March 31, 2005 at 7:37 pm
(Colorado, Media, Personal)
My birth city and hometown doesn’t have nearly the diversity in radio programming as my old college town. So after three years of hosting a show on WRUW-FM, I was disappointed to come back to Denver with little chance of hosting an on-air radio program.
But, the University of Denver has an internet station, and since I’m such a nice guy, they’ve let me have a two-hour timeslot. So you can catch my show, Jambalaya, on Fridays from 8-10 PM Mountain time at kvdu.du.edu
I’ll play jazz, blues, rock, with some zydeco and cajun thrown in for spice. And I try to stay off the soapbox, too (for now at least.)
Even if you don’t care to hear Jambalaya, check out the site, which is the result of a semester’s worth of blood and tears from the hard-working website team.
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March 31, 2005 at 1:29 pm
(Social/Economic)
The Denver Post yesterday said: Metro mortgage defaults are on the rise.
I’ve been loosely following the various economic data for awhile. It seems that it is promising on some notes (like these) and less promising on others (like consumer confidence)
Are things improving or not? One wonders, when bankruptcy and mortgage default is so high, if cheap money was the best answer to our economic problems. Savings has become a very un-American tradition as we are asked to buy things we don’t need. It’s hard to imagine the elite we’ve elected to “represent” us care too much, since they owe their jobs to companies rather than the people–their real constituents benefit when the rest of us buy useless crap (like big-screen flat-panel TV’s.)
But, savings is indeed a possible solution. If I remember my Econ lessons correctly, savings, like lowering interest rates, has the effect of “creating” money, and it’s long-term result is better for the economy. So why was our President explicitly encouraging consumption in 2001, and why does his administration continue to do so (as I mentioned in this post?)
*sigh*
Just another reason to cut up the ol’ credit cards.
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March 31, 2005 at 8:41 am
(Social/Economic)
Schiavo Dies Nearly Two Weeks After Removal of Feeding Tube
And the rest of us should be rushing out to have living wills made up. Because I don’t think anyone’s wish would be to be kept alive for 15 years and then left to die.
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March 30, 2005 at 3:20 pm
(Education, Social/Economic)
Here is a troubling local story on one school district making standardized testing mandatory.
Parents who are pulling their children from testing aren’t so much concerned about whether their children are tested so much as on what and how. It is quite clear that schools are (if not explicitly, than almost) expected to “teach to the test.” How can our educators expect to teach our kids a well-rounded curriculum when they are punished or rewarded on the results of this test of a very specific subset of knowledge?
Standardized testing is supposed to help schools turn out people who are able to learn and succeed in society, but the unintended side effect hampers that.
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March 30, 2005 at 2:32 pm
(Science/Technology, Social/Economic)
I’ve been checking in on the entertainment industry’s battle on music sharing software.
It’s an interesting case that I’ve been thinking about from a couple of angles.
The first is from the “stealing music” angle which is really at the forefront. Now, the entertainment execs know that this sort of thing happened in the late analog age, where you could tape songs off the radio or from a friend’s record, cassette or CD, and you could fairly easy record movies on TV or even copy VHS tapes. The digital world just makes copying faster and easier. You don’t need to buy a new tape for each copy or worry about “generation.” So the “cost” of stealing an album is far less. The internet makes things worse–you have a much larger pool of “friends,” most of whom you don’t even really have to know.
The industry makes two assumptions which I think are wrong. The first is that there is a high probability that anyone who copies a song would probably have paid for the CD if song wasn’t available for free. I suspect the probability is lower than they think. When I first discovered online music trading, it was an opportunity to discover music I’d never seen before or rediscover music I hadn’t heard in awhile. As time went on, it became a way to get songs (but rarely albums) that I did know, but it never really evolved (for me) into a way to get albums I would have bought otherwise. And while I did (and still do) hear people say “why would I buy it,” it is usually in the context of copying an album from a friend–just as it would have before the internet or CD’s. The second assumption they make is that they could ever protect themselves from copyright infringement. Not likely in an age where computers and consumer electronics are merging. Your CD player can usually send a digital signal out. Any other device (your computer, say) could receive that digital signal and save it. And as for transferring the songs via the internet? They may be able to put the chill on distributed networks, but they won’t be able to come close to killing it. And why would they want to? Enough music fans probably find bands they’d either never heard of or forgotten about to help rather than hinder recording artists. But these are the people who shut down lyrics.ch for copyright infringement.
And this almost segues to my next point. We keep coming up with laws that don’t fit the environment. Stopping file trading seems like a square-peg solution to the digital world’s round-hole problem. Why make it illegal to do something when it is next to impossible to evenly enforce and the social cost is questionable? I think the music industry is catching on and looking for other ways to boost sales. But in the meantime, there are other laws that are difficult to enforce. Drug laws are intended to protect us from the social ills of drug addiction, but have the unintended side effect of making it extremely profitable to sell drugs. Speed limits have a safety purpose, but only the most conservative drivers don’t go at least 5 mph over the posted limit, and you’re more likely to be punished for not speeding (by hitting a light) than speeding. Why have laws that young children know you can get away with breaking? Doesn’t it seem that we’re creating an atmosphere in which our aversions to law-breaking are broken down?
I think most people have a good idea of a safe speed for the conditions. Rather than posting a speed limit and ticketing people who disobey flagrantly, why not post speed advisories and instead ticket people who are actually driving dangerously? (Although this is a more subjective criterion, it also does more to support the objective of safer roads. Sometimes it’s the person driving the speed limit who is driving dangerously.) Don’t ticket people for failing to use turn signals unless it is a matter of safety (because how can you legislate courtesy?) And so on. Don’t put people in jail for years for possessing marijuana. Get people for the deviant behaviors you believe the drug induces.
Making it illegal to do something that many people already do isn’t likely to stop them from doing it, and it may just make them wonder what else they can get away with.
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March 29, 2005 at 3:05 pm
(Social/Economic)
Alternet has republished John Tirman’s essay on Homeland Security
It makes some interesting points, and more importantly, suggests alternatives to current practices. I’d like to see some serious discussion on his ideas. But you don’t have to tell me that current policies and even pop culture (24 is but one example) are aimed at nurturing a jingoist, puppet-like populace.
If you want to see another example of this, check out the “Citizens” section on the Department of Homeland Security website.
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