2008-Jan-31 07:20 Thursday
Finally - a la carte Cable Television has arrived
A few months ago, I was introduced to Joost.
I like it. It looks gorgeous on a MacBook Pro. I don't fire up the client application very often (a few hours a month, I suppose), but I have enjoyed sharing a lot of downtime watching together with my children, especially the National Geographic nature shows.
It's actually better than a la carte Cable TV.
2008-Jan-28 14:41 Monday
New Steve City
One of my favorite podcasters is building an online city. It grows with each (daily?) click to this link:
It'll be fun to watch it grow.
2008-Jan-01 09:50 Tuesday
Throwing Jonah Overboard
Happy New Year 2008.
I was surprised to see this prescient article by John Tierney in the New York Times: Predicitons for 2008 - Climate Change - Global Warming
He compares Jonah's situation with ours. When the ship encountered terrible weather, the sailors "quickly identified the cause (Jonah's sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard)." The metaphor in our situation is our climate (not terrible, despite the brayings of climate change alarmists) and the perceived sin of extracting productive energy from coal and oil.
This was the first I had read the terms "availability entrepreneurs" and "availability cascade." Tierney identifies the availability entrepreneurs as "the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels." The latter term, availability cascade, is credited to a couple of law professors, who use it to describe the process nurtured by availability entrepreneurs that leads to skewed risk assessments: "the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear."
I highly recommend the article. Former Vice President Gore and his acolytes are just such opportunists, and I for one am not going to let their chicken-little meme cascades manipulate my outlook. The mainstream media has an opportunity to regain my trust and respect, and the New York Times' decision to publish Mr. Tierney's article is a small step toward that end.