stargeek
U.S.-Bred Gadgets Are Back In StyleU.S.-Bred Gadgets Are Back In StyleU.S.-Bred Gadgets Are Back In Style 01/03/2004 07:28 PM American producers of consumer electronics begin to put some heat on Asian companies. By Bob Keefe (Atlanta Journal-Constitution via MyAppleMenu) This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)U.S.-Bred Gadgets Are Back In StyleGrok Headline matches for U.S.-Bred Gadgets Are Back In StyleBack to School GadgetsBack to School Gadgets 08/23/2004 08:53 AM
And even if more students are using Macs, it's not as if that means they'll continue to use them out in the real world. I mean, everybody that that first smoked pot in college immediately stopped on the day they graduated, right? Read - PluggedIn: Multifunction Devices
Draw Back-To-School Crowd [Reuters (Yahoo)] Bluetooth bounces back with new gadgetsBluetooth bounces back with new gadgets 02/16/2004 09:29 AM Cyber India Online Feb 16 2004 12:43PM GMT eBay Today: Back To School In StyleeBay Today: Back To School In Style 09/03/2004 12:58 AM Here's an item that looks like it never did hold a school lunch ... HEEEE'S
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Apologies for my unannounced silence since
last Saturday. The power supply on my Dell failed, draining the
battery
so I couldn't even back up my files to another computer. I just got it
back now. More on this spectacular failure next week. This week has
given me the chance to work on my novel, The
Only Life We Know, and my book Natural Enterprise, as well as a chance to catch
my breath and think about (a) what to blog about next, and (b) what to
do with myself once the three books are finished.Here are some of the things I'm planning on blogging about in the next few weeks. If there's anything else you'd like me to write about, let me know.
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 Thanks to
Torontonian AllSeasons for
providing this simple list:Peanut Butter Canned Fish Baby Formula Mac & Cheese Cereal & Bread Soup Pasta & Sauce Rice Fruits & Vegetables It's the list of suggested items on the brown paper bag from the local food bank. "Your grocery list is someone else's wish list" it says above the list. Speaks for itself. And the very next blog I visited was another Torontonian, Daily Dose of Imagery, who, to my astonishment, had just posted the extraordinary shot below.  Check out these two great blogs, and then...well, you know what to do next. |
 I hate commercials. They're an insult to the intelligence. They're grating. They're repetitive. They're unimaginative. They're a colossal waste of money that could be spent on something useful to society. Mostly, they're depressing -- they show the low level of intelligence that big corporations can profitably pander to, to hawk their dreadful, overpriced crap. And they show the low level of creativity of Western society -- with untold millions of dollars to spend in a medium that can present almost anything imaginable, this garbage is the best they can come up with. How can these bloated corporations and slimy advertising agencies be surprised that the biggest hit of the last television season was TIVO -- a tool that finally allows us to skip their god-awful tripe permanently? And what can be more pathetic than millions of people watching a football game each year just for the ads, which are mostly for companies that sell third-rate mass-produced beer and other products that are either bad for you or manufactured in third-world sweatshops anyway? Why get so worked up about this? Why don't I just turn them off? Because they're one of the engines of corporatism, the means by which, from a young age, we're brainwashed to believe that our possessions, what we buy and wear and eat, determines our identity, our value and rank in society. And because, just like politicians who bribe us with our own money through 'tax cuts' (which are in reality simply service cuts), corporations in their advertisements are pressuring us to buy their product with our money. The cost of advertising, which can amount to up to 80% of the 'cost' of a brand-name breakfast cereal or sneaker, is passed along to us, the consumers. And we pay it because (a) the ads that we're paying for coerce us into believing that their brand name is somehow worth the hugely inflated price, and (b) the huge market share that this coercion brings allows these brand names to monopolize retailers' shelf space and drive those that produce small, local, reasonably-priced products out of the market. Such oligopolies control every industry in our economy. What's the answer? The usual solutions to deal with this problem are to boycott the overpriced, overhyped brands and the goods of socially and environmentally irresponsible corporations and oligopolies, to educate ourselves on alternatives by belonging to organizations like Consumers Union, and to pledge to buy local. These are good ideas, but they are not enough, by themselves, to reach a tipping point to bust the oligopolies, make expensive and deceptive ads unprofitable, and squeeze the hidden inflationary cost of exhorbitant ads out of the price of the products we buy. What we need to do is to take back the airwaves, to realize that the media bandwidth is a public resource and it should be owned by, and for the interests of, the people, not corporations and advertisers. As the owners of the airwaves, we should allow them to be used only for public purposes. As radical as it may seem to those of us in North America (it's not a radical idea elsewhere in the world), advertising should be prohibited on our airwaves -- it is not in our best interests. How then should programming be funded? Publicly, with the budgets for programs determined by a public foundation with a mandate to support a mix of entertainment, cultural and information programming, and guided within limits by what viewers actually watch, and by a code to be inclusive, politically and culturally balanced and courageous, and to encourage creativity and investigation, and stretch the limits of the media and the minds of the people. Yes, this would be paid for by tax dollars. But remember, we're already paying for it. Not only would public funding of the airwaves let the people, not the advertisers, determine what we can and should watch for our money, but the profligate waste of billions of dollars in advertising could instead be spent on real programming. And the taxes that pay for the programs would be progressive (income taxes), based on ability to pay, instead of regressive (consumption taxes), based on how much you've been duped to buy. Because of the savings on advertising, the cost (and hence price) savings on products would more than offset the cost of publicly funded programming. We'd end up with, almost certainly, better, more varied, commercial-free programming. The cost of many consumer products would plunge. Oligopolies would be unable to sustain their stranglehold, making many industries much more competitive, opening the door to more small, local, entrepreneurial businesses with the commensurate boost in jobs, and rewarding innovation more and brand less, which would benefit the whole economy. To those that find the idea of public ownership of the airwaves too radical, think about information and the arts as a public good -- like education, health, parks and public spaces. The neocons want to 'privatize' all of these things, too -- run them for corporate profit and to hell with what the public wants. Most of us can see that in education, health, parks and public spaces the benefits of public ownership and stewardship in the people's interest far outweigh the 'efficiencies' of private, corporate ownership. We need to fight back against the greedy corporatists -- in the private sector and in government -- who try to bribe us with our own money and denigrate the value of public goods. They're every bit as great a threat to our democracy as terrorists. P.S. Last week CBS refused to carry the Moveon anti-Bush spot. Since those that control the media, our airwaves, won't allow you to see this important message, you'll have to see it here. Too bad tens of millions of others won't have that opportunity. |
 There has been a lot of discussion lately, at least in moderate and left-wing circles, about the growing evidence of the Bush Regime's deliberate abrogation of the Geneva Conventions, on the basis that respecting it compromises the 'war on terror'. The best report was Friday on Bill Moyers NOW on PBS, which included a lengthy interview with Scott Horton, the lawyer for the NY Bar Association, about the Association's report on the Bush Regime's arguments for ignoring the Conventions, and their implication for the safety of American troops, and the integrity of international law. The report was commissioned in part because of concerns expressed by the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) office about alarming and inconsistent instructions that military personnel were receiving about non-application of the Conventions. These concerns stemmed from a whole series of classified memoranda from the very top of the Bush Regime, justifying widespread setting aside of the Conventions on flimsy grounds, notably a memo from Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo developed to pre-justify systematic contravention of the Conventions. Or as Newsweek puts it "a legal framework to justify a secret system of detention and interrogation that sidesteps the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions." There is a great deal more on this story. The NOW site above has links to additional stories. And Joe Conason at Salon.com has a good summary of it this week. So the question is: Why is John Kerry not raising this as a serious campaign issue, a defining distinction between his policy and Bush's? In the interview with NOW, Horton says that all the major media, especially the TV networks, have refused to provide significant coverage of this issue because "it is too complex to be understandable or of interest to the public." This is an astonishing position for the media to take, and a total abrogation of their journalistic responsibility. So, for the benefit of these media, allow me to make it simple, so that even a media mogul could understand it:
If we reserve our outrage and only prosecute those on the front lines that follow the orders they are given, and even then only when there are provocative photos, and if by our inaction we actually encourage those that commission the illegal and dangerous acts, give the orders, and then hide behind executive privilege and secrecy, what does that say about us? It's time for John Kerry to speak up. Photo: Interrogation room at Guantanamo, where Bush has declared that no prisoners are protected by the Geneva Conventions. |
 If
you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I'm
opposed to unregulated 'free' trade, very worried about the
extraterritoriality of the WTO, NAFTA, Davos and other corporatist
captives, strongly opposed to domestic corporations 'offshoring' jobs,
using influence with the Bush regime and other right-wing governments
to circumvent social and environmental laws and responsibilities, and
a
great believer in taking the pledge to buy local, and in community
self-sufficiency.At the same time, I'm a strong supporter of the UN and other multi-lateral NGOs, and I believe that we each have a responsibility for the well-being of all the people and creatures of this world. Some readers have said this view is inconsistent, and I wasn't quite sure how to respond to such charges. Fortunately, Peter Singer, in his recent book on global ethics, I'll have more to say next week about Bush's fraudulent and despicable Earth Day media blitz, and the major media's shameless lack of critical evaluation of the utter nonsense that his propaganda machine has been churning out this week on the environment -- newspeak of Orwellian proportions. The first part of Singer's book deals with environmental responsibility, and his prescription for increasing it -- immediate ratification of Kyoto by the US and other holdout countries, and introduction of an emissions trading mechanism to make the realization of Kyoto feasible (subject to the need for some oversight on the disposition of the proceeds of such trading when it involves autocratic governments). The second part of the book deals with the global economy, and Singer adroitly tears apart the Economist's (and other neocons') naive assertion that economic globalization somehow benefits both rich and poor countries. He then goes on to prescribe a substantial reform of the WTO and the GATT, which could actually lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and more efficient production of economic goods, while safeguarding human rights, labour and the environment. Unfortunately, the multi-national corporations and corporatists who hold sway in the WTO would never tolerate Singer's prescription, since it would entirely divert the benefits of economic globalization from their pockets to those of the world's poor. The third part of the book deals with international law, and Singer lashes out at Bush for his unconscionable refusal to ratify the International Court of Justice, and for the UN's continued hesitancy to accept a duty (not a right) to intervene in situations of genocide and other humanitarian crises, even within a single nation. Singer is sanguine about the limitations and dangers of 'global government', but supports strengthening the UN to enable it to act as a 'protector of last resort', and including in its mandate the responsibility to supervise elections in all member nations. The fourth and final part goes back to ethical principles and proposes that countries must, in this world where national boundaries no longer have any logistic meaning, set aside national interest and embrace, once and for all, global interest, impartially. That does not mean cultural homogenization, but imposes a responsibility for the reduction of inequality, both of economic resources and personal rights and freedoms. Always the pragmatist, Singer concludes by worrying out loud about how the responsibility for a global ethic could be managed: It
is widely believed that a world government would be, at best, an
unchecked bureaucratic behemoth that would make the bureaucracy of the
EU look lean and efficient. At worst, it would become a global
tyranny,
unchecked and unchallengeable. These thoughts have to be taken
seriously. How to prevent global bodies becoming either dangerous
tyrannies or self-aggrandizing bureaucracies, and instead make them
effective and responsive to the people whose lives they affect? It is
a
challenge that should not be beyond the best minds in the fields of
political science and public administration.
I'd like to believe that this was possible, because if it isn't, we're in serious trouble. We cannot expect national governments to set aside parochial interests, especially when this entails accepting a responsibility that would, for the richer nations, inevitably lead to a drastic redistribution of wealth to poorer nations and hence a sudden and sharp reduction in, at least, economic living standards (if not necessarily well-being). But as John Ralston Saul has so eloquently argued, larger organizations and institutions, whether public or private, are almost always, and inherently, less efficient, less agile, more resistant to change, more hierarchic, and less transparent than smaller organizations. So the challenge is to achieve the best of both worlds, having organizations of global scope and authority and responsibility, but broken up into sufficiently small, autonomous and dynamic units that they are sensitive, resilient, responsible and responsive to the people and communities they serve. We can only hope that "the best minds in the fields of political science and public administration", wherever they are, are up to the task. |
Slate takes a break from telling people to use
Firefox and Christopher Bitchens rants (oh man, BURNED YOU
GOOD! I gotta get a snack now) to take an entertaining romp
through the annual meeting of the American Veterinary Medical
Association, chock full of interesting pet gadgetry, including stops
by booths selling dog and cat pheromones (and soon, human ones!),
poop-grabbing Mutt Mitts, and Soft-E-Collars to replace those awful
cardboard cones that convalescing dogs must wear.
And speaking of softies, I think I almost have been convinced to hire on a pug by the girlfriend. Expect the review gadgets to come back a little chewier, manufacturers.
Read - The Pet Entrepreneurs [Slate]
Related
The
ISeePet [Gizmodo]
Wired News has a
short regurgitation from Reuters about the increasing number of gadget
users who are turning to solar power to keep them mobile. It's not
perfect, of course -- cloudy days can still easily double the recharge
time of batteries -- but as the efficiency of solar cells improve, we
may well see increased ubiquity of solar power for all our devices,
especially as flexible, wearable panels become available.
Read [Wired]
gizmodo.com
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< img src="http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/dmb_expo2004.jpg" alt="dmb_expo2004.jpg image" width="398" height="265" class="center border"/>IT Media Japan has a few pictures up of some of the hardware (primarily Samsung) shown at the DMB Expo 2004. DMB is Digital Media Broadcasting, a television content broadcasting format that is getting a big push in Korea. Television on cellphones is still at a "I wouldn't mind it" level of excitement for me—a level shared by "shark shin exfoliating T-shirt"—but new gear is always welcome.
P
roduct Shots from DMB Expo 2004 (Japanese) [ITMediaJP via SorobanGeeks]<
/p>
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