London Calling

Hat tip to John B's Tulip Frenzy for the news that the Royal Mail is issuing a set of stamps on British album covers.  First up: London Calling. 

The complete series:

Blur - 'Parklife'
Coldplay - 'A Rush of Blood to the Head'
David Bowie - 'The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars'
Led Zeppelin - 'IV'
Mike Oldfield - 'Tubular Bells'
New Order - 'Power, Corruption And Lies'
Pink Floyd - 'The Division Bell'
Primal Scream - 'Screamadelica'
The Clash - 'London Calling'
The Rolling Stones - 'Let It Bleed'

Going Gaga

Grammys Go Gaga, via WSJ.

"Lady Gaga's towering digital sales, almost all of them iTunes downloads, only tell part of the story. In fact, much of Gaga's audience got her music for free, and legally. They have listened to free streams—by the hundreds of millions—on YouTube and the other online services that Gaga currently leads, according to research firm BigChampagne. On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays. By contrast, singer Susan Boyle tallied only 133,000 plays, despite scoring the No. 2 selling album of 2009. A difference (among many) between Gaga and the dowdy Scotswoman discovered on a British talent show: Ms. Boyle's material, including "Amazing Grace," was traditional—and so were most of her buyers. Some 97% of her albums were sold on compact disc.

That tells you how pronounced the generational divide is," says BigChampagne founder Eric Garland. When it comes to the free streams that dwarf her still-impressive sales, Gaga isn't giving it away for nothing—musicians typically earn fractions of a penny each time a song is streamed on Yahoo, for instance. While most artists stand to profit more from high-margin CD sales, being embedded across the Web can pay dividends in exposure and the loyalty of fans."

People Aren't Stupid

More on the "Scott heard round the world . . ." from the WSJ.

"Back in September, picking up on the rising tide of public anger over health reform, excessive spending, and one-party arrogance, he fashioned a simple, compelling narrative to deal with it: no to a rushed, confusing health-care bill, yes to a freeze on federal spending and to introducing some sunlight into government. Mr. Brown repeated it over and over with the inner confidence that his message would eventually resonate. It did.

Mr. Brown says it frustrates him that too many politicians still believe that people will be fooled by what they're proposing. "People aren't stupid, and leaders should figure out they're better informed now than ever." Perhaps that explains how Scott Brown was able to pull off his improbable Cinderella story."

The Other Half?

So, according to the Salwens and their memoir The Power of Half, it's not enough to have half our earnings taxed, now we should give half of our home's value away so we can "live" with ourselves.  Publishers Weekly calls the book "self -congratulatory."  They got that right by half.

The authors' self-regard and self-promotion are overweening.

Dubai Timelapse

Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Surfing USA

Fat and Happy

Reveille

Birdsongs

Privacy in the cloud?

Here's the backstory to the Google - China censorship sideshow - from today's Wall Street Journal.

"What does Google know about you? What does the Chinese government know about you?

Now you know a less-spoken reason why Google has gone to the mattresses over Chinese hacking. Always in the cards, since the birth of the Web, was the possibility that some great Internet business—a Yahoo or Google or Amazon or Facebook—would be destroyed overnight by a cataclysmic loss of trust in its protection of consumer data.

Google's response to the discovery that Chinese hackers—likely government hackers—had tried to ransack its servers has been both energetic and obfuscating. "We love China and the Chinese people," said CEO Eric Schmidt. "This is not about them. It's about our unwillingness to participate in censorship."

This was good PR—changing the subject from the very touchy one of data security. It may also have been good strategy, putting China on the defensive about blocking its own citizens' access to information. Your move, Beijing."

Maybe China should be putting more pressure on Microsoft and its porous Internet Explorer?  Or maybe we all need to think about what we say online in an e-mail, blog post or Facebook comment.

Yes We Did!

MLK, Jr

Disfrutalo!

Shoppers at the Mercado Central de Valencia open market got an unexpected earful when members of the Palau de les Arts opera began singing Verdi's La Traviata.


Opera en el Mercado from esoqueseconocecomolaopera on Vimeo.

Werner Herzog Reads Curious George

Enough to give even adults nightmares.

Snap Crackle Pop!

Feeling Henpecked?

The "Zeroes," the "Oh Nos," the "Uh Ohs," and "Owe Owes"

No matter what you call it, the last decade was rough.

No small irony here that this YouTube video of the decade's magazine covers from the Magazine Publishers of America uses an online medium to promote print.

Obama's Coattails?

The simple fact that Obama's not stumping for Massachusetts Democratic senatorial candidate Martha Coaxley on the ground and is instead making his tired case on YouTube speaks volumes about his unhinged agenda and lost mandate.  The guy's become toxic.  Remember his Olympic's flop in Copenhagen?



More important, his party's massive miscalculation about their so-called "Kennedy seat" in a state that already has the closest thing to universal healthcare and has everything to lose in terms of higher costs and Medicare cuts if ObamaCare passes has given Republican candidate Scott Brown a real chance at winning next week.

I made a symbolic $41 donation to Scott Brown's campaign.  Godspeed.

Here's a great moment in political debating.

NBC's Must See TV

I've never been much of a Conan fan, and even less so a Leno fan.  But I know when someone's getting f'ed over.  I watched Conan's Wednesday show online and he's certainly gotten some good material out of getting fired, and he still has the show for a few more nights to stick his finger in NBC honcho Jeff Zucker's eye.

Conan's best line:  "Kids, you can grow up to do anything you want to.  Unless Jay Leno wants it too."

Letterman, who I think is genuinely funny but lost my support with his sleazy behavior and on-air victimhood, is now cleaning up in the 11:35 pm time slot.  Will Leno get the audience back after being a spoiler?  I doubt it.

Haiti Earthquake

Will Haiti and its people ever get a break?

NMH classmate Richie Morse, leader of the mizik rasin band RAM and owner of Oloffson's Hotel in Port-au-Prince, has been tweeting the last 24 hours with reports about the earthquake.  His tweets have been picked up by the news media around the world. 

Facebook on Privacy Norms

Well, I disagree.  Facebook's eroding privacy policies was the main reason I deactivated my Facebook account.

According to the Telegraph in the UK, "Mr Zuckerberg defended the changes made by Facebook to its privacy settings, saying it was in line with the new social norms. 'A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built,' he said. 'Doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do.

'But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it,'" he explained.

Jack Nicholson Courtside

Downward facing belly button.

A Year in the Life