Canadian Dollar on Par With US - First Time Since 1976
[cbc] The Canadian dollar closed above parity Friday for the first time in almost 31 years, as the U.S. greenback continued its dramatic fall against major world currencies.
According to Bank of Canada data, the loonie closed at $1.0052 US, up two-thirds of a cent from Thursday's close.
Expressed another way, it means that a U.S. dollar is now worth a little less than 99.5 cents in Canadian money.
The loonie had reached parity with the U.S. currency on Sept. 20 — the first time since November 1976 — but had failed to close at or above that level.
The loonie's rise came in spite of a weaker-than-expected GDP reading for July. Statistics Canada said the economy grew by 0.2 per cent that month, while economists were forecasting growth of 0.3 to 0.4 per cent.
Higher gold prices also lent support to the dollar, analysts said. Gold futures jumped more than $10 US an ounce to above $750 US an ounce, a new 27-year high. [...]
Since the start of the year, the loonie has gained 17 per cent against the U.S. dollar — more than any other major currency. The euro, for instance, has risen seven per cent against the greenback year-to-date, while the British pound and Japanese yen are both up about three per cent.
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[Day One] The LA Times is offering an enjoyable read in the form of their ongoing "Dust-Up" with Andrew Breitbart and David Ehrenstein.
Ehrenstein and Breitbart discuss the fall season of antiwar flicks. Later in the week, they'll attempt to define Hollywood values, locate Hollywood conservatives and ponder Hollywood's impact on the 2008 presidential race.
For the record, Breitbart slays in content and style.
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A Moment of Silence...
Marcel Marceau, Famed French Mime, Dies
[AP] Marcel Marceau, whose lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, died Saturday. He was 84.
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau — notably through his famed personnage Bip — played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.
A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation during World War II — unlike his father, who died as Auschwitz — and worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children.
His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers — Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."
Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life, never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.
"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?" he once said.
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Hillary : Future = No Health Insurance = No Job
[AP] Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system.
“At this point, we don’t have anything punitive that we have proposed,” the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans.”
She said she could envision a day when “you have to show proof to your employer that you’re insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination,” but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress. *emphasis ours
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We've read some of the withered complaints along the lines of "just because she says she "envisions the day" doesn't mean that she's for it or will do that etc. but that is such piffle. I can't understand how anyone can say such a thing with a straight face.
It seems more likely that once mandated by law that you'll really see exactly what she meant and the luster of magical "incentives and tax credits" pale in the new reality.
You'll need to show proof of health insurance to get a job, but no need to provide proof of citizenship to vote. Makes sense...uh, to some people.
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Dan Rather To Sue CBS For 70 Million Law
[nyt] The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Mr. Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. In a statement CBS said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.
In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt placate the Bush administration, though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect.
On 'Hurricane Dan'
[nro] Frankly, we need this. And by “we,” I mean a grand coalition of people who delight in watching one of the 20th century’s most pompous gasbags fall from the top of the laughingstock tree and hit every branch on the way down. These are dour times, and if Gunga Dan and Hurricane Dan and What’s-The-Frequency-Kenneth Dan want to trade their Afghan robes, yellow windbreakers and enormous tinfoil hats for some baggy pants, bright-orange wigs and floppy shoes, I say let them. I just hope all of the Dans show up at the courthouse in a teensy-weensy clown car.
But we also need this because Rather’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” routine will help us get to the bottom of a story that was actually under-covered. CBS News, under Rather’s direction, ran with fake documents - or, to be fair, documents so shoddily verified that no unbiased journalist would have run with them. When confronted with the rank incompetence and bad faith of the team he led (the lead producer tried to coordinate with the Kerry campaign), Rather first allowed three of his colleagues to be thrown under the bus, while he took a few more face-saving laps around CBS before he was quietly escorted out the door like the muttering office old-timer who’s gone off his feed.
But now he’s back like a crazy man who shows up unannounced at the Christmas party smelling like cabbage and old newspapers, wearing a trench coat but no pants. He wants $20 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $50 million in punitive damages. I’m no fancy lawyer guy, but last I checked, punitive damages were awarded to send a signal that “this must never happen again.” So what’s the “this” here? That network news divisions should never again spend weeks selling off their credibility like a fire sale at Wal-Mart, claiming their story was “fake but true,” only to cave in to reality and admit they made a mistake?
The beauty of this lawsuit, which has most legal observers laughing so hard that their neck veins look like one-pound sausage casings with five pounds of ground chuck in them, is that if it goes to trial (shortly after unicorns file my taxes), CBS will be put in the position of having to prove that the story was bogus, while Rather will be forced to look even more like a grassy-knoll theorist, climbing back to the top of the laughingstock tree. So I say again: You go, Dan! I’ll bring the popcorn.
...So, someone owes you 70 million eh Dan? You bet. What a disgrace. What a jackass. How pleasant it is to see delusional self important "greats" such as yourself blither incoherence. One can only imagine the strings of bullshit that paraded as "fact" and "news" in decades previous by "esteemed" types as yourself. There's no shortage of BS that still gets passed off today with the numerous fauxtography examples and buried (or non existent) "corrections," but thankfully there is no shortage of people out there to call the charlatans on such tactics.
70 million dollars. You bet. Take off the clown nose Dan and just go away.
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Champion Ducks open NHL's 90th anniversary season in London
[nhl] The Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks will open the National Hockey League’s 90th anniversary season with a two-game series against the Los Angeles Kings in London, England, the Cup’s ancestral home, Sept. 29-30. The most cherished trophy in professional team sports, purchased at the Regent Street shop of silversmith G. R. Collis & Co. 115 years ago, returns to its birthplace in the arms of the 2007 champions to open the 1,230-game season before sellout crowds at the spectacular new O2 Arena.
The Ducks and Kings are the first teams in NHL history to play regular-season games in Europe.
Following the series, the Ducks return to North America to help raise the curtain on the remainder of the regular-season schedule when they visit the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena on Wednesday, Oct. 3. That contest is one of three home openers in which Anaheim provides the opposition: The Ducks also visit Columbus Friday, Oct. 5, and Pittsburgh the following evening.
That night, Oct. 6, is the busiest night of the campaign as 14 games are scheduled, including two “Original Six” match-ups -- Montreal at Toronto and Detroit at Chicago -- and one “Second Six” match-up as St. Louis and Los Angeles play the first games of their respective 40th anniversary seasons. The Blues and Kings entered the NHL in 1967-68 along with Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Minnesota (North Stars) and California (Seals), when the League doubled in size to 12 teams.
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No Surprise : End of TimesSelect
[reuters] The New York Times Co said on Monday it will end its paid TimesSelect Web service and make most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue.
TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday [19th], two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year to read articles by columnists such as Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman.
The trademark orange "T's" marking premium articles will begin disappearing Tuesday night, said the Web site's Vice President and General Manager Vivian Schiller.
The move is an acknowledgment by The Times that making Web site visitors pay for content would not bring in as much money as making it available for free and supporting it with advertising.
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Kucinich Visits Syria, Shuns U.S. Troops
[worldnetdaily] After praising Syria following a meeting in Damascus with President Bashar Assad, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich declared he will not visit troops in Iraq during his Middle East tour because he considers the American military presence in Iraq to be illegal.
"I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation ... I don't want to bless that occupation with my presence," Kucinich said in Lebanon, according to the Associated Press. "I will not do it."
Geraldo : One Class Act
Geraldo Rivera (expelled from Iraq in 2003 for broadcasting details about future U.S. troop movements), polishes up his clown nose while adding yet another classy move in his circus sideshow media career:
[bostonglobe] "Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I've ever met in my life," he says. "She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.
"It's good she's in D.C. and I'm in New York," Rivera sneers. "I'd spit on her if I saw her."
Bin Laden's War On US Economy
[usnews] Six years ago, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda weren't just attempting to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They were trying to smash the American economy as well. Here is what bin Laden himself said about his goals and motivations back in December 2001: "If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means." And here is what al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said in September 2002: "We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy."
No luck so far, despite bin Laden's recent videotape ravings about our taxes and mortgage debt. Although the towers came down, the resilient American economy didn't. Since September 11, the economy hasn't suffered a single down quarter. In fact, it has notched 23 straight quarters of economic growth. (And despite the subprime mortgage crisis, this is likely to be the 24th straight quarter of growth.) Those numbers are especially amazing when you consider that when the terrorist attacks happened, the Internet stock bubble was in full implosion mode.
The economy dipped in the third quarter of 2001 and was slightly negative in two of the previous four quarters. But it's been nothing but growth since then. Overall, the American economy is, adjusting for inflation, $1.65 trillion bigger than it was six years ago. To put that gigantic number in some perspective, the U.S. economy has added the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias, eight Irans, 13 Pakistans, or 15 Egypts, depending on your preference. And while 9/11 did cause the stock market to plunge, the Dow is 37 percent higher than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, creating trillions of dollars of new wealth for Americans. What's more, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent today vs. 5.7 percent back then. Not bad at all.
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[dailymail] STORY OF THE WEEK: In a surprise move, Osama bin Laden entered the Democratic presidential race and promised to bring the troops home from Iraq, to impeach Bush and to sign the Kyoto agreement on global warming. While those are mainstream Democratic Party talking points these days, his call to cut taxes is expected to turn off many Democratic voters.
[IMAO] In the video, apparently Osama chastises the Democrats for not ending the war -- the thing they were elected to do, rants against "neoconservatives," praises Noam Chomsky, and talks about global warming and the Kyoto treaty.
Kos has to get this guy as a diarist before HuffPo does.
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EFF Releases Comprehensive Report on Recording Industry's Litigation Campaign
San Francisco - As college students across the country head back to class this fall, they need to worry about more than keeping up on their schoolwork. The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) continues to target college campuses for hundreds of new lawsuits each month. Meanwhile, under pressure from the recording industry, universities are instituting draconian punishments for students suspected of sharing music files. At the same time, the RIAA continues to sue file sharers off campus, with a total tally now exceeding 20,000.
In a report released this week, "RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provides the only comprehensive look at the four-year litigation campaign waged by the RIAA against music fans. The report traces the RIAA campaign from its beginnings in 2003 against a handful of students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Michigan Tech to the current spate of "pre-litigation settlement" letters being sent to universities nationwide.
"Despite the RIAA's legal campaign, file sharing is more popular than ever," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "History will treat this as a shameful chapter in the history of the music industry, when record companies singled out random music fans for disproportionate penalties. Artists must be compensated, but these lawsuits aren't putting money into any creator's pocket."
The crackdown on Internet file sharing has already driven music fans to technologies that are harder to monitor -- for example, burning and exchanging CDs among friends and sharing on members-only "darknets." EFF calls on universities to help artists get paid for their creative work while protecting their students from costly legal
problems. Universities should insist on a blanket license for their students, collecting a reasonable regular payment -- for example, $5 a month -- in exchange for the right to keep sharing music with their classmates.
"This is about money, not morality," said von Lohmann. "With a blanket licensing solution, the RIAA can call off the lawyers and the lobbyists, and universities can get back to education instead of copyright enforcement."
For the full report "RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later": [link]
For more on the litigation campaign: [link]
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Future of Music Policy Summit
The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) is a national nonprofit that works on the issues at the intersection of music, law, technology and policy. For the past six years, FMC has organized an annual Policy Summit that brings an unprecedented mix of 500 musicians, artists, attorneys and policymakers together for discussions about issues that are emerging as the promotion and distribution of music moves to a global, digital platform.
This year, FMC is back in Washington, DC, to host the 7th annual "Future of Music Policy Summit" from September 17-18, 2007. Over the course of two days, panels will cover such topics as:
* Copyright and licensing issues
* Network neutrality and broadband policy
* FCC's "rules of engagement" on payola
* Sample clearance licensing process
* The explosion of niche market genres
* Wireless/music portability
* The challenges of cultural preservation
* Technologies that are bringing artists and fans closer
together
...and more.
The Summit will also include a special conversation with Marybeth Peters, Register, US Copyright Office, and keynotes by leading members of Congress.
For general event information: [link]
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A Pathetic Preemptive Strike
The Washington Post and the GAO try to mislead on Iraq
[weeklystandard] The Washington Post, working hand-in-glove with Democrats in Congress, has gotten out front in preparing the domestic battlefield for September's fight over the war in Iraq. The Post led today's paper with an account of a leaked draft report from the Congressionally-controlled Government Accountability Office (the GAO's final report is due next Tuesday). The headline: "Report Finds Little Progress on Iraq Goals; GAO Draft at Odds with White House." Here's the good news: If this is the best war opponents have to offer, the administration is in amazingly good shape going into September.
The Post reporters--both strongly anti-Iraq war--characterize the GAO judgments as "strikingly negative." But there's nothing striking about them. The Democratic Congress ensured that the report would deliver negative "grades" for the Iraqi government by asking the GAO to evaluate whether or not the benchmarks have been met now--just two months after the major combat operations of the surge began. For the report from the White House, Congress asked the administration to detail if the Iraqis are making "sufficient progress." But Congress asked the GAO, by contrast, to report if the Iraqis had "completed" the benchmarks. This ridiculous standard was a Congressional trap that forced the GAO to waste time and taxpayer money to come out with a pre-ordained and meaningless judgment, since no one ever promised or expected that the Iraqis would have met the benchmarks by now. And the GAO report doesn't really shed light on the key question: Are the Iraqis making progress?
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Big Source of Clinton's Cash Is an Unlikely Address
[wsj] One of the biggest sources of political donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport.
Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.
* Fugitive donor bows out of fundraising
[latimes] Democratic donor Norman Hsu said Wednesday that he would "refrain from all fundraising activities" until he resolved an outstanding warrant for his arrest stemming from a 1991 criminal case in San Mateo County.
Hsu, a major fundraiser over the last three years for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and other Democrats, issued the statement through his attorney after the Los Angeles Times reported that he had been a fugitive for 15 years.
Prosecutors in California said Hsu disappeared in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.
Meanwhile, Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that it would donate to charity $23,000 in direct donations from Hsu, a New York apparel executive. And other recipients of his donations distanced themselves from the businessman.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts; Reps. Michael M. Honda of San Jose, Doris Matsui of Sacramento and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania; and Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota, said they would divest their campaigns of Hsu's donations.
Clinton campaign aides had said earlier that the candidate had no plans to return money donated by Hsu, but the campaign reversed itself after The Times' disclosure. [...]
Hsu has donated or raised more than $1 million for Democrats and their causes. He served as a "bundler," rounding up a group of donors and then packaging their checks together. He is a member of Clinton's "HillRaiser" group, individuals who pledged to raise more than $100,000 for her presidential campaign.
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Hulu : NBC and News Corp combine forces to launch their online video website. Hulu is currently accepting e-mail addresses of anyone interested in signing up for a private beta, which is set to launch in October.
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Vick Finds Jesus and Is Turning His Life Over To God
[fox] "We all make mistakes," said Michael Vick. "Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I reject it ... I found Jesus and turned my life over to God. I think that's the right thing to do as of right now."
Gee, that didn't take long.
I didn't think the curtain on the "finding Jesus" act would rise until after Vick went to jail, but alas, it came on the same day he made his plea deal official.
It took Paris Hilton a few hours in the slammer before she met Jesus, and Vick does it even before lockup. Who knew?
He must have hired Hilton rep Elliot Mintz as his spokesman over the weekend.
[bloomberg] Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick apologized to fans, his team and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell yesterday after pleading guilty to a federal charge he helped run an interstate dogfighting ring.
Vick, 27, called dogfighting ``a terrible thing'' in a televised news conference and said he had used ``bad judgment,'' and now felt ``ashamed'' and ``disappointed'' in himself.
Vick said he ``was not honest and forthright'' with his team or the league while the case unfolded. The NFL's Goodell followed Vick's plea agreement last week by announcing the same day that the quarterback was suspended indefinitely without pay. Goodell called Vick's actions ``cruel and reprehensible.''
[ledger-enquirer] Aside from an inability to summon tears, Michael Vick correctly followed the blueprint for public apology perfected long ago by disgraced politicians, televangelists and captains of industry.
The tears can be shed later, possibly during today's scheduled appearance on the Tom Joyner Show or perhaps down the road while seated on Oprah's couch.
But Vick, the suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback, hit all the other high points after pleading guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to a federal conspiracy charge stemming from his involvement in a dog fighting and gambling enterprise.
He expressed contrition and promised to take the nearest exit ramp off the road to perdition.
Vick made unwavering eye contact with the audience of reporters jammed inside a hotel ballroom in Richmond, Va. He offered to apologize "for all the things that -- that I've done and allowed to happen," but didn't itemize them because, let's face it, he'd have a lot of territory to cover with the Ron Mexico civil case, the dual Dirty Bird obscene gestures, the trick water bottle, the lying to the league commissioner, the lying to the team owner, the apparent indifference to his teammates and, last but not least, the cruelty to all those animals.
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[foxnews] A popular comic strip that poked fun at the Rev. Jerry Falwell without incident one week ago was deemed too controversial to run over the weekend because this time it took a humorous swipe at Muslim fundamentalists.
The Washington Post and several other newspapers around the country did not run Sunday's installment of Berkeley Breathed's "Opus," in which the spiritual fad-seeking character Lola Granola appears in a headscarf and explains to her boyfriend, Steve, why she wants to become a radical Islamist.
The installment did not appear in the Post's print version, but it ran on WashingtonPost.com and Salon.com. The same will hold true for the upcoming Sept. 2 strip, which is a continuation of the plotline.
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[nymag] My mission is to find Matt Drudge, and I’m failing. I’ve e-mailed the author of the Drudge Report countless times and written letters to him at the two places he owns in Miami to say I’m coming to town and want to talk, but when I check into my hotel there’s no note from him at the desk. It’s late Sunday night, and I turn on his weekly radio show in the room. Drudge is on his favorite theme, surveillance cameras everywhere, his belief that Google wants to spy on us and pass it all on to the government. At such times, Drudge comes off as a hunted man. “I just don’t want to be watched when I’m visiting the Lincoln Memorial, going through Penn Station, or walking down Hollywood Boulevard. So many cameras everywhere. And now you start feeding that into some kind of database and start linking it up with a Fascist company like Google? This is a serious issue. And it’s not given serious consideration—when it is a total transformation of our society and our liberties. What gives you a right? Why are you watching me? People say, well, what do you have to hide, Drudge? What do you have to hide? You know what? The burden should be on them. I think I have a right not to be watched.”
I call in to the show a few times: 1-866-4-drudge. Busy. You can often hear Drudge at his keyboard even as he’s on air, so I drop him another e-mail with a clever headline like something on the Drudge Report. Then the next morning I go round to his two addresses. It’s breaking my word. I’d e-mailed Drudge, “Not Stalking You; Coming to Miami,” because I know how feverish he is about the prying press. When Lindsay Lohan had her accident in Beverly Hills in May, Drudge said it was caused by violent “stalkerazzi.” He said, “That’s probably why she was drunk and higher than a kite … because she has no life and no privacy … they create their villains and then they report on them.”
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The thorny path to enlightenment Buddhists bringing ancient faith to U.S. at odds over role of martial arts in Shaolin - former allies deeply divided on physical, spiritual aspects of the misunderstood culture
[sfgate]
Stephen Ho dreamed that he'd be the one to introduce to America an authentic version of one of the world's most misunderstood religions.
He would build a San Francisco temple to be a branch of the legendary Shaolin Temple in China, where Zen was born and kung fu emerged as its most fabled expression.
The San Francisco businessman and longtime Buddhist went to China and asked the temple's abbot for his assent. In December 2004, the abbot sent Shi GuoSong, an experienced yet youthful Shaolin monk, to be a true and rare face of the ancient faith. [...]
A simple morning practice at the Oakland temple illuminates how Shaolin strengthen their bodies, the role of the natural energy force known as qi -- or chi -- and how physical work can be meditative. [...]
Qi enters the body just above the belly button, YongYao said. Through Qigong, practitioners learn to move it throughout the body.
"If some part of your body hurts, the qi has not gotten through yet," YongYao said. "Once the qi gets through, you don't feel pain there."
YongYao believes Qigong can help cure heart disease, cancer or diabetes, which he has, but he says it doesn't work "miracles." The group uses Western medicine, too. [...]
Chan: The Chinese word for what became known as Zen in Japan. This school of Buddhism teaches that the path to enlightenment is cultivated through long periods of seated meditation.
kung fu: A Shaolin martial art intended to develop the body and mind as one in an expression of Chan.
Qi: A natural energy or force that fills the universe. Also known as chi.
Qigong: An umbrella term for many types of qi-based practices that use breathing with intention. They can use movement, as the Shaolin do.
Shi: A name used by these Shaolin to identify as Buddhists.
Shaolin Temple: Built in 495 on Mount Songshan in Henan, a northern Chinese province. Bodhidharma -- whom the Chinese call "Damo" -- arrived three decades later and taught Zen for the first time at the temple. Legend says that he meditated before a wall for nine years.
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Propping Up Declining Traditional Media Businesses
[publishing2.0] Two reports out today illustrate how the traditional media industry is working hard to prop up their declining business. First, as evidence of the decline, IBM released a study that says that the Internet is about to overtake TV as the principal medium in most households(via MediaPost)[link]:
TIME SPENT ON THE INTERNET is set to surpass time spent watching TV in the average American household, according to the results of an IBM survey released Wednesday.
Overall, 19% of respondents said they spend six or more hours a day on the Internet, versus 9% for TV. More telling, 60% reported that they spend one to four hours using the Internet, versus 66% who spend the time watching TV.
Of course, the time spent on the Internet includes growing consumption of online video, according to the global survey of about 2,000 respondents (including 885 Americans) conducted in April-June of this year. Globally, 67% of consumers say they watch video on the Internet, or would like to do so.
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[cbc] The Canadian dollar closed above parity Friday for the first time in almost 31 years, as the U.S. greenback continued its dramatic fall against major world currencies.
According to Bank of Canada data, the loonie closed at $1.0052 US, up two-thirds of a cent from Thursday's close.
Expressed another way, it means that a U.S. dollar is now worth a little less than 99.5 cents in Canadian money.
The loonie had reached parity with the U.S. currency on Sept. 20 — the first time since November 1976 — but had failed to close at or above that level.
The loonie's rise came in spite of a weaker-than-expected GDP reading for July. Statistics Canada said the economy grew by 0.2 per cent that month, while economists were forecasting growth of 0.3 to 0.4 per cent.
Higher gold prices also lent support to the dollar, analysts said. Gold futures jumped more than $10 US an ounce to above $750 US an ounce, a new 27-year high. [...]
Since the start of the year, the loonie has gained 17 per cent against the U.S. dollar — more than any other major currency. The euro, for instance, has risen seven per cent against the greenback year-to-date, while the British pound and Japanese yen are both up about three per cent.
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[Day One] The LA Times is offering an enjoyable read in the form of their ongoing "Dust-Up" with Andrew Breitbart and David Ehrenstein.
Ehrenstein and Breitbart discuss the fall season of antiwar flicks. Later in the week, they'll attempt to define Hollywood values, locate Hollywood conservatives and ponder Hollywood's impact on the 2008 presidential race.
For the record, Breitbart slays in content and style.
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A Moment of Silence...
Marcel Marceau, Famed French Mime, Dies
[AP] Marcel Marceau, whose lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, died Saturday. He was 84.
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau — notably through his famed personnage Bip — played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation during World War II — unlike his father, who died as Auschwitz — and worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children.
His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers — Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."
Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life, never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.
"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?" he once said.
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Hillary : Future = No Health Insurance = No Job
[AP] Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system.
“At this point, we don’t have anything punitive that we have proposed,” the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans.”
She said she could envision a day when “you have to show proof to your employer that you’re insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination,” but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress. *emphasis ours
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We've read some of the withered complaints along the lines of "just because she says she "envisions the day" doesn't mean that she's for it or will do that etc. but that is such piffle. I can't understand how anyone can say such a thing with a straight face.It seems more likely that once mandated by law that you'll really see exactly what she meant and the luster of magical "incentives and tax credits" pale in the new reality.
You'll need to show proof of health insurance to get a job, but no need to provide proof of citizenship to vote. Makes sense...uh, to some people.
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Dan Rather To Sue CBS For 70 Million Law
[nyt] The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Mr. Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. In a statement CBS said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.
In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt placate the Bush administration, though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect.
On 'Hurricane Dan'
[nro] Frankly, we need this. And by “we,” I mean a grand coalition of people who delight in watching one of the 20th century’s most pompous gasbags fall from the top of the laughingstock tree and hit every branch on the way down. These are dour times, and if Gunga Dan and Hurricane Dan and What’s-The-Frequency-Kenneth Dan want to trade their Afghan robes, yellow windbreakers and enormous tinfoil hats for some baggy pants, bright-orange wigs and floppy shoes, I say let them. I just hope all of the Dans show up at the courthouse in a teensy-weensy clown car.
But we also need this because Rather’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” routine will help us get to the bottom of a story that was actually under-covered. CBS News, under Rather’s direction, ran with fake documents - or, to be fair, documents so shoddily verified that no unbiased journalist would have run with them. When confronted with the rank incompetence and bad faith of the team he led (the lead producer tried to coordinate with the Kerry campaign), Rather first allowed three of his colleagues to be thrown under the bus, while he took a few more face-saving laps around CBS before he was quietly escorted out the door like the muttering office old-timer who’s gone off his feed.
But now he’s back like a crazy man who shows up unannounced at the Christmas party smelling like cabbage and old newspapers, wearing a trench coat but no pants. He wants $20 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $50 million in punitive damages. I’m no fancy lawyer guy, but last I checked, punitive damages were awarded to send a signal that “this must never happen again.” So what’s the “this” here? That network news divisions should never again spend weeks selling off their credibility like a fire sale at Wal-Mart, claiming their story was “fake but true,” only to cave in to reality and admit they made a mistake?
The beauty of this lawsuit, which has most legal observers laughing so hard that their neck veins look like one-pound sausage casings with five pounds of ground chuck in them, is that if it goes to trial (shortly after unicorns file my taxes), CBS will be put in the position of having to prove that the story was bogus, while Rather will be forced to look even more like a grassy-knoll theorist, climbing back to the top of the laughingstock tree. So I say again: You go, Dan! I’ll bring the popcorn.
...So, someone owes you 70 million eh Dan? You bet. What a disgrace. What a jackass. How pleasant it is to see delusional self important "greats" such as yourself blither incoherence. One can only imagine the strings of bullshit that paraded as "fact" and "news" in decades previous by "esteemed" types as yourself. There's no shortage of BS that still gets passed off today with the numerous fauxtography examples and buried (or non existent) "corrections," but thankfully there is no shortage of people out there to call the charlatans on such tactics. 70 million dollars. You bet. Take off the clown nose Dan and just go away.
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Champion Ducks open NHL's 90th anniversary season in London
[nhl] The Stanley Cup champion Anaheim Ducks will open the National Hockey League’s 90th anniversary season with a two-game series against the Los Angeles Kings in London, England, the Cup’s ancestral home, Sept. 29-30. The most cherished trophy in professional team sports, purchased at the Regent Street shop of silversmith G. R. Collis & Co. 115 years ago, returns to its birthplace in the arms of the 2007 champions to open the 1,230-game season before sellout crowds at the spectacular new O2 Arena.The Ducks and Kings are the first teams in NHL history to play regular-season games in Europe.
Following the series, the Ducks return to North America to help raise the curtain on the remainder of the regular-season schedule when they visit the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena on Wednesday, Oct. 3. That contest is one of three home openers in which Anaheim provides the opposition: The Ducks also visit Columbus Friday, Oct. 5, and Pittsburgh the following evening.
That night, Oct. 6, is the busiest night of the campaign as 14 games are scheduled, including two “Original Six” match-ups -- Montreal at Toronto and Detroit at Chicago -- and one “Second Six” match-up as St. Louis and Los Angeles play the first games of their respective 40th anniversary seasons. The Blues and Kings entered the NHL in 1967-68 along with Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Minnesota (North Stars) and California (Seals), when the League doubled in size to 12 teams.
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No Surprise : End of TimesSelect
[reuters] The New York Times Co said on Monday it will end its paid TimesSelect Web service and make most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue.
TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday [19th], two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year to read articles by columnists such as Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman.
The trademark orange "T's" marking premium articles will begin disappearing Tuesday night, said the Web site's Vice President and General Manager Vivian Schiller.
The move is an acknowledgment by The Times that making Web site visitors pay for content would not bring in as much money as making it available for free and supporting it with advertising.
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Kucinich Visits Syria, Shuns U.S. Troops[worldnetdaily] After praising Syria following a meeting in Damascus with President Bashar Assad, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich declared he will not visit troops in Iraq during his Middle East tour because he considers the American military presence in Iraq to be illegal.
"I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation ... I don't want to bless that occupation with my presence," Kucinich said in Lebanon, according to the Associated Press. "I will not do it."
Geraldo : One Class Act
Geraldo Rivera (expelled from Iraq in 2003 for broadcasting details about future U.S. troop movements), polishes up his clown nose while adding yet another classy move in his circus sideshow media career:
[bostonglobe] "Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I've ever met in my life," he says. "She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.
"It's good she's in D.C. and I'm in New York," Rivera sneers. "I'd spit on her if I saw her."
Bin Laden's War On US Economy
[usnews] Six years ago, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda weren't just attempting to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They were trying to smash the American economy as well. Here is what bin Laden himself said about his goals and motivations back in December 2001: "If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means." And here is what al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said in September 2002: "We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy."
No luck so far, despite bin Laden's recent videotape ravings about our taxes and mortgage debt. Although the towers came down, the resilient American economy didn't. Since September 11, the economy hasn't suffered a single down quarter. In fact, it has notched 23 straight quarters of economic growth. (And despite the subprime mortgage crisis, this is likely to be the 24th straight quarter of growth.) Those numbers are especially amazing when you consider that when the terrorist attacks happened, the Internet stock bubble was in full implosion mode.
The economy dipped in the third quarter of 2001 and was slightly negative in two of the previous four quarters. But it's been nothing but growth since then. Overall, the American economy is, adjusting for inflation, $1.65 trillion bigger than it was six years ago. To put that gigantic number in some perspective, the U.S. economy has added the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias, eight Irans, 13 Pakistans, or 15 Egypts, depending on your preference. And while 9/11 did cause the stock market to plunge, the Dow is 37 percent higher than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, creating trillions of dollars of new wealth for Americans. What's more, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent today vs. 5.7 percent back then. Not bad at all.
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[dailymail] STORY OF THE WEEK: In a surprise move, Osama bin Laden entered the Democratic presidential race and promised to bring the troops home from Iraq, to impeach Bush and to sign the Kyoto agreement on global warming. While those are mainstream Democratic Party talking points these days, his call to cut taxes is expected to turn off many Democratic voters.
[IMAO] In the video, apparently Osama chastises the Democrats for not ending the war -- the thing they were elected to do, rants against "neoconservatives," praises Noam Chomsky, and talks about global warming and the Kyoto treaty.
Kos has to get this guy as a diarist before HuffPo does.
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EFF Releases Comprehensive Report on Recording Industry's Litigation Campaign
San Francisco - As college students across the country head back to class this fall, they need to worry about more than keeping up on their schoolwork. The Recording Industry of America (RIAA) continues to target college campuses for hundreds of new lawsuits each month. Meanwhile, under pressure from the recording industry, universities are instituting draconian punishments for students suspected of sharing music files. At the same time, the RIAA continues to sue file sharers off campus, with a total tally now exceeding 20,000.
In a report released this week, "RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provides the only comprehensive look at the four-year litigation campaign waged by the RIAA against music fans. The report traces the RIAA campaign from its beginnings in 2003 against a handful of students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Michigan Tech to the current spate of "pre-litigation settlement" letters being sent to universities nationwide.
"Despite the RIAA's legal campaign, file sharing is more popular than ever," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "History will treat this as a shameful chapter in the history of the music industry, when record companies singled out random music fans for disproportionate penalties. Artists must be compensated, but these lawsuits aren't putting money into any creator's pocket."
The crackdown on Internet file sharing has already driven music fans to technologies that are harder to monitor -- for example, burning and exchanging CDs among friends and sharing on members-only "darknets." EFF calls on universities to help artists get paid for their creative work while protecting their students from costly legal
problems. Universities should insist on a blanket license for their students, collecting a reasonable regular payment -- for example, $5 a month -- in exchange for the right to keep sharing music with their classmates.
"This is about money, not morality," said von Lohmann. "With a blanket licensing solution, the RIAA can call off the lawyers and the lobbyists, and universities can get back to education instead of copyright enforcement."
For the full report "RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later": [link]
For more on the litigation campaign: [link]
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Future of Music Policy Summit
The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) is a national nonprofit that works on the issues at the intersection of music, law, technology and policy. For the past six years, FMC has organized an annual Policy Summit that brings an unprecedented mix of 500 musicians, artists, attorneys and policymakers together for discussions about issues that are emerging as the promotion and distribution of music moves to a global, digital platform.
This year, FMC is back in Washington, DC, to host the 7th annual "Future of Music Policy Summit" from September 17-18, 2007. Over the course of two days, panels will cover such topics as:
* Copyright and licensing issues
* Network neutrality and broadband policy
* FCC's "rules of engagement" on payola
* Sample clearance licensing process
* The explosion of niche market genres
* Wireless/music portability
* The challenges of cultural preservation
* Technologies that are bringing artists and fans closer
together
...and more.
The Summit will also include a special conversation with Marybeth Peters, Register, US Copyright Office, and keynotes by leading members of Congress.
For general event information: [link]
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A Pathetic Preemptive Strike
The Washington Post and the GAO try to mislead on Iraq
[weeklystandard] The Washington Post, working hand-in-glove with Democrats in Congress, has gotten out front in preparing the domestic battlefield for September's fight over the war in Iraq. The Post led today's paper with an account of a leaked draft report from the Congressionally-controlled Government Accountability Office (the GAO's final report is due next Tuesday). The headline: "Report Finds Little Progress on Iraq Goals; GAO Draft at Odds with White House." Here's the good news: If this is the best war opponents have to offer, the administration is in amazingly good shape going into September.
The Post reporters--both strongly anti-Iraq war--characterize the GAO judgments as "strikingly negative." But there's nothing striking about them. The Democratic Congress ensured that the report would deliver negative "grades" for the Iraqi government by asking the GAO to evaluate whether or not the benchmarks have been met now--just two months after the major combat operations of the surge began. For the report from the White House, Congress asked the administration to detail if the Iraqis are making "sufficient progress." But Congress asked the GAO, by contrast, to report if the Iraqis had "completed" the benchmarks. This ridiculous standard was a Congressional trap that forced the GAO to waste time and taxpayer money to come out with a pre-ordained and meaningless judgment, since no one ever promised or expected that the Iraqis would have met the benchmarks by now. And the GAO report doesn't really shed light on the key question: Are the Iraqis making progress?
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Big Source of Clinton's Cash Is an Unlikely Address
[wsj] One of the biggest sources of political donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport.
Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.
* Fugitive donor bows out of fundraising
[latimes] Democratic donor Norman Hsu said Wednesday that he would "refrain from all fundraising activities" until he resolved an outstanding warrant for his arrest stemming from a 1991 criminal case in San Mateo County.
Hsu, a major fundraiser over the last three years for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and other Democrats, issued the statement through his attorney after the Los Angeles Times reported that he had been a fugitive for 15 years.
Prosecutors in California said Hsu disappeared in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.
Meanwhile, Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that it would donate to charity $23,000 in direct donations from Hsu, a New York apparel executive. And other recipients of his donations distanced themselves from the businessman.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts; Reps. Michael M. Honda of San Jose, Doris Matsui of Sacramento and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania; and Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota, said they would divest their campaigns of Hsu's donations.
Clinton campaign aides had said earlier that the candidate had no plans to return money donated by Hsu, but the campaign reversed itself after The Times' disclosure. [...]
Hsu has donated or raised more than $1 million for Democrats and their causes. He served as a "bundler," rounding up a group of donors and then packaging their checks together. He is a member of Clinton's "HillRaiser" group, individuals who pledged to raise more than $100,000 for her presidential campaign.
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Hulu : NBC and News Corp combine forces to launch their online video website. Hulu is currently accepting e-mail addresses of anyone interested in signing up for a private beta, which is set to launch in October.::::
Vick Finds Jesus and Is Turning His Life Over To God
[fox] "We all make mistakes," said Michael Vick. "Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I reject it ... I found Jesus and turned my life over to God. I think that's the right thing to do as of right now."
Gee, that didn't take long.
I didn't think the curtain on the "finding Jesus" act would rise until after Vick went to jail, but alas, it came on the same day he made his plea deal official.
It took Paris Hilton a few hours in the slammer before she met Jesus, and Vick does it even before lockup. Who knew?
He must have hired Hilton rep Elliot Mintz as his spokesman over the weekend.
[bloomberg] Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick apologized to fans, his team and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell yesterday after pleading guilty to a federal charge he helped run an interstate dogfighting ring.
Vick, 27, called dogfighting ``a terrible thing'' in a televised news conference and said he had used ``bad judgment,'' and now felt ``ashamed'' and ``disappointed'' in himself. Vick said he ``was not honest and forthright'' with his team or the league while the case unfolded. The NFL's Goodell followed Vick's plea agreement last week by announcing the same day that the quarterback was suspended indefinitely without pay. Goodell called Vick's actions ``cruel and reprehensible.''
[ledger-enquirer] Aside from an inability to summon tears, Michael Vick correctly followed the blueprint for public apology perfected long ago by disgraced politicians, televangelists and captains of industry.
The tears can be shed later, possibly during today's scheduled appearance on the Tom Joyner Show or perhaps down the road while seated on Oprah's couch.
But Vick, the suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback, hit all the other high points after pleading guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to a federal conspiracy charge stemming from his involvement in a dog fighting and gambling enterprise.
He expressed contrition and promised to take the nearest exit ramp off the road to perdition.
Vick made unwavering eye contact with the audience of reporters jammed inside a hotel ballroom in Richmond, Va. He offered to apologize "for all the things that -- that I've done and allowed to happen," but didn't itemize them because, let's face it, he'd have a lot of territory to cover with the Ron Mexico civil case, the dual Dirty Bird obscene gestures, the trick water bottle, the lying to the league commissioner, the lying to the team owner, the apparent indifference to his teammates and, last but not least, the cruelty to all those animals.
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[foxnews] A popular comic strip that poked fun at the Rev. Jerry Falwell without incident one week ago was deemed too controversial to run over the weekend because this time it took a humorous swipe at Muslim fundamentalists.
The Washington Post and several other newspapers around the country did not run Sunday's installment of Berkeley Breathed's "Opus," in which the spiritual fad-seeking character Lola Granola appears in a headscarf and explains to her boyfriend, Steve, why she wants to become a radical Islamist.The installment did not appear in the Post's print version, but it ran on WashingtonPost.com and Salon.com. The same will hold true for the upcoming Sept. 2 strip, which is a continuation of the plotline.
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[nymag] My mission is to find Matt Drudge, and I’m failing. I’ve e-mailed the author of the Drudge Report countless times and written letters to him at the two places he owns in Miami to say I’m coming to town and want to talk, but when I check into my hotel there’s no note from him at the desk. It’s late Sunday night, and I turn on his weekly radio show in the room. Drudge is on his favorite theme, surveillance cameras everywhere, his belief that Google wants to spy on us and pass it all on to the government. At such times, Drudge comes off as a hunted man. “I just don’t want to be watched when I’m visiting the Lincoln Memorial, going through Penn Station, or walking down Hollywood Boulevard. So many cameras everywhere. And now you start feeding that into some kind of database and start linking it up with a Fascist company like Google? This is a serious issue. And it’s not given serious consideration—when it is a total transformation of our society and our liberties. What gives you a right? Why are you watching me? People say, well, what do you have to hide, Drudge? What do you have to hide? You know what? The burden should be on them. I think I have a right not to be watched.”
I call in to the show a few times: 1-866-4-drudge. Busy. You can often hear Drudge at his keyboard even as he’s on air, so I drop him another e-mail with a clever headline like something on the Drudge Report. Then the next morning I go round to his two addresses. It’s breaking my word. I’d e-mailed Drudge, “Not Stalking You; Coming to Miami,” because I know how feverish he is about the prying press. When Lindsay Lohan had her accident in Beverly Hills in May, Drudge said it was caused by violent “stalkerazzi.” He said, “That’s probably why she was drunk and higher than a kite … because she has no life and no privacy … they create their villains and then they report on them.”
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The thorny path to enlightenment Buddhists bringing ancient faith to U.S. at odds over role of martial arts in Shaolin - former allies deeply divided on physical, spiritual aspects of the misunderstood culture
[sfgate]
Stephen Ho dreamed that he'd be the one to introduce to America an authentic version of one of the world's most misunderstood religions.
He would build a San Francisco temple to be a branch of the legendary Shaolin Temple in China, where Zen was born and kung fu emerged as its most fabled expression.
The San Francisco businessman and longtime Buddhist went to China and asked the temple's abbot for his assent. In December 2004, the abbot sent Shi GuoSong, an experienced yet youthful Shaolin monk, to be a true and rare face of the ancient faith. [...]
A simple morning practice at the Oakland temple illuminates how Shaolin strengthen their bodies, the role of the natural energy force known as qi -- or chi -- and how physical work can be meditative. [...]
Qi enters the body just above the belly button, YongYao said. Through Qigong, practitioners learn to move it throughout the body.
"If some part of your body hurts, the qi has not gotten through yet," YongYao said. "Once the qi gets through, you don't feel pain there."
YongYao believes Qigong can help cure heart disease, cancer or diabetes, which he has, but he says it doesn't work "miracles." The group uses Western medicine, too. [...]
Chan: The Chinese word for what became known as Zen in Japan. This school of Buddhism teaches that the path to enlightenment is cultivated through long periods of seated meditation.
kung fu: A Shaolin martial art intended to develop the body and mind as one in an expression of Chan.
Qi: A natural energy or force that fills the universe. Also known as chi.
Qigong: An umbrella term for many types of qi-based practices that use breathing with intention. They can use movement, as the Shaolin do.
Shi: A name used by these Shaolin to identify as Buddhists.
Shaolin Temple: Built in 495 on Mount Songshan in Henan, a northern Chinese province. Bodhidharma -- whom the Chinese call "Damo" -- arrived three decades later and taught Zen for the first time at the temple. Legend says that he meditated before a wall for nine years.
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Propping Up Declining Traditional Media Businesses
[publishing2.0] Two reports out today illustrate how the traditional media industry is working hard to prop up their declining business. First, as evidence of the decline, IBM released a study that says that the Internet is about to overtake TV as the principal medium in most households(via MediaPost)[link]:
TIME SPENT ON THE INTERNET is set to surpass time spent watching TV in the average American household, according to the results of an IBM survey released Wednesday.
Overall, 19% of respondents said they spend six or more hours a day on the Internet, versus 9% for TV. More telling, 60% reported that they spend one to four hours using the Internet, versus 66% who spend the time watching TV.
Of course, the time spent on the Internet includes growing consumption of online video, according to the global survey of about 2,000 respondents (including 885 Americans) conducted in April-June of this year. Globally, 67% of consumers say they watch video on the Internet, or would like to do so.
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