As the US economy heads into a recession and the dollar falls like a rock against the Euro and other currencies, what's your position on the size of the defense and national security budgets compared to our national investments in science & technology research, health care, education, and (domestic) economic development? Would you be willing to take a stand on freezing the defense & national security budgets and reallocating them more sensibly? Would you be willing to go so far as to call for a reduction in overall defense spending in order to achieve energy independence?
A few points i can agree with - iPods are great for toting along your audio of choice, podcasts are great for one's ability to listen whenever one chooses, and the FCC has devolved into a monopoly-protection racket that carves up a public resource (the broadcast spectrum)for the good of increasingly few big corporations.
The FCC wasn't always that way, but in the last >3 decades it has completely abdicated responsibility for ensuring both access to the airwaves and breadth/diversity in programming.
My biggest point of disagreement is the assertion that radio is dead. Commercial radio has been effectively dead for years, i wish someone would finally pull the plug.But as someone who lives in a city with one of the oldest community-based FM stations in the country (KBOO in Portland, Oregon, second only to WBAI in NY and KPFA in SF), i'm convinced that community-based and community-oriented programming can make all the difference in a locale's sense of cohesion and identity, especially for groups underrepresented and underserved by Big Broadcast Corps (aka ClearChannel, merchant of blandness). Local news covered by local folks (unlike the local daily paper, which is owned by Gannett), and a full spectrum of music programming done by amateurs in the best sense of the word - lovers of the music. Can't beat it. Public-access cable fills a similar role, but has narrower reach.
iPod-toting techsters are still in a minority - a lot of people still listen to broadcast radio.
Every search i tried for a city in Tibet failed with "We could not understand the location", whereas searches for cities in China were accepted even though GM doesn't have map data for the area. Even "Lhasa, China" failed.
The U.S. Version has been around for decades...
on
Vive La Loafing!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Since the early 80's a 'zine published in San Francisco called "Processed World" has dished up biting criticism and satire of the Amerikan workplace, all with an outrageous sense of humour.
One of their early mottos: "Time is money, steal some today."
Something i find even more disturbing is humanity's influence on the degree to which the earth wobbles as it rotates - according to a piece in Scientific American last year (couldn't find the article on theirr site), dams and resevoirs have displaced such a huge mass of water that the degree to which our planet wobbles on its axis has noticeably changed.
Slashdot Mirror
As the US economy heads into a recession and the dollar falls like a rock against the Euro and other currencies, what's your position on the size of the defense and national security budgets compared to our national investments in science & technology research, health care, education, and (domestic) economic development? Would you be willing to take a stand on freezing the defense & national security budgets and reallocating them more sensibly? Would you be willing to go so far as to call for a reduction in overall defense spending in order to achieve energy independence?
The FCC wasn't always that way, but in the last >3 decades it has completely abdicated responsibility for ensuring both access to the airwaves and breadth/diversity in programming.
My biggest point of disagreement is the assertion that radio is dead. Commercial radio has been effectively dead for years, i wish someone would finally pull the plug.But as someone who lives in a city with one of the oldest community-based FM stations in the country (KBOO in Portland, Oregon, second only to WBAI in NY and KPFA in SF), i'm convinced that community-based and community-oriented programming can make all the difference in a locale's sense of cohesion and identity, especially for groups underrepresented and underserved by Big Broadcast Corps (aka ClearChannel, merchant of blandness). Local news covered by local folks (unlike the local daily paper, which is owned by Gannett), and a full spectrum of music programming done by amateurs in the best sense of the word - lovers of the music. Can't beat it. Public-access cable fills a similar role, but has narrower reach.
iPod-toting techsters are still in a minority - a lot of people still listen to broadcast radio.
Every search i tried for a city in Tibet failed with "We could not understand the location", whereas searches for cities in China were accepted even though GM doesn't have map data for the area. Even "Lhasa, China" failed.
Spitzer for President!
Since the early 80's a 'zine published in San Francisco called "Processed World" has dished up biting criticism and satire of the Amerikan workplace, all with an outrageous sense of humour.
One of their early mottos: "Time is money, steal some today."
http://www.processedworld.com/
Something i find even more disturbing is humanity's influence on the degree to which the earth wobbles as it rotates - according to a piece in Scientific American last year (couldn't find the article on theirr site), dams and resevoirs have displaced such a huge mass of water that the degree to which our planet wobbles on its axis has noticeably changed.