Or was that 1899?

Stupid historical perspective. Always getting in the way of yet another gold rush.
CNN reports that an assortment of venture capitalists are ponying up a collective $100 million on some ideas that they’re sure will be winners.

Some examples:

The Ultimate iDrive: A driver’s tech fantasy fully realized: an in-dash computer with a keyboard built into the steering wheel and a full-screen heads-up display projected on the windshield.

What they’ll invest: $5 million for a deeply qualified 20-person team to deliver a prototype and a plan for pitching a commercial version to automakers within three years.

Or how about:

A design scheme for a community of affordable new homes, packed with luxury amenities and based on green values. This is yet another baby-boomer play, but AOL co-founder [Steve] Case and partner [Donn] Davis — who helped bring fractional ownership to the ultraluxury-home market with Exclusive Resorts — don’t think builders like KB Home and Pulte Homes have all the angles covered.

“Wellness” lifestyles are big draws among retiring boomers. But so is price, Davis says, as more and more people worry about shrinking retirement incomes. That’s why he’d like to see modest homes inside a community that offers an eclectic mix of perks — a spa, yoga classes, a community garden, room service, and so on.

Homeowners should be able to choose among full or fractional ownership and different levels of property management, perhaps even taking part in selling the community’s services to outsiders.

What they’ll invest: $5 million for the right plan.

Condos? With yoga studios? Hell, why not $10 million? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

But hey, who knows? Maybe the next pets.com is out there somewhere, too…

Read on

Here at Bloggerton, there isn’t really a unifying theme or a set of issues, and I certainly feel as though I’ve left my overtly political blogging days behind. So these days, I’m tending to avoid getting wound up — at least in public — about stuff like this.

But damn it, man…

From today’s NY Times:

Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a method that, if confirmed in other laboratories, would seem to remove the principal objection to stem cell research.“There is no rational reason left to oppose this research,” said Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of Advanced Cell Technology and leader of a team that reported the new method in an article in today’s Nature.

(How do you just know the next word is going to be “but”?)

But critics of human embryonic stem cell research raised other objections, citing the possible risk to the embryo from using the technique, and the fact that it depends on in-vitro fertilization, the generation of embryos outside the womb from a couple’s egg and sperm.

When is somebody in a prominent position going to call these people out and ask them if their real agenda is simply the subjugation of women and the continuation of some sort of “status quo” that never actually existed?

When is this group of people, at least some of whom openly support, say, carpet-bombing of residential neighbourhoods in Iraq going to be called to task for claiming to espouse a “culture of life”?

But more than anything, when are they going to be told that they lost whatever battle they think they’re fighting a long time ago, and that science might actually be able to save some lives if people just got out of the way?

I think that time might be now. I’m sick of reading about this stuff. Even Nancy Reagan’s sick of reading about this stuff. Put it to a referendum, which will validate the public’s will for stem-cell research, and let’s drag ourselves into the 21st Century, shall we?

Read on

Working my butt off today, so I haven’t had any time to post anything.

I did, as part of my workday, find a pretty cool site, adclassix, which is a treasure trove of classic print ads. Not the prettiest site I’ve ever seen, and no thumbnails, either. But if you’ve got time to waste, it’s a bit like looking at junkstore vinyl. You might even come across a gem like this:

Nothing makes me want to smoke more than a shotgun-toting penguin, but the fact that I can relax my throat — whatever that means — while I kill birds? Now that really elevates my intention to purchase this fine product.

SEE MORE

With all my technical woes last week I forgot to post the link to the final 10 songs in Pitchfork Media’s Top 200 Songs of the 60’s feature.

It was a great list overall, and while I’m not surprised by their #1 pick, I couldn’t agree less. Is it an important song in terms of its overall influence? Sure, I guess. But in my opinion, everything this band ever did sounds like hungry cats doin’ it. For a band so obsessed by vocals, you’d think they’d have learned to sing in tune.

Is your interest piqued? Did you guess the band before clicking through? Agree/disagree? Drop a line and let me know. I’m always up for a good scrap.

Go see

As a Swedish late-night anchor dutifully analyzed poll results on the news, viewers were shocked to witness a hardcore porn film playing on one of the monitors behind him.

Everything was going as planned on the midnight news broadcast, until the Czech hard porn film “Sex Tails,” came on the pay channel Canal Plus on the screen in the back. Those trying to catch the latest poll figures got to see group anal and oral sex.

Yes, I said “analyzed”. And then I said “poll”.

READ ON

Max Mayfield, Director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center, says Katrina was just a spit and a cough.

A tireless advocate for hurricane preparedness, he suggests that it’s only a matter of time before the big one — the really big one — makes landfall.
The difficulty, of course, lies in the way coastal real estate development has rolled out. There’s simply far too much development in high-risk areas. Many of the mega-homes and condo developments within the path of potential hurricanes will be extremely costly to rebuild. Leaving aside the potential cost in human lives, could the insurance industry and the economy in general sustain a major catastrophe?

The worst-case hurricane scenario? Mayfield has many in mind. A stronger hurricane closer to New Orleans. A direct hit on the vulnerable Galveston-Houston area, the fragile Florida Keys or heavily populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale.Or how about a major hurricane racing up the east coast to the New York-New Jersey area, with its millions of people and billions of dollars of pricey real estate?

“One of the highest storm surges possible anywhere in the country is where Long Island juts out at nearly right angles to the New Jersey coast. They could get 25 to 30 feet of storm surge … even going up the Hudson River,” Mayfield said.

“The subways are going to flood. Some people might think ‘Hey, I’ll go into the subways and I’ll be safe.’ No, they are going to flood.”

A chilling vision of things to come. Now over to Bob with the latest on locusts!

Read on

Through the whole Mel Gibson ordeal, something’s been gnawing at me. Well, something beyond the drunk driving, the anti-Semitic raving, the feeble attempts to deny any personal responsibility (”the booze did it”), the alchemical attempts to put a positive P.R. spin on the whole affair by claiming to want to apologize to Jews, and finally, now that the storm’s blown over and we’re once again obsessed with JonBenet, his apparent snubbing, via his publicist, of the L.A. Jewish community.

But beyond all this, as I say, something was chilling me like the air pouring out of the wide-open double doors of a downtown Gap in July. Something primal, something uncanny.

Then it hit me. The alcohol issues. The gatling gun delivery of offensive epithets. The rage. But most of all, those hollow, hollow eyes.

This summer, Mel Gibson is…Captain Haddock!

Advertising Age reports that Annheuser-Busch is launching its own in-house film and TV production company. The new division will likely focus on web-bound short films and sitcoms. Down the road, feature films could be in the works as well. The initiative will either be a huge success or a huge bomb, I’m sure. There will be no middle ground on this one.

Certainly, whatever they produce will have no less integrity or merit than the steady stream of dreck that dribbles out of Hollywood. This is traditionally the point in my post at which I note aridly that Rob Schneider has been the star of several feature films.

In any case, Advertising Age dishes the quote of the day:

“Making movies is always a great idea for an alcohol company,” said Don Faust Jr., a Miller and Coors distributor based in Houston. “Just look how great it was for the Bronfmans.”

Read on

Growing weary of being hated by the populace at large, the music industry has decided to specialize and create a new class of “niche haters”: amateur musicians who share guitar tabs online.

The publishers, who share royalties with composers each time customers buy sheet music or books of guitar tablature, maintain that tablature postings, even inaccurate ones, are protected by copyright laws because the postings represent “derivative works” related to the original compositions, to use the industry jargon.

The publishers told the sites that if they did not remove the tablatures, they could face legal action or their Internet service providers would be pressured to shut down their sites. All of the sites have taken down their tabs voluntarily, but grudgingly.

The tablature sites argue that they are merely conduits for an online discussion about guitar techniques, and that their services help the industry.

“The publishers can’t dispute the fact that the popularity of playing guitar has exploded because of sites like mine,” said Robert Balch, the publisher of Guitar Tab Universe (guitartabs.cc), in Los Angeles. “And any person that buys a guitar book during their lifetime, that money goes to the publishers.”

Mr. Balch, who took down guitar tabs from his site in late July at the behest of the music publishers, added that, “I’d think the music publishers would be happy to have sites that get people interested in becoming one of their customers.” (emphasis mine)

And that’s exactly the point. Fundamentally, the music industry is being punished (if, incidentally, you can call making billions a year being punished) because it doesn’t understand the way its customers think and behave. When it comes to forcing boy-band crap down the throats of confused kids, yes, they’ve still got a viable model. For everyone else, they’re utterly bereft of imagination, let alone a sound business model. People who play guitar and share tabs online are bound to be huge music fans; yet once again, the industry would paint them as criminals.

Read on

Haley Joel Osment, in a sincere attempt to fulfil his obligations as a child star, has been arrested for drunk driving and possession of marijuana.

I’m going to ask the same question I asked about Mel Gibson, because it applies here as well: if you’re a millionaire, why the hell can’t you take a cab? Take a stretch Hummer, fer Chrissake. Just Don’t. Drink. And. Drive.

If no other argument will work, consider this: all those legal battles will eventually cut into your annual plastic surgery and hairplug budget. You just think long and hard about that, young man.

Read on