More signs of the apocalypse: Foreign car brands outsold American car brands in the United States for the first time in history in July, 51.9% to 48.1%. No telling where that puts me: my first car was a Mazda, a company that's partly owned by Ford, and my latest car is a Ford built on a Mazda chassis.
For the record: You probably don't care, but I'm arbitrarily awarding Hank Aaron (right) an extra 75 home runs for the ones he probably would have gotten if he had used steroids for the second half of his career. So Barry Bonds still has a way to go, and we're right not to get all excited.
New York City Backs Down: For now, at least. Reacting to a storm of criticism, the NYC Mayor's Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting, in a distinctly defensive- sounding announcement, said it would redraft the proposed rules governing photo shoots on its streets. This may be a tactic meant to diffuse public criticism (the revised rules will be reopened for public comment a month from now, and the Mayor's Office could be hoping we'll have lost interest by then), but round one goes to photographers.
Nostradamus mode: I predict a crime wave when analog broadcast TV switches to digital a couple of years from now. You read it here first.
Lindsay Lohan's going to die: I hope I'm not predicting the future with this one, but if you're anywhere near my age, then you've been watching stars and celebrities self-destruct for decades now like I have. Name your favorites: Marilyn, Judy Garland, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Belushi, River Phoenix (original name: River Bottom, and I am not kidding), Chris Farley—the list is as long as your arm. It's such a shame, but doesn't Lindsay Lohan just have the aura of the next to go? She's such an appealing kid, and I would hate to watch the press in a frenzy over her funeral, but this picture just won't fade from the crystal ball. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to watch this. I really don't want to.
Still volatile after all these years: DPReview reports that digital camera sales have soared and DSLR sales lead the way, the latter with a whopping 75% growth. Still, margins are narrowing fast, and some companies are showing signs of R&D investment exhaustion. In a related news item, Sony has instituted a corporate blog for its DSLR division, which recently issued an official statement, probably intended to be reassuring, about its commitment to the product category. Many loyalists took the statement's breezy tone and lack of actual content as none too reassuring, at that.
Unfriendly fire: The Pat Tillman investigation revealed no enemy bullets anywhere in the area where he died, and there were three closely spaced shots in his forehead. There wasn't even a fire fight going on. That's no hero, folks—that's a murder victim. Not that the public will pay much attention to the investigation of what happened or to the bigger story of the spin-into-lies that followed.
Milwaukee's massive public works project, the near-billion-dollar rebuilding of the huge Marquette Interchange (in progress, above; original below).
Putting two and two together: The Waukesha Freeman (I live in Waukesha, a small town in Wisconsin near Milwaukee) gets my vote for best local headline: "The Bridges of Waukesha County." What surprises me about the aftermath of the tragic and very unsettling bridge collapse in Minnesota—truly the stuff of nightmares—is that it's yet another example of people failing to put two and two together. Some years after Elvis died, I found two newspaper headlines that together made a great joke. One said that there had been over 400 Elvis sightings in the U.S. over some specified period of time; the other said that there were over 200 professional Elvis impersonators in the U.S. Two plus two...well, I'm not saying anyone's directly to blame for a catastrophic bridge failure, but more politicians than you can count have made "No New Taxes" their mantra, Minnesota's current Governor prominent among them. So now a bridge falls down, and we learn that our country's investment in infrastructure maintenance is minuscule, a small fraction of what it should be. Can't anybody put two and two together any more? Cut taxes to the bone and the least glamorous public expenses have to go—stands to reason that the two are connected, seems to me. I could be wrong. One thing's for sure: I'm never again going to make fun of my cousin Linda for carrying an emergency safety hammer
Hammerin' Hank: A brief coda to the Hank Aaron item above. My younger brother Scott was a practical joker in his younger years. One time, our family happened to be sitting next to Mr. and Mrs. Hank Aaron at a local restaurant. (I should mention, to set this up, that Bobby Dandridge was a basketball star with the Milwaukee Bucks at the time.) Scott, who was thirteen or so, went over to their table and asked Mr. Aaron for his autograph. When he took the slip of paper back, Scott stared at it feigning great surprise and exclaimed, "Hank Aaron?!? I thought you were Bobby Dandridge!" The Home Run King angrily said, "Well, give it back then!" but Mrs. Aaron burst into laughter. Scott apologized to Hank and explained that he was just pulling his leg, which Hank took good-naturedly, although he still didn't think it was very funny. Mrs. Aaron, on the other hand, chuckled for quite a long time.
______________
Mike
>...broadcast TV comes to an end a couple of years from now.
To the best of my knowledge, broadcast TV does not come to an end. Terrestrial TV broadcasts of SSB-encoded analog signals is coming to an end. You will still be able to receive terrestrial broadcasts of the new HDTV digital-encoded signals. I do now and will continue to in the future. You need to get an HD-ready digital tuner, that's all.
Posted by: A. Dias | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 06:28 PM
Regarding the bridge collapse, it wouldn't be, surely, that the state of MN had plenty of money for other things and neglected their own infrastructure, could it? I know that wouldn't fit your "blame George Bush" meme that you've semi-cryptically alluded to, but if you're going to say that it's all about not having the money for infrastructure, you'd better check and make sure that they're not spending money on anything that isn't a necessity.
People tell me all the time, "We don't have money for this need, or that necessity," but when you look at what they spend their money on, you see that if they weren't buying lotto tickets and premium cable channels, they'd have plenty of money for basics and necessities.
Posted by: Derek Helt | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 07:00 PM
Derek,
I don't recall "blaming" Bush (I believe I only mentioned "the Administration," yes?) for the bridge collapse. That would be unreasonable. Even outrageous. "Act of God," and all that. But if you want to go ahead and make the argument that he grotesquely misspends public funds and/or neglects public service and safety, I certainly won't stand in your way. It's an argument that real conservatives should be eager to make. Go for it.
Mike
Posted by: Mike | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 07:13 PM
The TV transition will take most people by surprise. Do your own survey by asking your neighbors and friends... most people have no clue that it is going to happen. And the transition isn't easy, since on older TV's you need both an adapter and a new antenna.
The requirement for 25" and larger TV's to have compatible tuners just took hold one year ago, and for smaller TVs just last month, so there are zillions of not-so-old TV's that will need adapter boxes to pick up a signal from the air.
I added an ATSC tuner to my TV just out of curiosity... in Texas I gained about a dozen religion-all-the-time channels (promptly deleted from the list), 4 weather channels showing the same radar image, and that's about it. Instead of HDTV, they transmit several channels in the same bandwidth. And channels that came in clearly before don't anymore, the channel numbers are all screwed up, channels break up mysteriously (all or nothing situation). All in all, I'm not impressed so far.
Posted by: Unbound | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 07:25 PM
Unbound,
You got it. And when the poorest fifth of the population (least likely to know of the situation, least likely to be able to afford to adapt) suddenly can't sit quietly in front of "According to Jim" and "Survivor" and the baseball game of an evening, there is going to be a surge of surly people hitting the streets. Mark my words. TV is a people pacifier. I can't predict the degree, but it's going to be a considerable social disruption, at least for a day or three and quite possibly a lot longer.
Marx's version: Religion is the opiate of the people.
McLuhanian version: Television is the opiate of the people.
Whatever, people need their opiates, and sudden withdrawals are never pleasant.
Mike
Posted by: Mike | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 07:42 PM
This reminds me of the best bumper sticker I have ever read:
"I wish schools had all the money they needed and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
I butchered it a little, but the message is there. When talking about the infrastructure of this country, the deficits go far beyond roads and bridges et al. All I can think of the health and educational deficits this country is running up. Why do we spend so much destroying when we could prove to the rest of the world our might with the healthiest, most educated citizens on the planet?
Posted by: Mike Hess | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 09:02 PM
About Hank Aaron: are the 150 addtional home runs assuming that he would have replaced the greenies (amphetamines) he was taking with steroids, or supplemented them?
About TV: the switchover is from analog to digital, which can but does not have to be HDTV. I, personally, get quite a bit of additional programming on the digital channels (several extra PBS stations, a music video channel called The Tube, some weather stations, some local access, and a couple of stations showing classic TV). We also get the major networks in HD when the shows are available as such. Sill, I live in the Washington, DC metro area, so it's possible that our broadcasters have done more with the switchover.
That said, channel numbers aren't screwed up: the digital version of channel 4 is 4-1. I'm guessing that Unbound picked up a shoddy ATSC tuner that can't translate the digital channels to match the analog channel designations.
As to people being caught off guard by the switchover to digital, I'm sure some will, but I'm also pretty confident that the switchover will be delayed again. Right now, it's scheduled for February 17, 2009, but a delay to be closer to the Canadian date (August 31, 2011) seems likely.
Still, if you're worried about crime rates, the Netherlands switched over in December, 2006. Could be fertile ground for a study.
Oh, and a P.S.: is the requirement of javascript to post comments *really* necessary? You've already got the moderation and the CAPTCHA to catch spam...
Posted by: John | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 10:16 PM
The way people talk you'd think steroids were invented in the last twenty years and no one took them before then. Synthetic hormones were invented in the 1930's and stimulants have been around since the dawn of civilization. Testing in Major League Baseball didn't begin until 2003. The truth is, we don't know if Hank Aaron took steroids or other performance enhancing substances. So don't get carried away lauding the old timers.
Posted by: Castulo Guerra | Sunday, 05 August 2007 at 10:43 PM
A long term policy of deferred maintainance (being cheap), moving gas tax, driver license fees and trucking industry road tax moneies into the general fund (thievery)is the source of the road and bridge problem.
Posted by: Gary | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 09:09 AM
"I'm arbitrarily awarding Hank Aaron an extra 75 home runs for the ones he probably would have gotten if he had used steroids for the second half of his career."
And I'm subtracting 75, since he didn't have to face steroids-enhanced pitchers.
Posted by: Nerdie McSweatervest | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 10:14 AM
I have two questions about Bonds and the steroid controversy. Do steroids help hitters or pitchers more?
And how much was Bonds helped by expansion? Baseball added four teams during Bonds career, which has the effect of diluting the pitching talent pool--which would only help Bonds numbers. While expansion would also dilute the hitting talent pool, it's largely irrelevant to Bonds' numbers.
That's not to say Bonds didn't benefit from steroids, as he clearly put on a lot of muscle mass and jacked up his stats at an age when even superior players like Bonds typically begin to decline. (And Bonds would have been in the Hall even if he had never taken steroids.)
Posted by: mwg | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 11:52 AM
I'm no expert, but Bonds appears to no longer be a lock for the Hall of Fame. Mark McGuire got only a few votes on his first ballot, and some baseball writers think he may never make it into the Hall because of his steroid disgrace. According to what I've read, Bonds was surely a Hall of Fame lock before 2001, as he probably would have ranked among the top ten sluggers of all time, but his steroid use is so obvious in every way--not least according to an analysis of his stats--that the Hall voters might well shun him.
There have been millions of words written and spoken about this controversy and the nearly intractable pall it casts over baseball, and cycling and all of sports, most notably, in Bonds' case, the books "Game of Shadows" and "Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero."
Mike
Posted by: Mike | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 12:14 PM
Mike,
Living in Minneapolis I have heard a lot about this subject in the past few days. The federal government only sets the standards for the bridges the states are responsible for the repair and upkeep.
At the time the bridge fell a nine million dollar project was underway to repair the bridge deck and there is some talk about the amount of material the contractor had on the bridge when it fell. There is also discussion of how the work they were doing affected the overall structure.
The Minnesota state government spent almost ONE BILLION on ONE light rail line in the past few years and is talking about a commuter rail line that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, again for one line. The only discussion has been about how to make commuters stop using their cars, not how maintain the roads we have. Have you driven our roads? The major highways in Minneapolis/St. Paul are almost entirely comprised of 4 lane roads - only two lanes in each direction!! In my travels I have not seen any major urban area with so few lanes for traffic.
Our fine state does not dedicate the taxes we pay for automobile use (gas, license, sales tax) to transportation uses but mixes them in with the general funds. There is talk now after the accident about adding another 7.5 cents to the gas tax, but still no talk about even that being dedicated to road repair.
There are so many aspects of this story, it's impossible to neatly place any blame yet.
It was a terrible accident. The NTSB will find the reason. Until they do, placing blame is only expedient for political purposes.
Mike
Posted by: Mike S | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 12:39 PM
"but his steroid use is so obvious in every way"
except for one very important way. Any actual evidence.
While I agree with most people that he has probably taken steroids, Bonds have never tested positive for any banned substance. The guy may be a jerk, but innocent until proven guilty.
Posted by: daniel | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 12:53 PM
No, you're innocent of a CRIME until proven guilty. You're not innocent of suspicion of all wrongdoing until proven guilty. And, no evidence? The evidence is certainly there for all to see, in the stats and in simple before-and-after photographs of the guy.
Mike
Posted by: Mike | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 01:02 PM
Re the bridge collapse - it's the natural instinct of politicians to move money to the glory projects, which generally means building new rather than maintaining old. It may be true, as you suggest, that when money gets tighter, the squeeze on the unglamorous projects gets tighter disproportionately too.
As a Minolta shooter (I'll just ditch the 'Konica' part, which represents the will to get rid of the photography division as far as I'm concerned, and which ultimately won the battle), I must admit to quite some concern as to Sony's willingness to do what it takes to make their SLR division a success.
Since the Alpha A100's launch, there's been a worrying mismatch between producing a reasonable but consumer-targeted camera at a competitive and producing a line of lenses and accessories optimized for the very serious/professional photographer at very uncompetitive prices.
The fact that Sony has still not worked out that charging an at least 30% premium over Canon's prices for comparable lenses is not going to win them market share as the underdog is rather scary. Even more so when one realizes that the Canon prices often include a complex IS mechanism that Sony's don't have to. Even buying a consumer-grade 75-300 slow zoom costs the Sony customer about $50 over the Canon (approx 25% greater).
That kind of sticker shock is going to continue to leave Sony uncompetitive in the marketplace - accessory pricing is one thing that directs sales, and even consumers are going to notice that the cheap telezoom in the Best Buy cabinet is more expensive for Sony than Canon.
Posted by: Matthew Brown | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 05:33 PM
More Signs of the Apocalypse, in Nostradamus mode, about whether Linday Lohan is going to die of friendly fire, or not -- the dreams come unbidden, to Bug-Eyed Earl and the rest of us as well, from the pen of Max Cannon: http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2007-04-10/index.html
(Worth a peek, maybe.)
Posted by: Dave Sailer | Monday, 06 August 2007 at 06:38 PM
With the possible exception of Marylin, all the celebrities named, who died young, had a real talent. As far as I can tell, Lindsay Lohan's only talent is being in the news. She will be forgotten as soon as the next dope-sniffing, booze-slurping, pretty teen, willing to show a boob here and there, in dire need of parenting 10 years ago, comes around.
Posted by: Boyan | Tuesday, 07 August 2007 at 01:28 PM
Nothing to do absolutely with the content of your post, but I thought this was funny. Following your link to the "emergency safety hammer" wondering to myself "what on earth is he talking about?" turned up the Amazon page on which the "Customers Who Bought Items Like This....." also bought, well, a whole bunch of photo books that you previously recommended.
Looks like a whole bunch of TOP readers now have an emergency rescue hammer.
Posted by: Jeremy Tan | Friday, 17 August 2007 at 06:33 AM