news

All shook up

So apparently there was an earthquake today?

Everyone here is fine. It was reportedly a 5.8-magnitude earthquake, which, as many West Coast people were quick to point out over Twitter and elsewhere, is pretty much nothing, especially when you’re several miles and states over from the fault line. We definitely felt it in my office, up on the eighth floor, a weird vibration that caused a bunch of us to look up and say things like, “Did…did you feel something?”

Yeah, it was weirdly disconcerting, especially since I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an earthquake before, but it wasn’t exactly frightening. We’ve had freight trains go past our block — we’re right by the tracks, here at home — that have shaken me more. I wasn’t able to reach my sister, who works around the Washington, D.C., area (and therefore closer to the epicenter than New York), but only because the cell phone coverage went down. She wasn’t in any danger either. I have one co-worker who was outside, eating his lunch, who missed the quake altogether.

Other than that non-event of a quake — which nevertheless dominated conversation in the office most of the remaining afternoon — it was a pretty standard Tuesday. A conference call about a book in development was about as exciting as it otherwise got.

Tuesday various

  • Silicon Valley billionaire reveals plan to launch floating ‘start up country’ off San Francisco. Yeah, that’s gonna end well. [via]

    When I first saw that, I asked, “Are there any words scarier than ‘inspired by Atlas Shrugged‘?” To which DoctorHu rightly responded, “Are there any funnier or more appropriate than ‘We want looser building codes in our floating city?'”

  • But what do they care? Apparently, the very rich have less empathy. [via]
  • Speaking of the divide between rich and poor, if you’re like me and were wondering how Blackberry’s became the organizing tool of rioters and looters recently in England, here’s an interesting article on their shift from executives to the urban poor. [via]
  • Marvel Bribes Retailers to Destroy DC Comics.
  • And finally, Bert and Ernie are not gay. So sayeth Sesame Workshop, and you know, I’m with Mark Evanier on this. It was just ridiculous from the get-go:

    One could also argue, as I would if I could stand to devote five more minutes to this whole ridiculous matter, that there’s a nice lesson in Bert and Ernie not being retrofitted as gay lovers. It is possible for two men or two women to be close friends and live together and sleep in adjoining beds without their sexuality being an issue or someone saying, “They must be gay!” I don’t think same-sex wedlock threatens so-called “traditional” marriages in any way. I don’t think the idea that two males might just be really close friends (and nothing more) threatens gay marriages.

Wednesday various

  • The slow (but perhaps inevitable) death of Borders:

    In 2001, Borders would go on to partner with Amazon.com, allowing the online book retailer to handle their internet sales for them, if you can believe it. There’s a photo of Jeff Bezos and then-Borders president and CEO Greg Josefowicz shaking hands to celebrate the partnership. Josefowicz has weatherman hair and a broad smile, and he’s beaming past the camera with the cocksure giddiness of a guy who thinks he just got rid of all his problems because he sold his dumb old cow for a handful of really cool magic beans. But when you pull your eyes away from Josefowicz’s superheroic chin, you notice that Jeff Bezos is smiling directly into the camera with keen shark eyes. His smile is more relaxed, a little more candid than Josefowicz’s photo-op-ready grin. It’s the face of someone who’s thinking, I finally got you, you son of a bitch. [via]

  • The slow (and ongoing) death of Wikipedia:

    After years at the top result on practically every Google search, Wikipedia has lost its urgency. Kids who were in 8th grade in 2004 have gone through their entire high school and college careers consulting (i.e. plagiarizing) Wikipedia; to them, Wikipedia is a dull black box—editing it seems just a bit more possible than making revisions to Pride and Prejudice. [via]

  • Apes From the Future, Holding a Mirror to Today:

    But it has to be said that the movie science fiction of the original Apes era, with its now laughably primitive effects, in some ways benefited from its technical crudeness: the spectacle rarely got in the way of the ideas, and when the ideas are engaging, as they are in the first “Planet of the Apes” and “Escape,” the simple effects function like sketches, indications of some greater, not fully realized, narrative and intellectual architecture.

  • The Playboy Club as female empowerment? O RLY?

    Perhaps the good news is that we’ve now reached the point where it’s considered smart marketing to push a feminist spin on your show about Playboy Bunnies. Perhaps we’ve reached the point, in fact, where you have to try to fit your show into a “we have smart and strong women characters” mold. (Earlier in the tour, we had a panelist argue that Entourage had some of the strongest female characters on television, which raised eyebrows similarly.) Perhaps it’s good news that strength, like sex, presumably sells. Just don’t look for it here.

  • And finally, a little late linking this, but: Remembering legendary Cleveland rock critic Jane Scott [via]

Tuesday

A day spent mostly knee-deep in building instructor and student materials for online, with periodic checks on the terrible news that keeps coming out of England.

This evening, I got somewhat soaked in the block and a half between my office and Grand Central, but the rain had of course stopped by the time I actually got home.

Tuesday various