bill gates mansion; from cybernetnews.com

• John Burbank says something that needs to be repeatedly said: Washington is a wealthy state with a starved civic infrastructure, due to our over reliance on the regressive sales tax.
• Before this week’s winter weather, our pals at Capitol Hill’s Ghost Gallery got flooded by a leaky ceiling. The landlord won’t even help pay to fix it. They’d like our help.
• It was planned in expectation of just another Seasonal Affective Disorder winter, but it’s still welcome in the aftermath of Snowtopia. Local artists Susan Robb, Sierra Stinson, and  Jim Demetre have schedule an arty Seattle version of a winter carnival. They call it “ONN/OF.” It incorporates a number of installations and performances, all using “light” as a theme. It takes place in Ballard (specifically 1415 NW 52nd St.), Jan. 28-29. Contributors include ex-Seattle musician Otis Fodder (now based in Montreal, where they’ve always had a winter carnival) and his band the Bran Flakes.
• Seattle Weekly shrinkage watch: As a Stranger snark video shows, the Weekly has adopted an ugly squat-square page size, in keeping with other New Times Village Voice Media papers. That wasn’t enough to keep this week’s edition from topping off at a mere 48 (smaller) pages.
• Update: The outdoor feeding program for the homeless, the one the city wanted to shut down? A compromise arrangement may be in the works.
• Thing you might not have expected five years ago: Microsoft’s quarterly profits are flat, as fewer new PCs get sold. It’s not just a matter of new digital platforms. It’s also a matter of companies and individuals deciding the PCs they’ve got are good enough to keep until finances improve.
• William Greider points with thinly disguised glee at Mitt Romney’s primary opponents claiming to despise “vulture capitalism.”
• The copyright lobby didn’t need draconian censorship bills to nab file-sharing giant Megaupload, for better or (in my opinion) for worse.
• More deadly seriousness from “humor” site Cracked.com: “The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Poor.”

myonepreciouslife.wordpress.com

As an entire region continues to impatiently await the promised, wondrous Snowtopia hinted at on Sunday but only teased about in the two days since, here’s some beautiful flakes of randomness for ya.

• Knute Berger’s found some unused ideas for the 1962 World’s Fair, many of which were rightfully unused.
• The state budget supercrisis is causing even the state ferry system to consider dropping whole routes. Buh bye, Bremerton. Was nice to know ya.
• Eric Scigliano raises the battle cry: Save the Phone Book! (The white pages, at least.)
• One proposal to (partly) stem the state’s fiscal megacrisis: A capital gains tax.
• Another such proposal is to move all business-tax collection to Olympia, cutting cities and counties out of the action.
• The city of Seattle wants to shut down outdoor homeless-feeding operations. Is this humaneness, or is it the “disappearing” of poverty?
• Union-bustin’, vote-suppressin’, billionaire-coddling Wisc. Gov. Scott Walker is really, really unpopular.
• Now that she’s sold her news-aggregation-site empire to AOL, is Arianna Huffington going to become a Republican again?
• The fight against sweatshop-made sports merch spreads from colleges to pro teams, including the Dallas Cowboys.
• Fond birthday wishes to perhaps the greatest living American.
• If anyone here has ever had any doubts, the most recent race-to-the-bottom GOP debate shows it again: racist bigotry is neither clever nor cool. It’s just stupid.

And finally, I will have a new product announcement in this space tomorrow. It’s something all loyal MISCphiles will want to have for their very own.

revel body, via geekwire.com

• Seattle’s really got some high-tech hardware geniuses. Among them: the folks who’ve taken the same principles behind the Sonicare toothbrush and applied them to create advanced 21st century vibrators! (Really.)
• We’ve previously mentioned the strong presence of women’s erotica among Amazon’s e-book sales. Now come charges that some of the self-published smut books are stolen from stories posted for free viewing on erotica websites. (These allegations are against the small-time publishers, not Amazon.)
• Crazy Wall St. idea of the week (thus far): A local corporate-buyout analyst showed up on CNBC and said Microsoft should buy Barnes & Noble.
• Here’s one way to make money off of the walking renaissance. Make a big venture-funded software thing to help folks find homes to buy in walkable neighborhoods.
• Our ol’ pal Geov Parrish believes the state budget mega-crisis might, just might mind you, lead to talk, or even actual action, toward reforming Washington’s mighty regressive tax system—by far the principal failing of a local “progressive” politic that never dares challenge big business.
• On a related matter, state House Speaker Frank Chopp is floating the idea of Wash. State running its own bank, just like North Dakota. Or something as close to a bank as the state constitution now permits.
• The Mariners lose one really good pitcher, gain one maybe decent-hitting position player. What could possibly go wrong?
• Who knew the original Ladies’ Home Journal was so prescient? A 1911 list of “What Might Happen in the Next Hundred Years” predicts “telephones around the world,” airplanes used as “aerial war-ships,” automobiles “cheaper than horses,” “trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour,” grand opera “telephoned to private homes,” photographs “telegraphed to any distance,” “cameras electrically connected with screens at opposite ends of circuits,” ready-to-eat meals in stores, genetically modified foods, and even global warming. Writer John Elfreth Watkins Jr. did get a few things wrong, such as “hot and cold air from spigots,” the deliberate extinction of mosquitos, and the removal of C, Q, and X from the alphabet. Watkins also didn’t predict that his magazine would still be in business today, after many of its compatriots went to the great newsstand in the sky.
• Clever videomakers in Montana have released a thoroughly obliterating parody of a particularly dumb “rebel lifestyle” pickup truck commercial.
• And a great big thank you for those who attended the Seattle Invitationals Sat. nite, at which I performed what I hope was a respectful, straightforward rendition of the Presley classic “You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care).” Since this is the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair, I’d wanted to perform the best song from It Happened at the World’s Fair. But the live band didn’t know it. So here it is for all of you, in the original rendition.

auroramills.com

• Sad news in junk-food land. The makers of Hostess cakes and Wonder Bread, once known as Continental Baking but now the privately held Hostess Brands, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A needed step for survival, or a ploy to get out of pension obligations? No matter what happens, I will always remember my early fondness for Hostess Sno Balls. Even at a tender age, two white hemispheres meant something to me somehow….
• Let’s welcome the newest member to the Northwest online news family, Olympia Newsriver. Its mission: to track the legislative progress (or lack thereof) on “key bills supported and opposed by Washington’s progressive movement.”
• Microsoft received a patent for a smartphone-based GPS system, aimed at pedestrians instead of drivers. Part of the patent application stated the software would help walkers avoid “unsafe neighborhoods.” Disguised racism, say some detractors.
• Occupy Seattle is not only without a campsite, it may also be breaking apart. One contributing factor: ideological radicals within the movement won’t commit to strictly nonviolent actions.
• Ex-Seattle mayor Greg Nickels says he might run for Wash. secretary of state.
• Seattle’s second anarchist squat house in the past year has been forcibly evicted.
• Not only is Wash. state failing its commitment to fund public schools, it’s not even trying to fund previously passed reform plans for the schools (class size reduction, etc.).
• Amazon news item #1: “Celebrity librarian” Nancy Pearl is teaming up with the e-tail giant to reissue worthy out-of-print books.
• Amazon news item #2: One or more individuals in South Lake Union have put up street posters calling out a noisy minority of the company’s workforce there, calling them inconsiderate “Am Holes.” Trust me: a certain percentage of socially deaf dorks can be found at any tech company. During the early dot-com days of the mid 1990s, such dorks seemed to be everywhere.
• Get set for more rich/poor class conflict in the coming year, just as the Republicans and many Democrats place themselves firmly on the “rich” side.
• The Gannett Co.’s local newspapers may start charging for web access soon, according to buzz within the biz. The subscription fee would kick in beyond a certain small number of pages accessed per month, the way the NY Times does it. Of course, the NYT is a big, substantial product with global reach. Could the Salem, OR Statesman-Journal (the Northwest’s last Gannett-owned daily) similarly command a price for its online presence? (No word yet on whether Gannett’s flagship USA Today will also go behind a paywall.)
• The self styled “Father of the Internet” claims online access is not per se a human right, but rather “an enabler of rights.”
• Workers at a Foxconn electronics assembly plant in China threatened mass suicide, standing on the factory roof for two days until they were coaxed down. It follows 14 suicides (plus four unsuccessful attempts) at the company’s plants in 2010. They died, and countless other workers have cracked or burned out, so western companies can get the absolute cheapest price for product.

iloveyoubluesky.blogspot.com

• How-the-mighty-have-fallen dept.: Last year folks mourned the end of Kodachrome slide film. Now, Eastman Kodak itself may declare bankruptcy. The only thing that could delay that move: a fire sale of Kodak’s patents, its only remaining valuable assets.
• The Wash. State Supreme Court ruled the state Legislature is failing in its constitutionally assigned task to fully fund K-12 education. But the court didn’t prescribe any specific action to remedy this. I’m hoping this means the days of brutal, all-cuts state budgets are finally over.
• Speaking of which, some legislative Democrats have another state income tax proposal going, as part of an overall tax reform package. We’ll see how far this one goes.
• The movie biz had a lousy ’11, but music sales (led by commercial downloads) were up 6.9 percent. Non-major-label releases, however, were stuck at about 12 percent of total sales.
• The folks who created the “phone book art space” Gallery 206 tried to give it away to the Seattle Art Museum. They said no, expectedly.
• Not as gruesome as you might have thought: The guy who tried to drive alone in the HOV-only freeway lanes by having a dressed-up skeleton in the passenger’s seat? It was just a plastic skeleton.
• Yesterday when we said Boeing Wichita’s demise was Seattle’s gain? Nope, not really. Blame the obsession by corporate hotshots with outsourcing everything, even if it costs more in the long run.
• Update: That smashingly good sounding “Electronic Literature” exhibit in town, tying in with the Modern Language Association convention at the Convention Center? If you live here, forget about seeing it. It’s only for ticketed convention goers, despite what its web page says.
• R.I.P. Robert Jenkins, a figure in the Seattle music scene for more than three decades. I knew him in the ’80s, playing guitar for Audio Leter, Officer Down, and the New Art Orchestra, among many other combos. Lori Goldston’s obit says Jenkins…

…had an otherworldly timbral and expressive range with both guitar and voice, ranging from beautifully sweet to guttural monster-from-Hell.

1944-era logo of the first seattle star, now topping the new seattlestar.net

• With the new year we must say goodbye to Swerve, the downtown retail core’s last speciality music and video shop. Its owner had insisted the store was profitable, but she had a new opportunity out of state. With Borders gone, and new Target, Nordstrom Rack, and J.C. Penney outlets still unfinished, Swerve’s loss just adds to the number of holes in downtown’s shopping spectrum.
• Also gone is Seattlest, the locally run but out-of-town owned culture and entertainment site. Its contributors have gravitated to some new all-local startups, including SEA live MUSIC (the name says it all). Another new refuge for Seattlest vets is the cross-genre arts site The Seattle Star. Its founders deliberately chose a name previously used first by a small but spunky afternoon daily (1899-1947) and then by Michael Dowers’ still fondly remembered comix zine (1985-89).
• The indie Greenwood Market, after several years of uncertain future, is finally being razed so Kroger can expand its adjacent Fred Meyer.
• As another dreary Legislative session’s about to start, ex-State Rep. Brendan Williams bashes Oly Democrats as professional cavers.
• R.I.P. Ronald Searle, 91, satirical illustrator ne plus ultra and “Britain’s greatest graphic artist.”
• The feisty-as-ever Roger Ebert has a list of reasons why movie revenues were way, way down in ’11. “Too many sucky movies” isn’t even on the list.
• We’ve linked in the past to gadfly pundit Glenn Greenwald and his diatribes against those he believes are too capitulant toward the right. He’s added Obama, and anybody who supports Obama, to his targets. But Greenwald went too far when he alleged that Obama could “rape a nun” on live TV and his supporters would still back him.
• Speaking of rash allegations, Bloomberg.com’s got a UK academic who claims Wall Street, and perhaps U.S. business in general, has been taken over by “corporate psychopaths.”
• We close with a lovely picture of the highly unofficial “Occupy the Rose Parade” float, a 70-foot octopus made from plastic grocery bags. Looks just like an oversize version of something you’d see at any Fremont Solstice Parade.

The new year draws nigh. Around here, that predominantly means one thing. It means we seek your nominations for MISCmedia’s 25th Annual In/Out List, North America’s most accurate predictor of future trends (in a vast array of categories). Tell us your forecasts of what will become hot and not-so-hot within the next 12 months. (Not merely what’s hot and not-so-hot right now.)

Now, in random-linkland:

• Knute Berger has kind words for Lorraine McConaghy’s new Wash. state history tome New Land, North of the Columbia. McConaghy bases her tales on verbatim documents of the periods she explores. This gives her book a real “you are there” feeling, and brings to life events and historical figures which have often been laden with Edwardian creakiness (an image promoted, in many cases, by the historical figures themselves).
• Someone’s put together a list of every all ages show ever held at the long-since demolished RKCNDY club on Yale Avenue from 1996 to 1999. (RKCNDY had previously been a 21-and-over venue since 1991; its site now holds the SpringHill Suites hotel.)
• Charles P. Pierce at Esquire looks at one of this election cycle’s wannabe Third Parties and asks what’s the whole point, if it just gives us yet another champion of the billionaires? (Note that even Esquire, one of those magazines that always points with pride to its advertiser-friendly “upscale” readership, now finds the need to jump on the class-struggle bandwagon. This is actually a sign that the message is getting through.)
• On a similar note, George Monbiot explains better than I can how corporate “libertarian” ideology extols the name of “freedom” as it seeks to make almost all of us much less free. (“Freedom Is Slavery,” indeed.)
• For your listening pleasure, here’s Teutonic punk priestess Nina Hagen in her early years, when she was expected to conform to East German aesthetic as well as ideological strictures.
• If you still yearn for the holiday spirit that never was, relive the fantasy in old Christmas catalogs.

(Cross posted with the Capitol Hill Times)

Starting in June, liquor sales in this state move to private retailers.

But only at establishments of at least 10,000 square feet, as per terms of the Costco-written and -sponsored initiative.

This means most of the new liquor outlets will be run by big retail chains, not by independent merchants.

Washingtonians will continue to be spared the garish storefronts and signage associated with commercial liquor stores in other states.

But, for the most part, we also won’t get the careful selection and knowledgeable advice an independent merchant can provide.

In and near the Capitol Hill Times‘ distribution area, three independently owned food-beverage outlets have enough square footage to qualify as liquor sellers. They’re the Montlake Deli Market, the Madison Market Co-op, and the Jackson Street Red Apple Market.

The Madison Park Red Apple and Pete’s Wines on Fairview aren’t big enough. To get booze, they’d have to convince the state that their respective neighborhoods qualify as “trade areas.” You see, there’s a provision in the new law that says the state can license smaller stores to sell the hard stuff if there aren’t other liquor sellers in their respective “trade areas.” The initiative’s text doesn’t define those areas.

However, Area 51 Furniture on East Pine and City People’s Garden in Madison Valley ARE big enough to sell liquor. And the new law doesn’t say a store has to make most of its income from food/beverage sales, since Costco doesn’t.

Most of the new places for the hard stuff on the Hill will be the chains. Two Safeways, two Walgreens, one Trader Joe’s, and three QFCs (but not the too-small Broadway and Madison Rite Aid stores). All of these companies, including QFC’s parent Kroger, sell liquor at their stores in other states.

The Washington-only Bartell Drug chain (with large stores on Madison and in the Harvard Market complex) hasn’t said if it will add liquor. Bartell just added beer and wine to its stores last year.

•

The state’s budding “microdistillery” movement, including Capitol Hill’s Sun Liquor, will also be affected by I-1138. How it will be affected isn’t certain yet.

Hard liquor had not been commercially made in Washington since Prohibition, until a few years ago. That’s when a few entrepreneurs, with some regulatory easings from the state, started producing and releasing artisanal vodkas and gins. Whiskey, with its longer lead time, took longer to show up.

With the State Liquor Board as their only retail/wholesale customer, these fledgling producers could make one sales pitch and have their product in every liquor store in Washington, and available to every cocktail lounge in Washington.

The new system will be more complex.

Restaurants and bars will have multiple, competing distributors from which to get their spirits.

The big chains (mostly based out of state) that will dominate retail liquor sales will get to buy direct from producers, with no wholesale middlemen. And their offerings may be much more limited than the variety in today’s state stores. (They might even take shelf space away from local wine brands, and give it to national spirits brands.)

Will a Kroger corporate booze buyer in Cincinatti, or a Trader Joe’s booze buyer in suburban L.A., bother to even receive a proposal from a small Seattle distillery (or a small Yakima winery)?

Already, the Liquor Board has stopped adding new products to its inventory, as it prepares to shut down its stores. That’s put a crimp in local distillers’ new-product launches.

•

The changes to the booze biz in Washington are vast and complex. And various business interests will immediately ask the Legislature to make changes to the changes.

It will take a sober head to figure it all out.

washingtonstatewire.com

So the voters of the state finally up and did it.

They took liquor retailing away from themselves (the people of the state) and gave it to the likes of Costco and Safeway.

I for one will miss the state liquor stores, which will be closed or auctioned off to private operators some time next year.

In a modern marketing world where everything was loud and flashy and out to sell-sell-sell, this was one major retail chain out not to promote its wares, but to control their sale.

The stores were mostly no-frills operations, with modest signage and minimalist interior decor.

The employed unionized clerks, whose job was to facilitate sales, not to increase them.

In most years, they generated at least enough revenue to pay for the state’s alcohol treatment and anti-drunk-driving programs.

But their main function was service, not sales.

(Booze For People, Not For Profit.)

They showed by example that consumer goods can be distributed without excess hype, and without the secular religion of excess consumption.

sotnight.blogspot.com

I know some of these are a few days old. My present life is just that hectic, yes.

• The CBS Radio Stations Group, in its infinite wisdom, is transferring ex-child actor Danny Bonaduce’s morning talk gig from Philadelphia to Seattle’s KZOK-FM. In the recent past, celebrity offspring Ron Reagan Jr. and Scott (son of Bob) Crane fared well as Seattle radio personalities. Can Shirley Jones’s pretend-spawn do likewise?
• Seattle Weekly shrinkage watch: Perhaps in a pathetic attempt to get back at Mayor McGinn, over the latter’s allegiance to the crusade against SW sister company Backpage.com, the paper filed a public disclosure request seeking any instances of McGinn’s office using swear words in emails.
• Farm worker shortages aren’t just for Alabama anymore.
• Even Ken Schram agrees: The state can’t get out of its fiscal mess by cuts alone.
• Living costs (led by rent) have risen faster in Seattle than in the state as a whole.
• Separated at Birth: Microsoft’s new “video of the future” and AT&T’s 1993 “You Will” commercials?
• Much of what “they” say about the Internet today, was said at its infancy 15 years ago.
• Could hydroponic farming, that old pot-inspired technology, actually become a viable way to grow veggies in cities and suburbs?
• A blogger at the site Zen Peacemakers says the economic reform movement shouldn’t be about “the 99 percent,” but about uniting everybody toward a common, better future.
• Right wing outrages of recent days include a Halloween-themed Virginia Republican email depicting a zombie Obama shot in the head.
• And in corporate outrages of recent days, Citigroup settled (without admitting guilt) a case in which the big bank allegedly, knowingly, sold worthless mortgage-burger securities, while simultaneously “selling them short” (essentially betting they would fail). And the big banks still insist that all they have is an “image problem.”
• Kemper Freeman outrages of recent days include the Bellevue Square mogul and anti-transit obstructionist spearheading a trumped up “crusade” against a pro-transit Bellevue politician.
• And in deference to what has become America’s favorite adult holiday, here are the Occupy Seattle pumpkins at Westlake.

king-tv

(Told you I wouldn’t necessarily be providing these headlines every day.)

• Wednesday was drum n’ bass dance nite at Occupy Seattle!
• Gavin Polone is a film/TV producer in L.A. who believes film and TV should mostly be made in L.A., not spread out across North America. Still, he makes a lucid point when he alleges state and provincial tax breaks for film producers (like the ones Wash. state just got rid of) benefit only the producers, not the states and provinces.
• The real woman behind the book and TV movie Sibyl didn’t really have multiple personalities. But (and this is buried in the linked story) she really did have serious psychological/emotional issues, and believed she could only get the attention and help she desperately needed by exaggerating her condition.
• Ex-Seattleite Emma Harris pleads for her fellow environmentalists to care about more places besides “pristine wilderness”—which she says doesn’t even exist.
• Could the recently concluded CityArts Fest grow into the big regional music festival various entities have tried to launch from time to time but without really catching on?
• Now it can be told: Steve Jobs called Fox News a “destructive force in our society” to Rupert Murdoch’s face, while he was negotiating to get Murdoch-owned entertainment content for iTunes.
• Does the boss of BankAmeriCrap really believe all he has is an “image problem“? If so, he’s even more out of touch with reality than the average big-bank CEO. If not, he’s just another cynical spinmeister.
• Even Forbes scorns the Oakland, CA police’s violent over-reaction to peaceful Occupy protesters.
• Danny Westneat notices something we’ve known all along—Tim Eyman hates transit. So do right-wingers in general. They want people stuck in traffic, as captive audiences for the talk-radio goons.

• Jezebel and Gawker each snark away at the absurdist extremes of commercial “sexy” Halloween garb.
• The Olympian has some cogent reasons (as opposed to the TV ads’ scare-tactic reasons) why Washington state’s liquor business shouldn’t be turned over to Costco.
• Jerry Large is the first local mainstream reporter to note the connection between Occupy _______ and the Vancouver mag Adbusters.
• Buried within a statement of support for Occupy Seattle, city councilmember Nick Licata floats the idea of a municipal income tax.
• There’s a whole site of writers expressing support for Occupy ______. One of its best entries, as you might expect, is from Lemony Snicket.
• Matt Honan claims to speak on behalf of millions of grownup children of prior recessions when he proclaims, “Generation X is sick of your bullshit.”
• Is Target really better than Walmart? Allegedly, not when it comes to working conditions.
• Microsoft’s opened a retail outlet in U Village, right across a parking lot from the Apple Store.

classickidstv.co.uk

• Greenwood. It’s truly a lovely neighborhood. A great place to spend an autumnal evening in the company of fellow Seattle social history fans. Specifically, fans of our latest product, Then & Now: Seattle. It all transpires starting at 7:30 p.m. today (Thursday) at the Couth Buzzard Books and Cafe, 8310 Greenwood Ave. N. Be there.
• The media’s parental scare story of the week: Teens are supposedly soaking gummy candies in alcohol and scarfin’ them down for a quick buzz.
• The state’s moved one step closer to allowing Seattle bars to stay open later.
• Gay marriage, now less unpopular than before.
• Occupy Seattle’s still going strong; but is it being taken over by folks protesting for protesting’s sake?
• Community colleges in Washington can now declare themselves in states of “financial emergency.” Unions representing the college’s (mostly already underpaid) teachers are worried it could lead to further and faster layoffs.
• After the construction slump and the shrinkage of print newspapers, what more could go wrong for the wood products industry? Well, China used to buy Northwest-made finished lumber, but now it just wants raw logs.
• The vast majority of non-governmental arts funding in this country goes to big establishment institutions with decidedly white, upscale audiences. This will come at no surprise to friends of mine who’ve tried to drum up corporate and foundation support for smaller but established performing-arts outfits, only to learn said corporations and foundations only give to the “SOB” (symphony, opera, ballet).

geeknuz.com

• Another nifty book, another nifty book event. This one’s on Thursday, in gallant Greenwood.
• While the “SLUT”-branding skeptics weren’t looking, the south Lake Union trolley has become quite popular, even standing-room-only at commute hours. That’s one reason why the McGinn administration has a desire named streetcar.
• Occupy Seattle’s getting really popular. Except with the cops, natch. But Mike McGinn, who’d previously asked the demonstrators to quietly move to some less conspicuous place, came out and spoke in support of their cause.
• Three hundred more people may be living on the streets as of Tuesday, as the SHARE/WHEEL homeless shelters run out of funding.
• Will the long-stalled development project informally known as the West Seattle Hole finally be built?
• The AP asks whether iTunes saved the music business. Not asked: did the music business deserve to be saved?
• Koch Industries’ record is full of bribery, dirty dealing, and the regular flouting of environmental rules. Yet these guys expect us to let them take over the entire U.S. political process.
• You’d expect Bill McKibben to endorse Occupy _____. You might not have expected the NY Times to like it.
• Some guy named David Leonhardt says America actually had more reasons to be hopeful during the Great Depression than it’s got today.
• As a nearly lifelong Led Zeppelin disliker, I found enjoyment in a video short chronicling the band’s many uncredited ripoffs of R&B pioneers.
• It couldn’t happen to a not-nicer guy: Commissioner David Stern has canceled the first two weeks of the NBA season.