Screaming Penguin

It has been a while since I have gotten on the soap box, but the way Americans seem to think everything is a "debate" just chaps my hide, so here goes.

Everything is NOT a debate. At least not in the sense that most people that question scientific evidence mean it. Here I am talking about global warming, evolution, vaccines, and every other such fact ignorant people choose not to "believe." It's not about belief jackass, it's about evidence, and science, and frankly, reality.

Here is an excellent video that does a much better job than I can, of explaining what I mean:

The other day I set up my friends wireless for him so he could get online with his xbox 360. After I was done I went home and turned on my own Xbox. I was shocked and angered to see three red lights flashing. This is now my third xbox that has fallen to the red ring of death. After I talked myself out of throwing the damn thing out the window I called and scheduled a repair. I didnt feel like waiting for 3-4 weeks to get my new one, especially since the new madden is coming out Friday, so I went to Walmart.

Cedric really likes his kindle and I can see why. I think Amazon really has pushed themselves into an iPod like position of dominance with the Kindle, and I can be counted among those saying, "Jesus Murphy, am I the only person who doesn't need a goddam handjob from my reading material?""

However, the newspaper markets problem isn't one that can be corrected by reducing delivery cost, or (to a large extent) improving reader experience. The problem is that "Information Retail" is a stupid business to be in when the delivery cost of information is now ~0. People have been bemoaning the deaths of local papers my whole life. Most cities now have just one daily paper. However, most cities have a leaflet of "content" printed daily. Even in a city with one paper, the competition isn't the USAToday, or TV. It is every other paper on the planet. Moving your paper to the web isn't going to help you if your paper is simply wire feed stories under a masthead.

There will always be a demand for local interest stories, and I am sure that need will be filled, but I am not sure having a shovelware paper in every US city with a population of 15k+ is sustainable, or even desirable anymore.

At the same time, when you realize your audience isn't your city, but the whole world, the "threat" of the internet becomes a HUGE boon. Look at the Seattle P-I or the Manchester Guardian: they went from being relatively small local papers to "International Household Name" status because they were producing quality content.

The fact is, though, in a few years there will be drastically fewer mastheads out there. That, however, is only an adjustment for the fact that there have not been very many actual newspapers for years.

There is plenty of inauguration coverage around, and I for one am very proud that Obama was elected, I think he will make an excellent president.

I bought an Alpine CDA-9884 from Best Buys the other day for around $200. When I was looking at receivers I asked the salesperson what was the better makes they had. He immediately said Alpine, and proceeded to tell me of the new feature they had called Imprint which he explained contained a parametric equalizer. He proceeded to demonstrate the feature and I was able to see him adjust multiple band-pass points in 100 Hz increments. I recall thinking that this would be a nice feature as it would allow a degree of application of Fletcher-Munson correction for lower listening levels.