MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 8-19-11

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 8-19-11

August 18th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

1983 ad from vintagecomputing.com

Hewlett Packard’s spinning off or selling itsÂ PC hardware business, and shutting down its smartphone and tablet lines altogether. The hereby linked article doesn’t mention HP’s printers, or their worth-their-weight-in-gold ink cartridges.
Krist Novoselic’s staging an all-starÂ Nevermind tribute show on Sept. 20, during the breakthrough Nirvana album’sÂ 20th anniversary week. It’ll be a fundraiser for Susie Tennant, a longtime local music industry fixture who’s going through some nasty cancer treatments.
Sarah Ann Lloyd at Seattlest’s take on the state’s drive to make bars pay thousands in back “opportunity to dance” taxes, which the bars had never heard of before: It’s a vague ordinance, open to too-wide interpretation.
As we’ve already reported, the County Council’s compromise to save Metro Transit includes dumping the downtown Ride Free Area, starting in Oct. 2012. Real Change’s Timothy Harris alleges Metro management was in on “this opportunistic attack on the poor,” in order to “get the visible poor off the bus.”
Stephen H. Dunphy at Crosscut claims there are “two economies” in the Seattle area, (1) high-tech and (2) everything else. Guess which one’s actually working?
If you’re in that stagnant second economy, you might consider retraining in a new field. If so, you might think of this as absolutely the wrong time to slash community college funding.
Casino losses have funded something important. It’s the Tulalip Tribes’ new $19 million cultural heritage center.
In non-tunnel road news, construction of the new 520 bridge is set to start next year, even though the state doesn’t have the money to build anything on the bridge’s Seattle end.
There are (relatively) little guys in the gasoline business. They’re the station owners, trapped in unequal marriages with their franchisor/suppliers. One such case has resulted in 17 ex-Arco stations in Tacoma and environs and a bitter legal dispute between a multi-station franchisee and BP.
Can ex-UW president Mark Emmert, now running the NCAA, actually do anything to stem big-money corruption in college sports?
Bill Clinton now claims to be a vegan. Does that mean he’s going to become as annoyingly sanctimonious as the rest of ’em?
Someone’s found a use for print newspapers! It involves stealing them in bulk for the purpose of “extreme couponing.”
Here comes the backlash against Standard & Poor’s, about three years late.
According to the “hacktivists” at Anonymous, a defense contractor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce got together to infiltrate and sabotage progressives in online social networks. One scheme involved fake a Facebook profile using the real name of a Maxim model.
R.I.P. Gualtiero Jacopetti, creator of the original Mondo Cane and many of the “shockumentary” films that followed it.
Elsewhere in filmland, here’s an essay praisingÂ Chinese underground cinema as real independent cinema. No official support. No submissions to state censorship committees. No theatrical or above-ground video releases. No commercial potential.Â No careerist ambition. No bosses except Art herself.
Here’s a Vegas hotel implosion story with a differenceâ€”the 27-story tower has never been opened.