The Daily Loper – November 30, 2007

Shelter From the Storm Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Smartest drug story of the year: Rolling Stone on the war on drugs
  Right, but if we had actually had a smart, sane, non-hypocritical drug policy all of these years, we wouldn’t have had "The Wire," one of the greatest TV shows ever. So, see, on balance it all works out! Sure, on one hand, zillions of dollars wasted and millions of lives ruined, but on the other hand: "The Wire!" (jc)
• Iconic daredevil Evel Knievel dies at 69
  And so we lose yet another ‘loper icon.
• EMI May Cut RIAA Funding
  Interesting. Very interesting.
• News Web Sites Seek More Search Control
  Once again demonstrating that traditional media does not grasp the concept of search.
• Money to burn: how EMI’s profligate bosses filled a house with £20,000 worth of candles
  File under: bad news, music industry.
• Warner Music profit drops but beats Wall Street view
  Apropos of yesterday’s news that major websites can’t afford to introduce music to wider audiences, Warner Music sees drops in sales. Cause, effect? As CD sales tank (cause: who wants to buy an entire sucky album when you just want one halfway decent song), the music industry slums (effect: wholehearted embrace of the status quo because going down with the ship is manly).
• Spray-Painting Pynchon
  UCSB experiences an odd wave of graffiti: instead of Kilroy, Pynchon references (Crying of Lot 49, anyone?) abound. Go figure.
• Pope Criticizes Atheism in Encyclical
  Also, pope displays amazing ability to ignore irony: "Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized modern-day atheism in a major document released Friday, saying it had led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" ever known."
• Amazon’s Kindle Makes Buying E-Books Easy, Reading Them Hard
  Mossberg gives Amazon a thumbs up on ecommerce, and a thumbs down on hardware design.
• Channel 4 resurrects Max Headroom to promote digital channels
  Not so surprising, since Matt Frewer has been playing variations on Max Headroom with diminishing results for the past couple of decades. This is sad, because I remember "Max Headroom" the show was a brief, weird shot of mid-80s goodness, but now whenever he shows up on screen, it’s more cringetastic than anything. Also, isn’t part of the point of digital characters is that they don’t age? (jc)
• The Strike, Your Marriage and You
  Here’s an idea for Carson Daly: instead of paying scab writers for comedy bits, why doesn’t he show the clever YouTube videos — like this one — that the on-strike writers continue to make? Surely NBC wouldn’t have any issues with that. (jc)
• WGA, AMPTP talk but don’t comment
  Media blackout suggests that the posturing has slowed and the serious discussions are commencing.
• Report: AOL, Yahoo May Shutter Money-Sucking Radio Services
  Yay, music industry! Making sure that nobody hears their products.
• Spammers Giving Up? Google Thinks So
  Google needs to audit our respective spam filters before making such an optimistic pronouncement. Though we hope, we hope!
• O.J. Pleads Not Guilty
  Of course he did.
• AT&T: 3G iPhone Coming Next Year
  Sigh.
• Victor Keegan: How long should copyright last?
  Read. Discuss. Debate.
• Channel 4 resurrects Max Headroom to promote digital channels
  Seems like there should be something funny to say here…