Month: July 2006

More Ted Stevens.

This posting should have been up a week ago (or more). I lack the desire to edit this, so I hope it's somewhat cohesive. There must be more Ted Stevens insanity by now. And perhaps even in my bookmarks folder. But in the spirit of quantity, with quality a distant second, here's a posting for you.

It's clearly what the people want. We don't want his legislation. We want him to explain more things to us. Preferrably all technical items. Perhaps he could fill in for Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal for awhile. Maybe he's the next John Dvorak, oh, Jon Dvorak doesn't really write all his material. Could Ted Stevens at least start blogging? Or maybe a podcast. That would totally rock. And there would be no end to the soundbytes DJs and producers could get their hands on for their mixes.

Ok…now that I've started typing this, I've done a patrol around my little internet and found some other people's internets had some interesting Ted Stevens related material. Enjoy the links.

Yep…links. (in addition to those above, naturally.)

Oh, look…he does have a blog. Thank heavens for Theodore Stevens! (liberty taken with pronunciation of the last Stevens, but I've been called a liberal, so I should know something about liberty, right?)

Ted Stevens is selling his internet on craigslist. (Not surprised, it doesn't sound like it works as well as mine. Explains why it's only $19.)

Ted Stevens Internet Fan Club on myspace. This user's mySpace account was previously closed in relation to his song in honour of Ted Stevens. Who's that cuddly fellow that owns mySpace again? No no no, it's not Tom. The other one. Right, Rupert.

Will the real Rupert Murdoch please stand up? (Props to the “Dirty Digger” for his love of the Pixies.)

And here's the fake Rupert Murdoch mySpace page.

No Clue.

Apparently, I have no fucking idea how to set an alarm clock. The controls seem as alien to me as the controls on a VCR did to the previous generation. I've set them before but it's been some time. For years I worked an evening job without need for such interruptions. And then came children. Nature's own living breathing alarm clocks. Right now it seems as if I'd have a better chance of setting them than I would this alarm clock. I've managed to make different abbreviations flash on the display panel, found myself the focal point of some soothing sounds, and moved some numbers around with no clear indication of whether this device will wake me up tomorrow morning or simply wreak havoc on the magnetic forces of our planet. Yes, like Lost. Exactly.

I know when I need to wake up, if my body decides not to get up at that time, then it truly must no deem it necessary. Good night.

Bush and Blair Have a Little Chat

The comedian-in-chief clearly did not ask, “Is this thing on?” with a tap of the microphone. So the world gets a private moment between a couple leaders of the free world. There's a lot of talk about this around the blogosphere, and I'm sure there will be a piece on The Daily Show, followed by its posting YouTube. That's just the nature of these things.

Links:

Guardian Unlimited: NewsBlog

Transcript by Adam Boulton

Crooks & Liars

Ezra Klein

Oh and a little bit of Guess who's coming to dinner. Will the White House open the door to thug/oil baron? The answer may be inidicative of upcoming US policy in the Middle East since Kazakhstan opened airfields to us previous in the US conflict/bombing with/of Afghanistan. (Sorry I get a little slash crazy here and there, and that time it came while I was actually trying to make a point.) But it could also be that there's lots of oil in Kazakhstan. And people do crazy things for that black stuff.

Net Neutrality or Forget Reality

Listen to Ted Stevens describe how the Internet works (courtesy of The Daily Show), and decide for yourself if he should have any say in any legislation involving the Internet. I would venture to guess that given a Tivo, Senator Stevens would figure that the technology was reverse engineered from some technology found out in Roswell.

We've had Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley, but I'm not sure which Internet/Tech hotbed exists in Alaska. I would guess it would be the Silicon Pipeline, but unless data's in the form of black gold, it's got to find some other way to travel.

But since Stevens has been all for further oil drilling in Alaska and the rest of the frozen tundra, his use of “tubes” as a metaphor for the Internet should not be a surprise. Tubes and pipes have very similar technology. He knows how pipes work, so those “tubes” must work the same way.

This is the same Senator Ted Stevens vehemently opposed cutting off funding of his “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, when some selfish senators, even fellow Republicans, wanted to divert the money to assist Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. How dare they.

This $223 million bridge would connect the 8,000 people on one side to the 50 on the other. The Gravina Island Bridge (proposed name for the bridge) would apparently be nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and as high as the Brooklyn Bridge. The last time I checked a lot more people use those bridges, perhaps during the New York City Marathon alone.

(Upon further research, it looks like the bridge is no longer earmarked to receive its federal funding, although Alaska would still receive the money to spend on something else.)

This is also the same state that spent $500,000 in tax dollars to paint a giant salmon on an Alaska Airlines plane. This was to help promote the Alaska fishing industry in their battle against salmon farms. $500,000 could have been better spent elsewhere. How many people can even see ? I don't see too many planes pulling along side me on the highway, usually I'm underneath them, and their pretty high up. And even if it looked like a flying fish over my head, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run out to the fish market shortly thereafter.

Save the Internet, folks. It's still ours. It doesn't belong to Ted Stevens. I'm not sure he even knows how to turn an Internet on. For shits and giggles, let's hand him a solar calculator duct-taped to a toaster oven, and tell him it's the Internet. Although he'd probably be sharp enough to ask where the “tubes” were.

The next post you read…

…won't mention Rocketboom, I swear.

I need to prove to myself that there's something to talk about besides Rocketboom. But Jason Calcanis isn't offering me any jobs at Netscape, so I can't tell you about that.

I guess he doesn't remember my scathing commentary about Amazon.com that appeared on in the Silicon Alley Daily right next to Douglas Rushkoff. (I'll have to dig it up soon.)

Scathing is a fun word, kind of like scalding except there's no connotations of boiling water being spilt on your person.

Rocketboom Response

This posting was going to link to Andrew Baron giving his side of the Rocketboom debacle over at Dembot, (that's his blog, or at least one of them). But at the present time, Dembot is down. I'm sure it will be back, and then you can hear his side.

In a nutshell, Andrew Baron says that Andrew Baron does a lot of work over at Rocketboom. It says that he does just about everything. He even came up with Amanda Congdon's quick head turn to the other camera. I'm not sure he holds the patent on that, so perhaps Amanda will use that in the future.

That said, Joanne Colan will be the new host of Rocketboom. Joanne was apparently a VJ on MTV Europe. But now she got a pretty big shoes, (seat, whatever you'd like to add) to fill. It's very possible that this whole thing will work out quite well both for Amanda Congdon and for Andrew Baron at Rocketboom.

All they have to do is deliver. Simple,huh? The world may not be watching, but the blogosphere is, and that slight sound you hear is the blogosphere tapping on the shoulders of two friends collectively to tell them about all this. Even those who still don't care have the seeds planted in their brain, and when Amanda Congdon starts showing up on The Daily Show or some other media outlet, they'll know why they know who that is.