“Recently Kevin Phillips, former chief political strategist for Richard Nixon and author of “Wealth and Democracy,” said he no longer believes that democracy even exists in this country, but has in fact been replaced by a plutocracy — a government controlled by its wealthiest individuals to promote their own specific agenda.” Full article. [via JOHO]
Monthly Archives: November 2003
Pre-order DVD and get it same day film in theaters?
Mark Cuban thinks he’s ready to turn filmmaking on its ear: “Why can’t I preorder a DVD and receive it the day the film is released in theaters? Or buy it on my way out of the theater if I liked what I saw? One thing I learned from the Mavs is that you can watch the game on TV, but you’ll still go to the game, because it’s a different experience.” [Wired via Boing Boing]
In no particular order:
Barb
Ripley
Family
Friends
Health
Hope
Faith
Prosperity
Job
Home
Peace
Don’t tell people how to do things
“Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
–George S. Patton
Death
One of my first posts was a quote from Lawrence Block’s Everybody Dies:
“When you die, it is said you see your whole life. But you don’t see it minute by minute, like a speeded-up film. It’s like everything you ever did in all your days was a brushstroke, and now you see the whole painting all at once.”
Poet Billy Collins has a different view:
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
From The Art of Drowning
Just like in the movies.
A story in the news today from St. Louis County: A man who broke into a St. Louis County home and held a woman hostage has been shot and killed by the woman’s husband. The husband and wife are both 73. Police say the burglar was holding four-inch scissors to the woman’s throat. The husband told the man he had to get his wallet from the bedroom…but came back with a gun…and when his wife pulled away, he shot the burglar. Police believe the burglar was responsible for other home invasions and burglaries in the area.
The Wal-Mart you don’t know
“I first encountered Wal-Mart in the mid-1980s, when I worked in Kansas City. I watched as it marched through rural America, decimating downtown commercial districts everywhere it went. A corporate marauder, Wal-Mart had no mercy, no sense of anything but growth. It was, and is, an endlessly feeding shark.” [Fast Company]
Milton from Office Space
“And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were merry, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire.”
— Milton from Office Space.
Dan Gillmor on rolling his own news
“I realized I was probably getting a better report than anyone watching television in the United States. It was more complete, more varied. In effect, I’d rolled my own news. It was a convergence of old and new media, but the newest component was my own tinkering to create my own news “product” — a compilation of the best material I could find. It was a pale imitation of what we’ll be able to do next year and in future races, but it worked.”
Dave Winer on blogging
“Weblog software is going to be like mail servers. Lots of ways to deploy, every niche filled. For the masses, services like Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Blogging servers for corporations, inside and outside of the firewall. For schools, for the military, specialized systems for lawyers, librarians, professors, reporters, magazines, daily newspapers. The next President will have a blog. Writing for the Web, the prevailing form of publishing in the early 21st Century, will come in many sizes and shapes, flavors and styles. It won’t be one-size-fits-all. Open formats and protocols will make this possible.”
— Dave Winer on blogging