Quid pro quo over at the FCC and Comcast

It's time to investigate FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who voted for the Comcast merger with NBC only a few months ago, but is now leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast. This is outrageous. Three words: Quid pro quo. She should headed for prison, not soaking up a big lobbyist salary at the expense of United States citizens. Here's some low-hanging fruit federal investigators. Let's see if they do the right thing, or if they do anything at all.

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Problems with this website

I'm having some rather pronounced design issues with this site, but only when viewed by Explorer 9 or Chrome. Things look right on Firefox and Safari. I'm aware of these problems and I'm working to fix them. In the meantime, all the material at this site is readable on any browser, though the design is scrambled on Explorer and Chrome. Thanks for your patience.

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Corporatized political ritual presenting itself as “news”

To my dismay, my law office installed a flat screen high definition television in the lunch room a few months ago. You couldn’t design a better device for shutting down spontaneous conversation in the kitchen. I’ve also been dismayed to see the kinds of topics covered by the networks, hour after hour. The major news networks pump out endless headlines about war, terrorism, conflict, freaks, athletes and celebrities. There is also a constant droning on by economics-charlatans. All of it punctuated by commercials attempting to make me believe that I’m a failure because I don’t own something. I’m trying to look at this television invasion as an opportunity to be more knowledgeable about television “news.” When I go in to refill my glass of water in the kitchen or grab a snack, I often take a small camera so that I can capture something bizarre about the “news,” so I can illustrate a post. I’ve rarely been disappointed. There is always something wacky going on, both on the shows and on the commercials. The way they present the “news” is news to me because I don’t watch any live television at home (we do watch movies, but no live TV), so I only know the news by clips I choose to watch on the Internet. Seeing bits of the news streamed in live, day after day, is shocking for many reasons that I’ll be discussing in future posts.

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Report card of American telecoms: They flunk out

The few remaining American telecoms want American consumers to focus only on options that they want to offer us. But we know how to use our slow American Internet to check out how other developed countries are developing their broadband coverage and speed. At Alternet, David Rosen and Bruce Kushnick have issued a devastating report card to the American telecoms. Here's the bad news:

  • America is now 15th in the world in broadband. While Hong Kong and other countries are rolling out 1 gigabit speed services, America's average is a mere 5 mbps (i.e., 1,000 mbps = 1 gigabit).
  • Americans paid over $340 billion for broadband upgrades that never happened; by 2010, America should have been completely upgraded with fiber optic services to every home.
  • The FCC approved Comcast's acquisition of NBC-Universal, foreshadowing a likely wave of integration of transport or carriage and content.
  • Together, AT&T and Verizon control 80 percent of all wireless services and AT&T is now attempting to close down one of the only remaining competitors, T-Mobile.
What should we do about this? Rosen and Kushnick often many dramatic solutions--including divestiture--if only members of Congress would listen more to good ideas than to wads of cash handed to them by the telecoms.

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Melanoma is Sneaky

Much to my surprise, I recently was diagnosed with melanoma. Fortunately, I was suspicious of a skin spot, and showed it to a dermatologist. He shrugged and said, "probably not," but cut it off for a biopsy. A week later he called and told me to see a surgeon ASAP. I now am scheduled for minor surgery and further biopsy. The prognosis is, "Don't worry about it." Then a friend from high school shared this video with me, and told me that he's been inspired by my post to see a dermatologist to check out his spots. What you don't know can kill you. Had I ignored the spot, I might have lived another decade before it killed me. I knew a fellow who had a mole burned off, a couple of times, before someone bothered to biopsy it. By then, they gave him 6 months. But he was an athletic individual who wouldn't quit, and lived five years. But those last couple of years were hardly living, in terms of quality of life.

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