Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

'twas the night before Black Friday

After spending Thanksgiving Day with my sisters and their families on our first holiday without Mom, we got elected to make a Walmart run. The place is stacked with pallets of stuff waiting to be rolled out for Black Friday. Maybe the name comes from all that black plastic wrap.

Posted via email from Warner's Posterous

Happy Thankgiving

May you have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving Day.

Brilliant and Hysterical Angry Birds Peace Treaty

If you're a victim of the game Angry Birds, this is for you. Don't have any liquids around while you're watching this, unless you're in for some nose snorting.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch might be working on a Tablet/Slate newspaper delivery mechanism. According to reports this will cost $.99 a week. Well, since Tablet/Slates haven't saved print media from themselves yet, I've got no problem with new initiatives. I do have a problem with the quote that this is intended to combine "a tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence." I think you have to have the intelligence part first before you can combine it with anything.

Carol Mosley Braun's entry into the Chicago mayoral race proves once again that there is far too much room for those who failed miserably, perhaps have gotten in trouble legally or ethically, and should disappear from the stage still have a culture that lets them to continue their efforts to rise to the top. Or it just proves how forgetful some are about their own foibles. Why do I feel like those running for office fall into the same category of intelligence as those hired by the TSA? What a country!

Speaking of the TSA, the TSA privacy/security debate continues with what now seems like a story of abuse appearing each and every day. If Nightline still mattered we'd have a different story every night. Watch for the media to drop this story like a hot potato about the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. Security theatre is at least running the gamut of emotions. Unfortunately, all it is leading to is more skepticism and distrust and no security. Oh, and a bad rap for the concept of theatre.

Steve Gillmor uses the Beatles/iTunes launch as a catapult to wax (sometimes poetically) about where it is all going when Adobe (and others) find themselves on the ash heap of history. Only Steve.

Robert Scoble wonders if we still need the tech press in the context of how some App developers are succeeding without the usual PR/Hype circus. Um, Robert, if by tech press you mean the mass media, we haven't needed them for quite some time. I think you're proof of that.

True or False or Does It Matter

Some interesting true or false or conspiracy or tin hat or whatever thoughts for the day.

The pharmaceutical industry doesn't like cures because they enjoy the profits the rake in when you have to take their pills for the rest of your life.

Security theatre. Many claim the craziness we have to go through at airports these days doesn't help us be more secure.

Google does no evil.

Broadband capacity. Some say the carriers built lousy infrastructure. Some say we have more broadband available then they let on. All say the carriers don't care about their customers.

Politician = Crook.

There's insider trading on Wall Street.

Global Warming.

What matters is not whether the above or true or false. Healthy skepticism is always a good thing. But we've succeeded in creating a world where nothing can be trusted to be true or false.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

 

This Is Me Tonight

After a long day that featured a very productive and vey heavy rehearsal for A Christmas Carol. I feel like this.

Why Are We Surprised? TSA Scanned Images Leak Online

What to you get when you pair up Gizmodo, the TSA, and human nature? Leaked security scans. I certainly hope that no one is really surprised by this. It was destined to happen at some point, and that's one of the reasons there has been so much fuss over the issue.

I feel for just about everyone involved in this. The TSA has a tough job trying to make air travel more secure. It's filled with Hobson's choices, just like any endeavor that deals with human nature is. Those jumping up and down about the privacy aspects also have a legitimate beef, especially as it relates to children. The 12 and over thing for frisking suitability proves just how arbitrary most lines we draw are. It should come as no surprise that I largely agree with those who think this is just another sign that the terrorists won.

In my view there are no easy answers or no easy compromises here. There's also apparently no easy way to have a discussion about this without someone getting dogmatic one way or the other.

I'd like to see two things happen.

• Have the security officials who are charged with telling us this is important go through the system, along with their families. Show some leadership and show this happening.
• I'd also like to see anyone yelling and screaming about this on either side offer up a reasonable suggestion for how to fix the problem. But then, that's hard work and yelling and screaming about it is much more fun.

But again, that's human nature for you.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

The Phone Call is Dead. I'm not so sure.

The Pope says Internet users risk "solitude." I don't think those who do care.

Facebook is going to launch some sort of email package. Some think Google should be scared. Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see. Send me an email on Facebook or Gmail and let me know what you think.

The TSA is going nuts, as are air travelers and pilots about full body scans and frisking, that apparently gets quite personal. This isn't going to turn out good. One of these days we're going to see exploding breast and penis implants.

Frank Rich asks who will stand up to the super rich? Game over. Game's been over for awhile. Can't be done until it all comes tumbling down.

The Deficit Commission's report is probably dead before it even gets a chance. Too bad. It ticked off folks on all sides and that's a good place to start. But no one is going to want to debate this with any modicum of honesty or sincerity. That's the real deficit.

So an expectant mother eats a poppy seed bagel the day before she gives birth. The hospital's screening is set so that the the makeup of the poppy seeds register as if she was doing drugs. Procedures force them to turn her in and the baby is seized by officials because of abuse. Humans can screw anything up.

Christmas Carol Quotes

"There are some upon this earth of yours,'' returned the Spirit, ``who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

From Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol