TV
2010-04-04
Clay Shirky: The Collapse of Complex Business Models
There are two essential bits of background here. The first is that most TV is made by for-profit companies, and there are two ways to generate a profit: raise revenues above expenses, or cut expenses below revenues. The other is that, for many media business, that second option is unreachable.
Kafka’s Castle is collapsing | openDemocracy
The saying «We have been put on earth to make Kafka come true» has been well known since Soviet times. We have been so steeped in absurdity since childhood that we haven’t even learnt to distinguish any of the rules that regulate it. We are on the other side of the looking glass but somehow manage to function, work out what moves to make and make careers for ourselves.
[…]
[IKEA] had repeated the mistake of the surveyor K in Kafka’s «The Castle», who tried to use the powers of reason to overcome the absurd. A fruitless attempt. Reason has limited possibilities, whereas the absurd knows no limits.
Lies, damned lies and statistics
2010-03-03
We’re so good at medical studies that most of them are wrong
The problem is that our statistical tools for evaluating the probability of error haven’t kept pace with our own successes, in the form of our ability to obtain massive data sets and perform multiple tests on them. Even given a low tolerance for error, the sheer number of tests performed ensures that some of them will produce erroneous results at random.
[…]
In a survey of the recent literature, he found that 95 percent of the results of observational studies on human health had failed replication when tested using a rigorous, double blind trial.
As if.
2009-10-14
Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues
“It is like the tobacco industry asking for compensation for lost revenues as a part of a settlement to address the health risks of smoking,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The worst of this racket is that they have held up progress on supporting adaptation funding for the most vulnerable for years because of this demand.”
The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn’t matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.
The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand.
Newspapers
2009-09-19
[…] How different is the situation with newspaper strips today? Did the changes in the size of panels play a role in your recent decision to abandon newspaper strips? Will newspaper comics (and newspapers) survive? Have you ever thought about doing an online comic strip?
This is a sad topic but I’m going to be blunt. Newspapers have about five years left. Young readers of the newspaper comics simply don’t exist anymore in numbers that count. Those eyeballs are elsewhere and will not come back. Online comics are terrific. But they will never have 1% of the readership any major comic had 20 years ago, by the nature of the technology. They’re different beasts now. No, after having 70 million daily readers in 1985, getting 3000 a day online isn’t terribly energizing at this stage. I’m happy to go to the storytelling potential of film and books now. My heart was always there anyway, to be honest.
Now, see, Dominion? Not that big a deal.
2009-06-15
Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months.
For only the second time
2009-06-14
since i’ve been blogging, i’m not going to dignify the source by linking to it.
Jillian Harris, Vancouver’s most famous singleton, says she wants an honest man — one who will tell her if she’s got a booger in her nose.
She’s hoping to find him on reality television.
… i mean, really.
Welcome, Wired. We call this land “Internet” | Boing Boing Gadgets
Since then, Wired.com’s grown to 11 million monthly visitors: its blogs are among the best in their fields and its tech news reportage is among the finest, online or off […]. The sheer size of that readership speaks volumes: the Times says the magazine has only 700k or so subscribers. (It’s a damn shame that online advertising is devalued compared to print advertising, but that’s the media world for you.)
Notable for the comments from several Wired people, anonymous and otherwise, discussing.
And on a website that started out as a failed print magazine, how ironic.
Today’s fun fact
2009-05-11
Robert Augustus Chesebrough, January 9, 1837 – September 8, 1938) was a chemist and the inventor of petroleum jelly, trade-named Vaseline.
[…]
Chesebrough lived to be 101 years old and was such a believer in Vaseline that he claimed to have eaten a spoonful of it every day.
