Posts

Showing posts from November, 2008

Perfect for Whom?

Image
Mad Men is one of my favorite shows, so much so that I don't even trust it to the perfect television nanny that is TiVo. The series is an iPhone obsession I treat myself to for my Metro North commute, which runs parallel to the Ossining-to-Grand Central Terminal route Don Draper take when he bothers to go home (which isn't often, as it happens). I don't need to explain the obsession to people in the know. But I have some personal reasons, too: It takes place at a time in my native New York City that was a Golden Age, during the afterglow of World War II when the Greatest Generation was giving way to a bunch of Boomers who would shepard this nation to a period of great prosperity and fairness. It was the Boomers who decided that Gays were not "perverts" -- as described by one Mad Man -- and who changed the world just enough so that a black man who's greatest realistic aspiration might have been to operate an elevator at Sterling Cooper could now imagine bec

Watching Obama

President-elect Barack Obama is announcing his economic team, and taking questions, as I write. He is doing his very best to maintain the fiction that there is only one President of the United States at one time, and that he is not it. It is difficult not to see the night-and-day difference in this appearance and those in similar situations by many past and current holders of the office. It's easy to still be wowed by the man; he will be handled with kid gloves for a while, especially until he is actually president in fact. When Keith Olbermann and especially Chris Matthews lose their youthful crushes on Obama then we'll see the sparks that are necessary to keep everyone honest and working hard. But, watching Obama's first press conference as whatever he is, I had a thought: As well as he worked the room to get elected, and to achieve all the pre-conditional things that positioned him to vie for that office, Obama has been the recipent of some incredibly good luck. When he

Wired-o-Nomics: Too Big to Succeed?

It seems like forever but it has actually been only been 52 days since Congress thought the better of providing any bailout money to financial institutions to stave off global economic ruin. They heard the arguments for and against, checked the election calendar, and voted down a $750 billion package. The market immediately tanked . The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 600 points the next day to close at 10,365 (which frankly seems pretty bullish these days). So lawmakers took another look at it. They heard the arguments for and against, checked the election calendar, watched with as much amusement as the rest of us I hope when John McCain "suspended" his campaign to take charge of things, and voted up a $750 billion package. The market immediately tanked. On Thursday the Dow was down 33% from the day the original bailout plan was rejected a mere seven weeks earlier. This is called, in polite company, the law of unintended consequences. It’s called less pleasant th

Wired-o-Nomics: Wall Street Bonuses and Abortions

Ever since Congress threw $700 billion at financial institutions to help prop up the economy there have been a handful of reports about idiotic corporate expenditures , like $500,000 off-sites. These incidents speak to a massive disconnect with reality and create a public relations challenge but, like congressional earmarks, the money involved is relatively insignificant . More serious is the question of whether Wall Street Masters of the Universe should get bonuses this year, at least at those institutions receiving taxpayer money. These year-end bonuses involve staggering amounts: in 2006, USA Today estimated that the collective pool was just a hair under $24 billion , which "works out to an average bonus of $137,580 for every person employed in the financial services industry." In ordinary times we mere mortals may merely be disgusted by this sort of excess. This year, it isn't just about other people's money. Now, it’s ours. And our representatives have a comp

Hits & Misses on MSNBC

Image
Contessa Brewer on set, MSNBC Originally uploaded by John C Abell On Saturday I made two appearances on MSNBC, subject Barack Obama -- the tech president. I gratefully accepted the Town Car for the 30-mile trip and brought the fam to along for a day in the Big City, punctuated by my two brief appearances on the TV. It was a quiet day in the studio: We had the green room to ourselves (though a page told us that Beyonce was in the building for her SNL gig later that day) and the halls were mostly empty, except for several tours ambling by perhaps disappointed there wasn't anyone famous in the green room. I try to be casual about these things, the better to suppress the nerves. But this was only my second time around as a talking head and I may have come off as a wee bit too casual. In makeup, a woman who clearly worked there and was going to be on the air sometime soon graciously walked over and introduced herself as I was about to be layered with foundation. "Hi! I'm Conte

A Tribute to Greatness

Image
“Great” is one of those words that we simply use too often. Like the phrases some Oxford people think we have all heard enough , loose usage has devalued it into a pejorative, turning "great" into a lesser compliment than the equally diluted "awesome." I have a soft spot for greatness. It is the genuine weakness that a parent has for a child or any one of us for a savior. I will spare myself further humiliation by mentioning no objects of my admiration. Except for one. A few months ago a great man, friend and colleague died. David Mitchell and I collaborated in a world that had yet to coin the phrase “virtual meeting." In my 26 years at Reuters, I never met him or even saw a picture of him. That is, until someone else I have never met and do not even know provided me with a happy snap of Mitchell in 1976, three years before our first encounter. Last June I wrote a remembrance of Mitchell on a Reuters alumni site , and repost it here in a slightly different for

Voting.

Image
Voting Machine Originally uploaded by John C Abell Voting today was the easiest experience I've ever had: no lines, no poll watchers, lots of friendly volunteers. (Also, no free coffee or "I voted!" stickers, but you can't have it all.) Our district is sparsely populated; we are told that there are 800 registered voters here in the 11th district of Westchester County, where we have lived for only a few weeks. About 500 is the most any have ever turned out to vote, they tell us; I ask if they expect to break that record today, and I get forceful, pronounced, silent nods. Another reason why it was so easy? The voting machine was a fine beast of a thing, a relic from a simpler time when machines did the work that circuit and main boards are expected to now, with disputable success . Some solutions are better mechanical than electronic, I believe, and this is one of those areas (also, try digging a ditch with a computer). The machine's caretaker was delight

Now Would Be a Good Time to Rob the Place

Through a series of events -- some personal, some professional, some opportunistic -- the bureau will be empty tommorow, with all of us scattered about takin' care of business remotely. It's no big deal; our brosephs over at Ars Technica don't even have an office. Their newsroom is an IRC channel, which is much cooler than we will ever be. We do all have iPhones now, however, and there is serious talk about all us having beards, too, which would be tough on Meghan . It sort of all started with that video by CEOs telling people not to work for an hour and vote . I passed on doing a story about it because most states (or all) require employers to give their workers time off to vote, so, thanks for nothing. And why give Trump more air time. More to the point, most people don't live near where they work, so having an hour off to vote only makes sense if you come to work late or leave early. And Chris said he'd need six hours to vote, and that pretty much kills the day.

Shred for the Lord

Image
We don't do a lot of gadget-type stuff out of the wired.com bureau in New York. Lately it's starting to show. Eliot Van Buskirk, who edits our music blog, Listening Post , has had a toy on his desk for weeks. "Guitar Praise" promises to let you "Strap on the guitar and play along with your favorite bands -- tobyMac, Skillet, Stellar Kart, Newsboys -- and more." Yes, this is "Guitar Hero" for the devote. We can't wait (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) to fire it up and experience the "Unparalleled Game Play" which includes: Onscreen lyrics emphasize Christian themes (which makes perfect sense), and Power duel mode sends surprises to mess with your opponent's play (which sounds downright unChristian to me) This thing has become the Christmas gift you don't want but can't bring yourself to tell mom you'll never play with ever and would die if your friends found out you had one. But the truth is that, er, mor

I Couldn't Be Less Proud

A couple of years before I was axed at Reuters in a reorganization putsch our very savvy Editor in Chief was asked a long question at one of those town-hall-like meetings with the staff I can't imagine any senior manager looks forward to. The gist was, what do we have to be happy about, what with all the cuts and lack of optimism. His answer was brief: "Be happy you have a job." The questioner (one of my direct reports) and I, and our four other colleagues didn't appreciate how much we should have taken that particular advice to heart. After all, we were the golden children whose product had unbelievable margins well after the internet news contraction: we were the innovators, the go-to trusted team. It can happen to anybody. It's happening now, again, in Silicon V/Alley, as VCs keep their powder dry in an industry where nurturing the possible is still a lengthy and expensive proposition. We are keeping track of this, in a horse-race sort of way, with the wired.c

Hello, I Must Be Going

The careful reader (you two know who you are) have probably noticed a couple of things: this blog looks a little different, and I haven't been posting much lately. Let's tackle the easy one first: I meant to change the look, but did not do so an orderly fashion by, you know, saving templates and boring stuff like that. So there are design elements in this off-the-shelf template which I will probably change, because I can't leave well enough alone. But the idea is to get back to basics and shake off all the load-heavy eye candy crap. The tougher one: I used to tease my good friend Katie King about not blogging. I thought it was especially funny that she didn't blog because she a) taught her GWU journalism students that they had an obligation to blog, and b) because she was also a corporate consultant whose mission was to evangelize to her clients on the need to ... blog. My goads were unfair (the best ones are). She was working, hard, and I wasn't, at all. I needed t