Archive for July, 2006

Caught Napping … and Profiting

Posted July 29, 2006 By Pattie Gillett

I heard about this one on NPR and I had to find out more about it on my own. There’s a company (and by now, I’ll guess there’s at least one) that has tapped into a market dominated once by nursery school children and their teachers: Napping. That’s right, as a nation, we are so […]

Severe iPod Envy

Posted July 24, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Pattie got herself an iPod Nano this past week, and we went up to the Apple Store at the King of Prussia Mall on Saturday. Quite a crowd there. Which is kinda funny, given that the store doesn’t exactly have a huge array of products. There was one display counter, about two or three feet […]

The Power of Irony

Posted July 18, 2006 By Dave Thomer

Monday night: I set up the sprinkler and water my lawn. Tuesday night: A severe thunderstorm watch kicks off what looks like a week of on and off storms and showers. And for my next trick . . .

Funding Still Matters

Posted July 17, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The first essay I wrote in the Public Policy section here looked at the disparity in spending between Philadelphia and the neighboring suburban districts, in order to illustrate the idea that it’s not reasonable to expect a district to be competitive with a fraction of the resource base. Almost six years later, Chris Lehmann at […]

Public Policy Archive Updated

Posted July 17, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The Public Policy articles from the HTML and phpBB versions of the site have now been brought into the current WordPress edition. For the most part I have not gone through and rechecked all of the links in those pieces, so there are probably some dead links and stuff that’s behind subscription walls right now. […]

National Journal, Daily Show On Net Neutrality

Posted July 16, 2006 By Dave Thomer

The National Journal has a really good article summing up the context and current state of the debate over net neutrality. The article did a particularly good job of explaining how it was the words of a telecom executive that really set things off, implying that AT&T and other companies wanted to be able to […]

Sci Fi Friday on a Diet

Posted July 15, 2006 By Dave Thomer

So Sci Fi began its summer season last night. It looks like the network is trying to expand first-run dramas to more nights of the week, and run shows during more of the year, because they’re spacing things out a little. Last year they ran three shows on Friday night, now they’re only running the […]

Get Me Rewrite

Posted July 14, 2006 By Dave Thomer

And from the god of comedy setup lines comes this corker of a story: Terrell Owens claims he was misquoted in his autobiography. I tell you, the Owens fiasco is one of those things that really reminds you how much a sports fan can rationalize. I remember thinking to myself, “Well, hey, maybe it’ll all […]

Too Many Shiny Round Things

Posted July 13, 2006 By Dave Thomer

In my effort to re-listen to my entire CD collection, I’m getting down to the discs I haven’t put on in years, discs that I might have only listened to once or twice. I wonder if this is a relic of a different period. Thanks to online services like Rhapsody, I can listen to an […]

ID to Vote?

Posted July 12, 2006 By Dave Thomer

There’s been a lot of talk lately about requiring photo IDs in order to vote. It’s one of those things that sounds like it’s a good idea, but at the same time made me somewhat nervous for some reason. Spencer Overton at MyDD puts that cause for nervousness into words. In a nutshell, a significant […]