Month: October 2013

Lou Reed Record Sales Spike After Death

Seth Anderson0 comment

Proving that old adage that sometimes death is good for one’s career…

Lou Reed famously didn’t sell many records during his five decades in the music business, but after he died Sunday at age 71, sales increased significantly. So did radio play of “Walk On the Wild Side,” “Sweet Jane,” “Perfect Day” and “Dirty Blvd.” Reed’s album catalog sold 3,000 copies on Sunday alone, compared to fewer than 1,000 the previous week, an increase of 607 percent, and his solo digital-song sales jumped from 2,000 to 17,000, a 590 percent bump, according to Nielsen SoundScan. His Spotify streams increased 3,000 percent in the first day after his death, radio spins went up 140 percent, and Transformer and Rock N’ Roll Animal hit Amazon’s Top 25.

(click here to continue reading Lou Reed Record Sales Spike After Death | Music News | Rolling Stone.)

I noticed on Monday that most of the Lou Reed albums were back-ordered at Amazon, with the exception of Lulu…

Lou Reed Sold Out 2013 10 27 at 10 13 21 PM
Lou Reed Sold Out 2013-10-27 at 10.13.21 PM.PNG

Lou Reed Sold Out 2013 10 27 at 10 13 40 PM
Lou Reed Sold Out 2013-10-27 at 10.13.40 PM.PNG

and this is good news for crotchety rock snobs like myself, even though White Light White Heat is my 3rd favorite Velvet Underground record, ahead of Loaded, and behind the other two…

Reed’s best-selling posthumous titles, according to SoundScan, were Transformer, the Velvet Underground & Nico and tracks “Walk On the Wild Side” and “Sweet Jane.” But it’s unlikely that demand will lead to a wave of new box sets.

A 45th-anniversary edition of the Velvet Underground’s classic White Light White Heat, which Reed helped compile, will come out December 3rd as scheduled, according to a Universal Music spokesperson.

Five Hundred Seventy Four Dollars a Year to Be Spied Upon

Seth Anderson0 comment

Watching - Polapan
Watching – Polapan

Harumph. I thought my AT&T bill was on the high side, but seems like my NSA bill trumps that, for usefulness…

Indeed, as the Washington Post revealed when it released portions of the so-called Black Budget, this year’s price tag on America’s spook infrastructure comes out to a whopping $52.6 billion.

This is, of course, a tremendous sum – more than double the size of the Department of Agriculture, more than triple the size of NASA; the list goes on… But, what really puts this number into perspective is its average cost to each American taxpayer, or what I would call the NSA and associated agencies’ “rent.”

Yes, the NSA’s rent, charged to every taxpayer living under its web of surveillance, comes out to an exorbitant $574 per year. If this is the price the federal government is charging American taxpayers to have their own privacy invaded, then I say the NSA’s rent is too damn high.

(click here to continue reading The NSA’s Rent Is Too Damn High | Cato @ Liberty.)

On the bright side, if you add in the 53,676,039 non-taxable returns (from 2011) – i.e., the Takers™ – that means we are only paying $361 a year for the privilege of having our personal information scooped up by the N.S.A. power-vacuum…

Continue reading “Five Hundred Seventy Four Dollars a Year to Be Spied Upon”

Photo Republished at IRS Pays Billions In Bogus Refunds—But Legit Refunds Still Get Audited – Forbes

eggplant0 comment

Tax Refund Received

My photo was used to illustrate this post

The IRS has had a string of recent failures, but paying out bogus refunds is particularly embarrassing. The IRS knows it is happening, knows which tax credits and refunds are targeted, and still can’t seem to stop it. President Obama even called for a fix back in 2009 in an executive order. The IRS is looking into it. And a new report says there’s no solution in sight. The IRS paid out $132 billion in bogus tax credits over the last decade. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that the IRS is not in compliance with Executive Order 13520 to reduce improper payments. The IRS has had several warnings.…Tax Refund Received (Photo credit: swanksalot)

click here to keep reading :
IRS Pays Billions In Bogus Refunds—But Legit Refunds Still Get Audited – Forbes

automatically created via Delicious and IFTTT

Suzanne Somers’s Factually Challenged WSJ Obamacare Critique

Seth Anderson0 comment

Pippen Peruses the Newspaper
Pippen Peruses the WSJ

And the slow, sad decline of the Wall Street Journal continues under Rupert Murchoch’s helm. Today’s edition of Punditry Gone Wrong is via an OpEd from noted policy expert Suzanne Somers.

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine writes:

Reminder: This appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

In addition to offering her “down and dirty” advice for retirees, Somers has strong views on socialism:

And then there is another consideration: It’s the dark underbelly of the Affordable Care Act reminiscent of what Lenin and Churchill both said. Lenin: “Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.” Churchill: “Control your citizens’ health care and you control your citizens.”

Unsurprisingly, Lenin never said that line — it’s a decades-old right-wing fabrication. The more curious line is the Churchill quote. It’s almost certainly fake, too; it does not appear in the LexisNexis database or in Google. Unless Somers has done original archival work on Churchill, she seems to have fabricated that quote on her own, or possibly received it via chain e-mail.

But the more interesting question is what does Somers think it means? Does she believe Churchill was warning the world of the dangers of a national health-care system? If so, that’s weird, because he strongly favored such a system. Given the latter, is she holding up Churchill as another European despot who, like Lenin, sought to impose universal health care on his citizens? Somers’s side-by-side listing of Churchill with Lenin, along with Churchill’s actual support for nationalized health care, makes the latter more plausible.

(click here to continue reading Suzanne Somers’s Strong WSJ Obamacare Critique — Daily Intelligencer.)

 News You Can't Use

News You Can’t Use

Philip Bump of the Atlantic adds:

Her argument bounces around a bit, but centers on three things. First: Canadian health care doesn’t work and Canadian doctors want to come to the United States because “they want to reap financial rewards.” Second: Pre-existing condition coverage is good for seniors, but nothing else is. And, third: Lenin and Churchill saw health care as a tool to control the public.

The Canadian stuff is based mostly on an anecdote. That her sister-in-law had to wait to see a doctor is sad! But an old Maclean’s article isn’t terribly compelling, nor would be the idea that Canadian doctors want to come to America to make money. That’s the whole point! Doctors here have far fewer limitations on their ability to make money, which is one factor in increasing health care costs. If you were told you could make way more money doing the same thing somewhere else, you might move, too. That doesn’t mean you’re doing bad work where you are. Regardless, Somers’ claim is not true.

As for the elderly, Somers is very concerned about their health coverage, though in generally vague ways. She acknowledges the value of covering preexisting conditions, but then segues into “let’s get down and dirty; the word ‘affordable’ is a misnomer.” Why? Because premiums are “doubling and tripling” as you “hear on the news” and “most frightening of all, your most intimate and personal information is now up for grabs.” In this case, “the news” probably means Hannity, and “personal information” means … no idea. No idea what that means. She of course misses the whole point about pre-existing conditions: yes, premiums for some people with pre-existing conditions will go up — since many pay no premiums, since they can’t get coverage. And that’s good for kids with cancer just as it is for the elderly.

(click here to continue reading Having Conquered Cellulite, Suzanne Somers Takes On Obamacare – Philip Bump – The Atlantic Wire.)

——

update: apparently, Mr. Murdoch’s fact checker army had been furloughed, but are now back in the office. The WSJ appended this to the bottom of the story later on today:

CORRECTIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS:

An earlier version of this post contained a quotation attributed to Lenin (“Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state”) that has been widely disputed. And it included a quotation attributed to Churchill (“Control your citizens’ health care and you control your citizens“) that the Journal has been unable to confirm.

Also, the cover of a Maclean’s magazine issue in 2008 showed a picture of a dog on an examining table with the headline “Your Dog Can Get Better Health Care Than You.” An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the photo showed and headline referred to a horse. 

(click here to continue reading Suzanne Somers: The Affordable Care Act Is a Socialist Ponzi Scheme – The Experts – WSJ.)

Americans Realize Republicans don’t care about them

Seth Anderson0 comment

Useful as a Canadian Penny
Useful as a Canadian Penny

Not surprising, really, the GOP political motivation has been transparently directed towards demagoguery and re-election for a long, long time. Why else the so-called Southern Strategy? Why else the anti-civil rights positions regarding same-sex marriage? Why else other than fooling the rubes and (theoretically) winning elections. What’s happened is the GOP schtick has gotten tiresome, antiquated, and a smaller percentage of the voting public is convinced that tax breaks for wealthy corporations is beneficial for the rest of us…

If the tea party faction thought that they could lay claim to the idea of representing “real America” by dressing up in colonial clothes and calling President Obama some sort of foreigner, that idea is now out the window. After the Republican-controlled House of Representatives decided to shut down the government in a desperate attempt to take away the ability of the less fortunate to get health insurance, their polling took a major hit. Over half the country now thinks that it’s a bad thing that the Republican Party controls the House; three quarters of Americans believe that Republican members of Congress don’t deserve re-election.

All of those numbers would be bad in their own right, but there’s one that’s even worse, as Steve Benen at MSNBC reports:

The results cover quite a bit of ground, but there was one question in particular that stood out for me: respondents were asked whether they believe the various officials in Washington are more interested in doing what’s best for the country or what’s best for themselves politically. It’s an interesting question because it speaks to something that isn’t often polled: perceptions of motivations. I put together the chart above to capture the results, which should terrify Republican officials. By a nearly four-to-one margin, Americans believe GOP lawmakers in Congress aren’t concerned with the nation’s best interests. That’s just astounding.

Given the revulsion that the American public feels toward Congress in general, it’s unsurprising that Democrats on Capitol Hill are operating at a deficit in this regard as well, even if it isn’t nearly as steep as that faced by their Republican counterparts. But what should scare Republicans even more than their own abysmal numbers? President Obama’s. Despite every single thing that Republicans have said and done to delegitimize the President, ascribe evil intentions to him, and impute that he does not share American values, a majority of Americans think that he cares about what is best for the country more than being motivated by selfish intentions.

(click here to continue reading Daily Kos: The final blow: Americans think Republicans don’t care about them.)

The proof will arrive, or not arrive, in the fall of 2014 – all else is speculation until then.

Happiness Starts With Prohibited
Happiness Starts With Prohibited

Numbers 2013 sucks, by the way…

ABC/ Washington Post poll

ABC/ Washington Post poll


Continue reading “Americans Realize Republicans don’t care about them”

Slaves of the Internet, Unite!

Seth Anderson0 comment

This Way To Prosperity
This Way To Prosperity

If you recall, for a while I blogged the requests I received to use my art without compensation. I’ve been lax in documenting them lately, but make no mistake, not a month doesn’t go by without someone requesting something, sans payment.

Obviously, this is a frequent problem. Tim Kreider begins his rant on the subject thus:

NOT long ago, I received, in a single week, three (3) invitations to write an original piece for publication or give a prepared speech in exchange for no ($0.00) money. As with stinkbugs, it’s not any one instance of this request but their sheer number and relentlessness that make them so tiresome. It also makes composing a polite response a heroic exercise in restraint.

People who would consider it a bizarre breach of conduct to expect anyone to give them a haircut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear conscience, whether you wouldn’t be willing to write an essay or draw an illustration for them for nothing. They often start by telling you how much they admire your work, although not enough, evidently, to pay one cent for it. “Unfortunately we don’t have the budget to offer compensation to our contributors…” is how the pertinent line usually starts. But just as often, they simply omit any mention of payment.

A familiar figure in one’s 20s is the club owner or event promoter who explains to your band that they won’t be paying you in money, man, because you’re getting paid in the far more valuable currency of exposure. This same figure reappears over the years, like the devil, in different guises — with shorter hair, a better suit — as the editor of a Web site or magazine, dismissing the issue of payment as an irrelevant quibble and impressing upon you how many hits they get per day, how many eyeballs, what great exposure it’ll offer. “Artist Dies of Exposure” goes the rueful joke.

(click here to continue reading Slaves of the Internet, Unite! – NYTimes.com.)

For A Drop of Blood, It Could Be Bought
For A Drop of Blood, It Could Be Bought

Mr. Kreider continues:

I’ve been trying to understand the mentality that leads people who wouldn’t ask a stranger to give them a keychain or a Twizzler to ask me to write them a thousand words for nothing. I have to admit my empathetic imagination is failing me here. I suppose people who aren’t artists assume that being one must be fun since, after all, we do choose to do it despite the fact that no one pays us. They figure we must be flattered to have someone ask us to do our little thing we already do.

I will freely admit that writing beats baling hay or going door-to-door for a living, but it’s still shockingly unenjoyable work. I spent 20 years and wrote thousands of pages learning the trivial craft of putting sentences together. My parents blew tens of thousands of 1980s dollars on tuition at a prestigious institution to train me for this job. They also put my sister the pulmonologist through medical school, and as far as I know nobody ever asks her to perform a quick lobectomy — doesn’t have to be anything fancy, maybe just in her spare time, whatever she can do would be great — because it’ll help get her name out there.

 and then concludes with a more succinct version of the refusal than one I linked to a couple years ago:

Here, for public use, is my very own template for a response to people who offer to let me write something for them for nothing:

Thanks very much for your compliments on my [writing/illustration/whatever thing you do]. I’m flattered by your invitation to [do whatever it is they want you to do for nothing]. But [thing you do] is work, it takes time, it’s how I make my living, and in this economy I can’t afford to do it for free. I’m sorry to decline, but thanks again, sincerely, for your kind words about my work.

Feel free to amend as necessary. This I’m willing to give away.

Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service

Seth Anderson0 comment

We Finally Came To Realize

We Finally Came To Realize

A troubling tale via Krebs on Security

An identity theft service that sold Social Security and drivers license numbers — as well as bank account and credit card data on millions of Americans — purchased much of its data from Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, according to a lengthy investigation by KrebsOnSecurity.

…

Contacted about the reader’s claim, U.S. Info Search CEO Marc Martin said the data sold by the ID theft service was not obtained directly through his company, but rather via Court Ventures, a third-party company with which US Info Search had previously struck an information sharing agreement. Martin said that several years ago US Info Search and CourtVentures each agreed to grant the other company complete access to its stores of information on US consumers.

Founded in 2001, Court Ventures described itself as a firm that “aggregates, repackages and distributes public record data, obtained from over 1,400 state and county sources.” Cached, historic copies of courtventures.com are available through archive.org.

THE ROLE OF EXPERIAN

In March 2012, Court Ventures was purchased by Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Experian, one of the three major consumer credit bureaus. According to Martin, the proprietors of Superget.info had gained access to Experian’s databases by posing as a U.S.-based private investigator. In reality, Martin said, the individuals apparently responsible for running Superget.info were based in Vietnam.

Martin said he first learned of the ID theft service after hearing from a U.S. Secret Service agent who called and said the law enforcement agency was investigating Experian and had obtained a grand jury subpoena against the company.

While the private investigator ruse may have gotten the fraudsters past Experian and/or CourtVentures’ screening process, according to Martin there were other signs that should have alerted Experian to potential fraud associated with the account. For example, Martin said the Secret Service told him that the alleged proprietor of Superget.info had paid Experian for his monthly data access charges using wire transfers sent from Singapore.

“The issue in my mind was the fact that this went on for almost a year after Experian did their due diligence and purchased” Court Ventures, Martin said. “Why didn’t they question cash wires coming in every month? Experian portrays themselves as the databreach experts, and they sell identity theft protection services. How this could go on without them detecting it I don’t know. Our agreement with them was that our information was to be used for fraud prevention and ID verification, and was only to be sold to licensed and credentialed U.S. businesses, not to someone overseas.”

Experian declined multiple requests for an interview.

(click here to continue reading Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service — Krebs on Security.)

Or Pay The Price
Or Pay The Price

so if your account was one of the unlucky ones, what was stolen?

These services specialized in selling “fullz” or “fulls,” a slang term that cybercrooks use to describe a package of personally identifiable information that typically includes the following information: an individual’s name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, place of work, duration of work, state driver’s license number, mother’s maiden name, bank account number(s), bank routing number(s), email account(s) and other account passwords. Fulls are most commonly used to take over the identity of a person in order to engage in other fraud, such as taking out loans in the victim’s name or filing fraudulent tax refund requests with the IRS.

All told, findget.me and superget.info acquired or sold fullz information on more than a half million people, the government alleges.

Why exactly do we as a society allow Experian and similar organizations collect this data in the first place? They accumulate the data, and sell it to advertisers, or to scammers, and what benefit does it bestow on us? Other than headache and grief…

There was much gnashing of teeth when we discovered just how many hard disks the N.S.A. has filled with our personal data, why does Experian and other similar corporations get a pass from the public?

Revolution of The Innocent
Revolution of The Innocent

especially when Experian will skip away from this investigation with nothing more than a slap on the wrist with a wet noodle…

Meanwhile, it’s not clear what — if any — trouble Experian may face as a result of its involvement in the identity theft scheme. This incident bears some resemblance to a series of breaches at ChoicePoint, a data aggregator that acted as a private intelligence service to government and industry. Beginning in 2004, ChoicePoint suffered several breaches in which personal data on American citizens was accessed by crooks who’d used previously stolen identities to create apparently legitimate businesses seeking ChoicePoint accounts. ChoicePoint was later sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, an action that produced a $10 million settlement — the largest in the agency’s history for a violation of federal privacy law.

Experian makes about $500,000,000 in profit a year, btw.

Kermit Lynch Knows the Terroir

Seth Anderson0 comment

Good news, if this trend continues; Robert Parker’s taste in wine is not my taste in wine…

https://i0.wp.com/farm8.staticflickr.com/7382/10504696973_3107f5a2bf_z.jpg?resize=640%2C640
Arcangelo

For much of the last 35 years, the wine critic Robert Parker dominated the international wine scene. Parker invented the 100-point rating system for wine, and his reviews wielded such influence over sales that vintners everywhere worked to please Parker’s palate, making oaky, intensely flavored, high-alcohol wines. Kermit Lynch, meanwhile, through his wine shop in Berkeley, Calif., and also through his nationwide distribution business, chose to sell only French and Italian wines made in the unadulterated, old-school traditional style aimed at accentuating terroir — each vineyard’s unique combination of weather, soil and geography.

…Find a good merchant and let her pick out four or five bottles and then give the wines a chance. Try to be open-minded when you taste. A lot of people say, “I don’t know much about wine, but I know what I like.” Maybe you don’t know what you like, because you just keep drinking the same style. The wine world is pretty vast and diverse, and it’s not marriage. You don’t have to be faithful to one style. So don’t impose your comparatively limited experience on every wine you encounter. Try to understand wine styles you’re not familiar with.
…

Right here in Berkeley, I found a great winemaker, Steve Edmunds, working with Rhone varietals. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — I eat better in Berkeley than I do in France these days. My son now works for me, too, and he’s been talking about California wineries dropping the heavy-oak, heavy-alcohol style. He wants me to consider adding some to our portfolio, and I’ve given him the green light to scout around.

Q: Do you believe there are certain wines we should all be drinking? Or just that everybody should drink whatever they like?

A: Yeah — whatever you like, you should drink. But maybe you shouldn’t serve it to your friends.

(click here to continue reading Kermit Lynch Knows the Terroir – NYTimes.com.)

Keeps My Mind Wandering Where It Will Go
Keeps My Mind Wandering Where It Will Go

Greek Wine Mug, With Horns
Greek Wine Mug, With Horns

Eliyahu Was Thirsty
Eliyahu Was Thirsty

Some Vine Jibber Jabbers

Seth Anderson0 comment

Marty convinced me I should use Vine occasionally, so I’ve made a couple rank amateur posts to the service. Amusing, not deep. That is my motto after all.((irony alert))
If they auto play, I’ll shake my tiny fist at Marty…

 

Also a test to see if WordPress 3.7 is working correctly

Laying Bricks

swanksalot0 comment
Laying Bricks

Laying Bricks, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Shoring up the basement (put a piece of metal against the basement wall first, then these bricks).

I helped shovel sand and also put down a few bricks, but had to document the work first…

If you look at the colors carefully, you can tell I altered the balance towards the brick spectrum using a faux Technicolor technique in Photoshop; Enhanced the bricks at the expense of the green moss and bits of leaves.

I quite like how this turned out.

(click to embiggen)

Walk Over

swanksalot0 comment
Walk Over

Walk Over, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Vintage sign from Toronto’s garment industry. Based on the clothing of the gentleman, how old would you guess it is? I’m guessing 1890s-1910, but I don’t know that much about men’s fashion history.

Walk-Over Shoes has been around a long, long time (though I don’t know how long in Toronto)
www.walkover.com/OurHistory.aspx

This plaster sign was in what used to be my bedroom in Frostpocket, and I dragged the (plaster?) sign out into the sun to get a good photo of it.

(click to embiggen)