Hooked On Hookers

Now that I’ve stood on my high horse about Spitzer’s position, let me throw in a curveball. Why exactly is prostitution illegal in the first place? Seriously.

The big news this afternoon has been the New York Times story about New York’s governor, Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer has been linked to a prostitution ring.

I feel awful for Spitzer’s family. How does one reconcile with a spouse or child after this betrayal of trust? How do you re-establish trust?

Maybe you can’t.

Now that I’ve stood on my high horse about Spitzer’s position, let me throw in a curveball. Why exactly is prostitution illegal in the first place? Seriously.

I understand the act of prostitution in and of itself offends the sense of morality in many people, but do we legislate morality? Should we?

There are certainly serious questions raised about women forced into prostitution. It’s a horrendous and repugnant situation. However, wouldn’t we be better able to police and control that if prostitution was brought out of the shadows? The same goes for questions of disease.

We permit prostitution in much of Nevada (though not Clark County/Las Vegas). It’s also legal and controlled in the Netherlands. I’m not sure what the effects have been, but I suspect the answer is not much. Prostitution will exist with or without the sanction of government.

I suspect some of you will leave a comment and disagree with my opinion. It’s even possible one of you will comment and change my opinion. I’m not afraid to flip-flop on this if I find I’ve missed some crucial fact.

With all that’s wrong in the world, do we really have enough time and resources to go after prostitutes and their tricks?

Bad Times For The Times At My House

There is the temptation to drop home delivery entirely. After all, the Times is online 100%. Still, there’s a difference between online and offline. I always discover something in the printed paper I didn’t see on my screen. The photos are better too (though you’d think online would have better and more photos).

Long before I was out of bed, Helaine was downstairs getting the newspapers off the front steps. The ‘old school’ Foxes get the New Haven Register and the New York Times.

Along with today’s hernia inducing Times, was a smudgy, photocopied note.

Unfortunately today Sunday, February 17th will be the last day we will be delivering your newspaper. The intrusion of large delivery conglomerates has taken much of our business and is forcing us to cut back our delivery area. Refunds are being processed.

scan_paper.jpgHarold, who owns the place,had his name at the bottom. I’ve been speaking to Harold on the phone for over 15 years. He has one of those deep, rough voices that implies a life fully lived.

Our Times delivery wasn’t always trustworthy. Sometimes the paper wouldn’t come, then show up the next day. Who wants a day old paper&#185?

If we called, there would be a refund, but we didn’t always call.

I suspect we could have beaten Harold’s price. Now I’ll be forced to see if that’s really the case.

There is the temptation to drop home delivery entirely. After all, the Times is online 100%. Still, there’s a difference between online and offline. I always discover something in the printed paper I didn’t see on my screen. The photos are better too (though you’d think online would have better and more photos).

Newspapers are in terrible financial peril (what business isn’t). Episodes like this don’t help.

&#185 – My dad tells the story of taking a cruise through the Caribbean. When the ship got to St. Thomas, he stopped at a newsstand, looking for the Times.

“You want yesterday’s or today’s?” asked the man behind the counter.

“Today’s,” my dad replied, a little confused.

“Then come back tomorrow.”

Something Isn’t Right In Space

So what the hell is going on? Why would we jeopardize our low Earth orbiting fleet (which doesn’t include most weather, communications and TV satellites, but does include the International Space Station, Space Shuttle, GPS, mapping and spy satellites) in an act we’ve already condemned when executed by others?

Back in January I wrote about the US spy satellite that will soon come crashing to the Earth. Sure, it’s got all sorts of scary chemistry (specifically hydrazine) on board, but there’s nothing to worry about, right?

Last week most of the experts were poo pooing the danger this satellite’s fiery reentry would bring. Satellites… even big satellites… come down all the time. That’s what they said until Thursday.

All of a sudden we want to shoot this school bus sized piece of space junk down. Shades of Bruce Willis!

From the Chicago Tribune:

Speaking to reporters, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , and James Jeffrey, the deputy national security adviser, said the Navy’s window of opportunity to strike the satellite before it enters the Earth’s atmosphere begins in the next three or four days. Cartwright said the window would likely remain open for seven or eight days.

If the satellite is not intercepted, it is expected to enter the atmosphere in late February or early March.

“This has no aerodynamic properties,” Cartwright said of the satellite. “Once it hits the atmosphere, it tumbles, it breaks apart. It is very unpredictable and next to impossible to engage. So what we’re trying to do here is catch it just prior to the last minute, so it’s absolutely low as possible, outside the atmosphere, so that the debris comes down as quickly as possible.”

A satellite is one lone object. Shoot it down and you get thousands, maybe tens of thousands of tiny objects, all unguided and some likely to remain in orbit for a long time. At orbital speed, even a small object with little mass is destructive.

Back in 1996, after the space shuttle had shifted its course to avoid a dead satellite, the New York times published this:

Dr. Donald J. Kessler, NASA’s senior scientist for orbital debris studies at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in an interview that space junk was a growing problem threatening the safety of spacecraft and astronauts. The Air Force tracks more than 7,000 pieces of debris larger than a baseball, including old rocket parts, outmoded satellites, discarded tools, remnants of explosions, and other odds and ends moving in orbit at more than 17,000 miles per hour. And researchers estimate there are more than 150,000 smaller objects that also pose a danger of collision.

“It’s common for space shuttles to show evidence of frequent hits, but nothing catastrophic has happened,” Dr. Kessler said. “We are now getting good international cooperation to control space debris, but it will continue to be a problem for a long time and we have to take precautions.”

Illustrating how real the problem is, Dr. Kessler said astronauts servicing the Hubble Space Telescope found a half-inch hole punched through its main antenna. And after a flight of the shuttle Columbia last October, engineers found a similar-sized crater in a cargo bay door caused by the impact of a tiny piece of solder, he said.

Here’s the operative sentence: “We are now getting good international cooperation to control space debris.” In other words, space debris is bad and everyone should stop creating it.

In fact, last January, after the Chinese blasted one of their own satellites out of orbit, the US Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said:

…the January 11 event created hundreds of pieces of large orbital debris, the majority of which will stay in orbit for more than 100 years. A much larger number of smaller, but still hazardous, pieces of debris were also created.

The United States is concerned about the increased risk to human spaceflight and space infrastructure as a result of this action, a risk that is shared by all space-faring nations. The United States and many other nations have satellites in space in conformity with international agreements that provide for their national security, and foreign policy and economic interests.

So what the hell is going on? Why would we jeopardize our low Earth orbiting fleet (which doesn’t include most weather, communications and TV satellites, but does include the International Space Station, Space Shuttle, GPS, mapping and spy satellites) in an act we’ve already condemned when executed by others?

Is there something that vile or that secret in this spy satellite? Are we looking for a little target practice to show everyone we’re every bit as capable as the Chinese? I don’t know.

My “educated amateur” space knowledge says, something doesn’t seem right… something doesn’t smell right… something doesn’t add up.

There are missing pieces to this story I neither possess nor understand. I sure hope someone else does, and they are free to speak.

The Disappointing Doctor

Then there’s the Robert Jarvik we see in the ads. Dr. Jarvik is in his early 60s. He is shown, out alone, rowing a racing scull. It’s not really him. It’s a more physically fit body double!

Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart that bears his name, is taking heat for promoting Lipitor in TV ads. It was a story on Good Morning America and in the New York Times this morning and on our newscast here in Connecticut tonight.

There are a few problems with Jarvik’s TV spots. Though a degreed physician, he has never practiced medicine or is even licensed to practice.

His recommendation might be from the goodness of his heart, but the fact he earns well over $1,000,000 from Pfizer, Lipitor’s hard to spell manufacturer, makes it suspect at best.

Then there’s the Robert Jarvik we see in the ads. Dr. Jarvik is in his early 60s. He is shown, out alone, rowing a racing scull. It’s not really him. It’s a more physically fit body double!

I have a vested interest in this whole affair. I take Lipitor every day. My dad had heart disease and I’m hoping to minimize my risk through chemistry.

I don’t want to think it’s being sold like a burger at McDonalds or new car. This is, after all, medicine. It should be sold because it works best, not because it’s immensely profitable.

Lipitor aside, I don’t like seeing prescription drugs marketed directly to consumers. I don’t need to hear about oily discharge or erections lasting longer than four hours.

I spoke with my friend/physician Steve last night. He doesn’t like this either… but we’re too late. I can’t imagine turning back the clock on this recent form of consumer commerce.

Thinking about Dr. Jarvik and this story reminded me of something I’d heard years ago. I went online to check it out.

Dr. Jarvik owes much of the success of his artificial heart to the work of a medical trailblazer – Paul Winchell.

Something of a renaissance man, Winchell was also an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an early artificial heart he built in 1963 and then donated to the University of Utah for research. Dr. Robert Jarvik and other University of Utah researchers later became well-known for the Jarvik-7, which was implanted into patients after 1982.

In case you’re too young (and seemingly, everyone is nowadays), Paul Winchell was a ventriloquist. With his characters Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, “Winch” was a staple of 50s and 60s TV.

He was also the voice of about a gazillion cartoon characters, including Tigger in Winnie the Pooh.

I thought it was OK for Paul Winchell to pitch Tootsie Rolls while I was growing up. I don’t feel the same way about Jarvik’s pitch now that I am grown up.

Why Super Bowl Ads Cost So Much

There is rewinding and multiple viewing of the ads on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s one of the few times it happens.

Everyone talks about the ads run during the Super Bowl.

Before the game all you hear is the ridiculous cost – this year around $90,000 per second. After the game (and the money’s been spent) the spots are compared.

Is it all worth it? Probably. From the New York Times TV Decoder blog:

For instance, the commercials “got a higher audience than the game” in homes with the TiVo video recorder service, said Todd Juenger, vice president and general manager for audience research and measurement at the New York office of TiVo. “There is rewinding and multiple viewing of the ads” on Super Bowl Sunday, he added. “It’s one of the few times it happens.”

The phrase is, “Content is king.” Good commercials are good entertainment. People will watch anything, if they’re entertained.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Here’s the problem. When you’ve got an object as big as this 10-ton satellite, some of it will survive the plunge to Earth. That’s especially true when there are hardened pieces.

mir_atmosphere.jpgIt looks like a US spy satellite is out-of-control and will soon plunge back into the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s happened before.

I remember when Mir plunged to Earth. The photo on the left shows what was left as the debris passed over Fiji.

Back in 1979 pieces of Skylab fell on Australia. No one was injured.

The question is, is this dangerous? Uh… yeah. Though there is some conflict in that opinion.

I just checked Google’s news site and found “Falling US satellite is not dangerous – NASA” from Russia’s Interfax news agency. That’s a relief.

Oops. Hold on. Here’s what the Times of London says: “Threat as 10-ton satellite set to crash back to Earth”

So, it’s either not dangerous or a threat. Got it?

Here’s the problem. When you’ve got an object as big as this 10-ton satellite, some of it will survive the plunge to Earth. That’s especially true when there are hardened pieces.

From the New York Times:

John E. Pike, the director of Globalsecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., said that if the satellite in question was a spy satellite, it was unlikely to have any kind of nuclear fuel, but that it could contain toxins, including beryllium, which is often used as a rigid frame for optical components.

The speculation is this is a spy satellite, launched in 2006 and quickly lost. It probably went up with hydrazine for thrusters. That’s really nasty stuff.

When properly used in space:

The catalyst chamber can reach 800° C&#185 in a matter of milliseconds, and they produce large volumes of hot gas from a small volume of liquid hydrazine, making it an efficient thruster propellant.” – Wikipedia

When improperly encountered on the ground:

Hydrazine is highly toxic and dangerously unstable, especially in the anhydrous form. Symptoms of acute exposure to high levels of hydrazine in humans may include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures, coma, and it can also damage the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system. The liquid is corrosive and may produce dermatitis from skin contact in humans and animals. Effects to the lungs, liver, spleen, and thyroid have been reported in animals chronically exposed to hydrazine via inhalation. Increased incidences of lung, nasal cavity, and liver tumors have been observed in rodents exposed to hydrazine. – Wikipedia

The Earth is mainly covered by water. Even the land portion of Earth is sparsely populated in most spots. The odds of anyone getting hurt is small.

However, the more stuff that falls down, the worse those odds get.

&#185 – Here in the US, we use Fahrenheit. 800&#176 C is about 1,500&#176 F.

For perspective, aluminum melts at 1218&#176 F. Most other ‘substantial’ metals have significantly higher melt points.

It’s How I Feel Too

It’s very unusual to read an article and say, “Yeah, that’s how I feel too.” That’s especially true when it’s an article about Global Warming.

To a large extent, people are reacting to a tidal wave of media and not any climate change they can feel. Change is very slow and well hidden within the atmospheric noise that is weather.

If you get a chance, please read this essay from John Tierney. It was printed in the Tuesday Science section of the New York Times. It is the antidote to climatic hysteria.

Tech In The Times – From 1968

Because the school was one of New York City’s academically elite, with admission limited by an entrance exam, we had an overabundance of wimps and nerds. Most of our teams were awful.

dungareesI was just looking at some old articles in the NY Times archive (free and worth perusing). I entered the name of my high school, isolated my four years and began to scan.

Most of the stories were about our sports teams. Brooklyn Technical High School (aka Brooklyn Tech) was an all boys school with a 6,000 student enrollment. We fielded teams in every sport.

Because the school was one of New York City’s academically elite, with admission limited by an entrance exam, we had an overabundance of wimps and nerds. Most of our teams were awful.

Almost immediately, one story jumped out at me. It is attached to this entry.

The answer to your first question is, yes, I was there. Yes, I participated, even though my mom had to buy me a pair of dungarees to do so! This was the late 60s, and protesting by students was gaining steam, especially as it related to the war in Vietnam.

Oh, yeah, we really did call them dungarees. At that time, they were totally removed from the realm of fashion.

It seemed like a big social issue back then and a way of pushing back against what seemed like irrational rules.

It is a reflection of that more innocent time that this protest caused such angst to the administration of an academically elite high school. The principal was pissed we had defied him.

Until now, I had no idea the New York Times had covered it. They did in 87 words, buried on page 28 of the Saturday, March 23, 1968 edition.

As I remember (not well – I might be wrong), by the end of the school year, jeans were permitted in class.

Troubling Poker News

I’m a few days behind on this. It is troubling to me.

I play poker on line. For years I played about even. Then my ‘luck’ changed.

No matter how I honed my skills, I lost more than I won. We’re not talking large sums of money, I only play for a few dollars at a time.

I can’t tell you how many times I played tough only to be fourth when only three were being paid. Often, I was beaten by an unlikely set of circumstances.

Hey – that’s cards. It’s a game of skill and luck. At least that’s what I thought.

Then this from the New York Times Freakonomics blog: “The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open.”

The allegation is, someone was seeing all the cards as he played. It’s tough to lose under those circumstances!

This kind of fraud takes place outside the casino. A real inside job could easily be made totally undetectable from the outside.

I don’t play on Absolute Poker, but the allegations are still very troubling. I have no idea what’s going on with Absolute nor any of the online poker operators who are answerable to no one in the United States.

I wish these operations were legal here, so they could be regulated. Maybe then, I’d have more confidence.

Right now, my confidence is shattered.

The Nofollow Tag

Because you’re a human and not a computer, you’ve probably never seen a nofollow tag… and you probably wouldn’t care if you did see one. Nofollow tags are terrible for me as a blogger.

A little background. Search engines, like Google, are clever in how they decide which sites are important. You are judged by those who associate with you.

If popular sites link to you, you get some of their karma. More popular site links going your way means a higher Google page rank for you (and Google is the only search site that really counts).

It’s doubtful The New York Times or Drudge will link to me any time soon (and I probably couldn’t handle the traffic anyway). However, from time-to-time I make comments on other websites. Normally, these comments relate to my areas of expertise – like weather and media.

I don’t spam. I don’t comment for the sake of commenting.

It used to be, my comments (and my web address) were seen by the search engines. That helped elevate the importance of this blog, especially in my areas of expertise. I think that’s how Google and the others intended it.

Now, nearly all the comments I leave have a hidden tag appended to my website’s URL. I just left a comment on Jeff Jarvis’ Buzz Machine. He had posted an entry about TV news helicopters following car chases. That’s a subject I’ve commented on more than once.

Along with my name, I entered my website’s address. Unfortunately, just before www.geofffox.com, hidden within his website’s code, are the words “external nofollow.”

He’s telling Google not to follow the link to my site!

His site, along with many others, do this to every comment they receive. Maybe he’s right? Maybe self published links, like my URL, shouldn’t hold any weight at all.

On the other hand, the diminution of links through the “external nofollow” tag has moved my Google page rank from a 5 to 4, reducing my traffic by between 30% and 40% and cutting my AdSense income by at least 60%.

I’ll be the first to admit I want links for selfish reasons. I like the traffic. I like my thoughts being seen.

Just because it benefits me doesn’t make it wrong, does it?

I wrote Jeff Jarvis to tell him I was disappointed. He responded:

It is wordpress that sets that and it is purely spam. My host requires it.

That is how bad the spam problem is. Sorry.

Quite honestly, that’s the Internet equivalent of, “your call is important to us.”

After this was posted, Jeff Jarvis responded. Rather than leaving his comment a click away, I am moving it here within the entry:

Well, that’s rude. I sent you email immediately from a picnic on my Treo because I wanted to respond. I just got home and sent you another, lengthier response. And this is how you treat me? As I said in the email, I’m not the bad guy, spammers are. Blame them. To quote my second email, in full:

No disagreement. But the bad guys here are the spammers. Slime. Scum. Evildoers. I don’t blame my host; they have brought down my host more than once. Akismet, WordPress’ very good spam catcher, still misses many; I still have to kill them every hour or two. That’s how bad it is. Spam killed trackbacks. So far, it hasn’t killed comments, but it could. Spam blogs have also threatened the other means of tying together a conversation — Technorati and blog search revealing links to others’ blogs in a conversation — but so far, they’ve been able to keep only one step behind.

And by the way, it’s Jarvis, not Jervis.

-jeff

I had mistyped Jeff’s last name. I have corrected and apologized for that error.

Break In At Obama’s Place

Drudge has it on his front page, though pretty far down the left side. The AP wrote it up nicely. A bit of trouble Friday night at Obama Headquarters in Iowa.

(AP) DAVENPORT, Iowa The Davenport, Iowa, campaign headquarters for presidential candidate Barack Obama was burglarized Friday evening.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor says two laptop computers and some campaign literature were taken. A campaign worker discovered the burglary this morning, and a report was filed with Davenport police.

Vietor says that it doesn’t appear that it was anything sensitive or irreplaceable was taken.

Hmmm…. where have I heard this before? Here’s the opening ‘graph’ of a story from the New York Times, June 17, 1972.

WASHINGTON, June 17 — Five men, said to have been carrying cameras, electronic surveillance equipment and burglary tools, were arrested shortly after 2 A.M. today after a floor-by-floor search that led to the executive quarters of the National Democratic Committee here.

Here’s a copy of the actual story that ran on page 30 in the Times and the text of the story that was on the front page of the Washington Post. Remember, we knew nothing else except there was a burglary in Larry O’Brien’s office at the Watergate (The image of the front page on the left is from two days later, June 19, 1972).

I doubt last night’s burglary was anything more than a burglary. The stolen laptops were probably the target.

On the other hand, Watergate also seemed like a meaningless burglary. Nixon was way ahead at the polls. He would end up winning the presidential election with 60% of the popular vote and nearly 97% of the Electoral College.

Why would CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) even care what O’Brien did or did not know?

Just for a second, let’s make believe there was something politically evil going on Friday night in Iowa. Are there still Woodwards and Bernsteins in journalism? Are there Ben Bradlees and Katherine Grahams who would allow reporters to spend days and days pursuing leads which probably weren’t going to pan out? Few thought Watergate would be anything more than the 2-bit burglary it was.

I’m afraid I know the answer.

Corporate journalism, where publishers (and TV managers) answer to stockholders, not individual owners and where the cost of debt service has entered into the daily decision making process, has changed journalism in profound ways.

If 1972 happened in 2007, how much would we know?

Hyperbole As Large As Space Itself

Over the past few days I’ve seen headlines for, and mostly avoided reading articles on, the discovery of a new planet, Gliese_581_c. Time Magazine headlined: “Life on the New Planet?” Those words just don’t pass the sniff test.

It would be nice to say I’m excited about Gliese_581_c, except there’s a whole lot less here than meets the eye.

“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” said Xavier Delfosse, an astronomer with Grenoble University in France and one of the planet’s co-discoverers. Dmitri Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, went further, enthusing to The New York Times, “It’s 20 light-years [away]. We can go there.”

Sure, what’s 120,000,000,000,000 miles?

He’s talking 20 years, if we travel as fast as light. The fastest a man made object has ever traveled is around 150,000 mph by the Helios 2 spacecraft. This amazing speed was reached as the probe whipped around the Sun, using solar gravity for an assist.

Even at that normally unattainable rate, 120 trillion miles would take about 91,000 years.

And that life stuff – no one has actually seen the planet. Its existence is implied, based on orbital mechanics and shifts of the star it orbits. We don’t know if its got water or an atmosphere or what the surface temperature is. Gliese_581_c’s extremely close proximity to its “sun” probably affects its rotation, though we have no firm understanding of the final result.

The assumption is, gravity would be about twice what it is on Earth with tidal forces about 400 times what we see. The planet might be locked into its orbit in such a way that one side is always illuminated while the other side is under constant darkness.

What I’m getting at is, it’s an immense leap of faith to go with Time’s headline and project a planet supporting life.

It’s good to get excited about science. Why spoil that by turning on the hype machine?

From Kitty Carlisle’s Obit

You probably don’t know… probably don’t care who Kitty Carlisle was. Recently, she died at the age of 96.

Helaine will read this and say, “old reference.” She’s right. It’s been a long time since Kitty Carlisle was a household name – though she most definitely was.

She was part of my youth as a game show panelist in the 50s and 60s. Before that, she’d been an actress of middling success. She acted, and sang in the Marx Brothers classic “A Night at the Opera.” She appeared on Broadway. She sang opera at the Met.

I had no clue what her claim to fame was, nor did I care. She was a sophisticated New Yorker, dressed elegantly and on TV – a class of person foreign to my distant section of New York City. When I was a kid, I looked up to everyone on TV!

Today, The New York Times published a long, sweet, obituary written by Marilyn Berger. I was particularly touched by one passage deep within the piece:

She practiced singing every day, exercised every morning (and was the first to tell anyone that she had beautiful legs, which she did) and believed that discipline was the key to life.

I’m not sure what proper journalism is anymore. Maybe it shouldn’t be Marilyn Berger’s place to act as reporter and expert; confirming the beauty of Miss Carlisle’s gams.

I think it was sweet.

Concerning Google – What An Idiot I’ve Been

What’s the biggest Internet success story? Google, right? And everyone, until recently myself included, thinks it’s because Google is so good at performing searches.

Tonight, I’ve changed my mind.

Before Google, there were some very good search engines. There were AltaVista and Metacrawler and others whose names are now lost to me. Yahoo!&#185 was more a directory than a search engine.

As a power Internet user in the late 90s, I was not unhappy. I was able to search and get the results I wanted with little trouble.

So why is Google such a big deal? It’s not the search as much as it’s, their search seems benevolent.

Google was very smart. They cleaned up the home page.

All the other site where you could find stuff were gravitating toward being portals. Their home pages were full of news and tips and links and they included display ads. It was obvious to their users, they were sales machines. Please click. Please buy.

Google was basically a box where you entered text and not much more. No ads.

But searching is not a one web page affair. The search page leads to the results page. No search ends on the home page. Google was satisfied making their money on that landing page.

After the home page, every subsequent page on Google does contain ads. And, they are contextually tied to what’s on that page. If it’s possible to say, they are good ads.

It’s genius. But I don’t think it would have worked had Google not been willing to treat their home page as a loss leader. No ads!

As time went on Google has been able to extend their brand. They have contextual ads on webpages, like this one (look to the right). The have a mail service, also with contextual ads. They have other services too, but the payoff (to them) is always the same, and you never see any sign of commerce when you begin to do what you want to do.

Even better, since each ‘lead’ is prequalified, they can charge a higher CPM.

It’s not like a movie on TBS, where the first block is 45 minutes long and by the end you’re stopping for spots every 120 seconds. Google works so well because they run commercials and no one minds!

In this TiVo world, where the publisher of the New York Times worries he won’t have a paper based paper in five years and where CBS has just announced they’re selling a handful of TV stations for a few million more than they paid for just one of them, Google has succeeded in making us forget they are running commercials.

It is the genius of what they do, and any other elegance in the performance of search is no more than an interesting footnote.

I doubt, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were testing Google at Stanford, they had a clue what their success could be. They were lucky wise to give away the product they had worked so hard to develop.

Business is always better when you don’t worry if people will buy what you’re selling, but instead try to sell what they are dying to buy.

&#185 – I have been on the Internet long enough to have sent a comment to Yahoo! and gotten a personally written response that referred to “Jerry’s reaction” to what I’d suggested. “Jerry” was Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang. That ain’t happening today.

One Man Band

When a news photographer is also the reporter, that person is referred to as a “one man band.” It is not usually offered up as a compliment.

How can you do both well, reporters and photographers ask? Historically, that was true. I’m not so sure it’s still true as cameras and editing gear become more sophisticated and lightweight.

My friend Mike‘s TV station has switched to this mode of news gathering. The jury is still out on whether it’s a success or not, though he says they cover a lot more stories.

The reason I’m writing about this now is because of a job listing from the New York Times.

Job Description

NYTimes.com, the #1 newspaper site on the Web (Nielsen/NetRatings) and winner of Best News Site awards in 2005, 2004, 2003 (Editor & Publisher) is seeking a Videojournalist to join our team.

The videojournalist will be responsible for producing video segments for NYTimes.com.

Responsibilities: