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Sound Bites of the 1908 Presidential Candidates
roncosmos writes "Science News has up a feature on the first use of sound recording in a presidential campaign. In 1908, for the first time, presidential candidates recorded their voices on wax cylinders. Their voices could be brought into the home for 35 cents, equivalent to about $8 now. In that pre-radio era, this was the only way, short of hearing a speech at a whistle stop, that you could hear the candidates. The story includes audio recordings from the 1908 candidates, William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft. Bryan's speech, on bank failures, seems sadly prescient now. Taft's, on the progress of the Negro, sounds condescending to modern ears but was progressive at the time. There are great images from the campaign; lots of fun."
sounds condescending to modern ears but was progressive at the time
As opposed to the non-condescending progressives of today.
Had they put up some mp3, FLAC, WMA or similar files, it would be easy to listen to. However, they chose to use that insecure, and wholly inappropriate, Flash to distribute an audio file.
It's a shame too, because I'm sure the recordings would be interesting to hear.
It just goes to show why Flash must die.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Isn't the whole reason you got the greenback dollar because Lincoln didn't want to get the US govt into hock with the banks?
I was under the impression that there was always a significant distrust of banks in the US, until recently that is. I am astonished that a country which refuses to pay for a national 'free at point of provision' health service, supported by taxes, yet they happily hand over the entire country's income tax to the banking system, and now 700 billion because they stayed greedy for a bit too long.
That also puzzles me. Why not, just to throw a wild idea out, take a portion of the bad dept on for the people who are getting kicked out. I mean like buy 1/2 or 2/3 of the dept from the citizens affected, so they aren't evicted.
Surely that would work just as well.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I'm surprised that the inflation rate is so low for what had to be cutting edge technology of the era. Considering that a modern music CD that costs literal pennies to press sells (or attempts to sell, considering recent sales figures) for up to twice that price I wonder what figure was used for the amount of inflation over the last century.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I just got done reading an article about the Economic Panic of 1873 and how that depression more closely resembles what's currently happening. This might explain why Bryan was talking about bank failures. It was still fresh in their minds.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=477k3d8mh2wmtpc4b6h07p4hy9z83x18
McCain must be excited to hear his old wax cylinder recordings again.
The reason that a lot of the problems we're facing now happened is because of government regulation that coerced banks into giving loans to people who couldn't get them in a less regulated market. There's this asinine argument that goes like this: if the government doesn't make banks loan to minorities and the poor, then those racist bastards won't give anyone who isn't a good looking WASP male a mortgage.
Was Wall Street to blame on its own end? Absolutely. However, the usual suspects in political activism and Congress are getting away with this. People like Congressman Barney Frank, who helped force the lowered standards, are getting to stand in front of the media and blame Bush for something that started in the early 1990s! As much as I hate Bush, his economic policies are largely just a continuation of Clinton's.
And here's the irony about bank deposit insurance: by law the FDIC can never carry enough money to really bail out your bank account. It can only hold $50B in cash reserves at any one point in time. That means that they can prattle on and on about raising the limits from $100,000 to $250,000 but it's not even remotely economically feasible.
There's a purpose to having tags?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Of course what they don't tell you is that most people just ripped the wax cylinders into an oral history form and passed it on that way via a peer to peer approach.
People complained that the problem with the P2P network was that you couldn't tell what was the original and what was either a bad copy or just some virus put in there by someone else to mislead people, but people in South Texas claimed it was the only way they could do it as the Wax cylinders were not available in their area due to them melting.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
but...
When i was waiting for my train, three people were coming down the escalator. I heard one kinda laughingly tell the other two, "Palin said, 'John McCain already *tapped me*'." There there was more laughter. I couldn't *help* but wonder what kind of "tapping" McCain did....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The problem is that the people who were supposed to oversee Fannie Mae are the same people that are now supporting a certain Democrat candidate for president, and it would not be beneficial for the media to expose those relationships to the public-at-large until after the election.
I don't understand how the Enron Trial is on the tip of everyone's tongue, but the media isn't calling to put these banking executive in jail for a fraud that is 10x worse!
Bryan was supposed to be the premier orator of his era -- his "Cross of Gold" speech brought the house down at the Democratic convention in 1896. But that recording is just a snoozefest -- admittedly, it's about banking, which is important but boring (which is no doubt one of the reasons we're in trouble today), but the rhythm is just stately and bland and blah. Maybe the experience of being in a studio rather than in front of a live, reacting crowd was so foreign that it didn't occur to him that he should be using the same oratorical techniques, and instead was just reading prepared remarks.
"Mister Taft, what is your position on young whippersnappers using Edison's sound capturing device to obtain songs of popular performers and listening to it later, not paying music admission prices? Is this the end of Music Hall?"
Really? Flash is pretty easy to use, too.
How easy? Can you use it with your eyes closed? For sake of argument, I'll allow you to have a braille display.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
William Jenning Bryan... a Democrat. Strong supporter of prohibition, fought darwinism and was a racist.
Taft... a Republican. And the Republican Party of 1906 REMEMBERED ITS ROOTS! The party of the Abolitionists.
I wish the Republican's would acknowledge their heritage. The heritage of abolition and the abolishment of slavery. They should be proud of Lincoln!
Palin does a fine job of making herself look stupid, she doesn't need our help. Though surprisingly she did manage to use complete English sentences in the debate.
I mean, those interviews were more than embarrassing, they were frightening. Doesn't read, or can't name specific publications. Can't name a single supreme court decision besides Roe v. Wade. Says McCain is for regulation, but can't name one specific instance. Thinks sharing a maritime border with the most desolate, uninhabited part of Russia gives her foreign affairs experience.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Not nearly as ignorant as you would believe. Ever heard of the Community Reinvestment Act and its amendments? It played an important role in dropping the standards on accounting to make this problem possible. I admit that I came across as blaming only the poor and minorities in that first paragraph (such is the result of fast posting). The middle class certainly has its large share of the blame too for overspending on housing. However, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that this environment would have happened the way it did if banks didn't face the threat of legal action under the CRA if they denied someone a mortgage when that person could, *ahem*, theoretically make the payments on their current income.
It's ignorance on the part of flash developers, just like HTML designers who don't use ALT tags on images. Adobe provides the technology, developers just don't care.
- oZ
// i am here.
The CRA only applies to banks.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/barr021308.pdf
The CRA is only at worst 50% responsible (an additional 30% of the subprime loans were made by "affiliates" of banks, and therefore partially covered by CRA, the remaining 20% of all loans were made directly by banks... and the worst case scenario is that the regulators were there twisting the banks' arms for every single loan). The other 50% of the mortgages were irrefutably made of the originators' free will.
Secondly, the CRA doesn't call for Option ARMs or interest-only loans or giving people money with zero down or piggybacking another mortgage for the down payment or liar loans... those are entirely the invention of the banks and mortgage companies that offered them.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
She's only really in the Democratic Party at all because she has liberal views on social issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.), but she's quite conservative on business/economic issues.
She also happens to be married to Richard C. Blum, chairman of Blum Capital Partners, who as you might suspect rather like the idea of a financial-industry bailout.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Like Phil Gramm, McCain's economic advisor, who calls people "whiners" if they think the economy is doing badly?
Heck, conservatives are most of the elite---Bush beat Kerry by huge margins among people making $200k+, even in states that Kerry otherwise won handily (he won 64-35% among that demographic in California). Rich liberals are a fairly small subset of overall rich people---even in California, conservative aerospace/defense industry, real-estate, and import/export businessmen far outnumber Hollywood actors and tech bosses.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Biden does a fine job of making himself look stupid, he doesn't need our help. Though surprisingly he did manage to cry in the debate...
He was speaking of his wife and daughter who were killed as I understand it.
What sort of heartless fuck are you? Will you laugh when your family is killed, or will you just not care?"
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
No, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.
Flamebait: "Hay, fatass, your fucking slip is showing, moron. Ain't you got a momma?"
Discourse: "Pardon me, miss, but your slip is showing."
Both say the same thing.
Free Martian Whores!
People think that conservatives are anti-intellectual, which isn't necessarily the case. It's that they're anti-elitism.
That's fine as far as it goes, but the question is -- where does a lack of respect for real elite achievements begin?
When you're going in for surgery, are you going to be anti-elite?
The school district where I grew up put in a math program that was utterly and completely worthless. Math scores tanked, parents complained, and it was hard to believe that even 30% of the parents supported the new math program. However, the district stuck to their guns because some college professors thought it was the best thing in the world.
Anybody who understand that practical results matter more than expert advice is exhibiting common sense. I don't think most people are going to argue otherwise. I get really, really nervous, however, when people start to question whether expertise is important at all -- or the idea that looking towards expertise is "elitism."
Fortunately, there's signs that this isn't actually so much a conservative philosophy as it is a convenient tool for discarding expert advice that you don't want to believe, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum. And there's plenty of evidence that the accomplished and wealthy are happy to support conservative politics as well as liberal.
Tweet, tweet.