According to George Will (on ABC’s This Week), Americans have 105 billion credit cards (9 per card holder); $12,000 in average credit card debt per household; household debt is 139% of household income and no concept of deferred gratification.
9/29/20: Birth of commercial radio
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Thanks to the folks at Wired for reminding us today is the anniversary of the birth of commercial radio.
“In 1922, 30 radio stations were in operation in the United States, and 100,000 consumer radios were sold. Just a year later, 556 stations were on the air and half-a-million receivers were sold. Radio was on its way, and the commercial broadcast model would reign essentially unchallenged for eight decades until the advent of satellite radio and podcasts.”
My dad was a radio guy and so was I for a number of years. I am really glad I didn’t miss it.
Personalized Medicine of the Future
“When you walk into a superstore, you would drop a sample of blood or saliva on a BlackBerry-type device. When you’re done shopping for groceries, the store would present you with a printout of your ailments and a bag of personalized medication. That medication would also contain digestible computer chips, which would relay real-time reports on your body’s fluctuations.” washingtonpost.com
G. Steven Burrill addressing AdvaMed 2008, a medical technology industry conference in Washington last week, spoke about the upcoming era of personalized medicine.
RealScoop Tells You When Politicians, Celebrities Are Lying
“Dubbed the Believability Meter, RealScoop’s analysis technology analyzes over 100 vocal elements of the human voice and performs over 1,000 calculations per second to find out if a politician or celebrity is telling the truth. On Tuesday, RealScoop will cover the Vice Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, putting each one’s statements to its Believability test.” [Link]
Deadwood kidney stone scene
Back in 2005 I posted a link to a clip from the HBO series, Deadwood. In this episode Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) is sick as a dog from a kidney stone. So sick he cannot speak. Doc Cochran is about to surgically remove the stone (which could kill Al) but at the last minute, they opt to let Al try to pass the stone, with help from Johnny, Dan and Trixie.
Bonus clip: I’m thinking of putting this on my answering machine (6 seconds)
Excellent interview with David Milch (The New Language of the Old West)
My first “Digital Audio Player”
One of my first posts on podcasting was in November, 2004, and featured a little SanDisk “Digital Audio Player” I had purchased. Apple’s iPod had already been around for a couple of years but I saw no reason to pay more when the little SanDisk would work just fine.
I found the player in a drawer this week and marveled at it’s… clunkiness? Will my sleek new nano look just as ugly four years from now? Hard to imagine.
In Praise of Political Tweets – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
NYTimes’ Saul Hansell thinks Twitter might well be the birth of a media form that combines talk radio, Digg and late-night comedians.
“Like talk radio, you get an unvarnished and largely real-time window into what a wide swath of people are actually talking about. Like Digg, you see people point to the articles and videos that they want to share. And like late-night TV (or a politician’s sound bite for the evening news), there is a premium on pithy one-liners that try to get to the heart of the matter.”
57 Million Watched Presidential Debate: Nielsen Estimate
“The city with the highest percentage of viewers was St. Louis, where 52 percent of the TVs were tuned to the debate, reflecting either an inordinate civic-mindedness or a complete lack of actual lives, take your pick.” — McClatchy: 57 Million Watched Presidential Debate: Nielsen Estimate
Kevin O’Keefe on Twitter
“Just anecdotal evidence, but I find Twitter users a fairly affluent and upwardly mobile group. They tend toward being business people, as opposed to kids. I’ve not only met people I am now following, but I’ve been turned onto upcoming events of interest that I would have never known of but for Twitter. In one case I ‘direct tweeted’ a person who just moved to Seattle to head up a new group at Microsoft. On another occasion I connected with a leader in the Search Engine Optimization industry. And this doesn’t include the local Seattle lawyers I am making connections with via Twitter.”
It’s probably just frustration with trying to get some “hot new thing,” but I frequently encounter an almost angry tone on the subject of Twitter:“I don’t get it! This is bullshit! What a waste of time!”
I try to remember it took me more than a year for the Twitter to click [Twitterclick: noun. Small, sub-audible sound in the frontal lobe associated with Twittercognizance]
Where in the world is W?
In a few months George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will return to private life. They’ll be surrounded by Secret Service guys (does the VP get SS protection?) but they have to be somewhere.
I’d like to "crowd source" a volunteer army of citizen journalists to report the last known location of these guys. No trespassing or peaking through windows, just a short report:
"W entourage just left Crawford ranch, heading for airport."
"W group just checked into Paris Hilton."
Include phone pic if you have one. All of which goes to a map.
You can be damned sure the NSA knows where you are (if they want to), so why shouldn’t we know where these guys are? I know, the FBI will explain that to me in some detail.