Pithy Title Here

If you haven't been following the news, you might not be aware that News Corporation, owner of Fox, and Time Warner Cable have been in a rather ugly shouting match that will likely result in Fox pulling its programming and channels from TWC on New Year's Day. Let me explain: In the beginning, TV broadcasters put their programming out for free to viewers. If you had a TV and an antenna, you could tune in to NBC. Networks paid locally-owned TV stations to become network affiliates. Advertisers paid networks (and local affiliates) to support free delivery of TV. This was great, unless you lived in some remote area or in a deep mountain valley and couldn't pick up a signal. Thus, the invention of community antenna TV (aka "cable"). All was well. This was a pastoral era where man loved his fellow man, the Russians were the predictable-style bad guys. Life made sense. Then, it all went to hell. Quickly. See, cable was something you had to pay for. And that meant yo...

First off, believe it or not, I have a lot to discuss. So, be on the lookout for more entries in coming days. Now, onto the matter at hand... I think this whole business about the state of airline security in the aftermath of a terrorist trying to blow up Delta/Northwest 253 on Christmas Day over Michigan... is stupid. I don't understand why there's an uproar because it's simple: airport security sucks. I don't mean the TSA people who perform the job. From what I can tell, they're doing fine. The system they have to operate under is what sucks. My surprise is that we haven't had this happen more often. The issue is not a failure of intelligence (I highly recommend you read Malcolm Gladwell's 2003 piece on this topic here ). The issue is related to the problem Gladwell points out though. Essentially, we treat every person going through security like they could be a terrorist. But... we do it in a way that is designed to cause no undue delay for we, the ...

As much as I talk about travel on here, I might as well look back at the year that was in that sense... First, let's look at the raw numbers of miles flown and flights: US Airways - 58,872 (55 flights)* Delta - 3,444 (6 flights) AirTran - About 700 (2 flights) Continental - 406 (2 flights) Southwest About 500 (1 flight) The star goes next to US Air because by the end of this month, I'll have been on 62 flights and well over 60,000 miles. And the crazy thing... more than 30,000 of them will have been since October 1, which means (if my math is right), due to US Air's fourth quarter promotion, I will vault from Gold status on US Air, to Chairman's. Which, frequent fliers will hear me here, is bad-ass. I should note here this wasn't all for business, though the vast bulk was. That said, a few vacation flights in there for sure. So, where was Jay? Here were some of my travel destinations: Atlanta New York Seattle Portland, OR San Francisco/Oakland Southern Califor...

Well, here we are... another year of music to look at. Truth be told, it was a pretty weak year. I hate saying that, but I think it's true. The standout albums were easy to spot and the ones that came close had some serious flaws. We've been spoiled the last few years and this was the year the karma cycle paid us back. Still, the top 10 I have are excellent. And it was an excellent year for "electronic" music. As always, my top 10 has a "second opinion" so you know I'm not nuts (or at least someone is as nuts as me). First, a few notable albums that, in my mind were good, but not quite the top 10: U2 - No Line on the Horizon - This was easily U2's best entry since Pop . I know that a lot of U2 "fans" would dispute this, but these people seem to eschew creativity in favor of pedestrian arena rock. U2, for the first time in more than a decade took risks. And while it's not their best work ever, it's an album that shows tha...

Well, folks... it's that time once again. My annual roundup of all things music from my own selfish perspective. You might want to refresh your memory on last year to see if this holds up at all over time. Anyhow, we'll get to the 10 best albums soon. For now, partially because rankings in and of themselves do not sum up a year in music - and partially because I need more time to write the albums blog - let's just get to some of the musical housekeeping for the year that was: Creed of the Year I'm going to take some pain for this one, because Creed is probably not the best parallel, but... Kings of Leon. I say this because I have their most recent album. It has some good songs. They are all overplayed. They are far overrated as a band. They have vague religious righteousness about them. Maybe Creed is a good parallel. That said, if Creed could write a song as good as "Sex on Fire" the world would be a better place. Band I'm Glad I Got Into This Yea...

It's my birthday and I am feeling punchy. And since I can barely look at my Twitter feed, turn on the TV or leave my house without hearing about how good SEC football is, I'm going to have my wits with people. For those unacquainted with the issue, the Southeast Conference is widely touted to be the best college football conference ever in the history of the universe. At least by ESPN, which slathers the love on the SEC like my dog does to my bare feet. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising. Much like ESPN overhypes the NBA (a league ESPN paid a lot of money to broadcast), ESPN's talkies love to hype up the SEC. Some of these idiots go as far as to say a team that loses a game in the SEC might still be better than an undefeated team from, say, the Big 12, another major football conference. You would think ESPN signed a deal to televise SEC games... oh look: they did ! Beyond this, though, annoying fan after annoying fan is happy to remind me about how much bett...

For the past three years, I have worked to compile a mix of Christmas/holiday music that celebrates the season, but is performed by current indie bands. It's not because I dislike the old standards of the season... I just choose to not take the holidays quite as seriously as my local all-Christmas-all-the-time radio station might. In 2007, the mix kicked off with The Dandy Warhols ' psychedelic take on "The Little Drummer Boy," segued right into Save Ferris' Judaic send-up of "Christmas Wrapping" and, if I can say so myself, killed for 30+ minutes. It included the modern classic Barenaked Ladies/Sarah McLachlan "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and more. Last year, I felt I upped the ante with 40 minutes of spirited tunes. Ringing in with The Raveonette's "Christmas Song" and rolling right through to Coldplay's lovely cover of "2,000 Miles." This year, it was a harder task. The simple fact of the matter is that t...

Last week, when I flew home from a conference in Phoenix, I was a mess. I had known I was due for a cold and, sure enough, it hit with a vengeance. This was unacceptable. I had to fly to Seattle on Tuesday night and Sarah was going to meet me in Portland for the following weekend. I had to take action. When I fight disease, I fight to win. And while, the cold lingered well past its sell-by date, here's how I went from on my ass last Friday night to a cross-country flight Tuesday night and managed to feel OK: I stop drinking - I know. Rare is the night I don't have at least one drink. It's OK. My doctor says it's fine. Anyhow... From when I got on my flight in Phoenix until this past Thursday night, no alcohol. Zip. Don't need my body processing anything but a virus. I drink all kinds of other stuff. I have a rule with a cold... if I stand up, it's time for a glass of water. I must have had 6 cups of tea a day, too. Lunch? Soup. I basically challe...

CNN analysts are going on and on about the New Jersey governor's race, extrapolating what it means in the national scheme of things. One analyst talked about how big an indicator Chris Christie's election is... the fact that a Republican could win the governorship in a liberal state like New Jersey! One analyst even called it "shocking." Friends, here are the governors of New Jersey since 1982: 1982-1990 - Tom Kean (Republican) 1990-1994 - Jim Florio (Democrat, lost in 1994 in a landslide) 1994-2001 - Christie Whitman (Republican) 2001-2002 - Don DiFrancesco (Republican) 2002-2004 - Jim McGreevey (Democrat, resigned) 2004-2006 - Richard Codey (Democrat) 2006-2010 - Jon Corzine (Democrat) So, since 1982, in New Jersey, the "unlikely" party managed to hold the governor's office for only 16 years, with no democrat serving two terms. If Christie winning tonight is "shocking," I can only assume the person - or anyone - saying it has never been to ...

Today, folks, we learned that an afraid 6 year old can control the national media by hiding in an attic. A quick note... A few weeks ago, someone asked me which reality TV star I'd like to wish ill on. I chose a certain cable news pundit. The point being: the news shouldn't be called "the news"anymore. News is boring. But people don't tune in to see boring. And, today shows me we've reached the point where broadcasting the drama of the day - in many cases endlessly debating the drama of the day, if the issue at hand is political - is the key interest vs. informing the public. Seriously, think about it. A prototype balloon is released accidentally from a home near Ft. Collins, Colo. Would that normally interest you? Granted, the thought of a child in the balloon, helpless up in the Rocky Mountain air... sure, that's scary. But to broadcast the entire incident live - and psyching up viewers with statements along the lines of "what's going to...

In 1999, I decided to take on a 10-year project. Toward the end of my sophomore year in college, the U.S. Mint started the 50 State Quarters Program and, despite not really being a coin collector, I thought this would be cool. It was a conscious decision. I decided it wouldn't go seeking out quarters or anything of the sort. I wanted to simply come upon them. With five quarters released each year, I knew I had at least a 10-year project on hand. And so it began. First, as a small stack of quarters in my dorm room. That summer, after I told my mom I was doing this, she picked me up a $5 folder with slots for each state's quarter. Last week, after 10 years of looking carefully at virtually every quarter that came my way, I found a Montana quarter from the office vending machine... and my collection was complete. One of the reasons I started the collection was so I could sit back and see just what transpired in my life between acquiring that Delaware quarter and the comple...

OK, first off... the cat. The cat was spotted on the Charlotte- Mecklenburg Animal Control adoption Web site and was only up there for about a day. Plenty of other cats have remained on there, so we can safely assume this cat has found a new home that is not under my out-front shrubbery. You can all rest that much more soundly, dear readers. :-) In the meantime, it hit my house last night... by "it," I mean fall. Came home with some friends, got out the fall candles and the like. Even changed the Facebook profile photo to my October avatar. What's the best about this time of year, though... the smells. I mean it. Beyond the Yankee Candle Harvest scent... this is the time of year to get the spices out. Last night, that meant a fresh batch of molasses cookies. I use the King Arthur flour recipe for these and, year after year, I am convinced they are the perfect cookie. They smell outstanding. That house-filling smell of spice. They look like a cookie. I mean, th...

Dear readers, I eat lunch at home some days when I don't get the dog sitter. This is mainly to allow my dog to relieve herself. I mean, I know the feeling of being trapped in a car when nature calls. A cage must be worse. Anyhow, on Friday, when I came home for lunch, I had a postcard to mail and as I was walking out to the mailbox I saw the mailman driving up. Perfect timing. In more ways than one. Had I not been out there right then, I doubt I would have discovered (at least for another few days) the Siamese cat that was under one of my bushes. I wondered what was making all the rustling noise and I walk over to see this poor thing camping out under a shrub. Important side note: I am allergic to cats. I don't mean the dander makes me sneeze. I mean cats make my head explode into a drippy, teary mess. Some years ago, a friend's cat fell out of her arms and the cat, desperately trying to arrest its fall, grabbed onto the closest thing it could... my thigh. Where c...

I read a fair amount of pop-econ and pop-psych. For instance, Malcolm Gladwell's excellent books, such The Tipping Point , and recently, Outliers . I recently read Chris Anderson's Free , breaking down the potential of companies (or bands) to make money by giving stuff away. It's interesting to see some topics arise in several of these books and one I've seen in the above - and in some other articles lately - is Dunbar's Number . In basic terms, Dunbar's Number is 150 - being the maximum size of a given person's true social network. The number was established through research... of course there is some dispute that 150 is the number, but, Dunbar did notice some interesting things. You can find plenty of examples through history of societies that broke apart into two groups when their total populations exceeded 150. Roman army units were made up of 150 soldiers. The idea is that, once you exceed 150 people in a group, cohesiveness - or common mutual int...

Way back in the day, when I was in college, I took a media criticism class. You encounter some crazy stuff in media criticism. There are some folks who think every ad you see contains veiled sexual allusions. Another set of crazies think that all media is designed to protect the bourgeoisie from the workers of the world (Yes, there are Marxist media critics). But one book we read in that class wasn't nuts. It was by Joseph Turow and titled Breaking Up America . Bear in mind that, in 2000, there was no YouTube. Streaming video was something you watched on a clunky player called RealPlayer . There were no iPods . You still - GASP - had to use CDs , unless you were using Napster or the more covert Scour Media Agent to download one 128 kbps mp3 at a time which you only - ONLY - played through Winamp . There wasn't a Blogger yet. The Internet , as wonderful as it was, was barely showing its true power. With that context in mind, understand how Breaking Up America worked. ...

Like many of you, dear readers, I am excited for the start of the annual NFL season. Let's be honest, of all of America's professional games, this is the one people really wouldn't want to do without. It's compact 17 weeks of regular season play. The regularity of its schedule. It's easy to plan around and, almost always, filled with the kind of drama that you don't need ESPN to point out... the season is that good. This means Kissing Suzy Kolber will kick into high gear, fantasy teams will be selected and then bitched about... but it also means (gulp) advertisements. With the economy in a rut, it's likely fewer ads will be made, meaning we're bound to see the same ones over and over again. Heaven. Help. Us. I yearn for the day when games go commercial-free, a la international soccer. Until that fine day, I am stuck. Now, some ads, I can tolerate. Like Coors Light's ads where they take old coaches press conferences and splice in new questi...

I generally try to keep calm about the rancor of political debates. I've grown accustomed to pundit blather that fuels ratings-focus "news" channels. But this week, we have hit a level of ridiculousness that I didn't quite think possible. And I'm done. I'm letting it all out. The town hall meetings that are all the buzz right now are an atrocity. While I certainly think that our congresspeople have stopped doing anything to try and build a consensus among their constituents (which they should then take back to Washington), the people disrupting these meetings have pushed us into a theater of the absurd. The thing is, see, the Constitution that many of these folks say they are defending was not just the product of someone sitting down and drafting it. In fact, the Constitution was the product of an extremely partisan battle among several groups. The only reason we have a Constitution is because this group found several compromises - each giving something...

You know that friend that was there for you a lot in the past? You had a lot of great times, maybe had a moment or two... but then, one day, that friend changed. At first, you figured it was just a phase. Underneath it all, the friend was still the same. But outrageous happening after outrageous happening, you start to find you can't hang out with this friend as much anymore. You still defend him.her, but even you have to shake your head. And more than anything, you keep hoping that friend will go back to being the way it used to be. That is how I feel about Our Lady Peace. Let us go back to 1994. Remember 1994? I loved me all my grunge music, but this - this - was something unique. Starseed - Our Lady Peace Had all the heavy stuff I liked, but had a nice unique sound to it. And they were Canadian, which meant they weren't getting heavy U.S. airplay. But they were getting HUGE in Canada. If you were an American fan of OLP, it was like being clued in to some great se...

I don't normally blog about hiking. It's something I love to do. Something that challenges me. But writing about most hikes... I mean who wants to read "I climbed for a while and then got to this incredible view." No, that's why I take and post pictures of hikes. The woods can look the same to many people, but the things trails lead to are the things people can get excited about. That said, I had a hike today that warrants writing about. The Wilson Creek Area of North Carolina sits in the Pisgah National Forest. Getting there means driving on gravel National Forest Roads. And it is stunning. I had hiked this area before to Lost Cove Cliffs and North Harper Creek Falls. It is a rugged wilderness area. Any trail guide warns you that it is a remote area and must be treated as such. Where I went today was on another side of the area, just south of Mortimer, NC . The Forest Service (or someone) has posted a sign as you enter this area from the south noting t...