People use text messaging a lot, or not at all. In the United States, 82 percent of cellphone owners said that they never used text messaging, and 15 percent said that they used it every week or even more.
— According to a worldwide survey by Ipsos MediaCT, as reported in the
N.Y. Times
If all inmates and arrestees who need treatment [for drug abuse] received it and the success rate were only 10 percent, the cost of treatment would be recouped in a year, and thereafter the economic benefits in productivity, taxes and reduction in criminal activity would approach $10 billion a year.
— Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and president, National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in a letter to the
N.Y. Times.
Last week, I recorded about 10 hours of the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials that took place in Omaha, Nebraska. Last night, I gorged myself on the video, but I had to fast forward through much of it.
It quickly became apparent that the commentators were directed to talk about almost anything except the actual swimming itself. NBC went out of its way to make the comments as inane as possible.
The hidden message is that swimming is too boring to hold the average viewer’s interest. While it’s true that swimming is amongst the most boring spectator sports (and God bless my Mom for all the youth swim meets she sat through for me), the inane comments just reinforced that idea.
We learned that Dara Torres is old, that Phelps has big feet, that swimsuits are made with lasers from NASA, and that the Japanese press ignores Phelps (sacre bleu!) just to hound lesser-known swimmer, Hansen. We got human interest pieces and juicy gossip – and almost nothing about, you know, swimming.
I wanted to hear why the fastest swimmers are always in the middle lanes. (The water in those lanes offer the least resistance and therefore are given to the most qualified swimmers.) What about Phelps’ technique makes him so great? (Everything!) Is freestroke all about the arms? (It’s not. Great swimmers propel themselves with their stomaches and body core as much as with their arms.) What is the advantage to staying underwater after a flip turn? (Less water resistance) What makes a fast pool? (Yes, some pools are faster than others!)
This portends bad things for the Beijing Olympics. We may be doomed to hundreds of hours of inane bullshit human interest pieces. I’m preparing my mute button already.
P.S. I was already disappointed weeks ago by ABC/ESPN’s poor coverage of the European Cup. You can’t tell me that out of 300 million Americans, ABC couldn’t find two sportscasters with American accents who know the sport of soccer.
If you’re looking for a cheap way to run Microsoft Windows applications on an Apple Mac or Linux PC, I recommend CrossOver from CodeWeavers.
I use CrossOver to run the Windows version of Quicken Premier on my Mac. I bought Quicken before my switch from Windows to Mac so I wanted to save money by using the same software on my new iMac. Plus, Quicken Premier for Windows has a lot of features that Quicken Mac doesn’t have. Quicken on CrossOver has some quirks to get used to, but it works well enough.
CrossOver is hundreds of dollars cheaper than alternatives from Parallels or VMWare because it doesn’t require that you purchase a Windows license from Microsoft. CrossOver’s cheap price is at the cost of compatibility. It is compatible with a small subset of Windows apps – the most popular software – so make sure your Windows apps are compatible with CrossOver before buying.
Parallels or VMWare, are compatible with nearly all Windows applications because they use and require a licensed installation of Microsoft Windows on top of the cost of the Parallels and VMWare products.
I like CrossOver so much that I’ve become an official CodeWeavers Advocate, which mainly consists of beta testing new releases in exchange for free copies of the software.
![Gays are Refused a Drink (April 21, 1966)
In 1966 New York City, it was de facto illegal to serve a drink to a homosexual. This photo by Fred W. McDarrah documents a “Sip-In [which] was the opening shot in the campaign to make gay bars legal,” according to historian David Carter.
As reported in the Village Voice article which accompanies this photo, “The action didn’t overturn the law, but it did bring awareness to the issue and led the New York City Commission on Human Rights to declare that homosexuals had the right to be served. Eventually, entrapment by police was also outlawed. Homosexuals could assemble freely and drink while they did it. The gay bar as we know it was born.”](http://media.tumblr.com/o0L8M1afQb7tk5tt4RpgF5F9_400.jpg)
