George Bush has recommended country-western music as an inspirational source of important ideals
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pg 2 of The Wild West — The Mythical Cowboy & Social Theory by Will Wright Ok, there are some things he was right about. |
Rumors of Carlos Slim buying The New York Times
Although these rumors have been squashed by Slim’s PR team, it is worth thinking about the ramifications of having someone like Slim own The Times. The NY Times is perhaps the most trusted newspaper in the world, and while it has a reputation of being a left-leaning publication, their influence is immense. If you take that last sentence and replaced ‘left’ with ‘right’, you would have the Wall Street Journal, which is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian.
In the hypothetical scenario that Mr. Slim was to purchase The Times and take it private, two of our most well-read and credible newspapers will be owned by foreigners.
I’m not proposing that media corporations that cater to the US market should be owned by an American. We have a choice of what to read and watch, which has a great influence on our thoughts and opinions. I largely stopped reading The Journal after NewsCorp purchased it and replaced the editorial team with Murdoch figureheads. I am also aware that Slim already owns a 6.4% stake in The Times, although I think this minority ownership in the company hasn’t had a large impact on the reporting of the paper. However, I have noticed that they never write anything negative about Slim, which is a bit disconcerting.
These two papers have immense influence on the American political landscape, foreign policy, local businesses, international corporations, and a host of other incredibly important matters in our world.
We all watched Murdoch make a slough of promises to the Bancroft family to purchase The Journal. We saw what happened to all of those promises as soon as the deal went through. History has a way of repeating itself. I hope The Times doesn’t make the same mistake that its rival did.
Signing special fees petitions has become a tedious process at Stanford this year. I built this form to let students sign all of the petitions they want to support at once.
I needed a mobile site for StanfordDaily.com to work on my BlackBerry, so I wrote this up on Friday afternoon using the Daily’s RSS feed. Just visit StanfordMob.com on your smart phone and voilà!
A much happier person now than when we first met him. He feels like he’s done good things, and they’re greater than what he expected when he was young. If there is sadness in him at all, I think it is a tiny core of profound sadness of the kind that the Buddha understood—that we probably can’t use human rationality to make the world all better, and it would be really nice if we were able to.
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
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| — | Robert F. Kennedy |
COLBERT: Ben Bernanke, who oversaw the collapse of not only the United States, but pretty much the entire world financial system, and brought our economy to its knees, has been reappointed as head of the Federal Reserve... Does this give you hope for being reelected Governor of New York? [laughs] Because, mind you, he ...screwed EVERYBODY.
SPITZER: I just became a big fan of Bernanke.
