William Shatner Reads Levi Johnston's Tweets (VIDEO)
"Is it true that fat kids don't get kidnapped." Genius. Shatner, I mean, not the twirp.
"Is it true that fat kids don't get kidnapped." Genius. Shatner, I mean, not the twirp.
There will be much number-crunching tomorrow, but preliminary numbers (at least in Virginia) show that GOP turnout remained the same as last year, but Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:
- If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.
- If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.
- If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.
Tonight proved conclusively that we're not going to turn out just because you have a (D) next to your name, or because Obama tells us to. We'll turn out if we feel it's worth our time and effort to vote, and we'll work hard to make sure others turn out if you inspire us with bold and decisive action.
The choice is yours. Give us a reason to vote for you, or we sit home. And you aren't going to make up the margins with conservative voters. They already know exactly who they're voting for, and it ain't you.
Sounds about right.
Not a Simple Price War -- It's a Fight Over What You Get to Read
October 29, 2009
By William Petrocelli of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California
What looks like a simple price war between Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart over a handful of bestsellers is symptomatic of a much deeper problem in the book business. The larger fight is really over what you get to read.
The price war began October 15 when Walmart.com dropped its prices drastically on several bestsellers. Amazon.com and Target.com quickly followed suit, and within a couple of days the prices were down to $8.99 and heading lower. At this point, these behemoths were clearly selling those books below cost and engaging in an illegal form of predatory pricing.
The authors affected by this price slashing were not amused. James Patterson said, "Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week's new movies for $5. You wouldn't be able to make movies." John Grisham's agent added, "I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted bestsellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers." (New York Times, October 17, 2009). The American Booksellers Association saw things the same way, saying in a letter to Christine Varney, head of the Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, that these companies are using books as loss leaders to sell other kinds of merchandise. "The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war." (Bookweb.org, October 22, 2009)
Predatory pricing is a means of driving other booksellers out of business. When this happens, the choice of books is one of the first things to suffer. Some readers think that if their favorite store closes they can always buy the book they want somewhere else. But that's a dangerous delusion -- the books they want may not be there at all. In fact, these types of disruptions in how books are sold or distributed have a profound effect on what publishers decide to publish in the first place.
Some researchers think cats and dogs evolved their cuteness as a way of controlling humans. I think the robots will overthrow us the same way.
We told you it was happening back in April, but now Men In Black 3 has a writer and, if rumors are to be believed, a director. But does it have Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones? Not exactly...
Don't worry; MiB3 isn't necessarily going to replacement route just yet; according to The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog, Smith is interested in signing up for a third go-around (Back in September, Jones was also reported to have been considering the idea). The movie will be written by Tropic Thunder co-writer Etan Cohen, according to the Risky Business blog, and Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed the first two movies in the series, is said to be close to signing on to return for the third installment, which may begin filming as early as Spring 2010.
‘Men in Black 3,' by way of ‘Tropic Thunder' [THR Risky Business]
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
Oh, this brightened my morning. But only if Smith and Jones are both going to be there.
Ford is planning to open its Sync in-car computing platform to third party app developers, the automaker tells FastCompany.com.
The idea is still nascent and there is no hard-and-fast timeline for release, says Prasad Venkatesh, who leads Vehicle Design & Infotainment at Ford. Just how drivers would use in-car apps is still being researched as well. (Below, a present-day Sync system in a Ford Mustang.)
"The way we're developing the toolkit, you could sit in the comfort of your home and plan a roadtrip," he says. Using a smartphone or computer, you'd then add points of interest or other plans. "At the click of a button, the cloud would make all that available to you in the car, and it would broadcast it to your social networking groups." Future Ford vehicles may include mobile broadband, he says; current Sync systems pair with a driver's mobile phone to download updates.
This sounds amazing. Not much info has been released about the system, but we're probably not far from having APIs that hook into all of a car's systems, allowing users to download apps that run all sorts of diagnostics, send reminders, and generally gather data about your car's performance and usage that can be managed in all sorts of ways. Brave new world.
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