October 1st, 2010
Lotus unveiled its new lineup at the Paris Auto Show yesterday and the re-designed Elise is, well . . .
It looks like a futuristic Matchbox car from the early ’80s.
I wouldn’t care except that I already have the current Elise penciled in as my mid-life crisis car for 2020. I defy you to find a more awesome ride for $20,000. And if the new design flops, it’ll drive up the price of the old models.
0 commentsWhy no, I do not know any black people, personally.
September 30th, 2010
Channeling Peggy Noonan, Michael Wolf writes,
Black people have, apparently, soured on him, too.
The “him” in this sentence is Barack Hussein Obama.
What in the world is Wolf talking about? The Rasmussen poll is generally the least favorable (this is not meant to imply least accurate) to President Obama. Rasmussen has Obama’s approval number among blacks at 92 percent! His disapprove number among blacks is 6 percent.
6 percent.
As a point of emphasis: Obama’s approval number among blacks today is higher than it was at his inauguration in January 2009 when it stood at *just* 90 percent.
3 commentsOptional Reading
September 30th, 2010
Over at the Standard I’ve got a long (and hopefully semi-accurate/coherent) layman’s explanation of the Stuxnet worm, how it works, and why it scares the beejezus out of tech people. (“The worm still holds many secrets”? Really? Ugh.)
If you want to read something that’s actually interesting, Galley Friend A.W. sends along this excellent 2005 ESPN piece on Steve Bartman. It’s pretty good feature writing about a really great subject.
0 commentsBest Line Ever in PC World
September 29th, 2010
“Iranian government representatives did not return messages seeking comment for this story.”
0 commentsMissing the Big Picture
September 28th, 2010
Walter Russell Mead has an essay arguing that China is currently following the diplomatic path to ruin established by the Kaiser: That having achieved regional hegemony, the Chinese are doing the one thing most problematic for the future ambitions–uniting their weaker neighbors against them and pushing these smaller states into closer alliance with the United States.
That’s fine, so far as it goes. Oh sure, maybe India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, and some other piddling nation-states will ally to check Chinese power. But what will that mean against China’s network of ultra-modern airports and high-speed trains? And while WRM obsesses over all this “hard power,” he misses the most significant fact about modern Chinese dominance: They are going to own the electric car industry.
It’s as if we’re all playing checkers, but the Chinese are playing chess, man.
1 commentMalcolm Gladwell on Twitter
September 27th, 2010
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I’m in sympathy from the beginning. What strikes me, though, is the assumption which is almost always made (Gladwell does not do so explicitly, I don’t think) that “social change”–with or without Twitter/Facebook–is always a good.
Gladwell centers his piece around the anti-Jim Crow sit-ins of the 1960s. But isn’t the Bolshevik Revolution an equally powerful example of modern social change?
(James Glassman’s comments which Gladwell reproduces, are particularly troublesome if they haven’t been taken out of context.)
1 commentMixed Media
September 27th, 2010
Galley Friend Mike Russell ran a nifty little experiment recently: He went to a performance of Pagliacci and then did a series of sketches of the performance as it was happening. The results are pretty great.
0 commentsThe Big Loser in Today’s TV Shuffle?
September 24th, 2010
Kathleen Parker.
Parker staked her career on a Sullivan-esque political turn. It paid off when Jon Klein gave her a show on CNN. Now Klein is out the door before Parker’s show debuts.
In the film business, the rule is that the first thing a new studio head does is bury all of the old guy’s projects. If something the old boss greenlit hits, then it reflects badly on the new boss, who may be struggling with the projects that belong to him. And if it misses, it underscores how important it was to get rid of the old boss while simultaneously lowering the bar for success for the new boss.
I don’t know that this film rule holds true for cable news. But I can’t immediately see why it wouldn’t.
0 comments
