It bums me out that even the most significant mountain-moving type pop artists like Kanye West have to be “good at Twitter” in order to put a dent in the zeitgeist. That his music — very little music anymore, not even the best stuff — can’t do the kind of heavy lifting that movies and video games and television can without this extra-song-and-dance. It bums me out that Kanye West, who is Kanye West, has 1.2 million Twitter followers, while Ashton Kutcher, who is Ashton Kutcher, has 5.9. It bums me out that music is so devalued at this point that Kanye West — one of the greats — is giving away his entire album a track at a time here because albums are basically just “promotional materials” for “artist brands.” It bums me out because I like albums, not artists — so also it bums me out that Kanye West, who knows how good these songs are (he tells us so), week after week raises the expectations of what “free new music” sounds like, glossing over the fact that it took a lot of major label money and quality studios for Kanye to develop this sound. It bums me out that he’s contributing to the speed with which we are willingly consuming “free new music,” which is to say all new music, which rarely gets more than a second or third listen because there’s always some new Great Kanye West track to get to.
It bums me out that Kanye West, in order to be “Kanye West,” is devaluing Kanye West’s Music.
September 2010
57 posts
Obama approves of Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.
No word yet on Stephen Colbert’s March to Keep Fear Alive.
(via thepoliticalpartygirl)
South Korean investment in the U.S. got a major boost in 2008 when the federal government decided to no longer require visas for visiting South Korean citizens. The move has already shown results. For the first six months of this year, some 450,000 South Koreans entered the U.S., a 38% rise over the same period last year. The U.S. is the third-most-popular destination for South Koreans, after China and Japan.
But money from Seoul has caused tension in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, analysts say. ”It’s having a hugely disruptive impact,” Park said. “If you’re a restaurant owner there, you’re running scared, because the South Koreans bring a more authentic, more exciting brand of Korean food. ”Many Korean American owners see the writing on the wall — they know they have to step it up or be pushed out,” Park said.
I’ve always liked that story, but the truth is that the party received hardly any votes. And that means that the joke is really on us. For these days one of America’s two great political parties routinely makes equally nonsensical promises. Never mind the war on terror, the party’s main concern seems to be the war on arithmetic. And this party has a better than even chance of retaking at least one house of Congress this November.” —Paul Krugman, Downhill with the GOP, The New York Times (via vruz)
Rep. Judy Chu, the last member of Congress to question Stephen Colbert during a hearing on migrant farm workers and an AgJobs bill, took issue with the media hand-wringing over the comedian’s in-character testimony, saying instead that he brought an important message to Congress and did a far better job covering the issue than any so-called straight reporter. Several reporters criticized Colbert today, engaging in theater criticism rather than any substantive discussion of the issues involved. Mother Jones’ David Corn complained that Colbert was “making a mockery of this hearing,” and the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake concurred.
Chu, an actual member of Congress, didn’t agree. “The only thing Mr. Colbert’s testimony ‘made a mockery’ of today was our nation’s failed policies toward migrant farm workers and other undocumented immigrants,” she said in response to questions from FDL News. “His message, although unconventional and satirical, is an important one. These men, women and children toil through extreme heat and long hours to put food on American dinner tables. They deserve our appreciation and protection, and I’m happy Mr. Colbert helped bring attention to their plight.”
The annual release of the Forbes 400 list of Richest Americans has become an important part of the country’s Horatio Alger faith. All those new billionaires, starting out with little or nothing, working hard and riding a great idea to vast wealth.
Only this year tells a different story: A scarcity of new wealth, and a hardening of the plutocracy.
Report: Brewery-heavy Wisconsin not exactly eager to punish drunk drivers — Autoblog (via dixiecupua)
Yep, sounds like where I live
Une réplique de magnitude 4,4 sur l’échelle de Richter a été ressentie dans la nuit de lundi à mardi à Port-au-Prince et en province, mais, elle n’a fait aucune victime ni dégât. Selon les indications de l’institut américain de géophysique (USGS), cette secousse a été enregistrée lundi à 23h33 heure locale (mardi 04h33 GMT). Son épicentre se situait entre les villes de Petit-Goâve et de Miragoâne (sud-ouest de la capitale). Des témoins affirment avoir senti la terre trembler dans les Nippes (sud-ouest), le sud-est et dans l’ouest, près de Petit-Goâve et dans certains quartiers de la capitale.
Today in class, the professor posed the first question from the paper:
“A hardware store has been selling snow shovels for $15. The morning after a large snowstorm, the store raises the price to $20.”
In 1986, 82 percent of respondents thought this was unfair. In class, it was about 50-50.
As the professor said, this is probably because there are a lot of business school students in this class. Business school students are classic Econ 101 robots. They know enough to know that if there is a demand shift, not only is it OK to raise prices, but you should raise prices in order to clear the market. In this case, supply is fixed in the short term, so raising the price won’t increase supply; the Econ 101 argument is that raising the price allocates the shovels to people who will derive more utility from them (because they will pay more), thereby increasing social welfare.
But this rests on a huge assumption: that willingness to pay is the same as utility. Unfortunately, however, this assumption fails in the real world; poor people simply can’t pay as much for snow shovels as rich people, and as a result a price increase will allocate shovels to rich people, not to those who need them the most.* But people who believe Econ 101 only remember the demand and supply curves they saw on the first day of class, so they think firms should raise prices
