Dan Walsh
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Wilder was initially hesitant, but finally accepted the role under one condition:
When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself… but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.
When Stuart asked why, Wilder replied, “because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”
Genius.
Ty Cobb as Detroit
I really enjoyed this piece on Grantland (I enjoy lots of pieces on Grantland) by Anna Leigh Clark about how the history Detroit and Cobb will be forever linked.
Perhaps as easy to admire as he was to hate, Ty Cobb is as polarizing a character as there has ever been in professional sports - his near-perfection on the field was rivaled only by his troubled behavior off it. I keep telling myself that I’m going to read Cobb’s biography… I really should get around to it.
Safe Playgrounds Are Destroying Society
Coincidentally, I just learned this weekend that the swingset I had growing up (and most from that time period, apparently) was pressure treated with arsenic. “It’s really only dangerous if you get a splinter.”
Kids these days are such babies.
We also have to make sure we retain our most effective teachers. We can’t allow them to continue to fall victim to policies that emphasize length of service over the quality of work. For example, we have to stop using seniority as the determining factor in teacher layoff decisions during tight economic times. Instead, we should make these difficult decisions based on job performance.
Ensuring students have effective teachers in front of them every day will go a long way toward putting our kids on a path to success in college and in their careers. Anything less shortchanges our kids and shortchanges our country.
- Michelle Rhee on how investing in our most effective teachers can jumpstart job creation. Read more at The Atlantic (via theatlantic)
To Rebound, RIM Courts the Carriers
What a puff piece on RIM from the NYT’s Canadian correspondent. Beyond that, this article only further illustrates RIM’s greater problem - they’re totally out of touch with the consumer market. RIMS’s carrier relationships are already among the strongest in the industry and have been for years. I really have trouble believing that the carriers will be the ones to save Blackberry.
RIM’s troubles began not with the release of the iPhone but, as the article alludes to, when the so-call consumerization of IT (CoIT) trend started to take off. Simply put, you can sell data compression and security to IT managers, but you can’t sell clunky UIs and uninspired handset design to the consumers that are now making the purchase decisions. If RIM was really serious about a rebound they would do one of two things: either A) pump a lot more money into R&D and encourage their teams to start from scratch or B) go into acquisition mode and get some fresh blood with a new way of looking at things.
UltraViolet Is Ready. Now Hollywood Needs To Make It Work
So who is more at fault? Apple for not simply getting on board with this or Hollywood for not forcing them to? Either way, MG is right - without Apple’s devices UltraViolet is an empty gesture.
I’m not sure how this post managed to skip over the one big hole in the plot, but it did. APPLE IS NOT ON BOARD.
Hollywood has a new version of DRM wrapped in a fancy name with some new (admittedly compelling) features such as the ability to transfer films between devices. Great. But without Apple’s devices on board, will anyone give a shit?
The answer is “no”.
npr:
I had forgotten that before Bill was pushing pudding pops, he was kind of a cool cucumber. — TdoubleB
Happy 74, Bill. (via Aurora Hernandez)
koalas get chlamydia?!?!?
Indeed they do. Apparently koalas are currently suffering from an “outbreak” of chlamydia: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/6537179/Koalas-extinct-within-30-years-after-chlamydia-outbreak.html
Indiana Jones is on the Case!
A court-ordered search of vaults beneath a temple in India has turned up a treasure worth at least $11 billion, according to reports from the Indian state of Kerala. An inventory of what lies beneath the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, as reported on the website Business-Standard.com and others, reads like a prop list from an “Indiana Jones” movie:
About Dan Walsh
I've been described as dry, sarcastic, funny and honest. With luck, my posts here will reflect that.
Multi-fantasy-sport champion.
I'm also in PR - I help people talk to people who write for people. Everything posted on this blog is my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of my employer or its clients.
