National Journal, Daily Show On Net Neutrality

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 charge content providers like Yahoo to transmit data over the Internet, beyond the normal charges for bandwidth.

And as Jon Stewart points out, when Congress gets involved in this kind of thing, it’s not always pretty.

Sci Fi Friday on a Diet

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 two Stargate shows. I’m kinda curious as to how that will affect the ratings.

As for the shows themselves – I still have not gotten into Stargate Atlantis, but I was there for the tenth season premiere of Stargate: SG-1. It’s kind of interesting the degree to which they’re resetting the status quo, with Earth the plucky underdog against the overwhelmingly powerful godlike foe. I’m hoping they have enough variations on the theme to make it interesting, but I figure the selling point will remain the cast and main characters. I know I’m hoping Ben Browder has a solid run on the show. I’d hate for the guy to be typecast, but the guy just belongs as the leading man on a sci-fi action show.

Get Me Rewrite

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 work out here.” Turns out, not so much.

I guess I just have to hope that Dallas discovers the same thing, and even sooner than Philly did.

Too Many Shiny Round Things

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 entire album before I decide if I want it, so I won’t get fooled by a particularly solid single. (And I can just buy that one song I like if that turns out to be the case.) And if I buy an album or a song electronically and decide I don’t like it so much after all, it doesn’t have to physically stick around and take up space anymore.

Then again, I’m still somewhat attached to having a physical disc that I can bring from place to place if I want. But in a few years we’ll probably just carry our iPods around and stick them in whatever docking stations we have around. The CD tower manufactures must be crying in their beers.

ID to Vote?

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 number of people do not have photo IDs. So requiring one creates an additional burden to voting. And there’s no guarantee that the requirement would actually do anything to cut down on voter fraud, especially since it leaves absentee ballots – which are increasingly used – untouched.

Losers

Remember when I said I might have been lucky not to go to a Phillies game? Well, I’m pretty sure of it now. One of the team’s owners, former managing partner Bill Giles, just got back from a trip to Italy and promptly put both feet in his mouth. The stuff about how the team owners really want to win and David Montgomery, the current managing partner, is doing a sensational job is frustrating but probably within the boundaries of “Well what do you expect him to say?” But then he has to offer his opinion on the Brett Myers fiasco, saying that Myers did nothing wrong and was really just trying to help his wife, despite other witnesses and police reports to the contrary. Montgomery came out today and said that Giles must have misunderstood what Montgomery was telling him about the incident. Which means that one of the team owners has a problem with listening comprehension and doesn’t have the sense to keep his mouth shut about events he doesn’t have any real knowledge or understanding of. Great.

In Brightest Day?

I don’t have much to add to this post, but Matt Yglesias’ use of Green Lantern to illustrate certain conservative visions of foreign policy deserves a read.

The emphasis on willpower is especially dangerous, I think, because it’s one of the things that leads to any criticism of the government or the military policy being seen as something that makes the country, the military, and the men and women actually doing the fighting all weaker.

Great Google-y Moogly

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary has added “to google” as a verb in its latest edition, joining the Oxford English Dictionary’s online edition as recognizing that the name of the search engine has become a word in its own right. The article says that the first use of the verb was in a newspaper article five years ago, which is pretty young for a new word to be making it into the dictionary.

Unsurprisingly, the article also explores the dilemma that occurs when a brand name becomes so ubiquitous that it becomes an ordinary word: the company can lose trademark protection. The Merriam-Webster mentions that the term is derived from a trademark, and defines the word to specifically refer to used of the Google engine as opposed to a generic search. Given that Yahoo turned its own engine brand into a verb with the “Do You Yahoo!?” campaign, I think it’s hard to argue with the dictionary folks on this one.

An Economic GOOOOOOAL?

Back when the Wor;d Cup started, the Inquirer’s economic columnist Andrew Cassell argued that many economists were rooting for Italy to win. Apparently, it’s been reasonably well documented that the country that wins the World Cup experiences a jump in economic growth in the following year. Cassell argued that Europe was most in need of a jump start, and that Italy’s economy was big enough to make a difference in the overall health of the economy and sluggish enough that the World Cup bump would make a noticeable difference in pushing it onto a growth track.

Well, thanks to penalty kicks, we’re going to find out if Cassell’s theory is right. I caught the last few minutes, just in time to see a French player get kicked out of the game for head-butting an Italian, and then to see the penalty kicks. I gotta say I feel bad for those goalkeepers. The French keeper didn’t stop anything, and really, neither did the Italian – the French missed when one player hit the crossbar after the Italian keeper had dived. That’s gonna lead to a few years of could’a-should’a, I’ll bet.