One of the most frightening Muppets, to me, was Grouch. Doesn’t ask me why. I think it was his appearance, home and his voice, which vaguely reminded me of one of my uncles. That’s what I’m going with. I bring this up because the other one that disturbed me is at the bottom of the post.
At lunch today I dropped a plate, basically right in the lap of a young lady who’d made the unfortunate decision to sit between my Point A and Point B. The plate was, thankfully, empty. And it did not break. But this is mortifying. There are eight young women sitting there talking about their studies or their sorority or boys or who knows, and then I happen.
Some distance away I could hear the slow clap starting. That hasn’t happened since high school. My innocent victim noted, as she picked up my plate and I apologized profusely, that at least her table didn’t chime in, an observation I’d already made, and a decision for which I was grateful. But no one else did, either, and the slow clap quickly died. It was probably only three people.
“Frat boys,” one of the students said.
I’m pretty sure they started clapping reflexively, but then stopped when they realized this was an old guy. Maybe one of them was a student of mine. Maybe it just isn’t funny if it isn’t your peers.
For example, the state troopers now say there were more than 700 snow and ice-related car crashes last week, not counting whatever the locals worked. That’s unfortunate for those people, to be sure. Nine people died in crashes. And in this vein some people are making their wacky “Haha, Southerners can’t drive in snow” jokes.
But, hey, we opened our windows and sat around in shorts last weekend.
Here’s another video, a short film featuring Ms. Alice Herz-Sommer. She is believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor, and, perhaps, the world’s oldest piano player:
Things to read … because your parents warned you about watching all of those videos.
I saw this story today and wondered what the reaction would be and how long it would take. CBO nearly triples estimate of working hours lost by 2021 due to Affordable Care Act:
A historically high number of people will be locked out of the workforce by 2021, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.
President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law will contribute to this phenomenon, the CBO said, citing new estimates that the Affordable Care Act will cause a larger-than-expected reduction in working hours—eliminating the equivalent of about 2.3 million workers in 2021.
The answers were not long, and bad enough that they should have taken a few more minutes to think up something not so insulting.
Health Care Law Projected to Cut the Labor Force
With the expansion of insurance coverage, the budget office predicted, more people will choose not to work, and others will choose to work fewer hours than they might have otherwise to obtain employer-provided insurance. The cumulative reduction of hours is large: the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time positions by 2024, the budget office said.
The report “rightfully says that people shouldn’t have job lock,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “We live in a country where we should be free agents. People can do what they want.”
“Now you won’t have to work!” doesn’t sound like an especially compelling argument, really, Senator. But have at it.
Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism
The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
[…]
The attack was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred” in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time.
[…]
To some, the Metcalf incident has lifted the discussion of serious U.S. grid attacks beyond the theoretical. “The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented” in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute. The motivation, he said, “appears to be preparation for an act of war.”
Have 24-hour TV news channels had their day?
The past two decades have seen a revolution in every aspect of the media industry – technological change has enabled consumers to develop sophisticated and subtle patterns of behaviour, constantly being updated from a variety of sources. Cable news established the 24-hour news habit, but today social media and mobile phones fulfill the instant news needs of consumers better than any TV channel can.
Yet around the world hundreds of millions of dollars continue to be invested each year in news networks. Is this money well spent? Or has the time come to rethink the TV news business? Were live channels simply the product of the satellite age which is now all but over?
[…]
News channels prize being first – a race that they can’t win, and nobody else cares about. “Did we beat CNN?” is a phrase often heard in a newsroom. But in the digital age social media will always win the race to be first (if not always the race to be right). And who, other than the inhabitants of newsrooms, is watching enough news channels simultaneously to know who was first anyway? Those 30 seconds might be important for commodity traders – but for news audiences?
In today’s media environment any broadcaster is first for minutes at most – by which time Twitter or the competition will have caught up. Being first – the primary criterion for 24-hour news channels – is increasingly the least interesting and effective value they offer.
What wasn’t included, but should be: The Weather Channel.
Making Failure Acceptable: Entrepreneurship in Journalism
Sochi facilities still a work in progress
From the multimedia blog:
Viral content, relevant news aimed at audience who offers excuses to news
And, finally, the game is a-fruit!
The Count always scared me. But that’s a conversation for a different day.
