Interactive Video

while i was trying to upload a screengrab from neonbible i accidentally also had the audio going from this so far semi-slimy ted-talk going . . . like i'm really excited about virtual reality but half-way into this, not so much. but the combo of the two was excellent.

anyway, pls go to neonbible and roll + click around -- on a tech basis, i don't think i've seen interactive video like this before.

The Death of YouTube as We've Known It?

As reported by ipower, "As of yesterday YouTube has replaced its list of 'Most Viewed' videos on the site's 'Videos' section with a varied selection of sponsor-friendly videos that the site calls 'Most Popular'. Where users normally see videos with high view-counts that have become popular due to viral spreading and community activity, we now see videos like the new MacBook commercial that gets showcased on the 'Most Popular' #1 spot while having very low view-counts and even lower ratings. YouTube will no longer give massive exposure to its community's video productions and instead is now tightly controlling its Videos pages to attract more sponsors and a more mainstream audience." More at the link above.

John Waters and George Kuchar

Read mention recently (sorry I can't recall where) that John Waters was inspired by one of Kuchar's early works, Hold Me While I'm Naked. Available on ubuweb and worth seeing (warning: I found the volume LOUD).

Man Killed for "Hogging Karaoke"

Per the BBC, "[a] Malaysian man has been stabbed to death for refusing to stop singing and hand over the microphone at a karaoke bar, police say." (Thanks, Ben!)

Why Must I Be a Teenager in Luv?

Last week I and a niece saw Twilight. The vampires were icy-hot. Also thanks to my niece, I'm totally enjoying some anima and manga.

I just want to lose myself in the romance -- the more over-the-top, the better. Maybe reality's been a bit much for me lately.

Meanwhile, finally, despite media consolidation, electronic elections, and other hurdles, we've managed to elect Obama.

He'll inherit one of the most horrific sets of problems faced by any new President in U.S. history. And we can't wait 'til he does: we hang on his every word; we can't stop talking about him -- why have his cabinet picks been so retro, will he in fact be able to direct them toward fixing all the problems, etc.; we're breathless, even gasping with anticipation. And it's still almost two more months before he'll be inaugurated.

Bailout $$ as of Nov. 30, 2008

Via Seeking Alpha.

The Beginning of the End of Artificially Good Times

From Bloomberg.

"A push by the richest U.S. universities to unload their stakes in private-equity funds is flooding the market, driving down prices for the world's best-known buyout firms.

"Investors led by Harvard University, which manages the largest U.S. endowment at $36.9 billion, may increase so-called secondary sales of private-equity funds to more than $100 billion during the next year, overwhelming available pools of capital. Interests in funds managed by KKR & Co., Madison Dearborn LLC and Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. all are being offered at discounts of at least 50 percent, according to people familiar with the sales.

"Crippled financial firms such as American International Group Inc. and bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. are joining strapped endowments such as the ones at Columbia University in New York and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in trying to sell private-equity stakes. A deepening global recession that is crimping the value of buyout firms' holdings is forcing further price cuts in a market where buyers already are scarce.

“'There's a huge supply-demand imbalance,' said David De Weese, a general partner at Paul Capital Partners in New York, which manages $6.6 billion. . . .

“'I don't know of any institution that's not looking at its portfolio and saying, "What can we do?”' said Frank Morgan, a partner at Coller Capital Ltd., a London-based firm that invests in buyout and venture capital funds.

"One financial institution recently held discussions about selling more than $100 million in private-equity stakes in a fund run by New York-based KKR at a discount of about 50 percent, a person briefed on the talks said. A sale hasn't yet been completed. . . ."

Much more at Bloomberg.

Obama's Picks So Far

. . . seem to consist mainly of people who helped create the messes we now face.

(As noted by Jonathan Weil on Bloomberg, "Not only was [Robert Rubin] chairman of Citigroup Inc.'s executive committee when the bank pushed bogus analyst research, helped Enron Corp. cook its books, and got caught baking its own. He was a director from 2000 to 2006 at Ford Motor Co., which also committed accounting fouls and now is begging Uncle Sam for Citigroup- style bailout cash." Much more at the Bloomberg link; see also The New York Times.)

Obama got elected in part 'cause he was the only candidate the media were willing to take seriously who did not vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq . . . suggesting that maybe we the people think, ok, hey, there were lots of pros who may have been well-intentioned but who turned out to be wrong . . . so, for a change, let's just experiment and pick someone who turned out to be right.

Can't help but wonder what it might be like to have more than one person like that in the gummint.