Why Congress needs to stick SOPA up its PIPA

The definitive video on how Congress is on the razor's edge of blowing up the Internet in the name of weaponizing the law for the benefit of members' war chests.


HAT TIP: Gizmodo.

Mama, don't take my Kodak film away

I used to go through a lot of Kodak Tri-X film back in the day. Now, it's like bread pudding with bourbon sauce -- a special, special treat.

Likewise back in the day, Kodak was photography, not only in America but in much of the world. Today, the Eastman Kodak Co., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

We all knew this was coming. We all know time marches on . . . no matter how much we hate that fact. And I hope most of us are wise enough to know that change is a constant, but it isn't always progress.

STILL, the headline in today's New York Times is a totally expected shocker:

Eastman Kodak said early Thursday that it filed for bankruptcy protection, as the 131-year-old film pioneer struggled to adapt to an increasingly digital world.

As part of its filing, made in the federal bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York, Kodak will seek to continue selling a portfolio of 1,100 digital imaging patents to raise cash for its loss-making operations. The company plans to continue operating normally as it reorganizes under Chapter 11 protection.

“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation,” said Antonio M. Perez, the company’s chief executive, said in a news release. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core I.P. assets.”

The company said it obtained $950 million debtor-in-possession from Citigroup to provide it liquidity to operate during bankruptcy. Kodak said that its non-American subsidiaries are not part of the filing.

Kodak has become the latest giant to falter in the face of advancing technology. The Borders Group liquidated last year after having failed to gain a toehold in e-books, while Blockbuster sold itself to Dish Network last year as its retail outlets lost ground to online competitors like Netflix.

Founded in 1880 by George Eastman, Kodak became one of America’s most notable companies, helping establish the market for camera film and then dominating the field. But it has suffered from a variety of problems over the past four decades.

FIRST KODACHROME -- or rather the demise thereof -- and now this. It's enough to make a grown geek cry, one old enough to cherish the memory of his first Instamatic Hawkeye and who still has his parents' old Brownies.

All together now: Sic transit gloria mundi.

Instamatic Hawkeye photo by Russ Morris @ Flickr

Blackout.

UPDATES:

Stop the Great Firewall of America

Techdirt anaylsis of SOPA, PIPA

'Does a fat puppy poot?'

Dogs bark, cows moo, Weebles wobble and Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes.

Who knew?

Ah . . . the Today show knows what darkness lies in the pancreata of celebrity cooks:

Queen of comfort cuisine Paula Deen confirmed to Al Roker Tuesday that she has type-2 diabetes.

In her first broadcast interview discussing the disease, Deen said she intentionally kept the diagnosis secret after discovering she had it during a routine physical three years ago. “I came home, I told my children, I told my husband, I said, ‘I’m gonna keep this close to my chest for the time being’ because I had to figure out things in my own head,” she told Roker on TODAY.

I GUESS Paula "figured" it out:

“I’m here today to let the world know that it is not a death sentence,” said the Food Network star, who is now being paid as a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that supplies her diabetes medication. Coinciding with her announcement, Deen and her family are appearing in a new ad campaign for the company this month.

The news puts a spotlight on Deen, who has been criticized for promoting the type of high-fat, high-sugar diet that leads to weight gain – a major factor believed to cause type-2 diabetes. Deen said her reputation wasn't the reason she kept the diagnosis under wraps. "I wanted to bring something to the table when I came forward," she explained.

EXCUSE ME while I go cogitate about how to make enough money whoring off of my arthritic ankle and lower-leg edema to buy myself a really badass Mac Pro computer.


OR . . . as Dr. Zachary Smith once said, "The pain! The pain!"

Experience it. Feel it. Enjoy it.

I bought an old record album Monday evening.

"The Sound of Jazz," on Columbia Records, was the companion LP to one of the greatest moments in TV history. That came Dec. 8, 1957, when the program of the same name aired as part of CBS' short-lived The Seven Lively Arts anthology.

A few days before, all the jazz greats featured on the television program gathered in a Columbia Records studio to commit music set for the TV program to magical grooves in round slabs of vinyl. The LP hit stores the next year -- '58 -- and now one of them sits next to me in the Revolution 21 studio.

I am a happy man. I own the TV show on DVD. I own the 54-year-old record now, too.

As I revisit The Sound of Jazz -- the TV show . . . the LP will be savored later today -- I am struck by a remark from the show's host, New York Herald Tribune media critic John Crosby. Hell, nearly literally.

"There's not gonna be a lot of talk on this program today," Crosby said at the program's start. "I'm not gonna interpret jazz, analyze it, bring you its history. The important thing about jazz is to experience it -- feel it. Enjoy it. "

That's it. That's 3 Chords & the Truth, the podcast arm of this august (cough) media empire (snort). I'm not going to go all public radio on you and analyze jazz -- or any other music -- to death. It's not an endless list of everyone playing on a session . . . for every bloody song.

Music is not work. Music is joy.

"The important thing about jazz is to experience it -- feel it. Enjoy it." Ditto for rock. And punk. And country. And blues.

That's rather like life, don't you think?

3 Chords & the Truth: Warming up for a Big Show

Hang on a second while the vacuum tubes warm up on the old Radiola, and in a minute we'll see what happens when Ray Charles ran into 10,000 maniacs.

Or was that 10,000 Maniacs?

Regardless, the result ought to be interesting.

Just a few more seconds, now, and it'll be all warmed up and ready for 3 Chords & the Truth. Rumor has it that this week's edition of the Big Show is going to be a big show, indeed.

AFTER ALL, Ray Charles does run into 10,000 Maniacs. I don't know whether hilarity ensues, but music certainly does. And we're not even mentioning the Johnny Cash, Doobie Brothers, Avett Brothers and something that was going on in San Diego.

And then there's a little night music, s'il vous plait. That, we have covered. You bring the blanket, drinks and a plush chair to curl up in.

Is that Radiola about warmed up? Looks good to me. I always prefer my podcasts served up in a fine hardwood cabinet with an inner glow, so to speak. I'm funny that way.

Well, now that everything's warmed up on another winter's day, it's time to serve up the audio goodness -- maybe with a little something on the side. Settle in, curl up and lose yourself in the music. You'll be glad you did.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

You mean there's a difference?

The journalists of the PBS Newshour can find one-armed gay yak herders in Tibet for long-winded features on the homoerotic qualities of thin air and missing limbs.

What they can't find is Mississippi on a map.

Thursday evening, during a story on the Haley Barbour pardon scandal in the Magnolia State, a full-screen infographic presented the eye-raising tale of the tape, while underneath the litany of statistics was a map of . . . Louisiana. I can't speak for Mississippians, but I think I can speak for those born and raised in the Bayou State.

They ain't happy.

The visual error probably came down to something as mundane as public television's image bank of state outlines stopping short of "M," thanks to the cheapskate ways of pledge-dodgers like yourself. I must confess, however, that my first jaded thoughts turned to East Coast parochialism and the perils of being stuck in "flyover country."

All those states where people talk funny and live in trailer parks are pretty much all the same, right? Am I right? Louisiana . . . Mississippi . . . it's all like In the Heat of the Night, right? Who'll notice?

The first thing I saw in my mind's eye (after I had made sure my eyes' eye had seen what I thought it saw) was that iconic cover of The New Yorker. This one:


I REALIZE the Newshour is produced at WETA in Washington, but the general thesis holds up. Both Louisiana and Mississippi are in front of the lump called Texas. Somewhere.

I think you can get there by exiting the Beltway -- someplace -- but it's harder if you get in the HOV lane.

As a native of one corner of flyover country and a resident of another, that -- like I said -- was my first aggrieved thought. I was probably being a little paranoid and conspiratorially minded.

I'm sure the error, which I'm sure the Newshour staff regrets, was due to something as simple as the nearsighted arts editor of the Economist, fresh in from London, sitting in for the WETA graphics guy, who had a few too many cups of chai and had to make a trip down the hall. Hell, it's not like I could find Stratford-Upon-Avon on a map of England.

Or . . . it might've just been that the JPEG clip-art folder only went up to the letter "L."

Thanks to viewers like you.

Didja hear the one about Starbucks 'blonde'?

. . . we were told at a Regional Rally there are absolutely no Blonde jokes to be told around the coffee what so ever. It will be a written offense if so. This came right from the RD's mouth to about 100 SM's so communicate back to our stores at our own meetings.

It's like the time they told us we could not refer to Via as instant it must be called micro ground but then wrote instant on the packaging...great idea!

-- Comment from the Starbucks Gossip blog

The return of winter

It took a while, but Nebraska in January is starting to look once again like Nebraska in January.

Hello, winter. I've been saving a blanket just in case.

Whiz kids of a dying empire

This video is disgusting and Not Safe for Work. The video is, however,
instructive of what a decade of war does to a military and a country.

Some people whistle past graveyards. Not us.

No, Americans send their Marines to Afghanistan to piss on the graveyard of a terminally ill empire -- ours. Americans send their military to Afghanistan to fight in a war long past its expiration date for an empire approaching its.

Our dying empire sends its youth to fight an endless war against barbarians, all in the name of protecting the homeland, preserving our freedom and fostering democracy. Supposedly. At least that's the official story put out there by Washington and swallowed whole by the media and the public.

At some point, though, you realize something. You realize we have become that from which we must be saved -- barbarians. Barbarians who revel in killing. Barbarians who no longer can restrain the beast within.

Barbarians who piss on the dead.

WE TURN ON the television or log in to YouTube to see our young Marines -- our sons -- pissing not on the enemy -- not ultimately -- but instead on what separates us from the animals. We watch in decadent comfort as American Hessians piss on the humanity of Taliban fighters in a land known as the "graveyard of empires."

We shake our heads (or maybe not) as our sons piss on human dignity . . . and on respect for the dead . . . and on the "civilization" we say we fight to uphold. We gawk as our children -- clad in camouflage and carrying sniper rifles -- piss on their dead targets and on our own awaiting grave.

Once you have handed the moral high ground to the "barbarians" against whom you struggle, you have nothing more for which to fight. You have met the enemy . . . in the mirror.

THE BBC REPORTS on what our barbarians have done to Afghanistan's in a war exposed as having no particular point anymore:

Afghanistan's Taliban has condemned a video that appears to show US Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters.

A spokesman told the BBC: "It is not a human action, it's a wild action that is too shameful for us to talk about."

But Reuters quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying the video would not derail attempts at peace talks to end the war.

The US military is investigating the authenticity of the video and the Marine Corps said the actions were not consistent with its core values.

The footage shows four men in military fatigues appearing to urinate on three apparently lifeless men. They have brown skin, bare feet and are dressed in loose-fitting outfits. One appears to be covered in blood.

A man's voice is heard saying: "Have a great day, buddy."

The origin of the video is not known, nor is it clear who posted it online.

The men in military fatigues seem to be aware they are being filmed.

(snip)

Already, the video has stirred up anger in Afghanistan about the foreign military presence.

"The US soldiers who urinated on dead bodies of Muslims have committed a crime," Feda Mohammad told Reuters in Kabul.

"Since they've committed such a crime, we don't want them on our soil anymore."

Afghan Member of Parliament Fawzia Kofi said ordinary Afghans, no matter how they felt about the Taliban, would be upset by the video.

"It's a matter of a human being, respect to a human being," she told the BBC.

"I believe that the brutal acts that the Taliban did here during their government and even now is condemned by Afghans. So is watching a brutal act by international forces. We condemn that as well," she added.

Oh, baby, dat's a lotta Spandex!

I remember when Scoot was the morning guy at WRNO in New Orleans in the 1970s. WRNO was the antithesis of this, and Scoot in the Morning would have had a field day with Airwaves Scoot on WDSU-TV.

Then again, it was 1983. It was "interesting," 1983 was.

Don't judge your parents harshly, kids. People smoked a lot of weed in 1983 . . . and this was their brain on dope.

Scoot, Scoot, Scoot. You watched the WKRP episodes where Dr. Johnny Fever turned into Rip Tide, didn't you?

Noted newspaper fails epically

I totally forgot to post this until now. I think that was a Freudian thang or something.

But I did want to post the front page of Tuesday's Baton Rouge Advocate to show you what LSU's offensive game plan would look like if it got translated into a newspaper front page about the BCS football championship.

"TIGERS LOSE"? Are you (expletive deleted) kidding me?

If any of the approximately 12 billion unemployed American newspaper journalists saw this thing -- an effort the newspaper's designers and editors apparently phoned in between bouts of worshiping the porcelain god at a local sports bar -- they probably shut down the computer, cursed God at the manifest unfairness of it all . . . and then died of a burst aneurysm.

"TIGERS LOSE"? Really?

Almost three decades ago, Mother Teresa visited some of her nuns in Baton Rouge. It was a really, really big deal locally. And the then-Morning Advocate's banner headline on the Page 1 story?

"Noted nun visits B.R." No fooling.

Some things never change.

It takes a couyon

Here's the thing about sportswriters: When it comes to "protocol" and "professional" and following the rules and stuff, they're a lot more Felix Unger than Oscar Madison.

You can't cheer in the press box, no matter that a fair slice of the press in the box is in the tank for dear old Fill-in-the-Blank U, committing the official version of the truth to paper while dishing the juicier (and truer) stuff back in the newsroom. Coach gets asked -- mostly -- the questions he feels like answering, and Coach gets -- mostly -- the stories he can live with.

Sometimes, though, a sportswriter gets a wild hair. Then there can be hell to pay.




AND WHEN there's hell to pay, a sports reporter can lose "access." And when a paper or TV station loses access, it can lose audience, and when it loses audience, it loses advertising, and when it loses advertising. . . .

It's all quite rational. It's all quite rationalized. And when some Boudreaux from the bayou gets pissed off and starts speaking truth to football power -- even when the Boudreaux is an Hebert who used to be an NFL quarterback -- the horrified "professionals" in the room start reaching for the smelling salts.

Like this guy from The New York Times:

After Miles made an opening statement, the moderator opened the floor to questions. The first came from Bobby Hebert, a local broadcaster and former Saints quarterback, whose son, T-Bob Hebert, plays center and guard for L.S.U.

Hebert started, according to the transcript: “Coach, did you ever consider bringing in Jarrett Lee, considering that you weren’t taking any chances on the field? Now, I know Alabama’s defense is dominant. But, come on, that’s ridiculous, five first downs. I mean, so it’s almost an approach, I’ll tell you from the fans’ standpoint, that how can you not maybe push the ball down the field and bring in Jarrett Lee?”

In the often mundane world of post-event news conferences, where coaches spew clichés and reporters worry about deadlines, this rant, in all its fan-like anger – from a broadcaster to the man who coached his son – registered somewhere near the level of “bombshell,” as the room fell silent and faces filled with shock.

In theory, such news conferences are supposed to be attended by objective reporters, which doesn’t mean that always happens. But even then, this was unusual, too. In the press room after the game, talk of Hebert’s lack of decorum dominated conversation more than Alabama’s transcendent championship performance.

Lee served as the Tigers’ quarterback for much of the season, when Jordan Jefferson, who played all of the game Monday, was suspended for his alleged role in a bar fight. Lee, in the Tigers’ locker room Monday, said he “thought I might get” a chance to play when Jefferson and the L.S.U. offense remained stagnant from the first half into the second. But that, of course, never happened.

So back to Hebert. He continued with his “question,” later, again according to the transcript, adding, “I know the pass rush of Alabama, but there’s no reason why in five first downs … you have a great defense, L.S.U. is a great defense, but that’s ridiculous.”

At that point, the moderator interrupted, asking, “Do you have a question?”

Hebert responded: “That’s the question. Do you think you should have pushed the football more down field?”

Miles answered: “I think if you watch our calls that we did throw the football down the field. We didn’t necessarily get the football down the field.”

LISTEN, Mr. New York Times, I got a scoop for you. It's better to be the "unprofessional" oaf who asks the obvious damn question everybody wants answered than it is to be a polite, oh-so-professional, ball-less wonder who dutifully repeats coaches' bulls***.

We Louisianians have a saying about this that I just made up: Sometimes, it takes a couyon.




UPDATE: Let's just say it didn't take long for the Empire to strike back against the Cajun Cannon.

A Sugar Bowl flack told a reporter Bobby Hebert's question was "disappointing" and that he might be banned -- in PR speak, that's called withholding "credentials" -- for future bowl games and BCS championship games. "We don't want to credential people who go into a press conference and act like a fan," he said.

He had no comment on the future credentialing of coaches who go onto the field and act like homicidal maniacs.

Not. Helping.

Alas, after the embarrassing performance by my LSU Tigers tonight, I fear there just may not be enough booze in the world.

Alabama Coach Nick Saban is a genius. An evil genius, but a genius nevertheless. LSU's Les Miles? Not so much.

Listen. I can screw up just as badly at just about anything as the LSU coaching staff and quarterback Jordan Jefferson did Monday night at football. Please . . . somebody pay me $4 million fo f*** up just like Les did.

Better yet, how about the Gret Stet of Loosiana throw a few more million at its flagship university's actual reason for being, which is education. I am sure there are plenty of professors who can teach as bad a class as Les coached a game. I also am sure there are plenty of undergrads who can take as bad a final exam as Jefferson played a final game.

FOR GOD'S SAKE, show those f***-ups as much money love as boosters and fans show the football program. Then maybe Louisiana natives like me won't be thinking -- before the Big Game -- "Please, God, let the Tigers win. It's all we got."

Furthermore, I have theories about the inexplicable performance of LSU that are not based in reality. Well, at least not likely based in reality. Unfortunately, they make much more sense than anything that's remotely plausible -- of which I got nothing.

Congrats to hated rival Alabama. I wish the Tigers could have given you a game.

Screw football, I wish Louisiana could have given its children a national-championship future.

Elephant huntin' season

It's time. Game on. Geaux Tigers!

He said what?

What planet does this man live on, this Mitt Romney who wants to be -- urp -- president?

Not mine, I can tell you that.

Here's what Romney said about health care today:

I want people to be able to own insurance if they wish to, and to buy it for themselves and perhaps keep it for the rest of their life and to choose among different policies offered from companies across the nation. I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.

HUH? If you like to fire anyone, I'm sorry, but you're a freak. And you may be an evil one at that.

Firing someone -- or anything, even your insurance company -- is a last resort. It's unpleasant. It's a pain. It represents failure on many levels. It is not to be enjoyed.

If you get off on such, you are disturbed and you have not an empathetic bone in your sorry carcass. That's just the way it is.

Now, beyond that, just who in America -- apart from rich people like Mitt Romney, the ones who can afford individual health-insurance policies -- gets to fire his insurance company, anyway? Any candidate who says such a thing to ordinary folk and thinks it's persuasive is woefully out of touch.

Any ordinary Joe who falls for such an argument is too stupid to be allowed in public unaccompanied by a competent adult caretaker. Yet this is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination?

God help us, no matter whether Romney or President Obama wins in November, we are so screwed. In different ways, mind you, but screwed nevertheless.

3 Chords & the Truth: A little night music

This week's edition of the Big Show is best heard on something running on vacuum tubes, in the dark.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is best heard in the middle of the night, where magic dwells.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth features night music -- jazz music -- the way it used to be.

Come with us to yesterday, to the night, to a faint glow in a dark room. Come with us to find where magic hides itself amid blues in the night.

I HAVE THOUGHTS on this subject, and I'm not shy about sharing. Here's an excerpt from something I wrote a while back about magic, and music, and glowing vacuum tubes in the dark. Yeah, this is what this week's show is about:

Today, an iPod will give you music. Yesterday, this old Zenith filled your house with magic.

I know. I sound like a broken record (another lost metaphor only fossils like me get). But if you ask me -- and you didn't . . . tough -- one of the tragedies of our age is the absence of magic.

Where is the magic in an iPod? Where is the magic in YouTube? Sure, YouTube is a great tool . . . and, in some cases, a forum for all manner of tools.

And sure, You Tube can offer up stuff you never could have imagined -- or perhaps imagined that you'd never see again.

But it's not magic.

Kind of like the iPod, a zillion websites, Facebook, Twitter and whatever they'll think of next. All useful. All interesting. All with the potential to while away countless hours.

But magic? No, not magic.

Magic is a multicolored dial glowing in the dark. Magic is the five tubes inside an old Zenith tombstone radio casting a backlight glow, silhouetting the angles and curves of a wood-veneer case.

Magic is the rich sound of a six-inch speaker fed by heavy metal and hot filaments.

Magic is the smell of ozone wafting through the room

Magic is sitting by yourself, listing to mellifluous voices on distinguished radio stations in distant cities, each with its own distinctive "sound." Each beaming the life of a far away place, a distinct local culture into the ionosphere and then back to earth, into a long-wire aerial, through the circuitry and out the cone speaker of a 1936 model-year Zenith radio set.

Made in the U.S.A.

Sitting in a darkened room. Singing into your ear and speaking to your soul.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

The devil has all the good games

LSU football may have just achieved full understanding of what it means to win by losing. This soap opera is Alabama's problem now.

But that's the least important thing illustrated by this video. The most important thing to be learned from this orgasm of hype and adulation thrown at mere teenagers, however gifted, is that ESPN is the devil.

ESPN is single-handedly turning college athletics -- and college recruiting -- into The Jerry Springer Show. That or The Steve Wilkos Show. . . six of one, a half dozen of the other.

I'M A LITTLE surprised there's no paternity test shoehorned into the Big Announcement here. That's OK, Mama still manages to work in a classless reaction to the bad news that did come her way on live television.

But not just live TV . . . the devil's live TV.

Thanks for another cultural low point, ESPN. Now go to hell.

Sorry, I meant to say back to hell. My bad.

Nostalgia with some jazz on top

I am 50, heading fast for 51. By all rights, I ought to be 70-something, heading fast for the nursing home.

This is because I'm pretty sure I was born too late. This is because I'm pretty sure it would have been a grand thing to be a young man in New York in, say, 1961 -- the year I was born too late in a city far to the south.

One of my great joys nowadays is buying old jazz albums to play on my old record changer. And if I have to, I'll buy 'em on compact disc, too -- just not for playing on an old record player. That would be bad.

An old CD player will suffice.

This, obviously, is nostalgia, the yearning for an idealized past lost to the outgoing tide of history. In my south Louisiana hometown, 1961 was no walk in the park, and much less so for blacks.

I'M SURE that, to whatever extent, the same went for New York in '61. Or '58. But there was the music -- the wonderful jazz. The rock. The roll. The street-corner symphonies in rhythm and blues.

It seems to me that the time of my life -- the one I was late for -- was one of higher culture, if not always higher ideals. We may not have behaved better then but, by God, we kept up a good appearance, didn't we?

So live from 1958, here's the inimitable Blossom Dearie on the Jack Paar-era Tonight Show. My spirit sits in the audience, enjoying the time I was born for -- and the respite from the time I'm stuck in.

Signs and wonders on the campaign trail

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is what you call a sign of the times.

Well, that and evidence God has a wicked sense of humor.

I know you have a crucial question on your mind right now . . . namely "Huh?" Trust me, I understand this.

But I want you to consider something, and when you do, your "Huh?" will give way to understanding. And fear.

This is what I want you to kick around in your head for a while: A Louisiana politician -- former Gov. Charles E. "Buddy" Roemer III -- is the most honest, principled and above-board presidential candidate in 2012. Not only that, he's making the most sense.

Sadly, this can mean only one thing (two if you count "The Apocalypse is nigh!"). He doesn't have a chance. After all, this is America -- a land where you, as Auden wrote, "shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart" but an honest man doesn't stand a chance.

Good luck, Buddy. You're gonna need it.