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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Open Thread

by John Cole|  October 13, 201011:34 am| 31 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Ever have one of those days where as soon as you finish something it seems like two other things pop up? I’m having one of those.

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31Comments

  1. 1.

    cleek

    October 13, 2010 at 11:39 am

    Ever have one of those days where as soon as you finish something it seems like two other things pop up?

    once. on the toilet. after some bad fish the night before.

  2. 2.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 13, 2010 at 11:39 am

    Ooh, like hydra heads?

  3. 3.

    Martin

    October 13, 2010 at 11:40 am

    Fuck, that’s every goddamn day for me.

  4. 4.

    Comrade Mary

    October 13, 2010 at 11:40 am

    I’m setting up a Ritalin shunt straight into my brain just so I can manage.

  5. 5.

    MazeDancer

    October 13, 2010 at 11:42 am

    For those with interest in West Virginia, apparently it is a geo-thermal hot spot. The largest in the Eastern US.

    New energy waiting underground:

    http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/10/west-virginia-is-a-geothermal-ho.html?etoc

  6. 6.

    Brachiator

    October 13, 2010 at 11:46 am

    Ever have one of those days where as soon as you finish something it seems like two other things pop up?

    Oh,yeah, I can relate. Someone needs to invent a To Do List Pop Up Blocker.

    Have people seen the recent story about public TV station KCET (Los Angeles) deciding to go rogue? By pulling themselves out of the PBS network, they are leaving one of the largest public TV markets in the lurch.

    KCET, the Los Angeles PBS member station, has decided to break away from the public broadcasting network and become an independent station.
    __
    Starting in January, station officials intend to replace such iconic PBS fare as “Charlie Rose,” “NewsHour,” “Sesame Street” and “Masterpiece” with news and documentaries from Japan, Canada and elsewhere, along with old feature films. (KCET will continue to carry PBS programming through the end of December.)
    __
    The drastic move comes after a months-long battle over the dues KCET must pay the national organization. Last year, the dues totaled nearly $7 million, or almost one-fifth of the station’s $37-million net operating revenue. Station officials say that amount is far too high. PBS, fearing that a reduction in the sum could lead to demands for similar discounts from other member stations, refused to budge.

    Smaller stations in the area are promising to come to the rescue, meaning that kiddies won’t go without Sesame Street, and adults won’t go without Antiques Roadshow.

    But are the same technological pressures which are pushing various forms of old media aside, from magazines to newspapers to radio, also threatening the stability of public broadcasting? Do you need a public tv or radio station in every market if you can stream the major programs or get access to them via an iPhone or Android app? What happens to local reporting if the stations cannot depend on the infrastructure of a larger network?

  7. 7.

    bk

    October 13, 2010 at 11:46 am

    yeah. Like the past three days.

  8. 8.

    New Yorker

    October 13, 2010 at 11:51 am

    Having it right now. That’s life as a consultant: be on the ground where the operations are going on, and field sometimes inane requests from the bigwigs in the office 400 miles away….

  9. 9.

    BR

    October 13, 2010 at 11:52 am

    @Brachiator:

    Oh,yeah, I can relate. Someone needs to invent a To Do List Pop Up Blocker.

    It’s called cannabis sativa (the subspecies, as opposed to indica).

  10. 10.

    TJ

    October 13, 2010 at 11:53 am

    BTW, you got a response from emptywheel.

    Short form: We’re probably fucked big no matter what, but probably somewhat less fucked if we give the banksters a time-out.

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    October 13, 2010 at 11:53 am

    Everybody watch the F out! The Bond Vigilantes are coming!
    Inflation to Fall Short of Fed’s Goal Through 2012, Survey Says
    If we don’t do something about that *Deficit*, and I mean Right The Fuck Now, the markets are gonna punish us big time!

  12. 12.

    Ross Hershberger

    October 13, 2010 at 11:54 am

    No I do not. The universe that I live in is a 1D brane of your 3D universe. By definition things can only happen one at a time.

  13. 13.

    Morbo

    October 13, 2010 at 11:55 am

    Having one’s furnace inspected only to find out that the gas had not been turned on despite the fact that the utility company had been sending bills for it does tend to result in that feeling, yes.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 13, 2010 at 11:56 am

    I’m having one of those days where all my jobs are very simple but very boring and too numerous and I can’t get motivated. So I went nut picking over at MyDD. This is from a front-pager who, I believe, is 25 years old. The subject is, honest and for true, Barack Obama’s iPod:

    Incidentally this entire episode helps me understand why so many people are caught up in Obamamania. He’s a cool fellow.

    For perspective, the post also contains some history

    On the morning after a particularly bruising debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton, then-Sen. Obama met with a throng of supporters, flipped off Sen. Clinton, and then brushed his shoulders off, a la Jay-Z.

    I eagerly await a reference to “thuggish supporters” and The Whitey Tape.
    Jerome Armstrong, the John McCain of the left blogosphere, actually invited this hump to post on his blog.

  15. 15.

    middlewest

    October 13, 2010 at 12:01 pm

    as soon as you finish something it seems like two other things pop up?

    You missed an obvious Chilean miner reference here.

  16. 16.

    Anya

    October 13, 2010 at 12:03 pm

    This migth be a stupid question, but is there a way for this blog to coordinate some sort of recruitment of voter protection volunteer lawyers for Illinois and Wisconsin? The GOP, it seems is more ruthless this election cycle and their sliminess and “White Voter Strategy” even more flagrant.

  17. 17.

    mrmcd

    October 13, 2010 at 12:04 pm

    http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/10/dont-ban-soda-purchases-a-better-way-to-put-food-stamps-on-a-diet/64412/

    I’m trying to figure out if the author of this post is a fascist, or just really, really dumb. For starters, there’s the practical implications of how different individuals have different calorie needs, and there’s a huge number of ways to game a system like this. What really blows my mind though, if why anyone would think a massive system of electronic surveillance to monitor the eating habits and slowly starve the poor would ever be a good idea on any level.

  18. 18.

    Anya

    October 13, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    Jerome Armstrong, the John McCain of the left blogosphere,

    In what respect Charlie? Seriously I want to know, cuz I’ve never read MyDD.

  19. 19.

    Ferd of the Nort

    October 13, 2010 at 12:14 pm

    Ever have one of those days in which everything seems to go right?

    Doesn’t it confuse the shit out of you?

  20. 20.

    Mnemosyne

    October 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    That’s the same guy who insists that he knows that Obama is exactly like Jimmy Carter despite, you know, not having actually been born until after Carter had been out of office for a decade.

  21. 21.

    Mustang Bobby

    October 13, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    I’m having one of those days where the world is a Marx Brothers movie and I’m Margaret Dumont.

    And I don’t do drag.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 13, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    @Anya: Embittered loser (major PUMA) making himself more ridiculous by giving in to his bitterness as his relevance shrinks.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 13, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    @mrmcd: Why can’t he be both like the late Earl Warren?

  24. 24.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 13, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    This was posted on Twitter by LunarMovements, who sometimes comments here:

    He is the very model of the modern US president… And somewhere either Gilbert or Sullivan is turning… http://tumblr.com/xxglluw8t

    I think it was well done!

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 13, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    @Mustang Bobby: at least you have some good scenes. I’m having a Zeppo year.

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    October 13, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    That’s the same guy who insists that he knows that Obama is exactly like Jimmy Carter despite, you know, not having actually been born until after Carter had been out of office for a decade.

    Jimmy Carter and Obama were both born in Kenya.

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 13, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    @Brachiator: One learns something new very single day on this blog.

  28. 28.

    Anya

    October 13, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read some of his posts after your comment. What a sad spectacle.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    October 13, 2010 at 1:18 pm

    @Brachiator:

    But are the same technological pressures which are pushing various forms of old media aside, from magazines to newspapers to radio, also threatening the stability of public broadcasting? Do you need a public tv or radio station in every market if you can stream the major programs or get access to them via an iPhone or Android app? What happens to local reporting if the stations cannot depend on the infrastructure of a larger network?

    Some, but the problem here is different. We get 2 PBS stations on the most basic cable tier and 1 more on the next tier, so there’s a fair bit of redundancy in the market. Back when all this was broadcast, that made sense as SoCal is a big place, but cable allowed all three networks to have effectively the same market.

    As congress has continued to defund public broadcasting, the costs to produce and distribute shows has been shifted more to the networks. With channels like Discovery and NGC now covering more documentary content, fewer viewers are tuning into PBS, and Disney and Nick are siphoning off some of the educational viewership (though not necessarily into educational programming). So, by shifting the model from being more government supported to more viewer supported, and with fewer viewers, the system is somewhat imploding.

    KCET was the top-tier PBS station, and it’s sad that they’re the ones giving up since they did a fair bit of original producing. All of the Huell Howser shows and the like were produced and distributed out of KCET. The other two are smaller, don’t do as much producing, but have had lower operational costs as a result.

    Moving to the internet could be a model, but there’s still the matter of production costs, and there’s the other matter of a decent distribution model. Nobody has quite solved the on-demand to the TV via Internet with monetization problem yet. We’re close, and Netflix is closest, but online won’t be a realistic answer until that loop is closed, and I’m not sure who has the combination of skill/trust to pull it off. Apple has the technical bits and the monetization part, but they aren’t trusted due to their size. Netflix has a similar problem, but they’re more trusted. They don’t have the hardware, though to get you to the TV. Google doesn’t have the monetization part, nor do they appear to want to handle the back-end content hauling. They do everything by proxy, which leaves the really hard bits to everyone else. Microsoft would only fuck it up. Hulu doesn’t have the money or hardware part. Boxee and the other set-top guys are too small. And the cable companies are pulling out the stops to kill these efforts, so they need to be big enough to weather that.

  30. 30.

    Quicksand

    October 13, 2010 at 1:23 pm

    Ever have one of those days where as soon as you finish something it seems like two other things pop up?

    Yes. I call them “weekdays.”

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    October 13, 2010 at 1:51 pm

    @Martin:

    Some, but the problem here is different. We get 2 PBS stations on the most basic cable tier and 1 more on the next tier, so there’s a fair bit of redundancy in the market. Back when all this was broadcast, that made sense as SoCal is a big place, but cable allowed all three networks to have effectively the same market.

    Not just cable, but broadcast digital TV. Remember that some poorer households without cable could not get the PBS stations like channel 24, 50 or even 58. But they could at least get channel 28 via a conventional TV set. With converter boxes, everything is much easier, but also more complicated.

    But also from what I understand, the sticking point between KCET and PBS were membership dues, not just the impact of Congressional funding.

    I agree with you that alternative channels like Discovery make it harder for public TV stations to justify their existence. And I remember when National Geographic specials were regularly shown on PBS, not on a separate cable channel. But with Internet streaming and other new methods to distribute programming, who needs cable anymore?

    Moving to the internet could be a model, but there’s still the matter of production costs, and there’s the other matter of a decent distribution model. Nobody has quite solved the on-demand to the TV via Internet with monetization problem yet.

    But public television and radio have an additional impediment: appealing to members and potential donors. And here again is where the multiplicity of outlets gets interesting. If I like Fresh Air and can stream it off the Internet, download the podcast or fire up the NPR app, while I might contribute to the originating public radio station, why should I contribute to my local public radio station since I am no longer depending on that station to provide me with the program content?

    The problem exists in a similar way for public TV. The distribution and contribution models aren’t in sync anymore.

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