With crack talent like this, it ought to be easy to see why we never watch local news.

Pregnant Woman Relieved to Learn Her Rape Was Illegitimate.

Though she was initially upset following the brutal sexual assault last month that left her pregnant, victim Martha Byars told reporters she was relieved Sunday to learn from Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that her ability to conceive her unwanted child proves she was not, in fact, legitimately raped.

“Being violently coerced into having sex was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, so I take comfort in knowing it wasn’t actually rape,” Byars said[.]

If you’ve ever forwarded something on Facebook or Twitter or your blog that came from a single, perhaps dodgy source, well, you should totally read this.

Why does the IT industry continue to listen to Gartner? Same goes for Forrester and, in my experience, pretty much all the rest of those “analysis” firms. They’re almost never right. They miss big trends. You’d be better off asking my grandmother, and she’s been dead since 2001.

(h/t Gruber.)

Just watch it.

(Related.)

At The Awl: “After being ejected from the Zoo, and then the park altogether, anti-Semitic Elmo was taken away in an ambulance for psychiatric observation.”

As you do.

“Completely Awesome Ventriloquists”. No, seriously. Longtime Heathen may recall she’s appeared here before (though, sadly, that video link is dead — she’s the one with the monkey), but Nina Conti is back with a ridiculously entertaining new bit of meta-ventriloquism. Enjoy.

Longtime Heathen Chris Mohney — who is now a big fancy muckety-muck over at that Tumblr thing — apparently still has time to pen amusing reviews of the artifacts of parenthood. This time around, it’s Reviews of My Son’s TV Shows: A Toddler’s Dad Adjusts To His New Video Diet.

Enjoy.

Heathen Rob notes that, despite the obvious nature of the premise, its use in a well-executed ad is actually novel.

Al Pacino and Chris Walken, apparently just hanging out.

Harry Shearer’s spot-on Mike Wallace in this early 80s SNL snort is second only to Martin Short’s Nathan Thurm, Esq, but the whole of the piece is an absolute pitch-perfect 60 Minutes send-up.

Congress is considering yet another Internet-fucking bill. Behave accordingly.

The Atlantic’s excellent In Focus feature this week is about NASA’s Project Gemini. The shots are amazing; take a minute and look. The Gemini astronauts included many who would go on to the Apollo program, including household names like Neil Armstrong — but also Edward White (the subject of the first photo and the first American to walk in space) and Gus Grissom, who would die in a launch pad fire with Apollo 1 only a few years later.

The group also included then-34-year-old John Young; he looks like a distillation of “astronaut” to me. Young would go on to walk on the moon with Apollo 16 in 1972 — and pilot the first shuttle flight in 1981. He still lives in Houston, apparently.

This piece over at TechDirt, of all places, is one of the smarter reactions to the Mike Daisey foolishness — it, unlike most others, addresses the “David Sedaris exception.” The difference, which I think is real, lies with intent.

Worth your time.

I refer, of course, to the New Yorker‘s approach to the iPad. One had to buy individual issues. There was no provision for subscriber access, or discounts. It was awful double-dipping of the worst kind.

Then, all of a sudden, it got a lot better. Now subscribers can read nearly any issue of the magazine on their iPad. That’s a great boon, especially for travelers like me who may have several issues “in progress.”

But the goodness really stops there, and in the time since they made this shift it’s become clear that Conde Nast has made some very, very bad choices around this presentation.

I would write more, but it turns out that David Wheeler has pretty much already done that in a very detailed and approachable piece.

(Via Fireball.)

You know you want to read every Bart Simpson chalkboard message.

When, exactly, did they become shamelessly inflammatory?

Look, if reasonable people reading or listening to your work could come away with the impression that you’re reporting facts, just saying “What I do is not journalism” doesn’t get you off the hook.

It just makes you a weasel and a jackass.

Update: “Not a journalist” link fixed.

The Encyclopedia Britannica announced this week that they would no longer publish a paper version of their 244-year-old enterprise.

I believe Josh Marshall has nailed down the proper reaction to this over on Twitter:

With demise of encyclo britanica, sad my kids will never know a hard 2 navigate, poorly written, 300 lb set books that got outdated each yr

Warner Home Entertainment has a new plan for how consumers can easily and safely — and affordably! — convert their DVDs to digital files for use on other devices! Let us rejoice!

Public Knowledge has the punchline and a takedown, because this approach is so hilariously far of the mark as to make us wonder if it’s some sort of performance art.

For the lazy (and who among Heathen Nation isn’t?), here’s their plan:

1. Have DVD
2. Drive to local brick-and-mortar store offering “Disc to Digital” services
3. Pay shop for conversion
4. Hope conversation clerk knows what the hell they’re doing
5. Wait for conversion
6. Receive digital copy almost certainly locked so as to play only on studio-approved devices
7. Drive home
8. Hope it works

What people are actually already doing, of course, is somewhat simpler:

1. Have DVD
2. Download free software
3. Run conversion to commonly accepted format for use on laptop, iPad, etc. without regard to studio preferences, and without having to pay any more money.

The studios, of course, hate that this second alternative exists, and that people do it all the time despite the fact that it’s technically illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

It seems unlikely that “Disc to Digital” will be very successful, but I could be wrong. Some people are voting for Santorum, after all.

Somehow, Tyrese Gibson came across an email address he thought was for the ex-girlfriend of Kanye West, when in fact it belonged to and entirely different Amber. Madcap hilarity does in fact ensue.

…that I whiffed a golden opportunity yesterday re: the deaths of certain jackasses, but in truth I was just super busy.

We are better off without the likes of Andrew Breitbart on this earth, and who knows? Maybe God agreed. Breitbart created controversies for personal gain by selectively and dishonestly editing videotapes, and then calling it “journalism.” He was more interested in personal enrichment and a broken, fundamentally selfish and un-American ideology than in anything else. I was criticized in private correspondence yesterday for dancing on his grave, but the likes of Breitbart are a cancer on American discourse. He and his ilk encouraged the worst impulses of their audience and, in so doing, led them to false conclusions as a party trick. To be worthy of the title “journalist,” you need to be working to inform and educate the public. What Breitbart did was sick, craven manipulation designed to float his own boat and aid his ideological fellow travelers, and he did it in a way that makes Murdoch’s Fox look subtle.

I am sad for his family, and whatever friends he may have had. I am sad he made the choice to use what was clearly an exemplary intellect in such a morally bankrupt way. I am sad that his financial success means we will see more of this kind of media hooliganism, not less.

But I am absolutely not sad that he will make no more such noise.

Every time I hear about another social network I “need” to check out, I roll my eyes a little. Granted, by writing here I maintain a pretty rich online presence, and things like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc., are first and foremost about allowing people too untechnical to create a real blog some level of access in this still-new medium, so to a first approximation I probably should just welcome all these new tools. But who has the time?

The truly eye-rolly thing is that there are some folks who somehow insist they’re participating meaningfully in so many of these networks as to defy belief. Really? You maintain a blog, a Twitter feed, a Facebook wall, a Tumblr, and post 10 shots a day to Instagram? How, exactly? (And if the answer is “I put the same content on all of them,” well, what’s the point?)

So let’s just say that this little parody hits me exactly right, and if you share my view on these things, it may please you as well.

Via Brent Simmons. Even better is the beneficiary of the joke, btw.

(For my part, I do Twitter and Heathen almost exclusively. I’m on Facebook, but only minimally, and mostly at this point to easily communicate with family.)

Ze Frank is Bringing Back The Show.

Confused? Don’t know what this is? You’re in for a treat. Basically, Ze Frank did a brief online episode of commentary, music, comedy and general brilliance every weekday between 17 March 2006 and 17 March 2007. I linked to him often in that year. Now he wants to do some more. This is a good idea.

This is kind of huge. Basically, NPR is walking away from the whole bullshit “teach the controversy” style of reporting that refuses to make any judgements about arguments. You know what I mean: stories that end with the intellectual equivalent of “while sources at the Vatican insist scripture shows the Earth is the center of the universe”.

A journalist’s job isn’t to report what’s being said. It’s entirely possible one side really IS demonstrably full of shit; in fact, in American politics, it’s quite often the case, and quite often the Republicans doing the lying. And the only reason they get away with it is because news orgs are afraid to call them on their shit for fear of being branded “liberal” by Fox and its fellow-travelers.

Even NPR has been taken in by this false equivalency doctrine in the past; no more:

In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.

and

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.

I’m glad they’re returning to journalism. Or, as certain numbskull NYTimes editors called it, “vigilanteism for facts.”

MeFi points us to this post at Jezebel, about some rich alumna’s letter to the Smith College newspaper complaining about all the poor, nonwhite, lesbian students that are there now.

No, really. I’m not making this up. The letter closes with this:

I can tell you that the days of white, wealthy, upper-class students from prep schools in cashmere coats and pearls who marry Amherst men are over. This is unfortunate because it is this demographic that puts their name on buildings, donates great art and subsidizes scholarships.

Seriously.

Anyway, madcap hilarity ensues, predictably, but the single absolute best part is this comment at Jezebel itself that all by itself manages to redeem blog comments as a concept across the board:

Dear Place I Spent My Youth,

Things are not as good as they were when I was young, because my youth was the Best Time Ever.

I would like the world to reward me for my circumstances, despite the fact that I had nothing to do with them. They are still mine and I demand validation for them. Life is a game I won it, can’t you see that? Everyone loves me, or is intimidated by me, which means that everything is the way it should be.

The fact that you have shown approval to people who do not look like me, act like me, and are clearly not Life Winners like me hurts my feelings. Make them go away and restore my sense of superiority.

If you carry on including people based on their ability to thrive in an academic environment instead of their upper-class status, I will no longer be able to lord my credentials over other people. This will not stand.

Keep putting the cunt in country club,
Selfish Racist Homophobic Narcissist

That, gentle heathen, is a burn.

Stephen Colbert deliciously skewers the utter ridiculousness that is corporate marketing.

I am reminded of Bill Hicks prescription for marketing and advertising people. Seriously, if you spend your days making up bullshit like “Wheat Thins are for people who are actively seeking experiences,” you are a completely useless sack of meat who should drastically re-evaluate your life choices.

Hollywood would really like to have all sorts of extra tools, like SOPA and PIPA, to go with their colonization of the Justice department in the desperate pursuit of eradicating illegal content online.

For a whole host of reasons, that’s just not going to happen. People HAVE to be able to decrypt movies and music in order to watch them, and once they’re decrypted people will make copies. They’ll make backups, because media — either CD/DVD or hard drives — fails. They’ll transcode movies to watch on their phones and tablets. They’ll do these things because they should be able to do them, even though the MPAA would prefer it if you needed to re-buy your movies over and over in order to enjoy them on your TV, on your computer, and on your portable device.

Hollywood’s biggest problem isn’t piracy. Hollywood’s biggest problem is their own inability to treat their customers with anything other than contempt. Endless attempts to cash in at any point — like Sony’s move to jerk The Bodyguard off streaming services this week, because people will want to watch Whitney and maybe they can be convinced to BUY A BLU RAY instead — make it abundantly clear what they think of us, but one more excellent example is the ongoing usage of “release windows.”

The term describes the process of allowing properties to be available in certain ways only at certain times — maybe a movie is on Netflix for a while, but they’ll pull it off and flood the zone with BluRays if there’s a sequel coming, for example. And with television properties, the windowing rarely makes any sense at all.

Case in point, and the whole reason I’m writing this post, is what happened when the author of the Oatmeal tried to watch Game of Thrones. It’s very, very similar to what happened when Mrs Heathen and I tried to catch up on Battlestar Galactica before the final season was available. It beggars belief, really, that they make it this hard to give them money.

“Bound, naked in a Subaru: Valentine’s Day role-playing ends badly“. Via JWZ.

I shall put down my organic coffee and NPR tote so that I may type on my Mac with both hands to share with you that Ira Glass and Philip Glass are cousins, and that the former interviewed the latter for the former’s radio show.

Also:

This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do. This is the joke I didn’t do.

It’s that time of year again: the Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathesome Americans is, as always, spot on. I’d quote, but you should really just go read the whole thing.

Also, though: awesome.

No way I’m buying a damn Honda though. Please.

We’re sort of persistently on the edge of kicking any sort of bulk TV provider to the curb here at Heathen World HQ. We probably don’t watch enough shows to justify the $90 or $100 month DirecTV costs, and could probably get 85% of what we want for cheaper just buying it from iTunes, and fill the gap with an antenna or torrents, but right now that’s just a bit too much fiddly for us to make the leap. Wide online streaming availability and occasional $1.99 single-ep purchases have already made it completely unnecessary to hook up the 2nd tuner on the Tivo. It’s only a matter of time before such things obviate the first one, too.

But we’re not quite there yet. Fiddlyness aside, we’d also be screwed on (a) sports on cable (ie, college football, which admittedly won’t start again for 8 months) and (b) HBO, which is the one consistently bright spot on the dial. We would pay HBO $15 a month directly in a HEARTBEAT to get access without having to go through a middleman. Probably $20. Near as we can tell, nobody in the “channel bundler” business — not Dish, not DirecTV, and sure as shit not AT&T or the incumbent terrestrial cable companies — is really doing much of anything to justify their cut of the price. (To be perfectly honest, we feel the same way about pretty much everybody between us and the actual programming providers — local network affiliates could wither up and die for all we care, as long as we get national feed. (Frankly, we feel the same way about KUHF and NPR, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing (HDANCN?)).)

Anyway, the aforementioned Mr Zawinski (a famous-to-nerds Internet person, programmer, and Netscape millionaire cum night club owner) is in more or less exactly the same spot we’re in: standard definition service from DirecTV using a now-nearly-extinct version of the DirecTV-Tivo combo box that was the new hotness in 2002. It really is a nice way to get your TV, but they keep raising the rates for no good reason that I can see. The promised HD Tivo is still a pipe dream, at least in this market, and I will ditch DirecTV altogether before I use one of their bullshit braindead DVRs. And don’t even ask me about a bundled pile of crap from ATT or Comcast.

I think the answer is still, basically, hand on like we are for a bit longer. Bundled programming is a model that is under direct threat from other providers (Apple, Hulu, NetFlix, Amazon). Either DTV will figure out how to provide value in a post-scarcity world, or we’ll ditch them. But right now, the real sock in the face is that all this horseshit JWZ describes is being done by the clear frontrunner in terms of customer service.

That should tell you a LOT about TV service.

This AppleOutsider post takes note of the new MPAA-NetFlix agreement (wherein subscriber access to DVDs will be even further delayed, supposedly to encourage us to just buy the damn things instead), and notices something that should be obvious to the MPAA and everyone else now:

There is no delay for pirated copies of DVDs. There is no DRM. There are no bullshit unskippable warnings or commercials. In response to this supposedly existential threat, Hollywood is making easy access to their content harder, and encouraging folks to find another path. After all, iTunes succeeded because it was easier than piracy.

It really is amazing how fundamentally stupid this is, and how much it suggests an utter contempt for their audience. Make it easy, make it available, and we’ll pay to watch or listen to the things we like. It’s that simple. Start putting hoops in the way, and they just encourage mechanisms of distribution outside their control.

Look, it’s real simple: they hate us:

The MPAA is a hate-sink, a front to protect its members from negative PR. But unlike the similarly purposed Lodsys (and many others), it’s easy to see who the MPAA represents: Disney, Sony Pictures, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Brothers. (Essentially, all of the major movie studios.)

The MPAA studios hate us. They hate us with region locks and unskippable screens and encryption and criminalization of fair use. They see us as stupid eyeballs with wallets, and they are entitled to a constant stream of our money. They despise us, and they certainly don’t respect us.

Yet when we watch their movies, we support them.

They use our money to buy laws that are hostile to us, and will continue to do so until either the succeed or we get real campaign finance reform.

More here, which includes a video you should watch.

But the protests DID make a mark; see here, and marvel at the ability of folks like Chris Dodd and Lamar Smith to lie as though they have no shame whatsoever.

Keep paying attention. Keep watching.

Should Vanity Fair Be A Spelling Vigilante?

Reproduced here in full, just because it’s so awesome I can’t stand for you not to see it:

Just as New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane is concerned whether his newspaper is printing lies or the truth, we here at V.F. are looking for reader input on whether and when Vanity Fair should spell “words” correctly in the stories we publish.

One example: the word “maintenance” seems like it should only have one “a” in it. It should be “maintenence,” right? But it’s not. So is it our job as reporters and editors to spell it correctly?

Another example: who decides “Michele Bachmann” should be spelled with one “l” in “Michele” and two “n”s in “Bachmann”? I’ve never seen it spelled like that in any other circumstance, so should we print it just because that’s how she spells it? I don’t know.

As one reader recently wrote in a message to the spelling editor:

“My question is what role the magazine’s news coverage should play with regard to stupidly spelled words. In general, Vanity Fair spells stuff correctly, but sometimes words just look wrong. ‘Broccoli,’ for instance, looks dumb. If a magazine’s overarching goal is to be correct, but something makes you do a double-take because it just looks so bad, should Vanity Fair just let these oddities stand?”

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can Vanity Fair do this in a way that is objective and fair? Whose job is it to decide what words look strange and what words just look fancy? And at what point does an exotic extra consonant become distracting?

Via TechDirt, we find something very clever from Tim O’Reilly. Here’s the core bit:

I found myself profoundly disturbed by something that seems to me to go to the root of the problem in Washington: the failure to correctly diagnose the problem we are trying to solve, but instead to accept, seemingly uncritically, the claims of various interest groups. The offending paragraph is as follows:

“Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders.”

In the entire discussion, I’ve seen no discussion of credible evidence of this economic harm. There’s no question in my mind that piracy exists, that people around the world are enjoying creative content without paying for it, and even that some criminals are profiting by redistributing it. But is there actual economic harm?

Seriously. Show us. Remember, O’Reilly is a publisher. He makes his living in the content business. But all the hollering about piracy assumes that every pirated copy is a lost sale, and that’s never been the case. Assuming that the entertainment industry is correct about its supposed losses, or even that it’s being honest at all, is just a bad idea — this is a group that has fought every innovation tooth and nail going back a hundred years or more. They hated player pianos, they hated radio, they hated cassettes, they hated the VCR. Why should we think they’re on the level now?

Just go watch this.

More here.

Just because these bills seem to be losing steam doesn’t mean we can ignore them. Call your congresspeople. Tell them to withdraw support from SOPA and PIPA. Tell them you’ll vote the issue.

Update: One more thing. Go read this post about what the President is asking of the tech world, and what our collective response should be.

Especially if you’re concerned about SOPA. And doubly especially if you have no idea what SOPA is:

The Coming War on General Purpose Computing

Yesterday I ranted about Arthur Brisbane’s inane worry about the Times becoming “truth vigilantes.” Fred “Slacktivist” Clark, a longtime member of the journalism tribe, has some choice words for Arty:

OK, Brisbane seems unclear on both sides of “All the news” and “fit to print,” so let’s review.

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

That’s the job. That’s it. That is what being a reporter and a journalist means.

If your mother tells you she loves you and you turn around and repeat, “My mother loves me,” or even the slightly more careful, “My mother says she loves me,” then you’re not a reporter or a journalist. You’re not reporting, just repeating. That’s stenography or gossip, not journalism.

Checking it out is what makes a reporter and what makes a report.

It’s amazing to me this needed to be said. Clark has more:

Arthur Brisbane’s column is an admission of journalistic malpractice. He should be told to step away from his desk and go home before he does any more damage. The New York Times ought to be furious for what he has done to its once-respected name.

And his name should become a shorthand epithet for all who are clueless about the most basic purpose of their jobs. The next time a cornerback totally flubs the coverage to allow an easy touchdown, the announcer should say, “Boy, he really pulled a Brisbane on that play. He looked like he had no idea why he was even on the field …”

You should, of course, go read the whole thing.

Remember how, in the past, journalists routinely called out public figures who said things that just weren’t true, and that were trivially proved false? Yeah, that was awesome. Back then, we called it “journalism” when, in an article about John Doe quotes him as saying “the sky is green,” the reporter inserted a note stating that the sky is in fact blue.

This wasn’t controversial. Of course, that was also before ninnyhammer right-wing douchebags started insisting they had their own set of facts.

In this op ed, the Times’ public editor Arthur Brisbane wonders if they should engage in what he terms “being a truth vigilante.”

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

The most WTF moment in the article comes here: “Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another?”

A reporter cannot correct “one fact over another.” Only one fact is true. Fact checking is not vigilantism. Fact checking is a public service.

Hey, Arthur? How about you sack up and do your fucking job and stop the descent of journalism into a pit of PR?

HEADDESKBANG

You really owe it to yourself to check out Funny or Die’s 1986 TV Lineup.

On Friday the 23rd, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is doing a TV version of their show on BBC America.

I learned this from Neil Gaiman’s blog, who will be a guest thereon. His post also includes a valuable opportunity to see what Peter Sagel looks like.

Check this out. Apparently, at Fox, 8.6% is MORE than 8.9%.

It’s really shockingly egregious. There’s no way this is a simple error. Fox is actively seeking to mislead.

Nobody gives a rat’s ass about your brand.

So HP may or may not be getting a new logo. This is a complete waste of their time. What HP should do to make people care about them is simple: Return to making innovative products that people love, like they did in the 80s and early 90s. They chose not to be that company anymore at some point, and became an also-ran in a field of equally competent printer and PC vendors. Oh, and they do IT outsourcing, which goes about as well as you’d expect, and their fortunes are fading as a result.

So now they’re spending money on a new logo to fix it? That’s sure as shit going to do one thing: line the pockets of starry-eyed marketing and branding people only too happy to cash their checks. It’ll also be nice for the printing companies who do HP’s cards, and the signmakers who do the buildings, but it won’t make one fucking iota of difference to any actual customer, because brand equity is built on experience with the company, not a snazzy Illustrator file and new color palette.

This is very, very close to something people are noticing about magazine treatments on the iPad. Briefly, the Conde Nast or whomever marketers in charge of the interface for Newsstand placement or custom apps are all mad for fancy splash screens that show off the magazine’s logo. And no reader has ever cared about that. They want the content. Popping up a splash screen that eats 2 or 3 seconds every time the user wants to resume reading your magazine says “we care more about Branding than we do about you the customer,” and see above in the value of branding. In this case, aggressive logo displays are DEFINITELY having an effect on how people view the company, but it’s not the effect the crystalgazing marketdroids had in mind.

Branding is to corporate America as fad diets are to those of us fighting the battle of the bulge: a waste, ultimately. To lose weight and be healthy, all you really need to do is move your feet more than your fork. It’s a lifestyle change, not a thing you do once. You can dress it up (more veggies! less meat! more cardio! add yoga!), but that’s it at its most basic point. Switching to an all-lentils-and-spinach diet for six weeks isn’t going to create lasting value or change.

The corporate equivalent of “move your feet more than your fork” is almost as simple: Make good, reliable products that people like. Make sure that, when people have a problem with your product, you take care of them within reason.

That’s it. That’s who HP used to be, but are not anymore. That’s who Apple is now, obviously. That’s who Sony used to be, but aren’t anymore. It’s who Zappos and Amazon are, at least most of the time.

Just like weight loss, there is no silver bullet. You have to do the hard work of actually BEING a good company for people to view you as a good company. Paying a bunch of graphic designers and Flash programmers to rebrand your website is a waste of time if you’re not making real commitments to quality and customer satisfaction — and may still be a waste of time even if you are. Worse, fancy re-branding efforts come off as smoke and mirrors designed to distract customers and investors even if they’re not (and, let’s be honest, frequently they ARE). So skip them.

Do good work.

Make your customers happy.

The brand will follow.

Urged on by the “Florida Family Association,” Lowe’s has pulled its ads from a TLC reality program about a Muslim family in Michigan because the show isn’t bigoted enough.

The FFA said:

“The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish,” the group said about the show, a docu-soap chronicling everyday Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan that debuted last month. “Clearly this program is attempting to manipulate Americans into ignoring the threat of jihad and to influence them to believe that being concerned about the jihad threat would somehow victimize these nice people in this show.”

1. Extraordinarily high cost of living.
2. Occasional freakish civic ordinances which may or may not balance an overall more progressive local government.
3. Be honest: The vague threat of annihilation due to a catastrophic seismic event.
4. The possibility that a cannonball fired by the Mythbusters might shoot right through your house.

Remember this SNL bit about clueless news coverage? Yeah, not too far from the truth, as this actual news story about pedobear shows.

Christ, some folks are just clueless.

It turns out that Indian talent shows are much different from American ones. If that video link doesn’t work, head on over to the original post, because you really don’t want to miss this.

(In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ll just sign on with the President.)