I Didn’t Know

Monday, January 24, 2011 by Dick.

In “real life,” the place we used to call “meatspace,” I chair a small regional arts council.

Over the years, we’ve hung a lot of art and presented a lot of concerts including the only stop the national Artrain ever made in Vermont; Artrain included works by Henry Casselli, Peter Hurd, Peter Max, Jamie Wyeth, and my friend Deborah Deschner from Vermont. We brought to the stage April Wine and 17 other bands in an all-day benefit we called Floodstock, held in the same site as the Grateful Dead concerts.

I know lots of artists. I know lots of musicians. Hundreds. Maybe thousands, but not as many as Mark Sustic. And I’ve strung cables on stage and lugged gear.

That’s why it surprised me that I didn’t recognize the gear in this Facebook conversation:

Great Female Vocalist (rock/pop/country singer-songwriter):
Last night the guts fell out of my Shure PG58. Dangit. Do any of you vocalists out there want to recommend your favorite mic for live performances? I’m in the market! Thanks!

Band Leader #1
EV N/DYM 767A

Supercharged Drummer:
Shure Beta 58

Supercharged Drummer:
Or a Sennheiser E935

House Rocker Drummer #2:
Well then… Put the guts back in… The little set screw most likely fell out or became loose.

Gypsy Singer-Guitarist:
Shure Beta 58 is what I use.

Great Female Vocalist:
Well, I’d heard from my sound man that he’d appreciate me getting a better mic so that he could make better adjustments. That’s why I’m looking for feedback. I always liked that mic, but I don’t have the sound man’s perspective.

House Rocker Drummer #2:
Shure SM58 Industry work horse. But I am old school …If all is adjusted correctly…there is no feedback.

Band Leader #2:
I like our Beta 87 A’s for live work. Check with [female vocalist]. She has a mic she swears by. I forget what it is though.

August Sound Engineer:
I absolutely love the AUDIX OM-6 and it’s great for female voices. Highly recommended… Same with the Shure Beta 87A of course. There’s lots that’ll work well for you and of course that depends on your budget too. Best idea is testing them with your own voice though ! Good luck

I know that Shure designed the legendary SM58™ vocal mic for professional vocal use in live performance, sound reinforcement, and studio recording. I even know what it looks like. But I have no idea which of these mics is right for our Great Female Vocalist or whether some other one not named would be even better.

I’m a pretty knowledgeable guy with a broad expertise. Want to devise an AI controlled pick-and-pack warehouse or just a pick-and-place machine? I’m your guy. Need a suspension consult for your hot rod? I’m your guy. Want to design a website to sell your artwork? I’m your guy. Need a landscape photo or an opinion printed in portrait? I’m your guy. I didn’t know that I didn’t know an answer to this. And unlike most 3rd or 4th graders and most politicians, I couldn’t simply make one up.

There are undoubtedly lots of other questions I had no idea that I know nothing about. Maybe as many as the number of musicians I’ve never met. Using that data point of one, I shall now generalize that there are issues in this wide world that our self-proclaimed pundits also have no idea they know nothing about. But soooooo many of these authorities will analyze, and philosophize, and sound off anyway.

Gotta be a lesson in there somewhere.

Posted in Newspaper "Science", Sociology, Media, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Bloody Hell, Part 1

Monday, January 17, 2011 by Dick.

It’s the media’s fault.

It’s the Tea Party’s fault.

It’s the Demorat’s fault.

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I have spent the last week or so watching the news coverage and Innertoob noodlings that blamed pretty much everyone but the Man in the Moon for the Arizona shootings.

I’m tired of the Blame Game.

Paul “Buster” Door, a now-retired North Puffin car dealer and Democratic party official, has spent the entire time railing at me about the “climate of hate and blame” that set Jared Loughner off on his path of disintegration. “Dupnik proved his case without lifting a finger,” he said about Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. “And now the Party of Hate and Violence has turned its lie machine loose on him.”

Hello?

Buster doesn’t think the lie machine will get much traction there in southern Arizona where the 75-year old “anti-Sheriff Joe” has been re-elected seven times since 1980.

“The lunatic right-wing conspiracy theorists created the atmosphere that drove Loughner to act,” he said. “Their Dupnik spin comes through loud and clear about how hard they’re working to ‘prove’ their conspiracy theory about Mr. Loughner’s actions.”

Right wing conspiracy theories? Hello?

The NY Times reported that Mr. Loughner’s comments were “strikingly similar in language and tone” to the voices of the Internet’s more paranoid, extremist, right-wing militia writers. The NY Times.

I did have to correct Buster a few other times on the facts in a conversation he started about the wonderfulness of the sheriff.

Arizona seems to be the national capitol for wack jobs. Sheriff Dupnik comes through loud and clear, alright. Last year he said out loud that he would refuse to enforce his state’s immigration law. This year, when he should have been investigating the shootings, he spent his time building the defense’s “debbil made me do it” case by telling everyone who would listen that it was all the fault of the right wing media.

I can understand why Buster want this guy for his sheriff. I don’t understand why anyone else would.

To set the record straight, over the past week even the MSM news admitted that if Mr. Loughner is political at all, he leans left. Funny thing about jumping to conclusions.

“Since we’re engaging in sophistry,” Buster said “Dupnik’s comment was simply that, should the bill become law, he wouldn’t enforce it.”

No sophistry. Dupnik said he wouldn’t enforce the law.

Period. Paragraph.

“Nice job trying to steer the discussion from the real point,” Buster said “and off into a total non issue.”

We do agree on that. It’s what leftwingnuts do.

See, every single MSM outlet including the NY Times jumped all over Mr. Loughner as driven by “that hateful national political rhetoric” that drove his murderous fantasies. And, in spite of what the ongoing investigation shows, Buster still want to blame “that hateful national [conservative] political rhetoric” for the murders instead of blaming Mr. Loughner.

A. Man. Killed. Six. People.

But Buster keeps pushing “that hateful national [conservative] political rhetoric.”

A. Man. Killed. Six. People.

But Bernie Sanders is fund raising to combat “that hateful national [conservative] political rhetoric.”

A. Man. Killed. Six. People. He killed 9-year-old Christina Green and Federal Judge John Roll and wounded 14 others, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, his apparent target.

But all Buster can talk about is us hateful conservatives and our rhetoric.

It’s what leftwingnuts do when they can’t dispute the facts.

So Buster changed the subject.

“You saw that Sarah Palin got into it, right?” he asked. “She deliberately riled up her gun nuts with that reprehensible comment about the mainstream ‘journalists and pundits [who] manufactured a blood libel to incite hatred and violence against them.”

I know the stories that Jews used human blood and the particularly blood of innocent Christian children to bake the matzos of Passover. I didn’t remember the term “blood libel” nor did I associate it with the Jews when I did.

I’m a pretty fair country wordsmith and I use metaphor and allegory in most teaching and most of my editorial writing. “Blood libel” is not a word pairing I would have dreamt up so I have to believe Ms. Palin’s speech writers knew exactly what it meant.

Blood libel is, frankly, no worse than Mr. Obama calling Congressional Repuglicans “hostage takers” then offering to negotiate with them. Sends terrorists a great message that does. Blood libel is, frankly, no worse than calling a budget bill a “rape of the American people.” There wasn’t a woman in America untouched by that statement. Blood libel is, frankly, no worse than Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) saying “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him” about then candidate and now Governor Rick Scott (R-FL).

Mr. Kanjorski issued a pretty explicit call to violence. And yet. And yet Buster and Jon Stewart ignored it. If Rep. Joe “you lie” Wilson had called for Nancy Pelosi to be put against a wall and shot, the Demorats and the MSM would have eaten his shorts.

This is a bad trend. Next thing you know, we’ll start equating our politicians to Catholic priests.

It’s what leftwingnuts do when they can’t dispute the facts.

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This column started out spinning the giant Blame Game wheel. Let’s see where the ball landed.

It’s the media’s fault. Yeppers.

It’s the Tea Party’s fault. Sho ’nuff.

It’s the Demorat’s fault. Exactly.

That’s all true but the real truth is simple. It’s your fault.

You, dear reader, buy the newspapers. You, dear reader, tune to those television stations. You, dear reader, spread these exaggerations and untruths. And the media, the political parties, and your neighbors echo you.

Posted in Politics & News, Sociology, PC, Media, Big Thoughts, Random Access | 9 Comments »

What a Disaster!

Monday, January 3, 2011 by Dick.

Policemen police. Runners run. Writers write. And we all look over our own shoulders now and then.

This week I write about what I missed. And what I didn’t.

I cherish a few beliefs about myownself. This blog isn’t about me. These columns are what Faux News calls fair and balanced. And I AM™ never w-r-r-rong.

OK. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Last month, in writing about millionaires, I admitted that I’d rather be a millionaire than not. I’m not going to increase my personal wealth much by putting a Paypal button on this site. The week before that, I confessed that I now understand why liberals don’t geddit. And just two weeks before, I told the story of my mom at the corner of High and Gay.

This is my 333 entry since I started blogging in 2008. 220 of them have been in the op-ed category I call Random Access. Many of those (151) fell in the Politics and News category. I imagine you can figure out what topics I covered.

“Politics is like the weather,” I wrote in 2008. “Everybody talks about it. People think they can predict the weather. Or change it.”

The pieces that had more impact were more personal. 2010 was a busy year. Liz Arden sent me a family picture of herself with her parents and I riffed that into a story about my mom as an elderly woman who could have been slain by a taxi. We learned that “full” in a small town parking lot is different than “full” in Miami or New York. gekko and I wrote an ongoing series together.

My family didn’t have a lot of stuff when I was growing up. We had a boat but not a lot of cash. My dad’s job was the typical junior exec and we shared the homestead with my grandfather; we all had to work for what we did have. I came out of that feeling depraved but not deprived.

Rufus missed [bleep]ing Asbestos Dust back in May. He was amazed. The rest of us about died. A week earlier, I had written that “Kids aren’t allowed to eat dirt.” Number One daughter had been banned from classes because she wore a t-shirt to school.

I did spend some time wondering why my friend Swampy Swamtek, with all his brainpower, with all his education, with all his belief in conservation, can’t remember to turn out the lights when he leaves a room. I remembered that, since the heady days of Apollo 13 forty years ago, no man has had to walk twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill, barefoot. Both ways. According to this president’s plan no American man ever will again.

And I took some time off from worrying about the claim that women’s hot flashes are responsible for Global Warming to reminisce about my sports car races in the 70s.

---

I somehow missed the fact that the Mets did not make the World Series. I didn’t once write about the United/Continental airline’s merger that brought together 700 planes, dropped employment from 88,000 to 77,000, and shared 7 bags of 2003 peanuts among us. Airlines put fares up $20 across the board. I never once mentioned Christine O’Donnell’s Rhodes Scholarship in comedy which is at least as credible as her candidacy turned out to be.

I’ll keep hammering the small town politicians who want you to believe that paying twice as much for half as many police officers in your town is a way to save you (tax) money. And when Congress acts on H.R.6907, a measure to ban further activity at Eyjafjallajökull, you’ll hear about it here first. Most important, in the spirit of WikiLeaks, pretty much everything personal rattling around between my ears will sooner or later fall out on these pages.

Politics is like the climate. Everybody talks about it. People think they can predict the climate. Or change it.

Posted in Writing, Politics & News, PC, Media, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Words not on Paper

Monday, October 4, 2010 by Dick.

“I have to switch back to my iPod, since my audio book is on that device,” Liza Arden told me. “I can listen to it in iTunes and on my iPod, but not on my Android phone because Audible dot com does not provide multiple versions when you purchase a la carte.”

Elizabeth “Liza” Arden is an engineering manager with a long commute, a gymnast, and no relation to the cosmetic maven.

She still likes print on paper but is more likely to read with her ears or on a device.

Liza may be one reason Dorchester Publishing has stopped printing its bread-and-butter “mass market” paperback books as it transitions to e-books and “trade” sized paperbacks.

The typical mass market paperback uses cheaper paper, has few illustrations, and smaller print, all to fit the story into the smaller (usually about 4″ x 7″) book. The larger trade paperback are usually printed on better paper and have font and line spacing similar to a hardcover book.

E-book revenue has gone from 0.5 per cent of publisher revenue about two years ago to nearly 10 per cent now. According to a recent Harris Interactive poll of 2,775 American readers, 8% of the reading population uses e-books already and those reading electronically are reading more books more often. Popular e-readers are available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and applications are available for computers, iPads, smartphones, and PDAs.

I have that gut feel as well although the numbers are probably closer than we think. Typical trade margin ranges between 37% discount and 50%. Most popular books cost the publisher half the cover but reference titles typically run 37%. Wholesalers work on low single digit spreads. Co-op is another 3-5 points at most publishers.

Printing costs (meaning for a physical book) also include the cost of returns and warehousing. There is a non-negligible “warehousing” cost for the server farm and Internet infrastructure for an e-book. The biggest problem with trade publishing and the reason it is a single digit net margin business is returns which can run as high as 40%. These are good numbers:

		by %	in $
Book List Price		100%	$6.99
	to retailer	50%	3.50
	printing	8%	0.56
	inventory and obsolescence	10%	0.70
	royalties	7%	0.49
	sales and marketing	10%	0.70
	overhead and warehousing	10%	0.70
	co-op	2%	0.14
	editorial	4%	0.28

If you noticed, the publisher’s cost adds up to more than the 50% “take.” The actuality is that some of the fixed costs (like printing) really is fixed based on run size and other constant costs (like , overhead, and editorial) probably are indeed fixed for any issue, meaning it costs, say, $1,000 to edit a book. That’s the reason a mass market paperback now costs $7.95-9.95 instead of $1.50-3.95. Ditto the $6.99 e-book cost.

Let’s consider that from the e-book side. These are made up numbers but pretty accurate:

		by %	in $
Book List Price		100%	$6.99
	to online retailer	50%	3.50
	royalties	20%	1.40
	sales and marketing	15%	1.05
	overhead and warehousing	10%	0.70
	editorial	4%	0.28

There’s the potential for actual profit in there.

Founded in 1971, Dorchester is the oldest independent mass-market publisher in the U.S. Their romance line has included Christine Feehan, Jayne Ann Krentz, Katie MacAlister, Lynsay Sands, and more. The private company specializes in mass-market paperback fiction in romance, horror, Westerns and thriller genres. They also distribute pulp mysteries of the Hard Case Crime line and the Family Doctor series.

Dorchester sees the market soaring as more devices, apps, and programs become available. They predict that e-reader and e-book sales will continue to increase. The company will also offer print-on-demand (paper) copies for selected titles through Ingram Publisher Service. Some e-books that sell well will also be released as P-O-D trade paperbacks.

Dorchester’s e-books are available at most major vendors and compatible with most platforms at an average price of $6.99. Trade paperbacks will be priced in the $12 to $15 range.

Romance novels. Science fiction. Textbooks. Mainstream fiction. Are newspapers next?

Four years ago, IFRA — the newspaper trade group in Germany — and The New York Times started looking at De Tijd “e-paper” devices.

What a lousy idea that is!

Let’s imagine, just for a moment, that I’m the typical book-or-newspaper reader today. I have a few minutes here, a few there to read. I might take a little downtime at my desk. I’ll poop at least once for a few uninterrupted minutes in the “reading room.” I’ll stand in line at the grocery store, do 40 flights on the stair climber, and commute to work.

I absolutely do not want yet another device just to read my newspaper on.

“My desk has a computer that I usually stare at; I want what I’m reading right there,” Liza said. She won’t take her laptop to the reading room, so “I want today’s tome on my (waterproof) smartphone for that or for standing in line. Sitting by the pool is a great place for a full size e-book. Drive time isn’t, but that is perfect for an audio book. So is going to the gym.”

Americans once had a love affair with multi-featured gadgets. I have a Shopsmith, for example, that my grandfather built furniture with in the fifties and my father cut two fingers off with in the sixties. I still have all my appendages. The Shopsmith is a lathe-based woodworking tool with a single motor that drives its lathe, tablesaw, drill press, horizontal boring mill, and disc sander. Like MS-DOS, you have to stop using one tool to mount, setup, and use the next.

Most of us today have individual tools, hence our pockets and purses crammed with smart phones, iPods, netbooks, and Kindles™.

A monthly Audible contract would give Liza access to multiple versions of a file but even that offers Mac, Windows, or Linux computer and iPod files, but not for computers, iPod and any additional MP3 devices. Audible also offers a monthly subscription to The New York Times Audio Digest.

The book publishing and the newspaper industries can make both the Shopsmith owner and Liza happy.

Bundling.

Dear publisher:

I can nuke my TV dinner or cook it in the oven. Surely you can do the same.

When I buy my next book, I want a printed book on actual paper. I want an e-book in the three major formats. An audiobook on CD, AAC, and mp3. And a cross-platform app for my computer and my PDA or smartphone. All in that one package.

Theng yew vedda mush.

Posted in Tech Toys, Society, Media, Random Access | 8 Comments »

Anger Management

Monday, September 20, 2010 by Dick.

There, I said it.

Come to think of it, I am downright vexed. See, everywhere I look, people are trying to exasperate me and that just pisses me off.

BP, the company so many Americans have come to hate. They screwed up. The government screwed up. And the public got screwed. Meanwhile, 153 days of media coverage exacerbated the anger and fanned the flames. BP blamed the government which aggravated everybody. People on the ground blamed BP which antagonized BP but pleased pretty much everyone else. The media blitzed the scientists by offering conflicting reports, then blaming the experts for not knowing the answers. They took science down another notch which irks me. Lot of anger in that paragraph.

Anybody been to court lately? When our Visigoth neighbors decided some of our land was their land, they dragged us before the local zoning board, then sued us in both Vermont’s Superior and Environmental courts. They lied which inflamed me. I resisted which affronted them. Lot of anger in that paragraph.

“The only litigation more contentious than a divorce is a boundary line dispute,” our lawyer said. He, at least, was happy.

It goads people (”goad,” not “goat,” although it probably gets some goats, too) when I say this but Islam galls us. Some Muslims enrage us. One of the reasons they do, aside from claiming “religion of peace” status whilst trying to kill us, is simple: raving Muslim terrorists stir up embittered Muslim illiterates to blast unsuspecting Americans while ruffled rank-and-file Muslims stand idly by. Lot of anger in that paragraph.

Jealousy. There’s a biggie. In another arena gekko said “jealousy became more important than the relationships I craved.” Proverbs reminds us that Anger is cruel and destructive, but it is nothing compared to jealousy. Still, when Anthony Lozano threatened, bound, and tortured his girlfriend who eventually escaped the home they shared, all allegedly because he found a post on her Facebook page from another man, he certainly acted out his exasperation, irritation, and temper.

Take politics (sounds like a Henny Youngman joke). Here in Vermont, Demorat Peter Shumlin is riling his supporters (and the opposition) to a full boil over the Repuglican Brian Dubie’s hateful stand to renew the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant license. Mr. Dubie has maddened his supporters (and the opposition) by calling Mr. Shumlin a liar and a liberal. Lot of anger in that paragraph.

I’m a political junkie. I have chaired political committees, sat in political booths at field dayses, and walked the streets registering voters. I have run for office. I am now a “Librarian” but I started out as a Republican. I stuck it out until the party started to rant and rankle. I generally like the ideas individual Tea Party peeps discuss, but the Tea Party as a whole scares me because they monger anger. Their invective leverages agitation, outrage, and seething, steaming umbrage to whip voters into the mob frenzy independent of the thought process.

All extremists favor those tactics. The media who know that if you bleed, it leads. The lawyers who charge by the infuriating hour. The religious freaks who bristle over a Bris. The control freaks who flip over Facebook. And the politicians, whether they be home grown “officials,” terrorist fanatics, miffed militia men, or radical revolutionaries.

Provocation pays.

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Here’s my plan for the 43 days until November 2 (and all the days in the future):

• If you are in the media and you pump out lies designed to get on my nerves, you will succeed and I will not buy from your sponsors.
• If you belong to an extremist religion and continue to support the people who want to kill me, it will offend me and I will ask that you lose your tax exempt status.
• If you are a politician seeking my vote, stop. If you name your opponent it will anger me and I will write my own name in on the ballot.

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Breaking News:
I am just sooooooooo tired of these airheads: The NYTimes reports that, “Democrats are deploying the fruits of a yearlong investigation into the business and personal histories of Republican candidates in an effort to plant doubts about them.” !@#$%^ing !@#$%^ers.

Posted in Society, Politics & News, Media, Random Access | 6 Comments »

Short. Not Sweet.

Monday, July 26, 2010 by Dick.

I must be a racist. After all, I’m white and conservative, and I don’t think we should have an African-American president.

There. I said it.

I AM™ absolutely convinced we should not have an African-American president.

Read the next sentence in full because regular readers know what I think of Mr. Obama’s ability to govern. I’m perfectly OK with Barack Obama as a black man or a “person of color” or a purple man with pink polka dots but we ought not have an African-American president.

We should have an American president. Period.

Anyone who thinks we should have a hyphenated president is just plain nuts.

“No person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Not a natural born citizen of Europe. Not a natural born citizen of Antarctica. Not a natural born citizen of Africa. A natural born citizen of America. Those who become citizens here by birth or immigration are no longer citizens of somewhere else. They are Americans, darn it, not European-Americans nor Antarctic-Americans nor African-Americans.

Americans.

This whole argument irks me. Are there racist idiots in the Tea Party? Absolutely. Are there racist idiots in the Communist Party of the United States? Positively. Have the Lefty Loons trotted out the race card every day since 2008 to deflect us from their failed policies? Without doubt. Have the Tighty Righties stupidly responded to those slurs over and over again? Right again.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean called Fox News “absolutely racist” on Fox News Sunday. Vermont state veterinarian Robert Johnson also says there have been an unusual number of fox attacks this year, but it’s not cause for alarm. The latest attack happened a couple of weeks ago in Bennington when a rabid fox bit 8-year-old Rimmele Wood on the leg. His father killed the fox with an ax.

Some of our liberal friends are probably considering that solution for Fox News.

Perhaps everyone, not just the Wood family, needs the rabies shots. As my roofer friend Dino likes to say, sometimes I think I fell down the rabbit hole and we’re wandering around with Alice in Blunderland.

Posted in Society, What? Are They Nuts?, Politics & News, PC, Media, Random Access | 1 Comment »