Health:
[H1] Dave Schuler’s thoughts on obesity are worth reading. Southerners may not be fatter than the average American so much as they are more honest about their fatness.
[H2] Conventional wisdom is that skipping breakfast is a bad dietary strategy. I know that breakfast helped revolutionize my weight-loss efforts. But apparently the conventional wisdom may not be right.
[H3] On the efforts to free the nurses. I think mid-level providers as substitute docs is where this is all going to end up. The trick is going to be to get people to go along.
[H4] Utah is allowing organ donation from prisoners. The article states that it’s a thorny issue. I’m not so sure, though I would be concerned about blood or marrow donation.
Economics:
[E1] This is indeed a really awesome entrepreneur story. I love Sriracha sauce.
[E2] Will “Peak Oil” be solved by methane-hydrate? As Dave Schuler says, interesting times. Chris Nelder has a Everyone should go into STEM!” policy-making. That said, it’s hard to argue with the returns that many (not all, but many) STEM degrees bring in, regardless of whether they end up actually working in STEM or not. The question is whether the degree qualifies you, or it’s the new Rush Stamp.
utm_source=pulsenews”>contrary view, however.
[E4] It’s really quite strange to me how quickly Internet Sales Taxes went from being unthinkable to imminent. I think it’s time, though Dave Schuler is concerned.
America & Beyond:
[A1] One of the interesting things about watching Japanese Animation is their portrayal of American culture. So I got a kick out of this, which posits what our news coverage of other countries might look like in reverse.
[A2] In America, middle Classitude is about attitude more than anything else.
[A3] I’m not sure how I feel about Newtown voters voting down more money for school security. On the merits, i guess I agree. But something feels… odd about it.
[A4] A look at the effects of high speed rail by looking at China. One of which, interestingly, is a dispersed population.
Culture:
[C1] Apparently, the real problem with the hookup culture is that the sex is bad.
[C2] If this causes the downfall of the NCAA, they’ll have it coming. Not because they are evil or even exploitive, but because they are stupid.
[C3] The New York Times (of course) reports on the race for elite colleges and the tradeoff between paying full tuition at one of those or accepting a merit scholarship somewhere less prestigious.
[C4] Megan McArdle and Matt Welch disagree with Garance Franke-Ruta’s assertion that you can’t have major conservative newspapers because their markets are intrinsically liberal. Heck, I’d settle for agreement that the major newspapers at-all reflect their constituencies and yes, in fact, lean to the left. In an ideal world, I don’t think Franke-Ruta is right about the possible existence of major conservative media outlets in large – and largely liberal – cities. In the real world, this is something that conservatives have demonstrated that they can’t pull off under far less challenging circumstances.
Fun:
[F1] There is a lot of psychological muck in the attempts to make Muggle Quidditch a real sport. I mean, the athletes in the picture look fit enough, but I wonder how much of this is as a fallback sport. Or maybe I’m projecting.
[F2] Some awesome engineers in Texas have created Mario Kart… for real!
[F3] Is anyone else familiar with that old cell phone game Snake? Did you kow you can actually win that game?
Technology:
[T1] From Nob, this is a pretty awesome story. Drop off some tablets into Ethiopia with no instructions, and a bunch of illiterate African kids, and within days they are using apps and within five months they hacked the operating system.
[T2] I ran across the Space Jam website a couple years ago. I can’t believe I saw that movie at the theater. Free tickets will get some people to watch some pretty stupid things. Anyway, The Verge has an article on old, relic sites like Space Jam and Dole/Kemp.
[T3] I suppose it is supposed to give me the creeps, but I think this has potential to do some real good. On the city planner end, anyway. I don’t care if Verizon is making a profit, though I would prefer some measures be taken to protect my identity.
[T4] One of the common theories about why PC tails are tanking is that they’re too good. Meaning, they are so good that they don’t need to be upgraded. Dave Schuler has an alternate theory.
[T5] Henry Blodget is excited because he figured out how to make his iPhone battery last all day. I’d gloat, but that’s more than I’ve been able to accomplish with my Android phones regularly. But Android lets me have removable batteries.
[T6] The future of smartglasses.
[T7] T-Mobile is already paying a price for its no-contract philosophy. I guess I can understand where the Washington AG is coming from on this, though I still think it’s lame because T-Mobile is legitimately using a different model, and requiring that they state all of their costs up-front while the others get to tuck theirs in to the contract puts them at a disadvantage.
H2: Skipping breakfast becomes a proxy for “isn’t taking health seriously” and “is under more stress/skipping sleep” — both of which may have an impact on weight, and at least the former seems hard to quantify.
c4: Apparently these people have never heard of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. http://triblive.com/news/ Yes, the paper loses gobs of money. Call me when the owner gives a damn.
[T1] Have you read The Last Mimsy? Does everyone who reads this story say “Hey, you should read The Last Mimsy”?
How can you read it? It’s a movie.
Touche’.
Have you read Mimsy Were The Borogoves? Does everyone who reads this story say “Hey, you should read Mimsy Were The Borogoves?”
That’s easy. Everyone should say “Hey you should read ‘Mimsy Were The Borogoves'” just like everyone should read ‘Mimsy Were The Borogoves’. Or I suppose you could listen to William Shatner reading it on YouTube.
Got halfway through the NationalJournal before I decided I couldn’t take it anymore.
will try to find a better link.
I’ll swap out the link for y0u.
It’s a downside to reading most of these on my phone that when I flag them, it as often as not flags the mobile version.
[C4] McCardle indulges herself in the usual kind of false equivalence. The New York Post isn’t a more conservative version of the New York Times. It’s a disgusting, sensationalistic, ethics-free rag whose prejudices are reflected in its “news” coverage. The Wall Street Journal is successful because it does first-rate reporting which, pre-Murdoch at least, was uninfluenced by and often embarrassed by its hyper-partisan editorial page.
If the Koches want to publish papers with good reporting and conservative editorials, sure, that might be successful. But there’s no evidence that newspapers every page of which is self-consciously conservative are going to find a large audience, or be taken any more seriously than the Post is.
I don’t agree. The question is not whether or not the NYP is good, merely whether or not it is successful despite being a conservative paper in a liberal market (which Franke-Ruta says isn’t possible).
If there’s a weakness in bringing up the NYP, it’s this: New York has a lot of people, so that enough of them are conservative to carry a paper isn’t exactly instructive. There are more conservatives in NYC than in Boise, in sheer numbers. So Koch could get by in LA and Chicago, which also have a large number of conservatives (in the city and surrounding areas), but beyond that, Franke-Ruta might be right.
I fear, for reasons similar to what you mention, that Koch might see the NYP as a model. Which might be good business, but it won’t help the cause that Koch presumably wants to help. If Koch really wants to make strides, he’ll use it as a platform to redefine urban conservatism and make it more relevant. More City-Journal kind of stuff, less Fox News (which, of course, is urban, but pretends not to be).
(The primary criticism I have of Franke-Ruta is the assumption that urban newspapers are, in fact, as urban as we think. The stretch of the LA Times goes way behind LA proper and into more conservative suburbs. The papers haven’t been worried about alienating the latter, and I don’t think for entirely a business-minded rationale.)
But the NYP is more than just a conservative paper. It does a number of things differently which will draw in readers regardless of ideology. The fact that it is printed tabloid-style makes it more practical for some people. There is Page 6 and gossip. The sports pages are handled very differently. And there is a bit of a cult following of its absurdist headlines. I also find it more “readable”; I think it is written for a less sophisticated audience (note: I’m not saying sophistication = liberal or the inverse). The articles tend to be lighter, shorter, and with simpler language. If I’m in a deli and they’ve got the table of papers, I’m often more likely to pick up the Post because it’s a quick, easy, fun read while eating my amazingly delicious bagel sandwich that you’ll never know the taste of.
Sorry… got a bit off topic there at the end.
This is a quite good point, Kazzy. Something I wanted to get into, but couldn’t quite find the words for. The NYP and WSJ both do have niches that give them a market apart from ideology. This is something of a weakness in McArdle’s case. What conservatives ought to have in mind is something more like the Washington Times, except with a bigger budget and a slightly different mindset.
Of course, the Washington Times isn’t really financially successful. I think it would more likely be successful if it had a market to itself and did not seem to thrive at being the alternative to the traditional paper.
Yeah, the Washington Times is, from everything I’ve read, a money pit. Not that the Koch’s couldn’t afford that.
I wonder… given the apparent struggles of conservative papers and liberal talk radio… is there something (maybe even biological?) about the way people inclined towards a certain political leaning tend towards certain forms of media, particularly news media?
OR is there something about the way the different political movements present themselves that makes these particular outlets more successful? Modern conservatism has a certain angriness to it… this translates much better to television or radio than it does to paper. On the other hand, modern liberalism embraces a certain academic/intellectual elitism, which might play better in print.
I’m just theorizing here, but there might be something to that…
The Tribune Review (Scaife’s rag) isn’t successful either.
Kazzy,
The Republicans have cornered the people with an Authoritarian Mindset (this is best seen when they started hauling out “flipflopper” as a problem, and with GWBush, where his “stay the course” was considered golden). Those people like big bombastic folks who will lecture ’em.
“is there something (maybe even biological?) about the way people inclined towards a certain political leaning tend towards certain forms of media, particularly news media?”
I think it’s more of a matter any given mediums potential advertisers. (local vs national, fortune 500 vs independent, issue advocacy vs stuff vs services). And (daily) print media always made a critical portion of its money via classified ads, which is no longer viable.
Though even in the early days, Limbaugh had advertisers that could be considered ‘mass market’ like Snapple. These days though, a good deal of talk radio media buys is a self licking ice cream cone. I don’t think it’s sustainable.
You’re conflating “conservatives” with “market for NYP-style rag”. I’m guessing that you, for one, are a member of the former but not the latter.
And I am a member of the latter but not the former.
It makes me wonder what else is in that bagel sandwich,
Actually, there’s a pice-of-crap throwaway tabloid called the San Francisco Examiner that I pick up sometimes because the sports page is OK and it has a good puzzle page. But it’s so right-wing that that even leaks into the sports. They were disappointed with the NBA settlement because it didn’t screw the players badly enough for them.
Oh, I read it as much for entertainment purposes to laugh at just that sort of silliness as I do anything else.
Well, regardless of the NYP’s other attributes, the bias is there and the NYP succeeds despite it. I think that’s extremely relevant to the conversation.
I mean, perhaps the Kochs would go with a tabloid-style (in function, as well as form) with the other papers. I think that would be an ideological mistake, but maybe not a business mistake.
I’d like to think that there is a market for something more journalistic in nature but with a different bent. Maybe there isn’t, but I actually don’t think it’s entirely because of what Franke-Ruta says it is.
Maybe I’m wrong and there is a big untapped market for NYP/Fox style tabloid sewage. God help us.
I hope you’re not wrong. I hope that the Kochs don’t test the theory.
Can you call a newspaper that has never made a profit since the day Murdoch purchased it successful? If I ask out a thousand supermodels am I successful at dating supermodels even if I get zero return?
Also, the news side of the WSJ is relatively liberal based on the measurements of “lean” that I’ve seen. Only when you get to the Op-Ed is it conservative.
Is this the NYP, WSJ, or both? In any event, grading on a curve here would be appropriate, given how terribly most of the industry is doing. I don’t know how well these papers do compared to other papers, though.
I know that used to be true, but wasn’t sure if it still was. I’ve heard comments from liberals about how the news side has become more biased.
The Post has not made a profit since Nixon was president.
Yet it’s still around. Odd.
It’s a vanity project for Murdoch. There is no curve where the Post could be considered successful. The Orange County Register is a better example for major metro conservative paper, but even that hit the OC (conservative county) niche rather than truly serving LA.
Huh. I’d want my vanity project to be more respectable than the New York Post.
Saying “I own the second largest paper in NY City” sounds great as long as you don’t have to mention it’s the Post.
C2: Was there ever any doubt that that was what was happening? Or could it just not be proven?
I was a bit surprised, actually. In part because it’s a lot of trouble for EA Sports to go to for characters named “QB #12”. I figured they would coordinate skin color, and maybe size, but that’s about it (maybe bald-hair-dreadlocks for basketball). Why go to all the trouble – and make yourself legally vulnerable – for such a small thing?
For the gamers. It is why Madden pushed for and secured exclusive rights to NFL players… no body wants to play with a bunch of guys that are completely made up. And it is why, as soon as gaming systems when online, people would take the time to make and distribute patches that uploaded all of the names into the games because it was that important to gamers to have a real sense of who they were playing with.
I wondered who the big white QB that couldn’t throw very well and kept bowing down was supposed to be.
The naming of the players I totally understand. But how much of a physical likeness do you really need?
Maybe this is my age showing. It was an advance for me when games had black players and white players. The first football game I played was Madden for the Apple IIe, which basically covered the players up to avoid race.
I don’t think it is the appearance that matters so much as the skill set. If I’m playing with the Tebow-era Gators and my QB is a classic, slow-footed, drop back passer, it’s going to impact my enjoyment of the game. Likewise if I’m playing with a mid-90’s Nebraska team and their players lend themselves to the spread offense.
I don’t care if my Virtual Vick has corn rows or not, but I do care if they give him a 72 speed rating.
I should note that this isn’t SO much how I feel (I’m not that hardcore a gamer) but it is *very* important for some folks. It is why they secured the naming rights in the first place for the pro games… RBI Baseball with it’s teams full of made up players from Denver and Las Vegas just didn’t cut it after a while.
Oh, I did know they were trying to match the skillset. There’s nothing even untoward about that, really. Games that didn’t use real teams used to do that, back in the day, and the NFL couldn’t do anything about it. It’s the physical likeness that surprises me. That’s treacherous ground. Tom Landry football couldn’t have done that.
+1 to Kazzy. Gameplay first last and always.
(and I don’t do sports games!)
Looking like the player is part of the appeal. You may not care that your video game Jordan has a shaved head and sticks his tongue out when he dunks, but a lot of people do. I remember one of my favorite cosmetic features in video game baseball was adding accurate batting stances, like Gary Sheffield’s menacing, metronome stance or Craig Counsell’s “I haven’t updated this since Little League” batting stance.
I can’t speak to the physical likeness. I haven’t played an NCAA game in a while.
So, how long until the NCAA and the schools lose a court case brought by athletes over the revenue? On the legal theory that, at least for the big-money sports and programs, the schools make enormous investments in stadiums/arenas, in training facilities, in coaching staffs (and football coaches now move back and forth between college and the NFL); they derive enormous revenues from those investments; and the student-athlete designation is simply a fiction to keep from having to pay the talent fairly for their contribution. RG III signs for $21.1 million over four years, $13.8 million paid upfront as a signing bonus. Was his worth to Baylor, the Big 12, and the NCAA the year before really only the amount of the scholarship he received? Especially in light of the risk of blowing out a knee and never reaching that NFL payday?
This seems to me to be the long-term stupidity of the NCAA and the big-money schools: that they could turn college sports into a lucrative business and never have to share the revenue with the talent.
If RG3 were intrinsically worth the money that generates revenue to certain NCAA programs, they could start their own league and make significant amounts of money. Yet they can’t. The value is driven by the institutions. RG3 is a multimillion dollar player in part because he played for Baylor. He’d likely not be making millions if he played for Mary Hardin-Baylor. He got access to good coaches, good facilities, and the publicity that comes with being with a Big 12 program.
That’s the payoff.
…they could start their own league and make significant amounts of money.
Barriers to entry. Start with at least several billion of dollars worth of facilities, many built with very large taxpayer contributions.
They could all join the UFL tomorrow, if the UFL doesn’t have the age limit. If the UFL doesn’t have the age limit (I really don’t know), they won’t.
The NFL players, on the other hand, do a pretty good job for themselves in large part because, unlike college players, they could go off and form a separate league and the NFL would become irrelevant.
Actually, most couldn’t join the UFL because most aren’t good enough, which is sort of my point. Most of these players aren’t that good except in a specific system. People room for them because of the institution they’re attached to, or because they’re among the better teams within that specific system. Most of these guys – even the ones at the big conference schools – wouldn’t be invited to an actual pro-system.
T2: What’s your beef with Space Jam? That movie ruled it! You had the greatest basketball player ever, a bunch of iconic, beloved cartoon characters, and a classic “underdog” story. AND BILL MURRAY!
I dunno. I was entertained, I guess, but it was just silly-squared and not even silly in an off-the-wall sort of way.
How old were you when it came out? I suspect that might have had something to do with it. I was 13… perhaps a bit older than the intended audience but going to a school that had a plurality of black students and living just outside basketball mecca might have made us more interested than most. It wasn’t anything special or transcendent, but for kids who are into basketball, it was pretty dope.
I was in college. Maybe I would look back on it more fondly if I was more of a basketball fan?
Maybe. I mean, the idea of Jordan dunking over aliens with alley oops thrown by Bugs Bunny either does it for you or it doesn’t. I don’t think the movie had much more else going on for it. If it doesn’t, I can see why the whole thing seemed silly.
Shawn Bradley is the Christian Laettner of Space Jam.
Well played.
(A4). No transit advocate doubts that rail disperses the population. The easier it is to travel long distances relatively fast, the less need there is to live close to work or whatever. The thing about the car that transit advocates don’t like is that we feel that it disperses the population in ways that aren’t sustainable and are bad for the environment.
It’s my general experience that arguments in favor of rail go hand-in-hand with “… and death to the suburbs/exurbs” when this leads me to believe it would be the opposite. People in Everett drive to the train station, take a high-speed train to Seattle, have some sort of arrangements at the other end, and so on.
In other words, I’m not sure how much I see an opening for increased density here, which seems to be the assumption of a lot of pro-train, anti-car people I know.
You’ll get increased density where it makes sense.
Reminds me, I owe you a post about job sprawl….
C4: If you read the comments left by readers of many of the daily papers, you’d think that the readership consisted almost entirely of hard-right social and economic conservatives. Seriously, some of those people make Rush look quite tame by comparison. It’s not a representative sample, of course. Well, maybe a representative sample of the readers who have time to submit comments every day.
I’d thought about writing a post on those links. If I had, it would have brought up something this brings to mind:
Perhaps the strongest case in Ruta’s favor is that liberals can more easily boycott a newspaper with an undesirable editorial slant. Conservatives have fewer notable places to go (hence, comment sections of major newspapers).
“Breaking news: One of America’s (self-proclaimed) greatest newspapers actually takes the time to pull the records of an account that’s been in existence for years! Congrats to Tim McNulty and the tremendous work of the entire team from David Shribman on down. You really blew the cover off of this one. Yawn… Truth is no one is hiding anything, nor has attempted to. I have personally been the Chairman of this committee since its inception. In fact, its Chairman and intentions are much more transparent than your rag of a newspaper. At least I’m honest and truthful about my support and don’t attempt to hide behind a mantel of a “newspaper”. It’s actually laughable to think that you print your newspaper everyday with a straight face. It doesn’t take much to see who the P-G supports and doesn’t support. — Back to that in a minute… I was honored to receive tremendous financial support from hundreds of donors who believe in all of the wonderful things happening in our city. They (and I) want to see that continue. This effort is based on that — and that alone. It’s 100% factual and begins to expose the real Bill Peduto. Future ads will do the same. Finally – I love how the “haters” love to preach about the law and following it….. Except of course…. When it doesn’t benefit th! The facts are that this is legal in every sense of the law and nothing more than a committee expressing it’s first amendment rights. You 14th warders should love that right? Anyway – back to the P-G bias… The only question that remains is whether the P-G will endorse Peduto this Sunday or next. Curious about your thoughts… My guess is this Sunday — gives their man two whole weeks to talk about it!”
… this is our mayor. Commenting in the comment section. Our mayor has received many awards. Anyone who awarded him something ought to have their sanity questioned.
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/politics-local/chairman-of-secretive-group-behind-ad-attacking-bill-peduto-luke-ravenstahl-685660/
everyone else’s comments look mature and rational in comparison.
…http://www.hoocoodanode.org/node/17953
Norton’s running a series on NeuroBiology?!?
A2: I don’t think this is surprising and you can probably trace it back to various foundational realities and myths of the United States. I think most Americans don’t want to identify as upper-class because it seems Aristocratic or brings up images of someone like Paris Hilton. The implication of middle class is that you need to work for your lifestyle* and that you are at least comfortable and not struggling or suffering from want. The idea of middle-class appeals to the work-ethic.
*Indeed the reason people making 6 figures call themselves upper-middle class instead of upper-class is because most of their income or all of it comes from salary. I imagine you are talking a lot of lawyers, doctors, and most MBAs in this category. They think of wealth as living off of the interest of your investments.