual whose personal and professional life comprised the history of popular music in America over the past seventy years. On every level, the story of that life is just as rich, varied and exotic as the music that Ahmet brought the world through Atlantic Records, the company he founded in 1947 and was still running at the time of his death.

More here.

Big Political Donors are also Tax Shelter Players

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Walter F. Roche Jr. and Michael A. Hiltzik:

What’s a politician to do upon discovery that a generous billionaire donor turns out to be a major tax dodger? It’s a dilemma already encountered by the Republican and Democratic parties in this season of unprecedented political fundraising.
At a time when newly powerful Democrats, including presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, are pressing for aggressive pursuit of unpaid tax bills to boost federal revenue, the party’s biggest financier and prominent Clinton backer is tied to one of the largest individual tax avoidance schemes on record.
And two Republican billionaires — Texas brothers who have poured a small fortune into supporting the presidential bids of two George Bushes and, more recently, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — were accused last year of exploiting offshore havens to escape taxes on nearly $200 million in gains.
Amid predictions that the 2008 presidential campaign will be the most expensive in history, with spending possibly topping $1 billion, pressure to raise huge sums of cash is a certainty. For candidates, the question is whether the headlong pursuit of deep pockets may also risk embarrassment over their donors’ financial baggage.
Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said that candidates sometimes have to make their own “cost-benefit analysis.”

Fabulous Gallery of Recent North Korea Photographs

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Yannis Kontos pays a visit, by Marianne Fulton:

If one is tempted to think photography isn’t important – witness North Korea.
Photojournalists are not welcome and their attempts to obtain a visa are rejected, as were those of Yannis Kontos. He tried for three years to travel to North Korea as a professional photographer. He wrote in his November 2006 Dispatch [http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0611/dis_kontos.html] that his luck changed when he traveled as a tourist. But tourist cameras are also restricted to choreographed events and sites.
Kontos described his working conditions while trying to capture everyday life, in part:
“Almost 80 percent of my pictures were taken in secret using several different methods to avoid the attention of my minders. Frequently acting and feeling like a spy using my camera’s self-timer, most of the time I was shooting without looking at the viewfinder, even from inside a bus or a train. I managed to catch the mood of the country and little by little I collected enough material for a story. Every night, I was downloading my pictures in secret to my MP3 player, unbeknownst to my roommate. …

Red Tape for Tourists visiting the US

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Cory Doctorow:

America is rated the world’s most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers in a recent global poll. The War on Terror (which includes a $15 billion fingerprinting program that humiliates every visitor to America’s shores and has yet to catch a single terrorist) has destroyed America’s tourist industry, killing $94 billion worth of tourist trade, and 194,000 American jobs.

There’s something to this challenging issue. A driver on Hong Kong told me recently that passengers destined for most countries, other than the USA can check in (and check luggage) downtown, then take the train to the airport and go right to the gate. The security “friction” does have significant costs all around.

Shattering the Bell Cure: The Power Law Rules

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David Shaywitz:

Life isn’t fair. Many of the most coveted spoils–wealth, fame, links on the Web–are concentrated among the few. If such a distribution doesn’t sound like the familiar bell-shaped curve, you’re right.

Along the hilly slopes of the bell curve, most values–the data points that track whatever is being measured–are clustered around the middle. The average value is also the most common value. The points along the far extremes of the curve contribute very little statistically. If 100 random people gather in a room and the world’s tallest man walks in, the average height doesn’t change much. But if Bill Gates walks in, the average net worth rises dramatically. Height follows the bell curve in its distribution. Wealth does not: It follows an asymmetric, L-shaped pattern known as a “power law,” where most values are below average and a few far above. In the realm of the power law, rare and extreme events dominate the action.

For Nassim Taleb, irrepressible quant-jock and the author of “Fooled by Randomness” (2001), the contrast between the two distributions is not an amusing statistical exercise but something more profound: It highlights the fundamental difference between life as we imagine it and life as it really is. In “The Black Swan”–a kind of cri de coeur–Mr. Taleb struggles to free us from our misguided allegiance to the bell-curve mindset and awaken us to the dominance of the power law.

Author of nation’s toughest global warming law to speak April 25

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The author of the nation’s strongest global warming law tells us how California is responding to climate change and how she gained the political support to get it done …
“Leading the Way on Climate Change”
a free public lecture by Fran Pavley
3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 25
Memorial Union (see “Today in the Union” for room)
800 Langdon Street
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Fran Pavley has served three terms in the California State Assembly, where she is known as one of the most effective legislators in Sacramento. The former Mayor of Agoura Hills and long-time public school teacher is the author of landmark legislation (the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) on global warming that has become a model for other states and countries. She is also author of the first regulations on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions. Eleven other states and Canada have modeled their laws after Pavley’s Clean Car Regulations. She has been selected as one of Scientific American’s Top Technology Leaders in Transportation and received the 2006 California League of Conservation Voters’ Global Warming Leadership Award along with former Vice President Al Gore.
This event is co-sponsored by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison. For more information, please contact Steve Pomplun at the Nelson Institute or call Steve at 263-3063.

A few Suggestions for Governor Doyle Regarding the AT&T “Video Competition” Bill

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AT&T’s lobbying efforts to change Wisconsin’s cable TV regulations has generated a refreshing amount of commentary. 5 years ago, during Governor Doyle’s first Gubernatorial campaign, I had a chance to briefly talk with him after a debate with Scott McCallum. I mentioned Wisconsin’s poor broadband infrastructure (we continue to stand still, which means we’re falling further behind) and how AT&T had failed to invest in fiber networks. Doyle mentioned that he was aware of this, but could not do anything about it in a first term…..

Fast forward to 2007. This map, via broadbandreports.com displays the communities that have Verizon’s fiber to the home available. Fiber networks provide much higher speeds and more citizen choice than our aging and long since paid for copper networks (we continue to pay and pay and pay for the old stuff).

Perhaps, Governor Doyle might put citizen’s interests first and sign the bill only if:

  • Those who provide service via this bill must do so via symmetrical fiber to the home, and,
  • Customers may purchase the symmetrical fiber to the home service for internet use only (ie, without phone or video service). Such “naked” internet service shall be available at speeds equal or greater to those offered via phone/video bundles.. Cost and terms shall not penalize naked internet buyers vis a vis bundled phone/video purchases
  • Customers shall have complete access to all internet services. Vendors will not restrict any IP services.

What are the odds?
UPDATE: A friend emailed simply: “Lotsa luck”.
Interestingly, this type of an initiative would be quite a legacy for the Governor. The fiber will be connected to our homes for many, many years.