AT&T Is Still Trying To Fuck You

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So AT&T has this new “microcell” product out, and I think it’s pretty poorly understood. I say that because there’s no way rational people would accept AT&T’s pricing if they understood how it works and what it does.

The pitch is simple: If you put one of these $149 devices in your home, you’ll have better cell service there. This part is true, but the next part is nefarious: AT&T wants to charge you, one way or another, for the calls that are routed over this device.

If you have no idea how they work, this probably seems reasonable, but let Uncle Heathen explain something to you: The AT&T Microcell is an example of the femtocell class of devices. They work by being, basically, a short-range cellular-to-Internet bridge. The device, about the size of a wifi router, works as a short range cell tower that covers (basically) your home, and which only works for certain phones. It then routes the calls placed by those (in-range) phones not over the cell network, but instead over your broadband connection and thence to the AT&T mothership for completion.

That’s a pretty neat trick, obviously, but leave it to AT&T to turn a technology boon into a way to rape their customers one more time. Calls routed via femtocell never touch the AT&T wireless network, and yet AT&T wants to either count those minutes against your allotment, or charge you a monthly fee ($20) for “unlimited” Microcell minutes.

That’s astonishingly brazen, and completely full of shit. An iPhone on another carrier simply cannot get here quickly enough. I know they’re all sociopathic greedheads, but I’m tired of giving this particular pile of jackasses my money.

I’m really sick of this

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Not as sick as I was before, when it came with a host of other policies I found equally repugnant, but the Obama administration’s position on state secrets is just as antithetical to liberty as Bush’s. Frankly, I blame folks like Bush, Cheney, Addington, etc., who promulgated the notion of the imperial presidency so ceaselessly for eight years. Presidents of any stripe are loathe to release power; I noted at the time that such power grabs were likely to be permanent, and this is ongoing proof thereof.

Dammit.

Usually, lists are stupid

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But this list of the 50 worst ideas in sports history is pretty good, especially, including the DH, penalty kicks, Caddyshack II, Boise State’s blue field, sudden death OT, dog fighting, charging the mound against Nolan Ryan, and the BCS, about which they say:

Here’s a good rule of thumb for “how do I know if I’ve got a bad idea”:

If — in this highly politicized world in which professional politicians guard every word they say, intent upon offending no one — the President of the United States is willing to go on national television and say that your system is bad and you need a playoff system, well, you may have a bad idea.

No. Just no.

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We do not approve of this whisky:

James Gilpin is a designer and researcher who works on the implementation of new biomedical technologies. He’s also got type 1 diabetes, where his body doesn’t produce enough insulin to regulate blood sugar levels.

So he’s started a project called Gilpin Family Whisky, which turns the sugar-rich urine of elderly diabetics into a high-end single malt whisky, suitable for export.

We’re so fucking doomed

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TBogg: Sigh.

It is almost like the terrorists unleashed an unstoppable stupidity toxin into American airspace on 9/11. Yes, I know people like this have always existed. but in the good old days they at least had the decency to stay indoors gorging on Slim Jims and 84oz buckets of Mr. Pibb while watching Raymond reruns.

Lies and the Lying Liars Redux

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Fred Clark over at Slacktivist lays the righteous smackdown on the Liar Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Perkins appeared on Meet the Press opposite David Boies in the wake of the Prop 8 decision a week or so ago. Boies made absolute mincemeat of Perkins’ claims on camera:

“It’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions — appeal to people’s fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don’t exist or don’t say what you say they do. In a court of law you’ve got to come in and you’ve got to support those opinions. You’ve got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature or in debates where they can’t be cross-examined.

“But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence. There weren’t any of those studies. There weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science.

“… A witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court, you can’t do that. And that’s what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.”

And that’s where Fred starts going to town:

In response, the Liar Tony Perkins, unable to support his assertions because they were not true, simply reasserted them. To any reasonable observer, this was not credible and the Liar Tony Perkins was exposed, yet again, as the Liar Tony Perkins.

But reasonable observers are not the Liar Tony Perkins’ target audience. “You can fool some of the people all of the time …” Abraham Lincoln said, and the Liar Tony Perkins never stuck around to hear the rest. He had found his calling.

Go read the whole thing.

Dear Mississippi: Please stop making me say “GODDAMMIT!”

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The middle school in Nettleton, Mississippi, has rules limiting class offices by race.

Grades 6, 7, and 8 all have four offices (president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, and reporter). Black students may run for 6th grade reporter, 7th grade secretary-treasurer, and 8th grade reporter and vice president. The other offices are reserved for white students.

(As you might expect, Nettleton is in the ass-end of nowhere even by Mississippi standards, somewhere south of Tupelo. Which is also, come to think of it, the same area of the state that gave us the Constance McMillen/Itawamba prom fiasco. What the hell is wrong with you people in northeastern Mississippi?)

Your Friday Awesome

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This just smokes: Talking Heads, “Born Under Punches,” live performance, from nineteen eighty. That’s Adrian Belew, apparently, on guitar, and “oh my God I can’t breathe Tina Weymouth looks so much like an angel. A gorgeous, muscular, platinum blonde angel” on bass. (Via Merlin, who is also the source of the Tina quote.)

This astounding sort of complex multilayered music is still arresting and unusual today, but compare it to, say, the top records of 1980 to get an idea of how weird it was thirty years ago. Make time for this today, especially if your name is “Frank” or “Mike” or “Rick.”

You knew it was inevitable

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Lady Gaga Kidnaps Commissioner Gordon:

GOTHAM CITY — Supervillain Lady Gaga brazenly abducted Commissioner James Gordon from a charity fundraiser Tuesday, leaving police baffled and the citizens of Gotham fearing for their safety. Known for her outlandish costumes and geometric polygon hair, the criminal madwoman made a daring escape from Arkham Asylum last week and has been taunting authorities by interrupting television broadcasts ever since. “If you ever want to see Commissioner Gordon again, you’ll do exactly as I say,” Lady Gaga said from her secret lair, adjusting her angular yellow Tyvek and spandex dress as henchmen danced menacingly around the bound commissioner. While the kidnapping occurred at stately Wayne Manor, home of playboy jet-setter Bruce Wayne, the eccentric billionaire was not available for comment.

KTRU, Where Are You?

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So Rice sold the parts of KTRU that make it a “radio station” (transmitter, tower) to UH so that, ostensibly, UH can have two public radio outlets: One for full-time classical music, and one for full-time NPR news programming — all for the low, low price of $9.5 million.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I didn’t go to either school, and I’ve never been a real fan of KTRU beyond just sort of appreciating it existed — there’s just so much amateur, narrow-cast radio I have time for in my life. Plus, my own radio time has pretty much been “in the car only” for twenty years; at home, there are just way better options than radio.

All that said, the shitsplosion around this development seems to miss some points, and I am of course just egotistical enough to think I have something to add by enumerating them.

Protesting to UH is irrelevant
They’re just buying what Rice had on sale. Rice is the organization to be pissed at if you’re upset about this, but the way Rice’s administrators have gone about this probably means not even a focused and widespread alumni protest could stop it.
Rice doesn’t care
See above. Unless you went there and give them (lots of) money, my bet is they don’t give a rat’s ass what you think. KTRU only had 50,000 watts because of a goofy event 20 years ago; in many ways, that may have doomed them, since a more traditionally-powered college station probably wouldn’t have been as interesting to UH.
Shitting on classical music is a nonstarter
Some KTRU partisans are upset that their baby is getting smothered to make way for stuffy old classical music. This is not an argument that will make you any friends. There *is* a legitimate argument to be made that Houston needs better classical programming (KUHF rarely plays anything interesting), and also a legitimate argument to be made that a national format for yet another station stifles local voices.
Shitting on NPR as “mainstream?” Really?
KTRU fans upset that they’re losing local space on the dial have a point, but insisting that NPR is somehow just another part of the broken mainstream news landscape is pretty silly. It’s the only national news outlet with anything like both journalistic standards and a progressive point of view, and Houston’s been poorer because of how little of this content KUHF airs.
That said, a call-in current-events show will suck no matter what the audience
NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” is only marginally less cringeworthy than any right-wing show. Exchange crystal-gazing moonbats for cryptofascists and you’re most of the way there. There’s a reason those people on the phone aren’t on the radio already.
On the plus side, afternoon naps seem more likely
Seriously, which is more soporific: Ambien or Diane Rehm?
I have very little hope that anything programmed at UH won’t suck
I’m sick to death of their local “news” breaks during NPR programs, wherein some trainee reads a “local story” that is *obviously* a barely-edited press release. I’ve groused for years that I’d pay money to get a pure national NPR feed with NO local voices at all because of how awful the KUHF local content is; it was a tremendous shock to me when I moved here from **Tuscaloosa, Alabama** and discovered that big-city Houston’s NPR affiliate was worse than Alabama’s in every measurable way. If we’re losing KTRU, I’m all for getting a full-time NPR station, but I’m nearly certain local voices at UH will insist on interrupting the professional programming with local blather there, too.
That goes for the classical station, too
Ibid.
Wait. You’re telling me people still give a shit about terrestrial radio?
This is the elephant in the room. Radio is an almost total wasteland. I never listen to anything but NPR or, sometimes (depending on programming) KPFT, and that’s only ever in the car. In my office, my own music or podcasts or Internet radio brings me vastly more choice than any local station could. If I spent more time in my car, I’d pony up for Sirius for the same reason. All the KTRU love is great, but I think it’s mostly nostalgia and not grounded in a real worry about scarcity of, say, easily accessible outlets for weird jazz or Greek music or whatever.

Draft 1: This is one of those times I’m sure I’m going to edit this later.

I love LieBlog so much.

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David Lynch and Joss Whedon to Collaborate on Sex and the City Remake:

David Lynch and Joss Whedon announced in an interview with SkyMall today that they are embarking on a long-awaited, must-see collaboration–a remake of Sex and the City! The pilot episode will be shown on HBO on September 10, 2011.

The remake, entitled “Sex and the Countryside” will be a faithful plotline-by-plotline, problem-by-problem, episode-by-episode remake of Sex and the City, but will be set in the 1620s English countryside, and every character will be played by a sheep, except God, who will be played by Steve Buscemi.

Since fashion played such a large role in the original series, SkyMall saw it fit to ask whether the sheep will wear clothes. Whedon laughed, and Lynch rolled his eyes and commented “Every role except that of God will be played ovinely. Fashion had a role; fashion too will be played ovinely.”

“Ovinely means, played by a sheep,” offered Whedon, helpfully.