Fly me
: More reasons why I am very glad I have not flown since September 11: Lileks on being grounded.
Just fix it, bozos
: Harvey Pitt, head of the SEC, appeared on FoxNews yesterday saying just what he should not say. He wasted the time saying that he didn’t cause this Enron-Anderson-Worldcom-Imclone-Qwest mess; he whined that he inherited it; he said it didn’t happen on his watch.
Bozo.
We don’t give a damn, Harvey. All we want you to do is FIX IT! Stop with the frigging fingerpointing and get off your fat ass and FIX IT!
It’s easy: Just read the last issue of Fortune and follow their simple seven steps to FIX IT!
Mark my words: The economy is going to sink fast (see the depressing Denton). And when we analyze why George Bush couldn’t win a second term it will be because he didn’t FIX IT!
You have two wars now, George: You have to get rid of bin Laden and the crooked CEOs (and accountants and analysis) who are all ruining our consumer confidence, investor confidence, international confidence, and wiping out the last of my F.U. money. You have to FIX IT!
The new Yiddish
: Howard Stern this morning played tape of an awards show with hip-hop stars saying things I could not understand (of course, I’m not supposed to; I’m so whitebread, I am devoid of nutritional value). Every day, this is becoming more and more a language in its own right — a descendant of English just as Yiddish is mostly an offshoot of German — but still, a new language. Where is the dictionary? Where are the language classes?
Why spam will never work
: Having tired of trying to make a certain part of me bigger and bigger and bigger, my spam has now shifted its focus. It is offering me bigger breasts. No thanks. No mansiere here.
Video claustrophobia
: A trend: The fight for every pixel on a video screen — whether that’s a computer monitor or a TV set — is getting out of hand.
Every web site has bigger ads that weren’t big enough and so they have ads that cover everything for as long as they can get away with it. Hey, we gotta make a buck.
But the same thing is happening on TV. FoxNews covers the bottom of its sceen with logos, tickers, clocks, summaries of what the person on the screen just said, and anything else they can think of. It’s getting so you can’t see the person on the screen; TV is turning itself into a web page. And the trend is set to explode; expect to see tickers everywhere. TV Remote reports that the AP is now offering tickers to TV stations.
Things are moving so much on the screens I see I’m getting dizzy.
In the land of the networked, the networker is king
: Nick Denton brought together a great mix of fascinating people last night, a blog brain trust.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that a blog is a bit like a good party: It is selective; you decide to who to link to just like you decide who to drink with. And a good blogger is a good and generous host, like Denton.
It was refreshing to talk about an exciting new business again with Scott Heifermann of and about the meaning of community with Clay Shirky and about new technology I barely understand with the legendary Doc Searls and about brains with Steven Johnson (Plastic, Feed, Emergence) — who really should be blogging — instead of what online people usually talk about when they get together and drink: how tough it is to make this thing into a business. It inspires new thinking (instead of drunken depression).
Also was delighted to finally meet or remeet Matthew Yglesias, Anil Dash, Megan McArdle, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Rick Bruner, David Gallagher, Cameron Marlow, Om Malik, Elizabeth Spiers, the very gracious host John Johnson of Eyebeam, and others whose links I can’t find now. Also always great to see Amy Langfield and John Hiler.
Tomato, tomahto, rotten in any case
: Allan Connery answers my question:
I’ve always thought of it as ebb it- dah, with the stress on the first syllable.
For example, recall Porky Pig’s farewell at the end of his cartoons:
“EBITDA, EBITDA, that’s all, folks.”
