Backing off a bit

On the other hand, Scrappleface makes a good -- and hysterically funny -- point on the Wal-Mart culture. Mea culpa on yesterday's elitist comments by yours truly. Not everyone can be everything to everyone.

The Shallowing of American Taste

The Shallowing of American Taste -- First tastebuds and palates fall to McDonalds, now the eyes, ears, and minds fall to Wal-Mart, according to this NY Times article (free registration required)...

"The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains -- they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD -- has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers...But with the chains' power has come criticism from authors, musicians and civil liberties groups who argue that the stores are in effect censoring and homogenizing popular culture. The discounters and price clubs typically carry an assortment of fewer than a thousand books, videos and albums, and they are far more ruthless than specialized stores about returning goods if they fail to meet a minimum threshold of weekly sales."

Add in Clear Channel Radio and sanitized text books, and all I can say is that the internet has come along at the time it's needed. With the fingers of big commerce all over our culture, the web can serve to reverse an old mega-trend to "high-touch, high-tech." With Wal-Mart, et al, touching our minds, we need to resort to tech to add some depth and breath to their narrow and shallow offerings.

Dante's Inferno -- How hot are you?

How hot are you? The Dante's Inferno Test... has banished me to the Third Level of Hell!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

I guess this is saying that I'm a virtuous non-believer/heretic that likes to eat. Sounds about right -- and OK -- to me. Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

Tabs, Speed, and Spellcheck -- Safari Browsing

Tabs, Speed, and Spellcheck -- Cool... Thanks to Derrick Story at O'Reilly (written way back in January, but found by me today), I just found out that my biggest beef with Blogger's weblogging solution -- the lack of spell checking for Macs -- is no longer an issue, thanks not to the Google/Blogger folks, but to Apple and their newish Safari browser. This would have come in handy the other night when I put out a longish entry on my business blog while under the influence of a bit of the vine. For those that haven't found the feature, it's under the Edit menu at Edit-Spelling-Check Spelling As You Type. (Now my biggest Blogger Beef is the lack of a "Blog This" java link for Safari, but it's not so big an issue, thanks to Safari's tabs...keep reading...I'll get to tabs.)

While I'm on the subject, I've written from time to time on the business blog about on how RSS feeds and the NetNewsWire reader have change my web-browsing experience by giving me direct access to a growing list of regular reads plus other news sites. Having switched from Microsoft's Internet Explorer as my browser to Safari has introduced a whole 'nother speed-bump to my browsing. While Safari is significantly faster at loading we pages, that's not what I'm talking about. I've discovered tabs. (OK, OK, I know that other browsers offer tabbed browsing, but somehow, I never stumbled on anyone using them to see what they could do. If I knew then what I know now, I would have switched long ago.)

Tabbed browsing, for those of you still stuck in the MSIE world, allows multiple pages in a single window, accessible by tabs. A neat aspect that I use every day is that for a set of sites that I check daily and that are in a folder in the "button bar," at the bottom of the list, Safari adds a command to "Open in Tabs." I choose that option, and all my daily non-RSS sites load in individual tabs. Doing this in the background, while I'm reading RSS in NetNewsWire, or email, they're there ready for what feels to me like instant access. And instant access, even with a cable modem, is a good thing.

Emergency Backup iPod

Emergency Backup iPod -- I'll bet WKRP in Cinncinnati could have used one of these that day that Johnny Fever thought the phone cops were coming after him out at the transmitter. But then again, today, the phone cops would be replaced with the music cops from the RIAA.

Zuckerman on Bushwanomics

Zuckerman on Bushwanomics -- From a US News and World Report column...

"For the first time in American history, Washington policymakers seem to believe that we can have it all--guns, butter, and tax cuts. Almost overnight, the grail of a balanced national budget--so long sought and so hard won--has been dismissed as so much fool's gold. Suddenly, we are back to Alfred E. Newman economics--what, me worry?"

...as well as some good commentary on the inverse relationship between deficits and investments.

For Public Radio Junkies

Public Radio Fan -- A streamer's "TV Guide" for the NPR/PRI/BBC junkie, like myself. It's probably not missed, given the breadth of the stations listed, but missing from the list is my own local NJN.

Matrixed to the Max

Matrixed to the Max -- Now that we've all learned about how the X-Men are all about tolerance and diversity, it's time to get into the deep philosophical implications of a Keanu Reeves movie.

...whoa...

How to Make a Telemarketer Cry

How to Make a Telemarketer Cry -- In November 2002, a telemarketer called Mark Eckenwiler in D.C. at 5:24 a.m. This is the story of how that call cost him (the telemarketer!!!) $500. (If that fails, there's always the approach highlighted on the Howard Stern show and Crank Yankers.)