Every Pop Song On the Radio

I dis­cov­ered a bit from Clay Shirky, talk­ing about how tele­vi­sion was the way post-griminess indus­trial soci­ety chose to cope with free time. Included was the bit that enough time is wasted watch­ing tele­vi­sion to pro­duce all of Wikipedia 2000 times over.

Just… Wow

By select­ing Tim Geithner as his Treasury sec­re­tary, Barack Obama has opted for a fig­ure who plau­si­bly rep­re­sents change while also offer­ing a high degree of con­ti­nu­ity with both the Paulson Treasury and its Clinton admin­is­tra­tion pre-decessors. Krishna Guha, Geithner ready for top job as Treasury chief, Financial Times, 2009-11-23 How can you read that …

Elections

[Disclosure: I dropped a day’s pay on Obama’s cam­paign about a week before the pas­tor thing hap­pened, and hope I never feel com­pelled to write about this elec­tion again.] Matt Taibbi is (as usual, and in spite of his ridicu­lous hump­ing of Hunter Thompson’s legacy) repeat­edly cor­rect in his assess­ment of American pol­i­tics as a bunch …