I am the official photographer of Overshot Your Welcome.
There's other stuff I haven't been talking about much.
For instance ...
THE PARENT TRAP Who's big idea was it to design a gift holiday around St. Patrick's Day? Isn't it enough to believe a boy kidnapped from England and sold into slavery grew up to drive the snakes out of Ireland? Now you hook the kids into making intricate traps to capture little green imaginary creatures, who once cornered will leave a gift?
Guess how I found out?
She made a trap. And checked it hourly.
Also ...
EGYPT * LIBYA * NEW ZEALAND * JAPAN I am sending my best agnostic prayers your way.
WISCONSIN? THAT'S THE CAPITAL OF MINNEAPOLIS, RIGHT? Oh, education in this country is the target of much scorn. I know we need to work harder to energize students and prepare them a world we can't even comprehend. But I can't help but wonder why millionaires are picking on school teachers. To me one group eviscerating the collective power of another isn't the answer for society. In fact, it seems a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
SMALLER IS BIGGER, THOUGH. Consolidating districts, sharing superintendents, administrative staff? That's OK in my book.
LAST IN, FIRST OUT I have to say this is tougher for me. Experience should count, and it should be weighed heavily. That's not to say that I think "bad" teachers should be protected. But I just don't think during a layoff is the time to be punitive. Performance-based reductions should be continuously handled through evaluation. If that was happening, last in first out would be fair. Eventually all these young teachers grow older, too.
NEW YORK TIMES' ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION ANNOUNCEMENT: Wow. Not exactly the "paywall" people had predicted. But to my limited mind it seems pretty brilliant. Although there are several ways to trick the system, the system is really set up to make sure those who have been benefiting the most from having free news to aggregate (socially speaking, anyway) will be asked to pony up. If you are really "benefiting" from the downward trend of the news business I'm guessing $15 a month isn't too much of an uphill climb.
BUT WHAT DO I KNOW? I don't have a crystal ball, either. I'm just interested to see how all this turns out in the end. And really? I'm hoping for a time in the near future when we can laugh about some of this stuff.
Including this:
9 comments:
haha I LOVED your ''agnostic prayers'', perfect. DId you make her dress, its so cute.
x Heleen/toddlertoes
Oh dear... that's one pretty seriously disappointed face. And a bit of a window into her teenage face? Oh.
And as for the NYT subscription... the cost is more than twice as high in Canada. I guess it's really expensive to send all those pixels across the border. lol.
Heleen, I believe the dress may have been made either by my husband's mother or by his grandmother. I know it belonged to his sister.
Erin, I do believe A. has been a teenager since she was 4. : ) And NYT has three digital news packages planned for US consumers — $15 every four weeks for access to the Web site and a mobile phone app (or $195 for a full year), $20 for Web access and an iPad app ($260 a year) or $35 for an all-access plan ($455 a year). Is that more comparable to the prices in Canada?
I know everyone's struggling with how to make money in the new media age, but I think the Times is going to fall flat (again) with its subscription plan. $15 a month for ONE news source? (Oh, I'm sorry, I have to pay MORE because I don't have a smartphone.) I'm about to cut my cable, and HuluPlus and Netflix together cost $16 a month. I know the content is different, but it's a decent price point comparison for what people are willing to pay, and those services deliver massive amounts of content.
As it is, I mostly want the Times archives, where there is already an arbitrary formula for when something is free and when there is a ridiculously high $4 per article charge -- a charge I have paid exactly once. There are too many other ways of getting information, and very little that is worth $4 a pop.
According to the plans, $15 covers the .com (not just spartphone devices) and includes access too 100 archived articles would be included each month.
I think really heavy users might just budget for that.
I don't think this plan will work for news sources than aren't the NYT, though.
Yes, I misread the FAQ. You pay more for the Smartphone App, then even more for a Tablet App, but computer access is covered at any pay level. You're right, heavy users might budget for that -- but having a very selective audience, as you know, limits your attractiveness to advertisers. I just don't think they're going to have much success with this, and I don't think the Times is . They've tried the paywall before and failed. I wonder if this means they'll kill their RSS feeds?
The thing I find the most interesting is that people who get to the Times through links on Twitter or facebook will continue to be able to read content from the Times for free regardless of how many stories they've read going directly to nytimes.com or through Google searches. To me that seems as if the Times is really trying to get "aggregators" to pay for content they share.
Advertising may be the way the have to do it. Or maybe not.
A story in the SF Chronicle on Mozilla's and Microsoft's Do Not Track features, put it in an interesting way: If you're getting something for free, you're not the consumer you are the product.
The world is going crazy, isn't it?
Aside from all the real insanity & tragedy, nothing irks this irish lass more than the trumped-up nonsense that surrounds St. Pat's these days. My girl wanted to leave her shoes out for a leprechaun to fill with candy... who's telling the kids that crap, anyway? ;)
But, some things don't ever change... I know the look on her face, seen it many times. Good luck with that! :)
I know I haven't commented in MONTHS and MONTHS and MONTHS, but that leprechaun trap? That made me laugh out loud.
You have a pair of darlings, you do.
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