drat fink



View current page
...more recent posts

Wednesday, Feb 20, 2002

lance armstrong

what frightens me most about this story is that he has $20 million to blow on a space jaunt.

[link]


Tuesday, Feb 19, 2002

long view

"Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Copyright Extension Law"

[link]


major amplitude

"The stock market is schizophrenic, tech investors are paralyzed and the publishing business is in its worst shape in years. Sounds like a great time to start a tech magazine, huh?

David Bunnell and Fred Davis think so. The tech publishing veterans have thrown sanity to the winds with the planned launch of Dig-It, which the duo call -- stop me if you've heard this one -- ``the Rolling Stone of tech.''

[link]


group effort

"The "magic number" of people needed to create a viable population for multi-generational space travel has been calculated by researchers. It is about the size of a small village - 160. But with some social engineering it might even be possible to halve this to 80."

[link]


strategic intelligence

"WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said."

[link]


new cosmos

“Our readers are seeking emotional stability. We won’t make them feel guilty if they are not having a one-hour orgasm. Readers think women will have fewer partners and be less promiscuous. Cosmo girl is not a ‘ladette’, she is quite vulnerable emotionally and I will produce a ‘softer’ magazine.”

[link]


memory booster

"The "next generation" of DVDs, able to hold almost six times as much information as current discs, has been unveiled by major technology companies."

[link]


curious george

"Now, this could be, anti-George people (there must be some) might argue, because he doesn’t entirely engage. George, for all his intensity, is also an observer; there’s something positively disassociated about him, it sometimes seems. Or it could be because he engages too much—he’s one of those overcommitted, 24/7, nineties types, who, having burned out (he went into therapy and onto Zoloft when he was working at the White House), has to cut his emotional ties and start all over again."

[link]


sachs titles

"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Financial giant Goldman Sachs & Co. has signaled it has set aside more than $1 billion to start a magazine unit, and it’s approaching top magazine executives in hopes of reeling in one of the industry’s biggest names to run the business."

[link]


body double

"Johnson wrote a book during his FCC tenure, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set. This link takes you to the full text version, which Johnson has graciously posted online. It's amazing how relevant the book still is today, including its withering assessment of the government's chief regulatory body overseeing the television business ("It has failed," Johnson writes, "because it has, in effect, been captured by the industry it was established to regulate")."

[link]