My Tuesday column this week was on six relievers who should be starters, and I played the host to guest Chris Sprow on Wednesday’s Baseball Today podcast. And there’s the transcript to his week’s Klawchat. My post on Charleston and West Virginia prospects should be up this afternoon.
* Bob Woodward on investigative journalism and the Internet. I’d say I found this shocking, but the students in question were Yalies, after all. On a more serious note, though, I think this speaks, albeit in an overdramatic way, to the importance of old-school, first-person journalism, and perhaps an excessive faith in the cult of the amateur online.
* Amazon’s pricing war with publishers over e-books. Of course, I prefer dead trees, but I’m also a big amazon proponent, so some of what I read here was dismaying.
* The fight to preseve 35mm in a film industry increasingly pushing towards digital recording. Boogie Nights called this fifteen years ago.
* Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel takes the NCAA to task over transfer bans. Frankly, the idea that a player has to sit out a year when transferring bothers me more than anything else. They’re not employees bound by non-competes. They’re not employees, period, according to the NCAA.
* Animal Antibiotics: FDA Asks Drug Companies To Limit Overuse Amid Health Concerns. I’ve got a better idea: Stop buying antibiotic-fed meat. If demand drops, or if demand for antibiotic-free meat rises (supporting higher prices), we’ll see a reduction in their use – and factory farms depend on antibiotics to allow them to crowd their animals in unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
Stupid question re antibiotics in meat: are meat packages labeled in any way to to differentiate between with and without antibiotics?
I, also, love the idea of knowing what’s in our food.
Thanks for the link to the 35mm film article. I’m a (film) editor in Hollywood. I grew up loving the look of film and now mourn the coming demise of it. But frankly, we’ve seen this coming for years and it is no surprise. The article does a good job of defending why film should survive and I won’t add to that or dispute that it needs to remain a viable option for film makers.
I will make two points, however. 1) The public has been looking at digital prints now for several years. Almost all films are “finished” digitally, even when they are photographed on film. Ninety percent of the film going public has no idea whether they are looking at a digital print or a film print. The digital cameras have made huge strides in recent years. They are pretty damn good. Soon almost all movies will be photographed digitally and screened digitally. And the public will have no idea. Nor will they care. As a studio, why would I NOT choose to spend 10% of my current cost exhibiting my product for a public that can’t tell the difference?
2) When digital editing came into being almost 20 years ago it was a creative watershed. The physical aspect of cutting the actual workprint and taping the two pieces together was onerous. Admittedly, it was fun to hold the film and feel it in your fingers, but no one misses it enough to go back to the old ways. The advantages are too obvious: you can do so much more in much less time without destroying your original work. It’s pretty much the same as the typewriter vs the word processor. You occasionally see a typewriter, but almost no one wants to go back to using one. Ditto for editing. Now it’s true that you can cut digitally while still shooting film and projecting it. I would be all for it. But in the real world it ain’t going to happen.
Don’t get me wrong. I hope film survives. There’s nothing better than seeing a 70mm print of Lawrence of Arabia projected. But digital is here to stay (or until the next thing comes along). I hope both film and digital can co-exist and all of us who love film should work to make it so. Thanks.
Are you dismayed by Amazon? or the decision of some publishers to stop selling to Amazon?
I dont have access to Amazon in Australia but selfishly, I love the idea of some one squeezing producers so that i get a cheap product. Ive never published a book so what would i know about the process and costs involved but i read just as many articles that point to the distributor as the reason for high book costs. In Australia, new soft cover books are approaching $40 each.
“Mr. White, a trim 70, said that when he made the decision to bail out, his blood pressure soared. But he’s also reveling in the excitement, just a little. He commissioned a drawing of EDC in the role of David taking on the giant Amazon.”
I want $10 books. But i suppose i am being short sighted
The part of the Amazon story I found most surprising is also the part I read several times and feel I may still be misunderstanding. I’m hoping one of you can help me out. Does Amazon not make a profit on purpose, lowering their cost to consumers so low with the end game goal being they’ll cripple all of their competitors, which will then allow them to monopolize the industry? That’s the way I read it, but I still can’t even believe a company would think to do that, have the balls to do that, and be so devious. Okay maybe I can believe it, but still. My goodness.
Keith,
What is your opinion of the Amazon article? From reading your blog you may be the biggest Amazon fan I know. Is the low cost you only thing you care about? Not trying to put you on the spot but I’ve always wanted to hear your opinion on Amazon.
Thanks
The Amazon article is a little misleading in saying that Amazon as a whole doesn’t turn a profit: it’s had positive net income (basically reported after-tax profits) since 2003 and has generated positive free cash flow (basically the actual cash generated after adjusting for several items) since at least 2002. So it’s not as if the *entire company* is just generating losses to put all of their competition out of business; it’s still turning a net profit. I’m not a fan of all of its business practices, but thought I would point that out.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7853268/ex-mlbpa-diector-marvin-miller-players-salaries-more-justifiable-ceo-pay
Any thoughts on Miller’s comments here?
I think that the NCAA might be the only business going that actually gets their non-competes adhered to. My firm writes them into deals all the time, but we tell the clients up front: these are worth the paper that we’re writing them on; if someone wants to work here in PA, no court is going to uphold a restriction on trade.