1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial
This was the commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh Computer to the world.
“1984″ is an American television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer for the first time. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, Venice, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. Anya Major performed as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as Big Brother. Its only U.S. daytime televised broadcast was on January 22, 1984 during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. Chiat/Day also ran the ad one other time on television, in December 1983 right before the 1:00 am sign-off on KMVT in Twin Falls, Idaho, so that the advertisement could be submitted to award ceremonies for that year. In addition, starting on January 17, 1984 it was screened prior to previews in movie theaters for a few weeks. It has since been seen on television commercial compilation specials, as well as in “Retro-mercials” on TV Land. The Estate of George Orwell and the television rightsholder to the novel 1984 considered the commercial to be a flagrant copyright infringement, and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple and Chiat/Day in April 1984. The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that. wikipedia
]]>Summary: in this article David Brooks argues that the problem with jobs is innovation. Innovation which used to lead the way in all areas, helping to create new jobs, has slowed.
“The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.””
Let’s imagine that someone from the year 1970 miraculously traveled forward in time to today. You could show her one of the iPhones that Steve Jobs helped create, and she’d be thunderstruck. People back then imagined wireless communication (Dick Tracy, Star Trek), but they never imagined you could funnel an entire world’s worth of information through a pocket-sized device.
David Brooks
The time traveler would be vibrating with excitement. She’d want to know what other technological marvels had been invented in the past 41 years. She’d ask about space colonies on Mars, flying cars, superfast nuclear-powered airplanes, artificial organs. She’d want to know how doctors ended up curing cancer and senility.
You’d have to bring her down gently. We don’t have any of those things. Airplanes are pretty much the same now as they were then; so are cars, energy sources, appliances, houses and neighborhoods. A person born in 1900 began with horse-drawn buggies and died with men walking on the Moon, but the last few decades have seen nothing like that sort of technological advance.
Recently, a number of writers have grappled with this innovation slowdown. Michael Mandel wrote a BusinessWeek piece in 2009. Tyler Cowen wrote an influential book called “The Great Stagnation” in 2010. The science-Fiction writer Neal Stephenson has just published a piece called “Innovation Starvation” in World Policy Journal and Peter Thiel, who helped create PayPal and finance Facebook, had an essay called “The End of the Future” in National Review.
These writers concede that there has been incredible innovation in information technology. Robotics also seems to be humming along nicely, judging by how few workers are needed by manufacturing plants now. But the pace of change is slowing down in many other sectors.
As Thiel points out, we travel at the same speeds as we did a half-century ago, whether on the ground or in the air. We rely on the same basic energy sources. Warren Buffett made a $44 billion investment in 2009. It was in a railroad that carries coal.
The Green Revolution improved grain yields by 126 percent from 1950 to 1980, but yields have risen only by 47 percent in the decades since. The big pharmaceutical companies have very few blockbuster drugs in the pipeline. They are slashing their research departments.
If you buy the innovation stagnation thesis, three explanations seem most compelling. First, the double hump nature of the learning curve. When researchers are climbing the first hillside of any problem, they think they can see the top. But once they get there, they realize things are more complicated than they thought. They have to return to fundamentals and climb an even steeper hill ahead.
We have hit the trough phase in all sorts of problems — genetics, energy, research into cancer and Alzheimer’s. Breakthroughs will come, just not as soon as we thought.
Second, there has been a loss of utopian élan. If you go back and think about America’s big World’s Fairs or if you read about Bell Labs in its heyday or Silicon Valley in the 1980s or 1990s, you see people in the grip of utopian visions. They imagine absurdly perfect worlds. They feel as though they have the power to begin the world anew. These were delusions, but inspiring delusions.
This utopianism is almost nowhere to be found today. Stephenson and Thiel point out that science fiction is moribund; the new work is dystopian, not inspiring. Thiel argues that the environmentalist ethos has undermined the faith in gee-whiz technological wizardry. Legal institutions and the cable TV culture dampen enthusiasm by punishing failure so remorselessly. NASA’s early failures were seen as steps along the way to a glorious future. Deepwater Horizon’s failure demoralized the whole nation.
Third, there is no essential culture clash. Look at the Steve Jobs obituaries. Over the course of his life, he combined three asynchronous idea spaces — the counterculture of the 1960s, the culture of early computer geeks and the culture of corporate America. There was LSD, “The Whole Earth Catalogue” and spiritual exploration in India. There were also nerdy hours devoted to trying to build a box to make free phone calls.
The merger of these three idea networks set off a cascade of innovations, producing not only new products and management styles but also a new ideal personality — the corporate honcho in jeans and the long-sleeve black T-shirt. Formerly marginal people came together, competed fiercely and tried to resolve their own uncomfortable relationships with society.
The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
If you want to be the next Steve Jobs and end the innovation stagnation, maybe you should start in hip-hop.
That’s what they’ve been trained to do for years and years. They will always believe that they can be victorious. They’ll say it’s just a question of more troops, more equipment, a different strategy, or any number of other things they believe they need. They want to fight battles and they want to win for the good of the country. It’s what they do. No general wants to stop fighting if the job isn’t done, because they will always believe that they can turn things around. What are they to do if we pull out of Afghanistan? Go back to sitting at their desks thinking about war strategy?
Don’t get me wrong. They should be leading troops and we trained them to do that. That’s their role in life. And we want them to always be ready to fight…But many generals will never willingly give up the battle until someone above them says “Enough”. So when you listen to the generals who say ”continue the war”, keep the above in mind.
]]>In the late ’90s, federal law enforcement authorities investigated allegations that Perry had engaged in insider trading, sources involved in the inquiry tell The Huffington Post.
On Jan. 24, 1996, Perry purchased 2,800 shares of stock in a company, Kinetic Concepts, Inc., owned by a San Antonio businessman soon to be one of Perry’s top donors, James Leininger. It was great timing. Later that day, a group of investors bought up 2.2 million shares in the company, sending the price soaring and netting Perry a nice gain.
On the day of the stock purchases, Perry had given a speech before a group founded by Leininger. Both Perry and Leininger later admitted talking on the day in question but denied discussing the stock. Perry would go on to sell his Kinetic Concepts stock — a total of more than 8,000 shares — a month later for a $38,000 profit.
]]>New Bipartisan Lobby Shop Opens With Focus On CMS, FDA
Posted: September 29, 2011
A new Washington-based lobbying firm that includes two long-standing CMS and FDA lobbyists coupled with a major Democratic fundraiser has already amassed approximately a dozen clients and could become a major player as the medical industry tries to protect itself from cost-cutting proposals floated as part of Congress’ deficit reduction exercise and the FDA user fee debate on Capitol Hill heats up.
The firm — Roberti+White, LLC — is pitching itself as bipartisan and covering a wide-variety of issues, albeit with a strong background in health care from partner Rich White’s 15 years working on coverage and reimbursement policy coupled with partner Steve Irizarry’s background in FDA approval from being a lead congressional negotiator on user fees during the early Bush administration. Their background in health is coupled with partner Vin Roberti’s two decades of advising clients on finance and communications, and his close ties to Democrats as he provides messaging assistance ahead of the 2012 election.
“We want to be a major player in the health field,” Irizarry said, adding that the firm has a “pretty good stable of clients already.”
Irizarry worked for the Senate health committee as a counsel and for former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). He negotiated the reauthorization of FDA drug user fees and the establishment of the medical device user fee program.
White is a well known medical imaging lobbyist, helping to found the Alpine Group, a major K Street consulting and lobby shop. He worked on taxes and health care for former Sen. John Chafee (R-RI)
The firm also includes a qualified staff including Federica Rabiolo a graduate of the University of Colorado, and most recently with the Healthcare Leadership Council.
Roberti has deep connections with Democrats, serving as a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Speakers Cabinet and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee’s Majority Trust. He is a top advisor to DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY), the Senate Democrat’s messaging and policy chief. He also chairs the development committee for the American Foundation for Aids Research. He has been listed as among the most influential D.C. lobbyists, only behind Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group. — Ben Moscovitch (bmoscovitch@iwpnews.com)
]]>If you’re a Northeast elite hoping to crack the code on GOP presidential primaries while impressing your friends at Fifth Avenue dinner parties with insightful political prognostications, always remember one simple rule: Crazy never wins.
You heard right, my Upper West Side friend. Crazy. Never. Wins.
Despite the crop of nutty right-wing candidates that sprout up in GOP presidential fields every four years, despite the gasps and growls that regularly rise from Manhattan cocktail parties aimed at extremists who are hijacking the Republican Party (in ways that past GOP extremists would never have dreamed of hijacking the party), despite the cries from right-wing radio hosts predicting the rise of Ronald Reagan’s ghost and the nomination of an unelectable candidate, in the end this political chatter always proves to be sound and fury signifying nothing.
A few caveats to my rule: (1) Thank you very much for the invitations to your Manhattan cocktail parties. Anything written in the preceding paragraphs should not be interpreted to suggest that I am not delighted by your company or future invitations to said events; and (2) Reagan was never the right-wing tool that talk show hosts claim.
Reagan governed California during its greatest — and most challenging — decade. Running a state of that size required him to compromise on abortion, tax increases and the growth of government in a way that offended the John Birch Society.
Reagan ignored the most extreme elements in his party and governed from the center when compromise was required. That pragmatic streak required the conservative movement’s founder to come to the Gipper’s defense more than once.
William F. Buckley praised Reagan’s pragmatism in a 1967 National Review column that mocked right-wing critics by facetiously asking whether the California governor should “padlock the state treasury and give speeches on the Liberty Amendment.”
Buckley would later criticize George W. Bush’s utopian foreign policy by telling The Wall Street Journal that “conservatism implies a certain submission to reality.”
By that standard, conservatism is in short supply in the 2012 GOP field.
And by following the conservative standard my father used, it’s not so hard to pick out the pretenders in this year’s field.
My dad was comfortably middle class and always too busy putting his kids through school to obsess over politics. But he did know enough to see Reagan speak in 1979 and come home declaring that he had just seen America’s next president — a truth that most commentators would miss until election night a year later.
At just about this time four years ago, Dad gave me one of his last lectures on presidential politics.
John McCain was stuck in single digits, and his once mighty campaign was declared dead on arrival by Republican operatives and political pundits. But Dad’s message to me as I raced toward the airport was as unambiguous as his Reagan declaration 30 years earlier.
“You better watch John McCain. He’s gonna win the nomination.”
Despite my eye rolls and the Arizona senator’s self-inflicted wounds, Dad was right again. Just like he was when he supported Nixon, Goldwater, Ford, Reagan, Dole and Bush.
Guys like my dad do not gamble on candidates like Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich.
Guys like my dad tune out politicians who compare opponents to Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.
And guys like my dad don’t cozy up to Texas governors who brag about seceding from the Union or call Social Security unconstitutional.
That’s why crazy never wins. It never even comes close.
So regardless of what is written about the Republican Party every four years by Northeast elites or right-wing nuts, guys like my father still hold the GOP’s fate in their conservative hands.
A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.
]]>- 2 glasses of water after waking every morning helps activate the internal organs;
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- 1 glass of water before taking a bath can lower blood pressure;
- 1 glass of water before going to bed can prevent stroke or heart attack.
The same goes for you, Glenn Beck. You’ve attacked your political opponents with words designed to inspire hatred and mind-bending conspiracy theories from fans. Calling the president a racist, Marxist and fascist may be reprehensible, but it did not lead a mentally disturbed man to take a Glock to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s “Congress on Your Corner” event.
Good on ya, buddy. You weren’t personally responsible for the slaughter at the Safeway. Maybe you can put it on a poster at the next “Talkers” convention.
But before you and the pack of right-wing polemicists who make big bucks spewing rage on a daily basis congratulate yourselves for not being responsible for Jared Lee Loughner’s rampage, I recommend taking a deep breath. Just because the dots between violent rhetoric and violent actions don’t connect in this case doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore the possibility — or, as many fear, the inevitability — that someone else will soon draw the line between them.
Actually, someone already has. When you get a minute, Google “Byron Williams” and “Tides Foundation” to see just how thin a layer of ice Beck skates on every day.
Beck and Palin aside, I do understand why other conservatives pushed back on the media’s initial response to the Giffords shooting. The avalanche of condemnations that came pouring down on Palin, Fox News and the tea party were off base and offensive. Most of the same outlets calling for restraint after the Fort Hood shooting showed no such discipline after Tucson. The fact that the left predictably played to type did more to unite the conservative movement than any event since President Barack Obama’s election.
Now that the right has proved to the world that it was wronged, this would be a good time to prevent the next tragedy from destroying its political momentum. Despite what we eventually learned about the shooter in Tucson, should the right have really been so shocked that many feared a political connection between the heated rhetoric of 2010 and the shooting of Giffords?
Who, other than Palin’s most strident supporters, was not troubled by the bull’s-eye target over Giffords’s district? Or the political advertisement promoting the removal of Giffords from office with the firing of a “fully automatic M16” with her opponent? Or the gunned-down congresswoman’s own warning to NBC’s Chuck Todd that violent words have consequences?
And who on the right is really stupid enough to not understand that the political movement that has a near monopoly on gun imagery may be the first focus of an act associated with gun violence? As a conservative who had a 100 percent rating with the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America over my four terms in Congress, I wonder why some on the right can’t defend the Second Amendment without acting like jackasses. While these types regularly attack my calls for civility, it is their reckless rhetoric that does the most to hurt the cause.
Which brings us back to Palin and the GOP’s field of 2012 candidates.
In Palin’s Facebook manifesto last Wednesday, she didn’t condemn extreme speech and its potential for violence. Instead, she seemed to say, “Deal with it.” Then she proved it, ineptly and offensively naming herself the victim of a “blood libel,” which generations of persecuted Jews know carries connotations much more serious than a drop in the polls.
We know Palin won’t call out irresponsible language or lead the discussion back to civility, but who will?
Where was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who covets the moral authority to lead his party in 2012? Is there anything — anything at all — a member of his own party can say that offends this man?
Or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who refused to call out his state’s best-known congresswoman, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, for saying that the best way to oppose energy legislation is to be “armed and dangerous.”
Or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich? Oh, wait. Never mind.
From their defensive crouch, these candidates are clearly scared to do the right thing by calling out reckless rhetoric. So let me try a different tack by speaking to their politically expedient minds.
Overblown rhetoric is tailor-made for midterm elections like 1994 and 2010, when a conservative movement rises up to check a progressive tide. It’s why Republicans gave Gingrich the keys to the car in 1995.
As the liberal president is checked by the conservative Congress, a new presidential race approaches, the voting base expands and the keys to the car get turned over to more unifying figures. This explains how a party could move from Gingrich in 1995 to Bob Dole as its nominee in 1996.
Presidential-year elections are driven by a completely different demographic. Good luck trying that “Second Amendment remedies” crap on swing voters in the suburbs. It just won’t fly. And neither will the cacophony of crazy talk that has gripped the far right for the past two years.
It’s time to grow up, act responsibly and start planning for the 2012 election.
If you can’t be civil because it’s the right thing to do, then do it because it is in your party’s best interest.
A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.
]]>SAN FRANCISCO — AOL said on Tuesday that it was buying the influential technology news blog TechCrunch to bolster its growing online editorial business. The deal, signed on stage at a TechCrunch conference here, will add to AOL’s technology coverage, which also includes the gadget blog Engadget.
The companies did not disclose terms, but the price tag was more than $25 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to speak publicly. The acquisition is another step in AOL’s quest to revive its reputation as a hub for online news. Under Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, the company has hired hundreds of reporters to cover local news for the company’s Patch property, in a bid to strengthen online advertising revenue.
AOL is betting heavily on ad-supported content as its future, after its spinoff from Time Warner last year. The strategy sets it apart from Google, which does not create any of its own content. AOL also said on Tuesday that it had acquired 5min Media, a Web video syndication company that distributes a library of video clips from 1,000 media companies to other Web sites. It also bought Thing Labs Inc., which makes software for consumers to post online.
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