LameList!

Hurray for Jon Stewart for Taking on CNBC

Hurray for  Jon Stewart, comedian who has emarged as the best journalist around after taking on CNBC business cable channel.  Traditionally trained journalists have been throwing “fat pitches” — easy to hit baseballs served up to a batter to blast out of the park for a home run.  Stewart, thank goodness, asked tough questions. I like the U.K. [...]

Continue reading...

“Going To the Polls” a Quant, Old Fashioned Notion

Another election rant. The media talked and wrote about polling places, the impact of the weather on voting, and more. How quaint. How old fashioned. I live in a county that is all vote by mail. The vast majority of my state is that way. All of Oregon is vote by mail. Younger voters [...]

Continue reading...

Lame: The Endless Race Thing From the Media

I’m excited that Obama won and that the long campaign is over. Dear media, I really don’t want to hear how Obama is the first “African-American President” or listen to any talk of the significance of his race. Let’s just welcome him as our new president. Quit parading around the race card and get on [...]

Continue reading...

Sad Guys on Trading Floors

Sad Guys on Trading Floors collects some of the endless photos of, well, sad guys on trading floors, and adds humorous captions.  Sometimes hilarous captions. 

Continue reading...

Big Price Increase for Daily Newspapers

On the heels of my “what’s wrong with newspapers” post, starting September 1st, both the Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I will raise their price to 75 cents from 50 cents for the daily (non-Sunday) paper.

Continue reading...

What’s Wrong With Newspapers

From Downsizing the News And Pretending to Increase Quality : During the past few years, newspaper owners demanded and were getting at 20–40 percent profit, among the highest for any industry–and that includes Big Oil. Go to any journalism conference, and you’ll see a lot of hand-wringing. Reporters and editors are whining about how bad it is. [...]

Continue reading...

Oldster Seinfeld To Hawk Vista for Microsoft

According to the Wall St. Journal , "Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.’s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld," a stodgy oldster who appears mainly in reruns of a TV show that began 19 years ago and ended 10 years ago. He will be paid $10 million [...]

Continue reading...

Too Much Olympic Beach Bikini Volleyball

From not just NBC ("Nothing But Commercials"), but also the usually far superior CBUT Canadian broadcast. Are men’s beach volleyball or traditional indoor gym volleyball Olympic events?

Continue reading...

Lame: What Is “The Small Screen”?

"The small screen" is a common phrase. Several recent articles even discussed at length how the smallness of the screen changed the experience of what the writer was watching.  The self-absorbed authors did not make it clear whether they were watching a TV, a desktop computer, a laptop with a smaller screen, or an even [...]

Continue reading...

Lame: Two Hundred Billion Hours Wasted Watching TV

The title, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus , intrigued me, but the first paragraph of an essay by Clay Shirkey had me hooked and the essay just gets better: I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for [...]

Continue reading...