More than 300,000 vintage 78 rpm records have been digitized and are available on the Internet Archive.
Musical accompaniment for this post from Gordon Lightfoot.
David Foster
I’m Surprised That He is Surprised
Someone at Twitter asserted that it is strange that on the same network (Fox News) that host of one show (Tucker Carlson) is strongly against the present level of US involvement in Ukraine, while the host of the show in the next time slot (Sean Hannity) is strongly supportive of that involvement and would like to see it accelerated…and that the very same people are probably watching both shows!
Have we really reached the point at which people expect to be marinated solely in political views that are 100% in conformance with their own?…and that those individual political views solidify immediately, with no interval for persuasion, reflection, or discussion?
Worth Pondering
All the risks you didn’t take come and take their revenge.
–Anna Gát, @TheAnnaGat, at Twitter
I’m reminded of a passage in Walter Miller’s great novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz:
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.
(I had a Worth Pondering series that ran for several years, but didn’t keep it up for some reason. Think I’ll restart it, using new items as well as posts from the archives.)
Book Review: Father, Son, & Co, by Thomas Watson jr (rerun)
(Today marks the 59th anniversary of the announcement of the IBM System/360 series)
Buy the book: Father, Son, & Co
When Tom Watson Jr was 10 years old, his father came home and proudly announced that he had changed the name of his company. The business that had been known as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company would now be known by the grand name International Business Machines.
“That little outfit?” thought young Tom to himself, picturing the company’s rather random-seeming collection of products, which included time clocks, coffee grinders, and scales, and the “cigar-chomping guys” who sold them. This was in 1924.
This is the best business autobiography I’ve read. It’s about Watson Jr, his difficult relationship with his father, the company they built, and the emergence of the computing industry. It is an emotional, reflective, and self-critical book, without the kind of “here’s how brilliant I was” tone that afflicts too many executive autobiographies. With today being IBM’s 100th anniversary (counting from the incorporation of CTR), I thought it would be a good time to finally get this review finished and posted.
Watson’s relationship with his father was never an easy one. From an early age, he sensed a parental expectation that he would follow his father into IBM, despite both his parents assuring him that this was not the case and he could do whatever he wanted. This feeling that his life course was defined in advance, combined with fear that he would never be able to measure up to his increasingly-famous father, was likely a factor in the episodes of severe depression which afflicted him from 13 to 19. In college Watson was an indifferent student and something of a playboy. His most significant accomplishment during this period was learning to fly airplanes—-”I’d finally discovered something I was good at”a skill that would have great influence on his future. His first job at IBM, as a trainee salesman, did little to boost his self-confidence or his sense of independence: he was aware that local IBM managers were handing him easy accounts, wanting to ensure success for the chief executive’s son. It was only when Watson joined the Army Air Force during WWIIhe flew B-24s and was based in Russia, assisting General Follett Bradley in the organization of supply shipments to the Soviet Unionthat he proved to himself that he could succeed without special treatment. As the war wound down, he set his sights on becoming an airline pilotGeneral Bradley expressed surprise, saying “Really? I always thought you’d go back and run the IBM company.” This expression of confidence, from a man he greatly respected, helped influence Watson to give IBM another try.
The products that Watson had been selling, as a junior salesman, were punched card systems. Although these were not computers in the modern sense of the word, they could be used to implement some pretty comprehensive information systems. Punched card systems were an important enabler of the increasing dominance of larger organizations in both business and government: the Social Security Act of 1935 was hugely beneficial to IBM both because of the systems they sold to the government directly and those sold to businesses needing to keep up with the required record-keeping.
Is NPR ‘State Affiliated Media’?
If you look up National Public Radio on Twitter, you will see that it is now identified as “US state-affiliated media”. Not surprisingly, officials of NPR are very unhappy about this. John Lansing, NPR president and CEO, said: “NPR stands for freedom of speech & holding the powerful accountable. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy” and continued:
We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media,” a description that, per Twitter’s own guidelines, does not apply to NPR. Twitter and its member stations are supported by millions of listeners who depend on us for the independent, fact-based journalism we provide….
Full statement here.
So, where does NPR get its funding? And is it accurate for it to be labeled ‘state-affiliated media’? Here is NPR’s own page on Public Radio Finances. Included are revenues of NPR itself and revenues of its Member Stations. As far as NPR itself goes, I don’t think you can tell from the information provided how much of it comes from the government, it seems to be included in ‘contributions of cash and other assets’ or ‘other revenues’…but other sources indicate that it is less than 1% of NPR total revenues.
BUT, at least 31% of NPR revenues come from fees paid by the Member stations. And of the revenues of those member stations, 8% comes from ‘Federal appropriation via CPB’ and 5% from ‘Federal, state and local governments’. Seems to me that one has to consider those payments to the local stations as part of the government funding of ‘public radio’…in addition to the program fees that are remitted to the NPR entity, the local stations are themselves the essential component in distribution. If the government gave a trivial amount of money to McDonald’s Hamburgers….but a considerably greater amount to its franchisees…then wouldn’t we consider both numbers when evaluating the degree to which McD’s was government subsidized?
NPR says on its own website:
Federal funding is essential to public radio’s service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.
It’s been argued that NPR is obviously not ‘state-affiliated media’ because it was not supportive of the Trump administration when that administration was in office…indeed, it was the opposite of supportive To which my response is: NPR does not represent the elected government, but it represents those who it thinks should be the government. See my post about the Prince-Electors.
For reference, here is Twitter’s definition of state-affiliated media.