MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 5/29/13

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 5/29/13

May 29th, 2013 by Clark Humphrey

via theatlantic.com

The Atlantic has unearthed a 1999 Microsoft ad, touting the e-book future that was supposed to be jump started by the soon-to-be-released Microsoft Reader software package. It’s taken a bit longer than that for events in this “Future of Reading” timeline to come about. But one thing has happened already: the luddites who’ve long dominated the book community are loudly touting the benefits of “Real Books From Real Trees for Real People.”
Once again, I insist that Windows 8 is not the cause of the PC sales slump. Rather, it’s the fact that everybody’s agog about phones and tablets instead. And the fact that so much PC functionality these days is based on online and “cloud”-based activity, so home users feel no need to buy new hardware.
Traffic on Wash. state roadways is atÂ a 10-year low. Yet Republicans keep pushing a cars-only transportation budget.
Meanwhile, Knute Berger remembers the people who fought the R.H. Thompson Expressway, a freeway which would have eradicated the Central Area and ruined the Arboretum.
David Schoenfeld at ESPN.com says it’s time to sacrifice M’s manager Eric Wedge.
There’s a public school tucked away in Seattle’s residential north end. In recent years, the Indian Heritage School program was housed there. More recently, the school district’s talked about replacing the buildings on the site. That would mean destroying murals depicting local indigenous heroes. Activists have fought to keep the murals. They may succeed.
A cold-calling “charity” campaign, which recently phone-bombed Seattle households, may be a pure scam with little or no proceeds going to its stated cause.
Collector speculation pricing in music has affected the price of new vinyl editions.
“Mothers Now Top Breadwinners in 4 of 10 U.S. Homes.”
Today in what you never hear about in the right-wing media, the Bush-era IRS gleefully persecuted liberal groups.
The Russian-owned news/opinion channel RT has hired Larry King.
Facebook vows to crack down on user-posted rape “jokes.”
Philip G. Ryken at the Gospel Coalition site has a snarky list of “How to Discourage Artists in the Church.” Some of its bullet points also apply to discouraging creative work in the larger world, such as “Treat the arts as a window dressing for the truth rather than a window into reality.”
PolitiFact rates at least half the things Republicans say as “false,” and employs exaggeration tricks to find at least some Democrats lying.
Tired of folks my age griping about how things used to be? Make up your own “meme” slogan for the face of “Old Economy Steven”!

quickmeme.com