MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/15/13

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 4/15/13

April 15th, 2013 by Clark Humphrey

via jerry beck at indiewire.com

Jonathan Winters, 1925-2013: The groundbreaking comic actor was a made-it-look-easy genius at everything from improv to scripted character roles, from pathos-touched bits to pure zaniness. And his first and last film credits are both in cartoons.
BuzzFeed lists 35 “Truths About Seattle.” Not all of them actually are true. Not everyone, for instance, works at Microsoft.
If we really are witnessing the “Death of the PC,” it’s neither Microsoft’s nor Apple’s fault. It’s just that with so much PC use and even functionality centered on Web-based stuff, home users have fewer reasons to upgrade their hardware. (OK, maybe Windows 8 isn’t helping.)
Seattle will have two teams this summer in the Women’s Premier Soccer League, which claims to be the “largest women’s league in the world” based on the number of teams (70, coast-to-coast). It will also field teams this season in Issaquah, Spokane, Eugene, and something called “Oregon Rush.” (The league’s more exclusive “Elite” division will also have a Seattle team this year, name to be announced.)
Those forever out-of-order escalators in the Seattle Transit Tunnel have logged their first fatality.
Bruch Nourish at the Seattle Transit Blog has an idea for improved transit across the Ship Canal: make the Fremont Bridge for transit (and bikes and walkers) only.
Seattle and New York are vying to be the capital of “Big Data.” I’m still not clear just what “Big Data” is.
Sports blogger Chuck Culpepper has a lovely remembrance of the late local college basketball coachÂ Frosty Westering.
Would anybody want to go to a hospital where nurses have to take unpaid overtime and no breaks?
A British author claims “news is bad for you, and giving up reading it will make you happier.” I know this becuase I read it on a newspaper’s site.
Reader’s Digest in bankruptcy: But does it still pay to increase your word power?
Candy doesn’t make you fat. Or so a major candy-industry PR campaign would have you believe.
The scandal isn’t that Mitch McConnell was caught talking like a scumbag. The problem is that McConnell is a scumbag.
Having apparently grown tired of waging the War on Women, the Rabid Right is now waging a full-on War on Sex.
Porn industry revenues have fallen by almost two thirds in the past eight years. The usual suspect: free online content. A less usual suspect: could audiences finally be tiring of formulaic, loveless mating exhibitions?
Besides books (yes, really), the other legacy-media segment that’s best survived the digital-age “disruption” (a term I’ve already said I hate) is cable TV programming. But with more and more “cord cutters” among the populace, can the cable channels’ owners still demand their lucrative “bundling” deals with service providers?
America’s most implausible entertainment export these days might be the popularity of subtitled Jon Stewart clips in China.
Let’s close today with a guy who’s painstakingly made miniature models of iconic TV show settings.