Saturated Solution
After my recent trip to the Bay Area to report a PBS story about labor in the tech sector, I was struck by this (h/t Sullivan):
“Everyone is competing for the same people, going after the same real estate, the same support services,” Hartz says. “The natural resources of the startup world are getting scarcer and scarcer, and the cost is getting higher and higher. It’s all an outgrowth of an abundance of capital.”
The Wired piece cites the “billboards on highway 101 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley touting startups no one has heard of” which also struck me, as did similar ads on Caltrain.
Timothy Lee argues the problem is housing. He has a point: San Jose and parts of the Peninsula seem ripe for higher-density development.
But I think Lee misses something when he refers back to the original Wired piece’s formulation — that “the natural resources of the startup world” are “people, real estate, and support services”. Isn’t capital one of those “natural resources”? And isn’t it possible that what Hartz (the VC profiled in the Wired piece) means is an overabundance of capital? Can the VC market allocate resources efficiently when there’s an overabundance of those resources?
Lisa Simeone’s Firing
My fellow public broadcaster Lisa Simeone will no longer host the public radio documentary show Soundprint because she was a leader of and spokesperson for the Occupy DC movement. The AP is reporting that she was fired; Soundprint itself implies that the decision was mutual (check the link above).
On one hand, I can see why. Listeners, readers, and viewers are right to question the word of journalists with ties to organizations and movements with clear agendas. In the case of Soundprint, Lisa’s role as host could have resulted in listeners calling into question the veracity and verisimilitude of the work of a lot of talented reporters who produce work for the show.
On the other, I can see why some public radio listeners might see this as unfair. Juan Williams, after all, was both an NPR staffer and a Fox commentator for years before he was fired. And he wasn’t the only one.
During this pledge period, I urge everyone NOT to take this out on their local member stations by withholding pledges. Your local public radio station didn’t make this decision. Your pledge dollars support essential local programming and a lot of great national reporting; Soundprint gets only a tiny portion of that — if the show’s even carried in your market.
If you feel strongly that this is wrong, and if Soundprint is carried on your local station, I suggest that you call in and make a pledge of $1. Tell the person on the other end of the line — or say in the comment box at the online pledge page — that you’ll give more once public radio as a whole gets its house in order. Which is to say once Mara Liasson no longer contributes to Fox, and once Cokie Roberts is more clearly treated as a commentator and not an éminence grise on NPR’s air, at the very least.
The Gift of Music
Your new friend gives you something. He gives you a record. It isn’t his — it’s his older brother’s. But that’s okay, because the older brother’s away.
The record doesn’t make you sing like the records you’ve loved so far. It actually kind of makes you uncomfortable. But it also makes you want to flap your arms like wings. And it makes you want to hear more music that’s so oblique.
Once you start to delve into music like that, you can’t stop.
Pere Shae gave me that record. And I owe so much to him for that gesture. Nearly everything, in fact.
* He was “Pere Shae” long before he was the Deadheads’ “Poohshae”. And I’ll remember him as father, rather than bear.
Without Fripp, All is Lost
Californian
Why do UK journalists insist on treating California differently? What I mean is that Google, e.g., is typically referred to by the BBC and Guardian as a “Californian company”. New York Life is not a “New Yorker company”, and Wrigley isn’t an “Illinoisan company”. Thank God that Eli Lilly isn’t a “Hoosier company”. (I doubt even the Brits would attempt to use “Indianian”.) So why does California get its own adjective?
Apologies…
… for the delay. Work and life and death intervening and all that.
Songs I Realized Today that I Like 2
I have a problem with bands that become critics’ darlings before I’ve fallen in love with them: I tend to disdain and ignore them. I did that with Vampire Weekend, and Campus has convinced me I was a fool, as I usually am when I do this.
Black Kids, “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You”, from Partie Traumatic.
Count Matt & Kim among the bands cited above. “Daylight”, from Grand, is great.
Why do all of these bands sound like stuff I was listening to when I was 14?
Need to dig deeper: Band of Horses.
And why does Pandora think that the Strokes go with everything from the Mae Shi to Pavement?
Songs I Realized Today that I Like
“Eve of Destruction”, Bishop Allen (from Charm School)
“Down We Go”, Kepi Ghoulie (from American Gothic) (seemingly no linky)
“What Dreams”, Signals (okay, I owe that one to MNS. Do not miss the video.)
“Ice Age”, Good Shoes (from Think Before You Speak)
“The End and Everything After”, Johnny Foreigner (from Waited Up Till It Was Light)
I also decided I need to further investigate the work of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and British Sea Power.
Wasted. And wasted.
What’s the point of deploying such a great riff in service of such a lame song?
