After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.
This paragraph, amongst several in the letter, prove that Conan’s the most qualified man for the job he’s now going to leave (assuming, that is, that NBC doesn’t back off. They won’t.). Sad.
(via ryking)
mrgan wants some new iPhone Voice Commands:
- “What time is it?”
- “Rate song three stars.”
- “What’s the weather?”
- “Notifications!” (“You have one unread message and two unread emails.”)
- “Redial.”
- “New voice memo…”
For all its vaunted software design, the iPhone is the victim of a few punishingly odd absences; for the record, I agree with all of these, especially time and song rating.
In other departments, I’d like to see a FrontRow style functionality in the phone/touch. Right now if your phone/touch is docked (and connected to a tv or stereo), you are limited to starting, stopping, and tracking through your music with the remote. Why in the name of all that’s holy is there not a dedicated interface such that you can look at pictures, play a movie, browse your music, look at YouTube (and etc…), and fifty other obvious niceties such an app could provide, all right there on the teevee and from the comfort of your couch. Apple? Seeing as you are the only company that can cross these sandbox lines, why in the hell haven’t you done this yet?
Likewise: Keynote. Why does Apple’s own doodad focus on using the iPhone as a glorified remote? Where is a straightforward way of presenting my slides from the phone/touch? As it stands now, I can bodge it with a custom movie…so long as I don’t mind timed transitions. And, let me tell you: I mind them. There is no reason on this Earth that a laptop need be required to deliver a 50 slide stack at any moment to some unsuspecting audience somewhere. None! That’s the whole point of the device. Isn’t it? Well, that and dropped phone calls.
“Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo”
Just when you think the news cycle can’t get any stupider, Mark Halperin publishes a book.
Jeff Zeleny runs down some of the bigger bullet-points coming out of the new book by the execrable Mark Halperin and “journalist” John Heilemann. Among them, this little tidbit:
In the days leading up to an interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson, aides were worried with Ms. Palin’s grasp of facts. She couldn’t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations and she did not know what the Federal Reserve did. She also said she believed Saddam Hussein attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
Of course, the real question here, the real fucking point: if you asked her today, could she tell you why North and South Korea are separate nations, what the Federal Reserve “does,” and, most importantly, who planned and executed the attacks on 9/11/01?
Her public comments since the election strongly imply that we already know. This sort of substantive information will not and will never come out in a media forever obsessed with the horse-races of the day. This will inevitably work towards Palin’s biggest asset: her “mish-mash of populism, everywomanism, and paranoia – coupled with a light touch on policy specifics – [that] has proven to be highly prescient in terms of everything that has come thereafter.”
Sad but true: ignorant ciphers like Palin and W. Bush are simply the odds on favorites for nationwide campaigns in this day and age. Anyone with an actual viewpoint, or that attempts to make a nuanced, non-rhyming statement, or dares wear a four-button suit, simply doesn’t have a chance. Not in that environment. Accept this information and begin planning (and messaging) accordingly. Or suffer the consequences.
This is the unusual case where a Dowd column actually provides some valuable insight, albeit inadvertently. Her desire for a Daddy in the White House who will tell her scary bedtime stories and then reassure her that Daddy will keep her safe seems to be widely shared; the Republicans’ vaunted edge on “national security” is mostly about the “security” in the phrase “security blanket.”
- Torture memos released
- No more waterboarding
- White house visitor logs released
- Iraq withdrawal in progress
- Mexico City policy reversed
- Certain arguments against DOMA rejected
- Money set aside for high-speed rail
- Environmental Protection Agency enforcement is up
- Restrictions on Legal Services Funds eased
- Being HIV+ no longer disqualifies people for a green card
- Net neutrality
- EPA to regulate carbon
- The HAMP program has helped a lot of people avoid foreclosure
- Review of mandatory minimum sentencing
- Credit card bill of rights created
- SCHIP eligibility expanded
- No permanent bases in Iraq
- Cuba restrictions eased
- Release of Presidential records expedited
- National Park funding increased
- Protections for gays and lesbians added to hate crimes law
- AmeriCorps funding increased
- EEOC funding restored to pre-Bush levels
- Ledbetter Act
- Unemployment insurance extended
- Stem cell restrictions eased
Etc.
I tell people that if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it. The very definition of “news” is “something that hardly ever happens.” It’s when something isn’t in the news, when it’s so common that it’s no longer news – car crashes, domestic violence – that you should start worrying.
NYT:
This month, at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, physicists and engineers built [model train] tracks inside one of its fusion reactors and ran a toy train on them for three days.
[…]
The modified model of a diesel train engine was carrying a small chunk of californium-252, a radioactive element that spews neutrons as it falls apart.
“We needed to refine the calibration technique to make sure we are measuring our neutrons as accurately as possible
Awesome.
Lemkin 