Oh please oh please oh please go away oh please oh please oh please

[Tags: bush george_bush george_w._bush george_effing_bush barney christmas go_away_go_away_go_away ]

1 Comment »

I haven’t researched this — I’m in Paris for LeWeb and am too beat to actually look stuff up — but it seems to me that I haven’t read any of the “First 100 Days” speculation that usually fills the newspapers during the transition. I assume and hope that’s because the media — and we the people? — understand the magnitude of the problems. Why, 100 days is like a billion dollars these days … a drop in the bucket. [Tags: obama transition economy liquefaction ]

6 Comments »

Last night, my family and my brother’s family went to the outlet stores in Clinton CT at midnight when they opened. Or, let me be precise: At midnight we were waiting in the line of traffic sprawling out from the parking lot. We got one of the last spaces, and it is a bi-ig freaking parking lot.

The quarter mile of outlets store were jammed. People were lined up outside of popular stores, such as J. Crew, waiting to get in so that they could buy preppy t-shirts announcing their support of J. Crew and all that he (?) stands for, and then wait 20-30 minutes to pay for it.

I don’t know what this says about the economy. Maybe it means we’re not feeling as poor as we should. Maybe it means that we’re feeling so poor that we’ll line up to get a bargain. Maybe it means nothing.

But it sure was a pain in the ass. um, I mean, it was a shopatravaganza!

[Tags: economy meltdown black_friday ]

6 Comments »

From 8:02 until 8:58 this morning, I was in the care of an excellent endodentist, having a root canal. At the end of that hour, I was presented with a bill for $1,080, a number I associate more with high definition TVs than with hourly wages.

My endodentist was excellent. She’s highly skilled and had great chair-side manner, narrating each step, and preparing me for every delightful little surprise ( “You’ll feel a dull thud as I jam this this phillips-head screwdriver into your tooth, handle first.” “The smell of your own body burning may be a little pungent.”) I am old enough to remember when root canal was the standard measure of pain, just as “the length of a football field” is the standard measure of distance and “as many books as in the Library of Congress” is the standard measure of volume, so I have no complaints about a procedure that has become merely uncomfortable with occasional sharp twinges.

But $1,080 an hour? In Boston, that’s seems to be the going rate, albeit at the high end. On the other hand, after dental insurance, it only cost me $1,080….because there’s no practical way for me to get dental insurance.

I seriously don’t understand the pricing model. The endodentist is part of my dentist’s general practice. She shares the facilities and uses the same rooms. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of complex special equipment involved, outside of some rasps, a keyhole saw, and a cash register. She’s had some specialized training, but are root canals really that much more complex than the range of procedures my general dentist can do, from reconstructing a tooth to diagnosing gum problems? Meanwhile, the endodentist is in danger of getting repetitive stress syndrome from doing the same motions — drill, scrape, fill, phone her broker — over and over.

Is it pure scarcity that drives the prices up? At those prices, why is there a scarcity? And why aren’t other dental procedures broken off and priced as exorbitantly? Or is this a residue of the days when root canals were so painful that people wanted to feel like they were getting their money’s worth? [Tags: endodentists root_canals capitalism health_care dentistry_crabby_after_a_root_canal i_don’t_understand_economics ]

18 Comments »

“…the increased popularity of the Internet in America has not been correlated with an overall increase in reported sexual offenses; overall sexual offenses against children have gone steadily down in the last 18 years”

That’s from a preliminary 70-page review of the literature on the topic. Actual research, not scare stories or assumptions. The draft was put together primarily by Andrew Schrock and danah boyd (of the Berkman Center), for the Research Advisory Board of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force. It of course finds some important problems — for example, “the Internet increases children’s risk of ‘unwanted’ (accidental or inadvertent) exposure to sexual material” — but “Threats involving the Internet have not overtaken other harmful issues that youth encounter.” There’s lots and lots of details in the paper. For example:

On the topic of sexual solicitation, studies show that things are either improving or have been shown to be not be as prevalent and distressing to minors as initially anticipated. Between 2001 and 2005, the proportion of youth receiving unwanted Internet sexual solicitations went down (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2006), although this decline was only seen among white youth and those living in higher income households (Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhor, 2007a).

The Task Force will publish its findings in January.

[Tags: internet child_safety ]

6 Comments »

AKMA points to two snippets from Stephen Fry on grammatical purity. The second snippet is classic Laurie and Fry.

AKMA expresses his usual admirable inclusiveness: He thinks grammatical correctness is worth striving for, but also acknowledges that language can usefully overflow its bounds. I’m with him. I was disappointed to hear Obama use the phrase “between her and meI,” and at his recent press conference to use “between” instead of “among” when referring to relationships of three or more. But I’m not a stickler. Why, I’ve recently become willing to blatantly split an infinitive or two.

When it comes to the sanctity of the rules of language, doesn’t everyone have the same position? While we think people ought to follow the grammatical rules that matter, we graciously condescend to permit others to make fools of themselves in public, unless they break rules the violation of which force a “Tut tut” from our lips. The difference is only over which particular rules we think are worth following, ignoring, or tut-tutting.

Or, to complete Henry Higgins’ thought: “Oh, why cahn’t the English … learn … to … speak … like me.” Pardon me: “…as I do.”

[Tags: akma grammar stephen_fry language ]

8 Comments »

The FCC has approved unlicensed use of the White Spaces. This frees up spectrum for innovation. See Harold..

[Tags: fcc spectrum white_spaces ]

Be the first to comment »

It’s been a while since I used Seesmic, the video twitter site (or, as I think it would like to think of itself, the YouTube Made Easy and Instantaneous site, or possibly the YouTube Meets Social Networking site). Here’s one I did last night:

ChopsticksFrom a Beijing hotel room

Seesmic does indeed make it incredibly easy to record and post videos. And I sort of like the idea of occasionally recording a thought on video and posting it on my blog. Seesmic lets you copy and paste the code into your blog. But as the above makes clear, it makes a little thought look like a full-size video. I could, of course, just embed a link to the video at Seesmic. But I like embedding the video itself. I’d like a way to indicate that the video is of a quick, little thought. So, maybe doing it halfsize would work:

ChopsticksFrom a Beijing hotel room

(My connection right now sucks, so I can’t tell if that worked. Sorry.) Other ideas about how to present a video that is really just a quick thought? How could Seesmic help lower expectations? [Tags: seesmic ]

4 Comments »

Cofounder of the Berkman Center and legendary law school teacher Charlie Nesson is taking on the RIAA…

[Tags: berkman RIAA copyright copyleft RIAA charlie_nesson ]

1 Comment »

I built up on my nerve and successfully used the old-fashioned elevator at the hotel I’m at in Frankfurt. It’s a continuous, and continuously-moving, loop of open cubicles, large enough for two skinny people, or one American. No waiting, no doors. You step in as an empty compartment approaches and hop out as it moves past your floor.

The clerk assures me that there have been no injuries, although it seems easy to hurt yourself: mis-time your exit and you will be part way between the elevator and the floor as the elevator moves on. I’m surprised the lobby isn’t littered with severed arms and torsos split cleanly in two.

On the other hand, I only got in once the clerk assured me that if I panicked and was unable to force myself to hop out, it doesn’t turn the compartments upside down at the top of the loop.

Damn thrilled-crazed Europeans!

[Tags: elevators europe human_vegematics ]

27 Comments »