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Paul Levinson
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3/11/2010 @11:32 PM CT
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Show Details
4 days ago
Light On Light Through
Newest Episode: Thu March 11, 2010. 10:49 PM
Paul Levinson talks about social media, politics, TV, good food, lifestyles, science fiction
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The Free Market News Network
reports that WMUR neglected to cover Ron Paul at his "Family Day" rally
in Manchester, New Hampshire this past weekend. WMUR is a state-wide
television operation, with headquarters in Manchester.

What
struck me most about this was not the lack of coverage itself -
infuriating and undemocratic, as it is - but the fact that WMUR is an ABC
affiliate!

Just this past Friday, at the lecture I delivered to
my "Intro to Communication and Media Studies" class at Fordham
University (we'll have the video up on YouTube soon), I detailed a
series of outrageous ABC misreportings of Ron Paul since May - ranging
from leaving him out of poll results to publishing misleading photographs that made his
supporters seem far fewer at a rally in Iowa than they actually were.
But I concluded, in an effort to be fair, that ABC seems to have been
improving in the accuracy of its reporting lately, with Fox guilty of the
worst recent transgressions.

But here we are, once again, with a
national ABC television affiliate apparently up to the same old
business. If the Free Market News story is correct - and it's been up
online more than a day with no opposing comments offered - then ABC is
continuing to dig itself into a hole it may never get out of.

Because,
whatever happens in this election, the shameful performance of ABC News
at so many junctures - regarding mostly Ron Paul, but also, at least
once, Dennis Kucinich - will not be forgotten. Indeed, I expect it will
be a section in many textbooks about media and politics. I know I
certainly will be putting something about this in my next edition of The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution.

See reviews of the most recent edition of The Soft Edge.
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I was delighted to hear Ron Paul say at the Republican Presidential debate on PBS that he is opposed to the Federal death penalty. He indicated that this was one of the few positions he changed his views about over the years - at one time, he supported the Federal death penalty - and his reason was that DNA evidence has shown too many innocent people found guilty.

My position has always been against death penalties on all levels. Even before DNA evidence, it seemed to me that juries are fallible, they are capable of error, and putting a person to death on the basis of a wrong jury decision was one of the very worst things a civilized society could ever do. Life in prison without parole was a strong enough punishment, and one which allowed reversal in the event that new evidence came to light or old evidence proved faulty.

As on so many other issues, the libertarian distrust that Ron Paul has of government, and his sheer logic, have led him to an enlightened, humanitarian position. My only disagreement with Ron Paul on this issue is that I would like to see capital punishment outlawed on a state level, too.

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You see the Democratic Presidential Debate at Dartmouth last night? You gotta love Mike Gravel. Asked by Tim Russert how he could run for President and be trusted with the nation's fiscal responsibility, when he ran up a big unpaid debt, Gravel proudly shot back - hey, look who I stuck with that debt, I stuck the credit card companies with a $90,000 debt, and they deserved it!

But probably the most important point from an underdog - maybe the most important point made by any candidate - came from Dennis Kucinich, who said he not only favored lowered the drinking age to 18, but the voting age to 16. I seriously support such a lowering of the voting age - I've been saying for years that it should be lowered to 14 - an age at which, according cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget, people have completely adult reasoning processes, and have had them for at least two years.

Among the top tier Democrats, I thought John Edwards did splendidly  last night. He comes across as the most human - the least political - and made some points against Hillary and Obama on stopping the business as usual in Washington. I especially liked Edwards' solution to the social security crisis: rather than raising the cap (it's currently $97,000+), create a window, in which income earners won't pay social security tax above the current cap, until they reach a much higher level of income.(I actually most favor Ron Paul's solution of letting people below a certain age opt of social security - but Edwards' is at least an innovative solution, which doesn't punish people in the upper middle class).

But, yeah, let's lower the voting age to 16.   Certainly we adults have not voted all that brilliantly in the past few elections...

 
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I enjoy hearing from
people who disagree with my blog posts, podcasts, radio and TV
appearances. I've always agreed with Socrates that dialog is the best
path to knowledge.

Here's an example of a little exchange that
occurred this morning, shortly after my weekly radio interview by Bob
Brill on KNX 1070 all-news radio, in which I was talking about the
MoveOn.org - General Petraeus "Betray Us" controversy.

My
position: Most people - just about everyone, I'd say - can understand
the difference between a General giving advice to Congress, supporting
a President in his harmful foreign policy, that betrays the best
interests of our country. This is what the MoveOn.org ad was clearly
saying. Not that the General was betraying us on the battlefield, or by
working with the enemy - a clearly absurd point to make, and which no
one, even the war's most bitter opponents, has ever suggested.

But the Republicans are clearly trying to pretend that the literal traitor point is what the MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times was saying.

Here
is the e-mail I received, followed by my reply. (Out of courtesy to the
writer of the e-mail, I'm not printing his name - even though as a
recipient of an unsolicited e-mail, I'm under no legal or ethical
obligation to not publish the name of the writer.)

I
heard your comments this AM on the radio concerning the Moveon.org ad
in the NY Times. I was stunned by your take on it, but I suppose I
shouldnât be. You were simply reflecting your liberal bias and
confirmed exactly what most know about academics in the liberal arts.
Your views are so tainted by your liberal leanings, itâs impossible for
you to present an evenhanded report on anything.

I guess I live
in an ivory tower (slightly to the right of yours,) as I have not heard
one utterance which described the ad the way you did. Perhaps in the
liberal bastions of Manhattan, that nexus of all learning and
civilization, one could believe in oneâs heart that the average
American took the ad to mean something entirely different than the
words as written, but my guess is that if you spent a bit of time out
in good old âflyoverâ? country you would find that most Americans knew
exactly what the folks at Moveon.org meant. They were simply calling
the general a traitor. The doublespeak you used to dance around the
meaning was certainly the stuff of legend and on that I must commend.

Itâs almost as classic as âwe support the troops but donât support the warâ? and the like.

Is
the job of a journalist to report the facts without bias or comment or
is it to advance a personal agenda? The answer you give to that
question, the answer you give when you look yourself in the eye
brushing your teeth in the morning, will tell us where you stand.

And my reply ...
You're
the one who should have trouble looking at yourself in the mirror:
you're obviously intelligent, and therefore must know that there's a
big difference between saying someone's advice or assessment betrays
the best interests of this country (which is what the MoveOn ad is
saying about the General), and saying someone is betraying us on the
battlefield or in dealings with foreign powers (which is what the
Republicans are claiming).

But I'd guess you're probably very
familiar with what the Republicans are up to - you write as if you're
on their payroll. Are you? Did you actually hear me on the radio, or
are you responding to a mass e-mail that some Republican factotum sent
out to you?

As for me, I have no agenda, other than what I've
been doing in my 30 years of publishing books and articles, and
teaching about the media: which is, provide independent scholarly
assessments. (And, by the way, I was interviewed as a commentator and a
scholar - not a journalist. In other words, I was interviewed by KNX
because they were interested in my opinions and assessments.)

If
you'd like to learn more about my opinions, I hope you keep listening
to KNX - I'm on every Sunday morning at 7:20am. You might also enjoy my
book, The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information
Revolution - where you'll see that I criticize Democrats as well as
Republicans when they're dishonest with the American people, or
pursuing an unconstitutional and therefore illegal war.

All best wishes,
PL
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With the Fall at our doorstep, and the lecture I'm giving to my class
at Fordham University about the media mistreatment of Ron Paul just a
week away, I thought I'd share with you a little list I put together,
which ranks the five major TV news networks on their coverage of Ron
Paul as well as other presidential candidates these past six months.

Since
I'm not omniscient, I may have missed some network errors and abuses.
All corrections and additions are welcome in the comment section.

1.
CNN: in first place. They've done nothing wrong that I know of, and get
kudos for the YouTube CNN debate a few months ago, in which questions
came from people who submitted videos to YouTube, rather than so-called
experts in the media. CNN decided which questions to air, but this is
still a real breakthrough in the democratization of media.

2.
MSNBC has in general done a fine job in its reporting of Ron Paul and
the other campaigns. MSNBC commentators Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan
have been public and explicit in their support of Ron Paul. But MSNBC
got off to a bit off a rough start. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews,
discussing the candidates' positions on the war after the debate of May
4, neglected to mention that Ron Paul has been systematically against the war. They both improved their reporting considerably, shortly thereafter.

3.
CBS has done nothing wrong in its coverage of the current campaigns,
either, as far as I know. But I put CBS in third place because of its
continuing graceless treatment of Dan Rather, who was forced out of CBS
after courageously reporting about George Bush's military past, in the
election campaign of 2004.

4. Now we take a sharp turn downward with Fox News. Hannity and Colmes
denigrated Ron Paul's first place finish in the Fox phone-in poll
conducted after the last Republican Presidential debate on Fox - the
two claimed that Ron Paul's supporters were multiple-dialing. Not only
was there no evidence for this, it turns out a second call from the
same phone resulted in a text reply that the vote wouldn't count.
O'Reilly, to his credit, did have Ron Paul on his show. But to
O'Reilly's discredit, he barely gave Ron Paul a chance to get a word in edgewise.

5. ABC is in the cellar. Worse than Fox, ABC failed to mention on at least one occasion that Ron Paul came in first in its post-debate poll. It removed comments from Ron Paul supporters on its online board, and then proceeded to shut it down. ABC also showed a lone Ron Paul supporter
before the Iowa caucus, in contrast to big crowds for Romney, when in
fact Ron Paul had big crowds of supporters, too. Then there was Mark Levin,
in ABC's radio line-up, who called upon his listeners to call up Ron
Paul headquarters with advice that Ron Paul couldn't win. And, just for
good measure, ABC spread some its abuse around, and cropped Dennis Kucinich out of a photo Democratic contenders.

The
good news for Fox and ABC is that the election campaigns are
continuing, and they can change their ways. Actually, Fox has been
worse than ABC in the past month, and that may be a sign that ABC is
finally seeing the error of its ways.

I'd like to see all five major news networks report the election campaigns truthfully. The American people require no less.

I'll  keep you posted.
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Fri September 21, 2007. 05:11 AM
"Anyone listening to John Kerry should be tasered" - that "joke" came from a
former homicide detective, Rod Wheeler, who Fox News chose to have
as a guest on Hannity and Colmes last night.

Wheeler said a lot
more - that Andrew Meyer clearly deserved to be tasered, that he was
clearly threatening the police who were escorting him away from the
microphone - even though the videos of the event clearly show otherwise.

But Wheeler is entitled to his erroneous opinion of what happened.

And he's
of course also entitled to his deeply misguided sense of humor. I guess we
should at least be happy that someone with his values is a former
rather than a current homicide detective.

But where was Sean
Hannity's outrage or even disagreement with his guest for taking such a
tasteless shot at John Kerry's supporters, at a time in which tasering
and politics and freedom of speech have become sadly intertwined?

Now,
more than ever, we need candidates like Ron Paul who respect both the
First Amendment and the necessary limits of police authority.
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Fri September 21, 2007. 03:07 AM
I'm just watching Keith Olbermann, back on MSNBC's Countdown, after
several days of being down and out with appendicitis ...  It's good to see him back on his show.

I by no means agree with all of Keith's positions and remarks. I especially didn't like his caustic attack on 24
last year, his shots at Bill O'Reilly sometimes are over
the top. (But see my blog post about O'Reilly's site giving away
"Please Don't Taze Me, Bro" bumper stickers - a new low, even for
O'Reilly.)

But whatever Keith's flaws, he offers a unique and
much-needed commentary. Not only because it generally comes from the
left (which I don't always agree with, either), but because it is
sharp, outrageous, fresh and funny.

Alison Stewart does a good
job as Keith's regular substitute, but you can see Keith's special
contribution right there. Alison's content is the same as Keith's, her
delivery is fine, but I laugh, gasp, or get angry maybe one out every ten times I do when watching Keith Olbermann.

Welcome back, Keith, and keep up the good, infuriating work.
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Thu September 20, 2007. 04:06 AM
I was in an elevator yesterday afternoon.  It almost got stuck.  You
know what I mean?  It stopped for a split second in between floors,
shuddered, and then resumed its upward journey.

But it got me to thinking (always a dangerous development).  How little portable media have made every place more useful than it used to be.  A stalled
elevator, a car stuck in a traffic jam, a seat in a doctorâs office
when youâre waiting endlessly for an appointment - a wireless device, whether cell phone, Blackberry, or iPhone,  makes all of those formerly useless places useful.

The result is that we are enjoying increasing discretion and control
over our lives and our activities.  Increasingly, we do nothing when we
want to do nothing, not when circumstances dictate that we do nothing.

That's a good step forward.
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Thu September 20, 2007. 03:24 AM
Dan Rather is suing CBS for $70 million and he is 100% justified. Instead of standing by its reporter, after its own
two-member panel could not say that the report Rather went on
the air with was false, CBS hung Rather out to dry. In so doing,
CBS damaged Rather's reputation and his potential for future employment.  And it damaged its own reputation and its legacy even more.  

CBS
just celebrated its 80th anniversary the other day. William Paley must
be turning over in his grave about CBS did to Dan Rather. His law suit
is a small way of rectifying that.

Meanwhile, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric draws fewer viewers than it did with Rather.
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Bravo to YouTube for making videos of police brutality, such as
occurred with Andrew Meyer in Florida, more accessible than ever to the
general public.

In 1991, video allowed the public to see the Rodney King
beating - nothing the police said in its aftermath could contradict
what the public was able to see with its own eyes. YouTube has taken
this once step further - allowing us to see such videos without having
to wait for television to show them to us. The iPhone is helping as
well, by allowing people to see such videos when they are away from
their desktops and laptops. All of this is by no means stopping police
from trampling on First Amendment rights - but it is making it harder
than ever for them to get away with it.

On the one side, we have
retrograde forces like the commissioners of the FCC, and incompetent
out-of-control police, who each in their ways imperil our freedom. On
the other hand, we have miracles of technology, which speed us news of
the FCC's misdoings, which provide immediate, irrefutable images of
policy brutality and misconduct.

These technologies have made freedom-loving people
more equal to the task of combating these threats to our democracy.   They are, in effect,  media-philosophic partners of Ron Paul's run for the White House, and the respect he urges for the First Amendment.
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Mon September 17, 2007. 06:49 PM
I'm not talking about Fox News.  It is the Fox Broadcasting Company - the entertainment part of the company, which has far more viewers and rakes in far more advertising revenue than its little brother, Fox News - that might need some massive boycotting.

It was the Fox Broadcasting Company which censored Sally Field's anti-war statement in its broadcast of the Emmys last night.

Sally Field was on stage to accept her Emmy Award for best actress in a drama series - Brothers and Sisters.  She was talking about the pain of war, and said that, "if mothers ruled the world, maybe there would be no more godda-"

And Fox cut her off in mid-sentence. We're not allowed to hear the phrase "goddamned war," even though war is just that.

We, in our democracy, supposedly protected by a First Amendment that says Congress shall make law no abridging freedom of speech or press, are not allowed to hear a critique of war.

Fox was no doubt afraid of the Federal Communications Commission, and what it might do to a broadcast network that allowed the word "goddamned" to go out to the world.

This is what we've come to.  Fear of an unconstitutional agency leading a network to bleep a profound, heartfelt observation about war.

Here are some responses we might consider:

1. The Fox Broadcasting Company could lose more money if it loses viewers than it might have been fined by the FCC for broadcasting goddamned.  Maybe Americans who want to see this wrong war over should stop watching Fox for a couple of weeks.  A good time to start would be right now, when Fox is unveiling its Fall lineup.

2. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences should think about moving the Emmys telecast to cable, currently not under the FCC's thumb.

3. We need to elect a President who understands the unconstitutionality of the FCC, and the damage it does.   Ron Paul of the Republicans already gets this, and perhaps a few of the Democrats, such as Obama or Edwards, could make this part of their platform.

On the May 8th page of the 2007 First Amendment Calendar, I'm quoted as saying  "What begins as a seemingly innocent campaign against indecency â always segues in short order into political censorship."

That's just what happened last night.
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Sun September 16, 2007. 09:13 PM
Hey, I don't smoke ... but my interview in the current issue of The Smoking Poet sure does ... here's a snapshot of the e-zine's front page ...



THE SMOKING POET: FALL 2007 â ONLINE NOW!

Life
is growth. To stop growing is to stop living. The same principle
applies to a literary ezine. It, too, is a living being, breathing new
life with each and every submission that is chosen to appear in these
pages. And surely this issue â our fourth â is breathing deeply! The
voices here are many and diverse. Each one has given a breath of life
to these pages, and we invite you to witness that life, allow it to
move you, make you think and feel and perhaps do a bit of growing, too.

Author Interview with Paul Levinson

============================

Enjoy ... here's one of my favorite lines ... "Iâd
like to see the FCC abolished, and everyone in Congress who supports it
voted out or thrown out of office"
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Sat September 15, 2007. 10:06 PM
Translations ... in some ways, they are the most exciting, profound thing that can happen to an author.   Your words translated into another language, read by people halfway or even completely around the world.

I've been pretty fortunate with translations of my books.  I was just looking them over.   Here are some (to me, at least) interesting stats:

. My work, at present, has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Macedonian, Croatian, Russian, and Turkish.
. Chinese holds the record, at this point, with translations of five of my books (all nonfiction):  Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age, The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet, and Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium, and How It Has Transformed Everything.
.Polish is a close second, with four translations.  Two are of my nonfiction books, The Soft Edge and Cellphone, and two are of my science fiction novels, The Silk Code and The Consciousness Plague.
.Digital McLuhan has received the most translations - seven - Japanese, Chinese (twice - Taiwan and PRC), Korean, Croatian, Romanian, Macedonian (I love that - Alexander the Great!)
.The Soft Edge has received the second most translations - five - Chinese (twice), Portuguese, Polish, and Turkish.
.The most money I was ever paid as an advance for a translation was for the Japanese edition of Digital McLuhan.
.The most royalties I have received for any translation has been for the Chinese translation of Digital McLuhan.
.The French and Croation translations have been of my short science fiction.  All the others have been of my books.

You might wonder why there is much more translation from Eastern Europe than Western Europe.  There are at least two reasons.  One is that more people read English in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, so translations are less necessary.  Another is that the end of the Cold War has led to a remarkable intellectual renaissance in the former Soviet block...

Of course, speaking of reading English, I'm not fluent in the most of these languages - I can't really read even a single word in a few - so I have no way of knowing if I'd be happy with the fidelity of the translations...

But I have confidence in the cosmos.

A few covers follow ... I'll add more as I get a chance to scan them, or find them on the Web...
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Joan Baez's 1966 performance of Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side"...

The voice of angel. Dylan's words are the most
powerful refutation of war as a moral instrument ever written.

Dylan
first performed the song at Town Hall in New York City, April 12, 1963.
Joan Baez took him by the hand and out on the stage of the Newport Folk
Festival for an extraordinary performance of the song on July 25, 1963.
You can see a clip from it in Martin Scorsese's 2005 No Direction Home
bio-documentary of Dylan.

Here in 2007, the hope expressed at
the end of the song that, "If God is on our side, He'll stop the next
war," remains unfulfilled.

Ron Paul could make that happen.  So could Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, John Edwards, Bill
Richardson - even Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and to a degree any of
the other Democrats. They're all talking now about stopping this unconstitutional war, started in lies.

Ron Paul should use this song as a campaign song. So could Dennis Kucinich. I hope one of them does.

The lyrics are here.
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29:10
Thu September 13, 2007. 04:05 AM
Welcome to Light On Light Through Episode 44, An Interview with Obama Girl Producer Ben Relles ... We cover everything in this powerful, revealing 20-minute interview ... how Ben and the team at BarelyPolitical.com came up with the idea for Obama Girl ... how Amber Lee Ettinger was chosen to be Obama Girl ... the role of songwriter singer Leah Kauffman ... Barack Obama and his campaign's reaction to the Obama Girl videos, and Ben's response to this reaction ... placement of BarelyPolitical.com in the history and future of political satirical television and video ... You won't want to miss a second of this candid, informative interview...

Plus flashes ... Ben Relles, Amber Lee Ettinger, and Leah Kauffman will be at my class at Fordham University, September 21 ... my thoughts about Dylan's "With God On Our Side" after seeing Scorsese's No Direction Home - does it remind you of Mike Huckabee's statement in the last Presidential debate about the role of "God" in our continuation of the war in Iraq (this in response to Ron Paul's critique of our war policy)...

The Barely Political Revolution my blog post
http://BarelyPolitical.com Obama Girl vids & new vid on 9/17

also -

Rosh Hashanah Girl video
Bob Dylan and Ron Paul
The Silk Code podiobook - my award-winning novel, read by Shaun Farrell, available free -  at http://thesilkcode.blogspot.com or http://podiobooks.comhttp://artofgraciousliving.com Patsy Terrell's podcast - Patsy does the Light On Light Through - Blubrry id  The Plot to Save Socrates   (click on the
above title to get to Amazon) ... and if you'd like an autographed copy at no extra charge to you, just send me an e-mail atPaulLevinson@LightonLightthrough.com for details

home page: http://paullevinson.info
more blogs: http://InfiniteRegress.tvand http://www.myspace.com/twiceuponarhyme                         

 

videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006
                                                                           

The Plot to Save Socrates - my latest novel
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

Try GotoMyPC free for 30 days!  For this special offer, visit www.gotomypc.com/podcast

Ben Relles ... Amber Lee Ettinger ... Leah Kauffman
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Wed September 12, 2007. 06:59 PM
I'm still thinking about Scorsese's No Direction Home - likely because I watched another piece of it, again, last night ... the "Meet the Press" section...

Dylan was the quintessential anti-interview in the 1960s...

Q - How many protest singers are there?

A - Dylan -  About 136 ...

Q - About or exactly 136?

A - Dylan - 142...

He bristled and laughed at questions, and pretty much refused to answer them.   Most of this was well-deserved - the questions were vacuous, even ridiculous...

If ever there was an example of the merit of I. A. Richards' advice that the creator of a work is the last person you should ask about the meaning of a work, Dylan in the 1960s would be it.   This was the case with Dylan even when he wasn't being sarcastic. In an early radio interview, he tells Studs Terkel that "A Hard Rain" is not about atomic rain - it's just about something important about to come down.   I. A. Richards would say that shouldn't prevent anyone from hearing apocalypse in that song.

So how seriously should we take Dylan's commentary that is the backbone of Scorsese's movie?   Now in the 21st-century, Dylan seems to have little problem reflecting honestly on his work.  Actually, I first noticed this in the excellent interview Dylan gave to Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes a few years ago.

The reasons for the change in Dylan's interview performances are complex and multiple, like everything else about Dylan.  The questions today are not as stupid as those in the 1960s.  Dylan in the 1990s began to redefine his interviews as part of his serious creative work - rather than part of his spoofs - likely because he finally saw them as useful on the path to understanding himself and his impact, which has always been his goal.

All of which is good for us.
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Tue September 11, 2007. 10:42 PM
I continue to be fascinated - haunted, even - by Martin Scorsese's 2005 film about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home.  I'd seen large pieces of it before, but saw the whole movie for the first time just a few nights ago.

Dylan's performance of "With God On Our Side" at the Newport Folk Festival with Joan Baez in the summer of 1963 is the high point of the movie.  His voice never sounded better - Joan Baez's voice has always sounded great.  She takes him by the hand out on stage, and the two waifs open up with what is probably the most powerful anti-war song ever written - we all go to war irrationally thinking and claiming God's on our side.  This is exactly what Mike Huckabee said in defense of staying the course in Iraq, when Ron Paul spoke out in last week's debate about the war being wrong, strategically, as well as unconstitutional.  Dylan's lyrics are, sadly, as searingly relevant today as in 1963.

But by 1964, Dylan was singing another kind of song at the Newport Festival - "Mr. Tambourine Man".  This was the pivotal transitional song. The lyrics are sublime, but they never had much relevance to any current event.  The Newport crowd applauded, willing to give Dylan the benefit of the doubt.  He was, after all, still acoustic, and still sincere.

But Dylan was singing "Like A Rolling Stone" in 1965 in Newport, with electric backing.  In just two years, he had morphed from the most powerful, splendid, social critic ever known in folk song to a caustic, psychedelic commentator on the human condition.  Someone who even, for the first time, it seemed, may even have been sarcastic and condescending to his audience. For all of that, he got booed...

I've always loved both of Dylan's phases.  But given the state of the world today, I miss the Dylan who sang up there with Joan Baez, and still wonder at the transformation.  The assassination of JFK, Dylan's wanting some of the fame enjoyed by the Beatles, just needing to move on to other things - these were no doubt  important factors.  But, somehow, insufficient, either singly or in concert, to explain just what happened to Dylan....
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Tue September 11, 2007. 12:59 AM
A six-foot boa-constrictor was just discovered in New York City's Central Park.   Officials say a pet owner likely left it there.

But I gotta say I've been seeing a lot more wildlife in the New York area the past few years.   No, not wild night life - wild life - as in skunks, raccoons, deer, and even a wild turkey from time to time.

I'm used to squirrels, and maybe an occasional rabbit or chipmunk.  Deer are nice - but I'd rather they not be eating up my vegetables in my back yard.   And skunks ... well, who's ever happy about seeing them?

I've also heard that coyotes have been spotted not too far away, and I've seen a fair share of fox, and heard a moose once, on Cape Cod...

Zipadeedoodah...
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Is Steve Jobs Sick Of The Cell Phone Industry Already?
Crunchgear's Seth Porges asked and and answered that yesterday: Yes.  The new iPod Touch steals some of the
iPhoneâs thunder. That's proof enough.  And then thereâs Beckâs âCellphoneâs Dead,â? the Touchâs demo song.  Observes Sascha Segan of PC Magazine, âThe phone is the weakest part of the iPhone anyway.â?

I think not.  First, Porges and Segan make the mistake
that industry analysts - in contrast to media historians - often do. 
Theyâre equating the industry, or social and economic structures
surrounding a medium, with what the medium does or doesnât do,
itself.  Television national networks, for example, were spent by
the late 1980s.  But television - the enjoyment of audio-visual stories,
news, etc on a screen under one's control - was as powerfully appealing
as ever.  The result was the not decline of television, but its
migration to cable and BitTorrent.

The phone is not the weakest part of the iPhone - itâs actually the strongest
part.  A device that gave us great connections to all of the Internet
would be wonderful - but its magic is that it also lets us call someone
we love, or a business partner, and receive calls from same.  A
conversation with a real person - if she or he is the right person -
usually trumps anything else we might be up to online.

AT&T and its antiquated system is the weakest part.  But
AT&T was never in the vanguard of cell phone service in the first
place.   Indeed, as the near-monopolistic giant in the first hundred years of the telephone, it impeded its dissemination to the point that it was not until the 1950s, some 75 years after the telephone's invention, that more than 50-percent of Americans had telephones in their homes.

The iPhone will continue and thrive with its cell phone
service prominent and important - but with other carriers and other
plans.
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Sun September 09, 2007. 05:08 AM
I guess this comes under the category of you should be careful what you absurdly joke about, lest it become true...

Ever since I
was a kid, if I saw a fly land in someone's soup, or on a friend
or family member's sandwich, I'd say "hey, a little extra protein, no
charge"...

I seldom got much appreciation for the comment.

But it seems I - and who knows how many others - may have been on to
something. Take a look that video clip below - wasp cookies are getting buzz in Japan!

Apparently, wasp has been an ingredient in some kinds of
rice preparations in Japan for a long time, so making cookies with the winged creatures didn't seem like that big a leap.

And - yes! - the wasp cookies are being touted for their protein content...

But my tongue is probably barbed enough ... I expect I'll be sticking to sushi for my exotic protein...
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