MaisonBisson

It’s an old story, the growing gap between rich and poor, and it’s probably booring as hell to most. Thing is, I fear it’s shaping America in more ways than can be counted. I’ve been at a loss to make a clean argument about this, so all I can do now is give you this: Across the Great Divide:

In 1999, CEOs made 458 times as much as production and non-supervisory workers. If minimum wage had risen during the 1990s as rapidly as CEO pay, it would have been $24.13 an hour by 1999 instead of $5.15. Less in the realm of fantasy, if wages had at least kept pace with productivity, which rose 46.5 percent from 1973 to 1998, the median wage would have risen to $17.27 an hour, rather than $11.29, giving $12,438 more a year to full-time workers.

And it behoves me to ask, why does the Federal Reserve Bank, when setting percentage rates, not consider executive salary increases as signs of inflation? How can executive salaries increase 400% in ten years, but not set off alarm bells among those who watch the economy?

Copyfight points me to Doom9 which reports on Bits of Freedom‘s recent project:

Dutch civil rights organization Bits of Freedom has run an interesting experiment: They put up a text by a famous Dutch author, written in 1871 to accounts with 10 different ISPs. Then they made up an imaginary society that is supposed to be the copyright holder of the author in question, and sent copyright infringement takedown notices to those 10 ISP via email (using a Hotmail account). 7 out of 10 ISPs took down the material, sometimes within hours and without even informing the account holder. One ISP doubted the legitimacy of the claim and asked for some proof that the alleged plaintiff was in fact the copyright holder. Yet another ISP actually realized that copyright had long since run out on the work. That’s real scary, don’t you think? Made up society, Hotmail addresses and a website is gone.

Quotes from the bookofjoe:

“The bleeding always stops.”

…my favorite of the zillions of wonderful, pithy, often-harsh apothegms I’ve heard in my years in medicine.

There’s more:

“Try a Florsheim maneuver” [kick him to see if he’s dead or faking]

“We won’t know until the autopsy.” [actually spoken on internal medicine rounds by a resident when I was in med school, in response to the question, “What’s he have?” ]

“The patient is the one with the disease.” [said to oneself to calm yourself down when you start to get all worked up about how messed up someone is]

“The first thing to do at a Code Blue is take your own pulse.” [helps to settle you down and let you think more clearly]

“You know you’ve become a good surgeon when, instead of saying ‘Oops,’ you say, ‘There.’”

• Disney thieves Peter Pan from copyright-holding childrens’ hospital charity
  

  Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson and published by Disney’s Hyperion Books is billed as a prequel to the children’s classic, Peter Pan. […] But the hospital charity says [it] is getting nothing from Peter and the Starcatchers — which has been on the New York Times best seller lists, has had an extensive author tour and has its own Web site. They say the book has been published without its permission. A spokesman for the hospital told CNN that Great Ormond Street held the copyright to Peter Pan in the United States until 2023.

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      <a href="http://www.engadget.com/entry/2241460825857893/" title="Sony claims RetroPod will confuse consumers">Sony claims RetroPod will confuse consumers</a><br /> <blockquote>
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          Consumers likely will be misled and deceived into believing that Sony is somehow connected with the iPod personal stereo when in fact it is not.
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      </blockquote>
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• Now that WiFi access is common, WiFi-dependant applications are starting to appear.
  

  providers are finding out that the key to encouraging usage of hotspots and the key to leveraging hotspots to boost business is by offering applications that customers can use.

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      <a href="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/004343.html" title="Rest Stop WiFi Roundup">Rest Stop WiFi Roundup</a><br /> <blockquote>
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          Texas has signed a contract to install Wi-Fi at 105 locations by Oct. 2005, with service free for the first two hours. They’re hoping this encourages truckers and others to pull over a little more to catch up and reduce accidents, among other elements.
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      </blockquote>
      
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        <li>
          <a href="http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/oqo-model-01-reviewed-the-heavies-weigh-in-023395.php" title="OQO Reviews">OQO Reviews</a><br /> <blockquote>
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              …it seems that, while pretty cool, the OQO may not live up to the company’s hype.
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          </blockquote>
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Links: starting with politics, going to copyfight, ending nowhere.

• On The Mediathis week is reporting on the controversies about Sinclair TV and Bush’s wiring, looks at why there’s a dearth of local real local news, and, most interestingly, compares Bush’s lies to Kerry’s exaggerations.The whole show is available as MP3.
   
• RealClearPolitics lists polls in swing states and elsewhere.
   
• EarthBrowser (for Mac) gives us a glimpse of the world, showing swirling clouds and other weather, but hiding the politics and tension.
   
• WalMart vs. the music industry?
   
• SpyMall

Joe was telling his son, Justin, about his college football days. It was mostly a tale of his injuries, including one that required he have fluid drained from his knees daily before practice. He says it hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt to drain the fluid. It hurt to practice on it. It hurt throughout the day and night. Justin asked why he would do such things to himself. Because he could not imagine doing anything else.

While Yahoo Movies is okay, it doesn’t track all the local theaters. Fortunately, many of them are online:

The Nugget, Hanover

Lebanon 6

Lincoln Cinemas

Smitty’s/Chunky’s Tilton

Then there are the drive-ins:

Meadows Drive-In

Route 135, Woodsville, N.H

(603)747-2608

Fairlee Drive-In Theater

Fairlee, VT.

(802) 333-9192

Teleread reports:

RedLightGreen.com, a creation of RLG, searches through 120 million books based on such criteria as author’s name, title, and subject matter. Not full text search–but still useful.

Over at RedLightGreen, they say it “helps you locate the most important books and other research materials in your area of interest, and find out whether what you need is available at your favorite library.”