How Privatization of NASA's The Learning Channel (TLC) Devolved Into A For-Profit Child Exploitation Channel Pushing Honey Boo Boo

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Little Green Footballs in defense of CBS:

People forget or did not know that once upon a time The Learning Channel was founded in 1972 by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA as an informative/instructional network focused on providing real education through the medium of TV; it was distributed at no cost by NASA satellite. Then it was privatized in 1980 (Reaganism) and was then named the Appalachian Community Service Network. In November 1980 this name was changed to “The Learning Channel”, which was subsequently shortened to “TLC.” From then on we have a sad decline to the abomination of child and poverty exploitation of the TLC’s current hit freak show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”. … In 1998 the channel began to distance itself from its original name “The Learning Channel”, and instead began to advertise itself only as “TLC”. So when Mitt Romney and the Republicans talk about how much better off PBS would be de-funded and privatized, remember what privatization did to TLC and how TLC went from NASA beaming information into student classrooms to the disgraceful programs it runs today (many of which exploit children). I am not saying we should not be capitalists and should be against the for profit model - but we should wake up from the delusion that the private sector can do it better. In some cases, the private sector does it worse and is worse.

Denial

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A recent topic in the news over the last two weeks is how Republicans are in absolute denial that Romney is losing and they have begun to blame the polls saying so as being biased against them. There is even a guy, Dean Chambers, who has made a site that "unskews" the polls. Talking Points Memo wrote an article about this:

Chambers’ project started in July after he noticed an ABC News/Washington Post poll that “just didn’t look right.” An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted this month showed Obama up over Romney 49 percent to 48 percent. “Unskewed,” however, after applying Rasmussen’s numbers on party ID, Romney leads Obama 52-45 in the poll. It’s like magic. But Chambers insists he isn’t “changing” or “making up” data. “The only thing I’m doing is weighting.” But that’s exactly what most pollsters don’t do. “We don’t have any preconceived notions about the party breakdown of a poll before we conduct it. The only things we make any adjustments for are gender, race, and age,” Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen told TPM in an email. “It makes sense that as support for Obama increases, more people also identify themselves as Democrats. I know conservatives want to think it’s more Democrats in the poll causing Obama to do better, but it’s actually Obama doing better causing more Democrats in the poll.” “The reality is that (Republicans are) losing, they can’t accept it, and they’re going to find some reason to dismiss every poll that makes them unhappy not matter what its composition is,” Jensen added. “This isn’t really about Party ID, it’s about hardcore denial.” I see this as the fundamental problem with the Republican party in 2012. When something doesn't match their preconceived world view, when the facts do not match their version of reality, they attempt to ignore the facts, or simply make up their own. It is the purest form of denial I've seen. They will continue to lose national elections, where their legislative gerrymandering isn't able to help them, as long as this denial continues. I am very grateful that they are not able to gerrymander the borders of actual states.

What Has Gone Wrong For GOP Candidates?

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Nate Silver, at Five Thirty Eight :

More moderate Republican candidates, like Mr. Brown of Massachusetts and Mrs. McMahon of Connecticut, have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the national Republican brand, and sometimes also from the Republican presidential ticket. Some of these theories are speculative, to be sure. A large number of Senate races remain in play: of the several states in which there has been a shift against Republicans in the polls in recent weeks, perhaps only Florida seems completely lost. But if the trend continues, the question may no longer be whether Republicans can win the Senate — but how vulnerable they are to losing the House. Read the entire piece. Let's home this trend continues.

iPhone 5

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iPhone 5 Apple's event has just concluded. This is what was announced. Links are up on Apple's website: Promo Video
Features Highlights Features the following: * 7.6mm thin, 18% thinner * 112 grams, 20% lighter (the iPhone 4S weighed 140 grams by comparison) * Taller screen, 1136 x 640 pixels. Increased from a 3.5 inch to a 4 inch display. Room enough to fit another row of icons and have apps and movie be "wide screen" when rotated on it's side. * The screen itself has 44% more color saturation, as it is now a true sRGB screen. The touch sensor is built directly into the screen now instead of resting behind it. This means the phone was able to be more compact. * True 4G/LTE networking on Spring, AT&T and Verizon. * Faster Wifi. Dual-band 5GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n 802.11n in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Wifi speeds now up to 150 Mbps * New A6 CPU. 2x faster processor. 2x faster graphics. * Matched or exceeds the battery life of the iPhone 4S depending on how you use your phone. On the low end, 3G talking, or 3G/LTE web browsing can expect 8 hours of battery. On standby 225 hours. Video & wifi browsing can expect 10 hours. Music playing can go for 40 hours. * Camera is better. Still an 8 megapixel sensor with resolution up to 3264 x 2448. Backside illumination. Hybrid IR filter. Five-element lens. f/2.4 aperture. New dynamic low light mode. * With the new CPU it takes photos 40% faster. * New photo feature: Panoramic photos. Hit a single button and rotate your phone through the air. Automatically builds a panorama for you. (Looked kickass in the demo). * Video: 1080p HD, Improved video stabilization, Face detection, Take photos while recording * You can now do FaceTime over your cellular network as well (used to be Wifi only). * Audio improved: 3 microphones. Front, back & bottom. Speakers have 5 magnet transducers (old ones had 3). Earpiece now includes noise canceling on your own audio out. * Wideband audio: Fills up more frequency spectrum to make call audio sound better. * New dock connector called "Lightning". All-digital, 8 signal design. It is reversible (able to be inserted up or down). Improved durability. * They are selling an adapter that you can buy to make your old accessories work with it until you have a chance to replace them all. * iOS 6: I won't rehash the details here as they were already covered at the June WWDC event. But the iPhone 5 ships with the new iOS version too. * iOS 6 gets released to existing iPad and iPhone users to download, for free on September 19. Now for sales options & info: * Two colors, White & Black. The black is ALL black, even the edges. The white has a brushed aluminum edge. * iPhone 5 comes in 3 sizes, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB (same as the iPhone 4S) * Three pries, $199, $299, and $399 (same as every iPhone - nothing changes year to year). * Pre-orders start September 14th (Friday) and it ships to customers on September 21st (next Friday). Customers can also line up at stores on Sept 21 as well. In addition to the iPhone announcements, Apple had a big music related announcement: New version of iTunes coming out that is deeply integrated with iCloud. Completely redesigned the interface of the application (finally!). Easier to browse your music & other content now. The new iTunes version will come out in late October. Other announcements: iPod shuffle: $49, 2GB New iPad nano: * Small iPod with a tiny color touch screen. * 5.4 mm thick. * 2.5" screen * It has Music, Video, Fitness, Podcasts, Photos and Radio as its apps. * Comes in 7 colors: Silver, Black, Purple, Green, Blue, Lime, and Red. * FM tuner integrated. * Widescreen video * Built-in pedometer for working out. * Bluetooth * Uses the new Lightning connector. * 30 hours of music playback on a single charge * $149 price, 16GB New iPod touch: * 6.1 mm thin * 88 grams * Same 4" Retina display from the iPhone 5. * Will get the A5 chip (same processor as the iPhone 4S) * 40 hours of music playback, about 8 hours of video * 5 megapixel camera, hybrid IR filter, five-element lens, f/2.4 aperture * Bluetooth 4.0 with LE, * 802.11 a/b/g/n * 802.11n 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz * Up to 150 Mbps * AirPlay mirroring * Gains support for Siri. * 5 colors * Support for a "loop". Attachable wristband for kids. * $299 32GB, $399 64GB (Colors) New earbuds, called "EarPods": * They made 3D scans of hundreds of ears to come up with a new design. * New noise canceling technology. * Should be more comfortable. * Better microphone

Cosmo, the Hacker ‘God’ Who Fell to Earth

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Mat Honan, at Wired's Gadget Lab:

“I called Netflix and it was so easy,” he chuckles. “They said, ‘What’s your name?’ and I said, ‘Todd [Redacted],’ gave them his e-mail, and they said, ‘Alright your password is 12345,’ and I was signed in. I saw the last four digits of his credit card. That’s when I filled out the Windows Live password-reset form, which just required the first name and last name of the credit card holder, the last four digits, and the expiration date.” After Mat fell victim to similar social engineering miscreants weeks ago, he has begun investigating how widespread this issue is. What he has found, through a goldmine source, is that this sort of thing is prevalent within the industry. This is a must read article. I applaud Mat for exposing these security issues and hope the MANY companies mentioned in this article will take action to close these vulnerabilities within their systems.

JP Morgan Estimates That New iPhone Could Boost GDP By 0.5 Percent

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Call me skeptical given that it comes from JP Morgan (I distrust any mainstream Wall St. analysts given their track record) but if this is true, that would be crazy. Tim Reid, at Reuters:

Feroli laid out his math. J.P. Morgan's analysts expect Apple to sell around 8 million iPhone 5s in the fourth quarter. They expect the sales price to be about $600. With about $200 in discounted import component costs, the government can factor in $400 per phone into its measure of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter. Feroli said the estimate of between a quarter to a half point of annualized GDP "seems fairly large, and for that reason should be treated skeptically." But, he added, "we think the recent evidence is consistent with this projection." Again, that's crazy - but cool if true.