March 2005 Archives

Mark Cuban is a billionaire who wants to retrofit all of his theaters in the Landmark Cinema chain. He will convert them all to digital projection.

Let Xeni Jardin explain it:

[Cuban] dismisses talk that the industry isn't ready. "People get frightened about all kinds of things in Hollywood," he says. "That's not my system. I don't have a business to protect. I have a business to build."

It's a business filled with promise - and no small amount of uncertainty and financial peril for the key players.

First, the upside: Going digital would be a boon for studios, theater owners, and moviegoers. If studios no longer had to make thousands of copies of each film to deliver to theaters, they could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the studios spent more than $631 million in 2003 on film prints for the North American market alone. Taking these reels out of the equation could snip distribution costs by up to 90 percent, says Patrick von Sychowski, marketing director at Unique Digital, which places ads in European cinemas.

When you factor in the cost for foreign releases and overseas distribution, cutting out the prints translates to an eventual savings of as much as $900 million a year.

Likewise, switching to digital exhibition systems would give theater owners unprecedented flexibility. If a blockbuster packed more seats than anticipated, an owner could quickly reallocate screens that weren't selling as well to handle the overflow.

In a film-based world, such changes can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and costly - requiring an additional print from the studio and a reel swap. With digital, they would be nearly instantaneous and come at almost no cost, once the onetime hardware expenses were recovered.

Moviegoers, for their part, would be treated to a future that promises no more out-of-focus projection, out-of-order reels, or scratchy footage on heavily played film.

Even more exciting to Cuban is the broader range of content that digital systems make possible: Beyond movies, theaters could offer live, hi-res broadcasts of sports events, Broadway plays, fashion shows, and multiplayer electronic games.

When I was growing up, I wanted to live in the future.

Well, the future is now, baby! Hats off to Mark Cuban.

From the Physics Dept. web site at the University of Augsburg, Germany:

In the course of studying physics, one is officially taught that liquid nitrogen is simply (and mainly) used to cool things down to 77 degrees (K).

But everybody who once has observed students in practical courses "working" with this stuff knows that this is not true.

My intention is now to tell the truth about what is really done with liquid N2 before its remains are taken and used for cooling.

[snip]

1. Freeze a can of shaving cream.
2. Peel the can away from the cream.
3. Put the canless cream into someone's car.
4. Let the oven-like heat from the car's sitting in the sun defrost the shaving cream.

2 cans will fill an entire car.

Please, please, please if anyone reading this ever gets the chance to do this, would you please invite me to watch? Or at least take some pictures?

Thank you, in advance.

(HT to Modnar)

Former Senator Bill Bradley compares the Republicans' infrastruture to a pyramid....

1. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid.

2. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

3. The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years.

4. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.

5. At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.

It is not quite the "right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton described, but it is an impressive organization built consciously, carefully and single-mindedly.

The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don't want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they're paid well and believe, I think, in what they're saying.

True, there's lots of money involved, but the money makes a difference because it goes toward reinforcing a structure that is already stable.

...Then there's the Democrats' pyramid:

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.

There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on.

Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too.

Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people...

Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality.

The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe....

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

Listen, I hate to say it, but this is a must-read.

Will the Soros' and the MoveOn's be where the Dems come back? Will the net-roots and the Deaniacs be where the Dems turn it around?

Stay tuned.

Tuesday is the day that the Supremes will hear arguments in the case of MGM v. Grokster. So let's listen to Xeni Jardin who interviewed David Byrne, co-founder of The Talking Heads, for NPR. Here's part of the interview:

XJ: How do you feel about the fact that some of your fans are downloading your music for free?

David Byrne: It's a mixed bag. Sure, I would love to have compensation for that. But the argument of record companies standing up for artists rights is such a load of hooey. Most artists see nothing from record sales -- it's not an evil conspiracy, it's just the way the accounting works. That's the way major record labels are set up, from a purely pragmatic point of view. So as far as the artist goes -- who cares? I don't see much money from record sales anway, so I don't really care how people are getting it.

I recently caught this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction. I went out of my way to watch it because I liked all the bands that were inducted. I also enjoyed the folks that gave the keynote speeches for each group.

But I was especially impressed with Springsteen's induction speech for U2, not because I'm a huge Springsteen fan (I'm not); nor am I huge U2 fan (although I like them better than Springsteen). I just thought it was a great bit of writing and a great performance.

Uno, dos, tres, catorce.

That translates as one, two, three, fourteen. That is the correct math for a rock and roll band. For in art and love and rock and roll, the whole had better equal much more than the sum of its parts, or else you're just rubbing two sticks together searching for fire. A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.

It's embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens -- the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run -- whoops, I meant to leave that one out (laughter) -- the Sex Pistols, Aretha Franklin, the Clash, James Brown...the proud and public enemies it takes a nation of millions to hold back.

This is music meant to take on not only the powers that be, but on a good day, the universe and God himself -- if he was listening. It's man's accountability, and U2 belongs on this list.

Springsteen goes on and it's plain that there is a lot of affection between Bruce and the boys in the band. The speech is also pretty funny -- lots of good natured ribbing. You have to hear him deliver it in that Jersey patois. But, shy of that, you can read it here. It's worth it.

Digby:

The Republican party wants to tell you how to live your personal life while they systematically remove all government cooperation in ameliorating the risks this fast paced world creates.

The Democrats want the government to leave you to make your own personal decisions while having it help you mitigate the social and economic risk our fast paced world creates.

I might add that both parties would frame this as a belief in freedom. But they have different ways of promoting freedom. It's the Democrats that want to help you be free, whereas the Republicans are more concerned with punishing you after you screw up.

One party believes in prevention, while the other one believes in punishment.

Think about foreign policy and national security -- the Republicans disdain diplomacy, they disdain foreign aid, they sneer at nation-building (until they have first destroyed a nation's infrastructure), they disdain the idea that we should lead by example (e.g., freedom of speech, separation of church and state).

And the Democrats? Well, if it were up to me, we would be aggressively promoting the conditions under which democracy can flourish. Look at Hezbollah -- they have succeeded in capturing the hearts and minds of their constituencies because (by day) they build roads, hospitals and schools. But by night, they are murderous thugs and terrorists. Not surprising -- I understand that Al Capone was the most beloved personality in Chicago at one time.

Obviously, America is capable of far, far better than that. But here's the thing: if we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars re-building a country after we've destroyed it, why not spend a fraction of that to promote the conditions of democracy before we declare war in the first place?

Amy Sullivan in Salon:

...[T]here was a time -- not so very long ago -- when the religious left was a powerful institution in American society and politics, when the term "religious" was not immediately assumed to connote "conservative."

Moral giants with names like Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. led intellectual and social justice movements.

It's nearly impossible to page through American history without coming across political causes that were driven either partly or entirely by progressive people of faith -- abolition, women's suffrage, labor reforms of the progressive era, civil rights, and any number of antiwar movements.

Just a few decades ago, venerable organizations like the National Council of Churches (NCC) made pronouncements that carried not only moral weight but political influence as well.

In short, the likes of Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Ralph Reed have not always dominated American politics; indeed, in the span of American history, the last three decades are an anomaly.

So, here's the thing: at a time when Republicans and the religious right are fused at the hip, Democrats and the religious left are hardly speaking to each other.

Why is this?

A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off.

The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week.

Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’

That story comes via Milton Glaser, one of the great illustrators of the 20th century. It's part of a talk he gave a couple of years ago called, 10 Things I Have Learned.

Read the article; here's the list:

1. You can only work for people that you like.
   
2. If you have a choice, never have a job.
   
3. Some people are toxic -- avoid them.
   
4. Professionalism is not enough (or "the good is the enemy of the great.")
   
5. Less is not necessarily more.
   
6. Style is not to be trusted.
   
7. How you live changes your brain.
   
8. Doubt is better than certainty.
   
9. Solving the problem is more important than being right. (Contains the rabbit joke).
   
10. Tell the truth.

Democrats will not win a national election by running to the center, by becoming more attuned to this state's constituency or that state's cultural sensitivies. That's what you do when you play defense.

Democrats will win national elections again when they take the offensive and start talking like this again:

The thing that makes me angriest about what has gone wrong in the last 12 years is that our government has lost touch with our values, while our politicians continue to shout about them. I’m tired of it! (Applause)

I was raised to believe the American Dream was built on rewarding hard work. But we have seen the folks of Washington turn the American ethic on its head.

For too long those who play by the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft, and those who cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded. (Applause)

People are working harder than ever, spending less time with their children, working nights and weekends at their jobs instead of going to PTA and Little League or Scouts. And their incomes are still going down. (Applause) Their taxes are still going up. And the costs of health care, housing and education are going through the roof. (Applause)

Meanwhile, more and more of our best people are falling into poverty even though they work 40 hours a week. (Applause)

Our people are pleading for change, but government is in the way. It has been hijacked by privileged private interests. It has forgotten who really pays the bills around here. (Applause)

It has taken more of your money and given you less in return. We have got to go beyond the brain-dead politics in Washington and give our people the kind of government they deserve, a government that works for them. (Applause)

Tell me you know who said that, and when he said it.