Peter Kafka at All Things D has dug up a fantastic list – the wholesale prices that cable providers pay the broadcasters for each channel. Check out: “Hate Paying for Cable? Here’s Why.”
SNL Kagan
Every so often my father and I get into a frustration match about the bundling of cable TV. This happens mostly before or during baseball season, as NESN isn’t “basic” cable – it’s on the more expensive pricing tier.
You know, because “basic” cable should cost $55 a month.
We want a la carte pricing – why pay for Fox News, truTV or the Style Network if we don’t watch it? I don’t buy magazines I don’t like to read, or food I don’t want to eat.
Of course, every commercial enterprise has their tricks and quirks, and long ago the cable industry made the brilliant move to bundle everything we want and don’t want together. Getting them to change that seems less-and-less likely as downloads and streaming video take over the web and the mega-corporate broadcasters have more frequent disputes with the mega-corporate subscription-television providers over transmission fees.
Also, as pricing sends a signal (i.e. you get what you pay for) broadcasters would probably want their channels to command a higher price. As the lower the price of the channel, more people would infer the channel is crummy and probably not sign up for it.
Oh well. I guess we can dream that someday Time-Warner will allow me to pay $4.06 for ESPN, $0.88 for Disney, $0.24 for MLB Network and a scant $0.14 for Comedy Central. That someday they’ll be hurting enough to get my $5.32 instead of the $55 that I’m not paying them today.
UPDATE: Just saw a New York Times article from Wednesday about cable-cord cutter who ditch their subscription-television provider and watch cable over the internet tubes, a rising number as cable bills rise. Check out: “Changing Channels, From Cable to the Web.”
In summation – a federal appeals court ruled that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and printing “In God We Trust” on currency doesn’t violate the separation of church and state.
So I guess because it doesn’t say which God it’s okay?
Let’s reinterpret the First Amendment to the Constitution. Can’t have an Congress-established religion? Then it’s an “appeal to patriotism, not religion.”
Nevermind the fact that “under God,” which was added to the pledge by a 1954 federal law, was lobbied for by the Knights of Columbus – a friggin’ religious group!
Now I realize that our country is something like 78.5% Christian (CIA World Factbook, 2007 estimate), and if you added the 1.7% of the population that’s Jewish and the 0.6% that’s Muslim we have eight of of ten Americans worshipping the same Abrahamic God.
Burnham & Morrill Company has been in the canning business since 1867. In 1910, the business was moved to its current location on Casco Bay in Portland. On Thursday, March 11th the B&M Baked Beans factory will be featured on the History Channel’s Modern Marvels. The show starts at 8pm.
2. Permatemp, n. The condition of being permanently employed as a temporary worker.
This could be due to lack of motivation to seek permanent employment, inability to find permanent employment, or the permatemp’s belief that a company will eventually hire him/her for the job s/he is currently doing for lower pay and without benefits.
Sample sentence: “Wake up, Joe. You’ve been here for six months, your cubicle is decorated better than your living room, and the hiring manager still doesn’t know your name. You’re officially a permatemp, my friend.”
This New York Times “On Language” column is from a couple of weeks ago, but it’s clever and educational and portmanteaus (portmanteaux?) are always fun.
Plus I agree with Mr. Garner that blog is “the ugliest neologism of the last century”.
From the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times we get a graph showing water consumption in Edmonton from February 28 – during the men’s Olympic hockey gold medal game.
Continuing our coverage of the Mahmoud al Madbouh assassination in Dubai (which I still find fascinating) the Dubai PD have made a new pronouncement: “Spies ordered out of Persian Gulf.”
It wasn’t terribly forceful, however:
“Those spies that are currently present in the Gulf must leave the region within one week. If not, then we will cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Dahi Khalfan Tamim, a lieutenant general with the Dubai police.
So either “we will cross that bridge when we come to it” means something more bad-ass in Arabic, or they just want to evict the wuss spies.
The “Nomar” in question (if there are even multiple “Nomars” out there?) is former Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, who of course was a member of the historic 2004 World Series team – up until the trade deadline in July.
I was in Boston that weekend, and although I didn’t write about it at the time, I did take this photo:
August 01, 2004. The day after Nomar was traded to the Cubs. Ironic, eh? 'Keep the Faith.'
Anyway, immediately after I heard the news today I got to thinking about retiring his jersey, number five. Rocco had it last season, but now he’s retired, too. So it’s free.
But the Red Sox official policy on retiring uniform numbers is based on the following criteria:
Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame
At least 10 years played with the Red Sox
He’s a six-time All-Star and was the 1997 American League Rookie of the Year, so the Hall of Fame shouldn’t be a problem, we’ll have to wait five years but that’s no problem.
The second part – problem.
Nomar was only with the Sox from August of 1996 to the aforementioned July of 2004 – nine years.
I love languages. I love that you can say the same thing in hundreds of different ways. How some languages have subtleties that others lack. Each has it’s own strength and beauty.
It just sucks I’m so bad at them.
So instead I can marvel in how different people communicate. I think I mentioned recently how the United Nations has six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).
Well in this New York Times article from Monday about Google’s translating software I saw a fun fact – European Parliament proceedings are translated into 23 languages.
Dang!
I had to google it. We’ve got: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.
In it he calls the economy “thin”, likening it to Paris Hilton.
Ouch.
Key quote:
Yes, tomorrow’s organizations must be engines of more than merely money and stuff. They must learn to contribute to — and become essential components of — a thriving thick economy. Some companies are making a thicker economics peripheral to what they do, taking baby steps, like Pepsi’s doing with Refresh, still trading stuff for money, but using some of that money to do slightly more meaningful things. Some companies are making thicker economics central to what they do, taking great leaps, like Wal-Mart’s doing with zero waste: no longer just trading money for stuff, but zapping unnecessary stuff in the first place.
Check out this neat new building in Boston (okay, okay, Cambridge) that opened on Friday. The new hq for the MIT Media Lab was designed by Fumihiko Maki and Associates.
Photo by Andy Ryan/MIT
When I was at BU one of my buddies was at MIT and the Media Lab. It always sounded like a geek playground. I went over there once, in about 1996 or 1997, to see Bran Ferren speak. Genius.
I wonder how many people in that auditorium are millionaires now?
Punk-rock journalist Spencer Ackerman had a post yesterday that linked to the text of bill McCain and Lieberman introduced regarding the closure of Guantanamo Bay, specifically regarding detention. Here’s a chunk (emphasis mine):
An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 15 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.
Each week when Time Magazine shows up in my mailbox it feels more and more slender. In fact, this last week even the Rite Aid flier was heftier.
But damn, do they still write good stuff.
I love Joe Klein’s political insights, but this week it was television critic and entertainment reporter James Poniewozik who wrote a blistering political critique. Although, to be fair, it did involve a former-politician / political commentator’s outrage over a television cartoon.
Likening Palin to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall bit about Marshall McLuhan is brilliant. I want to quote the entire thing, honestly, but this is a key:
She’ll still get that attention, though, because the Family Guys and the David Lettermans can’t resist giving it to her. (On March 2, she’s scheduled to stick it to antagonist Letterman by guesting on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. And despite Palin’s objections to “Hollywood” intruding on her family, daughter Bristol will play herself as a teen mom on ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager.) Just as she has made her personal life the basis for her politics, so are the attacks on her consistently personal. That in turn feeds the victimization that only strengthens her connection with her fans: Hollywood is mocking me, personally, so it is mocking you, personally.
You know, even when Time devolves into a tri-fold brochure as long as they still has Klein and Poniewozik I’ll renew my subscription …
Josh finally lives in Maine again after four years at Boston University, a stint in Southern California with
Walt Disney Feature Animation,
and two years in Dubai, UAE,
where he created and wrote Newlywed in Dubai.
If you get the History Channel (I know it’s called simply “History” now but it’d be weird to say “If you get History”) watch 
