Ron Artest is my new favorite singer, maybe

I have no idea if this is real or not, but I'd like to believe that it is.



Source: [Deadspin]

Comcast to put its crappy TV on the Internet

Do we really need more ways to watch The Closer?

Apparently so, as "Comcast and Time Warner Inc. will work together on a nationwide trial, set to begin this month, that will provide new and recent episodes from top TNT and TBS series over the Web to 5,000 of the operator's cable TV customers." (Comcast rival, Time Warner Cable, which was split off from its parent company in March, also has plans to pursue similar trials.)

The model, which the companies have ominously dubbed "TV Everywhere," will initially provide full episodes of TBS and TNT shows "only to customers who subscribe to both cable TV and broadband services, over only a Comcast-provided Internet connection through a subscriber's cable modem, and via only the Comcast.net or Fancast.com portals." If the trial is successful, more cable programmers will presumably join in and those restrictions will be loosened, though it will continue to be a subscription-based service.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes is confident about the potential of "TV Everywhere" to compete with the "a la carte, ad-supported" content offered by Hulu.com (itself a joint Venture by NBC Universal, Fox and Disney), which has enjoyed a rapid rise to popularity since its launch in March of 2008. Said Bewkes, “If you advocate show-by-show [distribution], that will blow up the model. You'll end up paying more because you won't have the ability to have niche networks, you won't have the ability for ad support.”

The truth of that statement remains to be seen but, frankly, whichever model emerges victorious, the real losers will be the American public. I was all for Hulu (ad-supported digital democracy, hooray!) until it released those obnoxiously self-mocking commercials (watch here and here) suggesting that its content providers were aliens seeking world domination through the gradual softening of human brains. While the tone was jocular, the message had an unshakable ring of truth -- the more that innovative technologies are used to peddle the same tired, mindless content to an even broader audience, the more we become victims of a corporate culture that increasingly devalues the human cost of its actions.

Nevermind the fact that the United States ranks a dismal 15th internationally in broadband access, according to a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report, now we're supposed to pay for the opportunity to turn the Internet into a television? Are we really so hell-bent on our own destruction that we're willing to pay to have reruns streamed to our laptops?

Don't answer that -- I have a feeling that I don't want to know.

Source: [Multichannel News via Free Press]

Sarah Palin blows this joint

In what has to be the most bizarrely delusional move since Michael Jackson accepted the "Artist of the Millennium" award at the 2002 VMAs, Sarah Palin just announced that she is resigning as governor of Alaska, presumably so that she can get started on her 2012 presidential bid.

Considering that (soon-to-be-former) Gov. Palin is one of the most polarizing figures in American politics, this seems a bit like Hulk Hogan leaving pro wrestling to train for the Olympics, but I guess I shouldn't complain, being a Democrat and all. Still, if I have to listen to her babble about her foreign relations bonafides (Russia is "right over the border") and how David Letterman is mouth-raping her children for the next three years, I might seriously consider moving somewhere beyond the reach of cable news, like Mars.

Maybe she's on to something after all...

Source: [CNN]

Thanks for all the memories, Alaska:

Diving in the shallow end: Thoughts on the Twitter revolution

Three weeks ago, I would have told you that Twitter, the latest craze to sweep the Internet like some sort of digital swine flu, was not only one of the dumber innovations to emerge out of the past decade (right up there with the Snuggie), but also quite possibly a serious threat to civilization. All of this in spite of the fact that I had never written or even read a "tweet" (the 140-character messages with which Twitterers communicate).

Then the Iranian uprising happened, and protesters used social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook to subvert government repression, communicating with each other and sharing gut-wrenching accounts of the brutality on the streets with the rest of the world. Suddenly, it was as if Twitter could serve a purpose other than broadcasting one's egotism and superficiality into the ether.

Admittedly, that purpose is limited. As Fareed Zakaria suggested, Twitter isn't necessarily a "game changer" in Iran -- while it certainly helped draw international attention to the protests, any real change will likely have to come from the top down, and it's not as if the government won't find a way to restrict this new technology as it has the old ones. Furthermore, with the attention span of the media-consuming world dulled by the constant barrage of information coming from the TV and the world wide web, it's easy to forget that the crisis in Iran is still in full swing, as new stories (Mark Sanford's sexy love letters, Michael Jackson's tragic-if-unsurprising death, Bernie Madoff's sentencing and a military coup in Honduras) muscle onto center stage. Still, let us not forget the lessons of Birmingham, Kent State and even Tiananmen Square about the power of the media to help affect political change.

As someone who has now sent a full 18 tweets into the world, I feel qualified to state the obvious -- that Twitter is neither good nor evil in and of itself. It's just a program that let you share a little bit of information with a lot of people very quickly. In the wrong hands, that can be a dangerous proposition, but I fully believe that social networking can also be used to foster intelligent, articulate debate if people simply choose to use it that way. And it's not as if we have much choice -- like it or not, Twitter isn't going away, and we can't shape the future from a cynical distance.

Nailin' Palin

The now-infamous Nailin' Palin, as read by Thandie Newton and Ricky Gervais on The Graham Norton Show. If you haven't seen Oliver Stone's W., this is pretty much exactly how Newton plays Condi Rice, suggesting either that she has tapped into the essence of neo-con femininity, or that she's not an especially versatile actress. You be the judge.

Fixing D.C.'s public schools?

Clay Risen has a great article in the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly profiling Michelle Rhee, the controversial chancellor of Washington, D.C.'s public school system. A graduate of Teach for America and its data-based approach to teaching, Rhee was pegged by newly-elected Mayor Adrian Fenty in 2007 to reform D.C.'s failing school system and immediately sparked controversy by firing 98 central-office employees, including 24 school principals. Of particular concern, both to the teachers' union and to many parents, is her support of merit-based compensation, which would eventually eliminate tenure based on seniority and introduce a pay-scale based on performance.

As someone who grew up in the area, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the District has become a flashpoint for educational reform. Generally, in D.C., if you can afford to go to private school, you do (I went to the very expensive Georgetown Day School for 14 years), or you move to the suburbs (Montgomery County, Maryland -- which borders D.C. -- has some of the best public schools in the country). The D.C. school system was always a bit of an elephant in the room -- everyone knew that it was a mess, and frequently a violent one, but what could we do?

Regardless of which side of the debate you fall on, it's nice to see people willing to take on the challenges of rebuilding a failing school system. It makes you want to sign up for organizations like Teach For America...

The case for gun control

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/27/boy.shoots.himself.ap/index.html