Monday, June 08, 2009

I hate change

This site has been on Blogger since 2003. And because it pre-dates some fairly major overhauls of the service, it uses a "classic" and increasingly obsolete template. If I wanted to install any of the new widgets, I'd have to upgrade the whole site. But I get the impression that this is going to be more of a pain-in-the-ass process than I'm willing to put up with.

In a sort-of-related matter, I subscribe to Cox's "expanded basic" cable service at home which (with internet service "bundled") costs me about a hundred and forty dollars per month more than I think I should reasonably have to pay. I've just learned that next month, they're moving CSPAN II over to the digital package. If I can't get Book TV on the weekends anymore, I'm going to have to look into stealing cable again.

Update: Speaking of CSPAN, today David Simon appeared at the National Press Club today which, I am given to understand, is a thing of some mild local interest. This is a pretty good passage,

"Selling crap and calling it gold eventually comes home. It came home to New Orleans about four years before it came home to the rest of the country in a very literal way -- not in a metaphorical, financial way.

"What I really admire about people there is that they're really trying to find their way home, because it is one of the great places in America culturally, and they're trying to find their way back and they're doing it on their own.

"If you look at everything from the way Road Home money was administered to the way FEMA behaved -- not just in the immediate aftermath but in the months and years since - and now in terms of the state and local government and what they're doing in terms of everything from zoning issues to the hospitals -- that city's enduring and trying to find its way home on its own and without illusion anymore about what the country is, how hollow America actually is when it comes to certain things, and I find that to be interesting and admirable, and it's kind of what I want to pay attention to now.

"And I think we're all in that boat. A lot of things we believed were there to keep certain parameters and certain standards inherent in everything systemic in our lives really weren't there, and have been eviscerated over the course of decades. So ... New Orleans is looking at us now I think a little bit, like 'Well, what did you expect? We've been there.'"


Video here.

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