In Case You Missed It!

The Sierra snowpack is 12% of normal.  Lowest since 1960 when they started keeping records.

The government is encouraging those jailed for long terms during the crack epidemic to ask for early release.

Yahoo has joined the growing list of companies reporting that personal information of email customers has been stolen.

United ranks last among domestic carriers in almost every category surveyed.

Doctors have begun waking up Michael Schumacher from a medically induced coma he’s been in since his skiing accident last month.

Rory McIlray shot a 63 in Dubai, his lowest score in more than three years.

China continues to delay processing visa applications for New York Times and Bloomberg News reporters, apparently in retaliation for stories highlighting investments made by families of top officials.

The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology has reversed itself and will now allow its members to treat men.

At my old elementary school in Salt Lake City, Uintah, students who owed money for previous lunches were refused lunch and their meals were thrown out.  The school now says “We bad.  It won’t happen again.”

Have a nice day!

Not Interested!

Stories in today’s news that don’t interest me:

Justin Bieber getting in trouble with the law

François Hollande breaking up with his girlfriend

Maureen Dowd on marijuana in Colorado

Russian oligarchs funding Olympic athletes

Hamid Karzai dissing America – again

Rand Paul trying to broaden his appeal

The Grammy Awards

The Super Bowl

Chinese interested in French wine

Pre-analysis of Obama’s State of the Union

Recommended!

I recommend you read or watch the following:

Books:

The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Husseini

House of Stone by Anthony Shadid

The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiassen

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

Movies (Even if you’ve seen them before):

Amour

12:08 East of Bucharest

Apocalypse Now

21 Grams

Army of Crime

Barbara

Turtles Can Fly

35 Shots of Rum

Before Sunrise

Children of the Pyre

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Touchez Pas au Grisbi

The Diving Bell & the Butterfly

The Gatekeepers

TV:

True Detective

House, M.D.

Homicide

Oz

Breaking Bad

Orange is the New Black

House of Cards

Niners!

Tough game.

Coulda won.

Didn’t.

The good news?

Spring training begins in a month.

Go Giants!

Film Industry Nonsense!

The film industry is fighting a losing battle.  They release a film and then make the public wait for months to see it in any way save going to a theater.

They don’t get it.  Even among teenagers, fewer and fewer people want to go through the hassle of fighting traffic to get to a theater, parking, paying a high price for a ticket and even higher prices for refreshments, sitting next to someone with body odor and then not being able to hear well because of some incessant chatter between people.

We want to watch films at home or on some mobile device we use, at a time that suits us.  I would be willing to pay a reasonable (even a high) price for a DVD or pay to get the movie streaming through the Internet if I could get it when the film is released.  But that’s not possible.  I can’t find any place to buy a new release.  I guess there are piracy options but I haven’t checked them out.

For decades the music industry adopted the same stance.  Don’t let people have individual songs.  Make them buy the album.  Steve Jobs and Apple finally broke this stranglehold and surprise – everyone is making more money than ever because what people want is available.

Film producers, distributors and even theater owners should realize that sooner or later their limited view of an outdated business model is going to come back and bite them in the ass.  In the meantime, I have to wait 3, 4, even 6 months to get a newly released film on my home screen.

It’s nonsense!