Young People In The Recession: The War Against Youth

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Stephen Marche, at Esquire:

David Frum, former George W. Bush speechwriter, had the guts to acknowledge that the Tea Party's combination of expensive entitlement programs and tax cuts is something entirely different from a traditional political program: "This isn't conservatism: It's a going-out-of-business sale for the Baby Boom generation." The economic motive is growing ever more naked, and has nothing to do with any principle that could be articulated by Goldwater or Reagan, or indeed with any principle at all. The political imperative is to preserve the economic cloak of unreality that the Boomers have wrapped themselves in. If you read nothing else this week, please read this article. I apologize in advance at how much it will depress you but hopefully it will make you angry.

Why Won’t TV Sports Blackouts Just Die Already?

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Gedeon Maheux asks on his site, Gedblog, Why Won’t TV Sports Blackouts Just Die Already?:> "Since they were first televised in the late 60′s and 70′s, sports such as baseball and football have been subject to broadcast blackout restrictions. Originally designed to get people up off the couch, sell tickets and into the home team’s stadiums, blackouts were designed to help ensure a healthy bottom line for both league owners and those with a stake in local television markets. Stadiums cost millions of dollars to build and back in the day blackouts made sense, but not any longer. In today’s age of interconnectivity, smart phones, place-shifted broadcasts and on-demand programming, fans are fed up with the NFL & MLB’s blackouts." I wholeheartedly agree.

It's Easy To Steal A Bike In NYC

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Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around NYC and finds out that it wasn't hard. He even does this right in front of a police station:

I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which I first tried with my brother Van in 2005. I locked my own bike up and then proceeded to steal it, using brazen means -- like a giant crowbar -- in audacious locations, including directly in front of a police station. I wanted to find out whether onlookers or the cops would intervene. What you see here in my film are the results. I would guess that this may be easy to do in most large cities, what with out apathetic most pedestrians are to what is going on around them.

Rachel Gilmore's 100 MPH Fastball

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Andy Ihnatko, at Andy's Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth. He writes about a topic I seldom care about, Opera, but makes me care about this story:

Kim, an elite professional, accelerates through every curve. She seems to have no limitations; every note she sings is a conscious choice and she’s in full control of her instrument throughout. And keep in mind that as impressive as this performance was, it was all in a day’s work for her. She would do it again and again and again throughout the show’s run. So. One night, Kim got sick and Rachele Gilmore was forced to make her Met stage debut on just three hours’ notice. You must read his article, and watch the two videos embedded within it.

Half of U.S. Homes Own Apple Products

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Half of U.S. homes own Apple products – USATODAY.com:

"That's more than 55 million homes with at least one iPhone, iPad, iPod or Mac computer. And one-in-10 homes that aren't currently in that group plan to join it in the next year. But Apple doesn't have to worry about brand saturation any time soon. Americans don't stop with just one device. Homes that own least one Apple, own an average of three. Overall, the average household has 1.6 Apple devices, with almost one-quarter planning to buy at least one more in the next year. "It's a fantastic business model — the more of our products you own, the more likely you are to buy more," says Jay Campbell, a vice president of Hart Research Associates, which conducts the CNBC survey along with Bill McInturff. "Planned obsolescence has always been a part of the technology industries sales model, but Apple has taken it to a whole new level.""

(Via USA Today.)

Oral History of The Sopranos

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Oral History of The Sopranos:

Next month's Vanity Fair has a Saturday worthy longread, an oral history of The Sopranos. It's been about 5 years since the show ended, and for the most part, the major figures have not had much to say about it. There's nothing groundbreaking, but it's good if you were a fan. On the response to the show. TERENCE WINTER (writer, executive producer): One F.B.I. agent told us early on that on Monday morning they would get to the F.B.I. office and all the agents would talk about The Sopranos. Then they would listen to the wiretaps from that weekend, and it was all Mob guys talking about The Sopranos, having the same conversation about the show, but always from the flip side. We would hear back that real wiseguys used to think that we had somebody on the inside. They couldn't believe how accurate the show was.

(Via kottke.org)