Eubie's notes

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine is collecting stories of how blogs have changed people lives. The comments are quite interesting including half brothers finding each other through a blog.

Live Science — Drivers on Cell Phones Kill Thousands, Snarl Traffic. New study finds that 20-year-old drivers using cell phones have the reaction time of a 70-year-old. The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, publisher of the journal of the study, estimated that cell phones caused 2,600 deaths and 333,000 injuries a year in the United States. That estimate is from a 2002 study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Tip: Buzzworthy

Now just put cell phones drivers into an S.U.V. for a real threat.

A plagarism scandal last year led to The Settle Times creating a subcommittee to address the issue. The result — Seattle Times Plagiarism Guidelines — were posted on its web site Sunday. Tip: Poynter E-Media Tidbits

MSBNC — Social Security: A Daring Leap — President Bush makes his proposed private accounts sound like the opportunity of a lifetime. But the fine print shows they pose great risk for you—and the nation. Newsweek’s Alan Sloan takes a look at the numbers behind the push for Social Security reform and finds there has been more success in marketing the reforms rather than proposing reforms that equitable reform it.

If the president really wants to fix Social Security rather than pick a political fight — and the Democrats feel the same — it wouldn’t be difficult. They’d compromise by putting more money into the system by raising wage taxes a tad, taking less out by increasing the retirement age and trimming benefit formulas and setting up private accounts funded by wage earners, not by government borrowings. Put a few willing negotiators in a room and a deal’s done in a month. I won’t hold my breath, though.

Bush has marketed the pants off the Democrats by setting the terms of debate. Do you want to pay higher taxes or lower taxes? Clearly, lower. Do you want to pay estate tax or not? Do you want private accounts, or don’t you? He’s done a fabulous job of showing the goodies—and of hiding the costs. People, naturally, have opted for the goodies. The Bushies are in full sales mode, including sticking recordings on Social Security’s phone lines preaching that the system has to change. In the name of empowering my kids, he’s asking them to pay full freight for my retirement and for trillions in new borrowings, while forking over the same wage taxes for lower benefits. If he can sell this one, the Marketing Hall of Fame should start planning his induction ceremony.

NY Times — Course Correction: Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea. Learning how to use search engines is a skill many have learned, but Geoffrey Nunberg says too many people have not learned to be skeptical about the material they find online or the ability to judge the credibility and accuracy of that information.

Bizdemographics — Hartford carries the heaviest economic stress of any large city

Business Review of Albany — Spitzer: Good ethics key to free market

Atlanta Business — New company rolling out IP television

Austin Business Journal — Budding tycoon balances business with high school classes

Buffalo — Reverse mortgages are gaining momentum

San Francisco Business Times — SBC seeks a starring role in movies: $4 billion fiber push pits telecom giant against cable firms, Netflix

The New Yorker — Gross Points: Is the blockbuster the end of cinema?

The movie Troy is considered a failure even though it grosses a half billion dollars. Sideways is considered a success with a gross of $22 million. The business of movie making is as fascinating as the special effects.

Interesting points in the article, which looks at several recent books about the industry, include:

* Foreign box-office receipts has exceeded domestic receipts since 1993. The entertainment industry is the second largest US export.

* Marketing is the major juice for movies. Average marketing costs have risen from $2 million in 1975 to $39 million in 2003. The push is to generate the buzz for the first weekend.

* It’s the first weekend that counts — typically 25 to 40 percent of its total gross is from the first weekend. Studios book the movie in thousands of theaters and keep 90% of the gross. Theaters don’t mind because they get 100% of the concessions, which is about 35% of their total revenue. Typically a movie will do only half the receipts in the second week.

* DVD sales, television rights and merchandise contracts are major sources of revenue for movies

* TVs hurt movie attendance. In 1947, average weekly movie attendance was 90 million It fell to 15 million by the 1970s and has risen only a little since then. Number of movie released a year has fallen to 200 in 2004 from 700 in 1946.

Tip — How to Save the World: How the ‘Free’ Market Ruins the Entertainment Media who has a comparison chart of 1946 and 2004.

BBC — Why I’m giving up broadband

Gradually, though, the novelty of a fast connection has worn off. Disillusion has set in. I’ve slowly come to a terrible realisation: there isn’t really that much I can do with broadband.

and

Having nothing much to do with your broadband gives rise to a curious sensation that could be termed: “bandwidth guilt”. When I’m not using it, I feel like I should be. I keep trying to find ways to utilise its sheer power – and justify the £30 a month fee. I feel bad if I don’t.

Looking at the article’s comments, he’s not the only one.

Tip: Techdirt

New Yorker — Fear and Favor: Why is everoyne mad at the mainstream media

Article focuses on how both conservatives and liberals have become so angry or disappointed in the media. Editors quoted in the story said it was frustrating because do much of what a newspaper publishes has becomed questioned for bias.

A better understanding of conservatives seems manageable, but there is another possibility, which is much more worrisome, at least to journalists who work in the mainstream media. It is that during the years of heavy shelling—through impeachment and the Florida recount and then the rough 2004 campaign—what they consider their compact with the public has been seriously damaged. Journalism that is inquisitive and intellectually honest, that surprises and unsettles, didn’t always exist. There is no law saying that it must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn’t exist and that have worked hard to undermine it. This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don’t believe in us, don’t want us, anymore?

Maybe the journalists should read JD Lasica’s Why Newspapers Still Matter, but they should avoid this — Is watching the news bad for you? — but, of course that’s TV news, not print news.

Tobias S. Buckell asked science fiction writers how much they typically receive as an advance for novels. His first published novel will be out soon.

The typical advance for a first novel is $5,000. The typical advance for later novels, after a typical number of 5-7 years and 5-7 books is $12,500. Having an agent at any point increases your advance. There is some slight correlation between number of books and number of years spent writing as represented in the 5-12.5 thousand dollar advance shift of an average of 5-7 years. Charting individual author’s progressions, which I will not release to keep anonymity, reveals a large number of upward lines at varying degrees of steepness for advances, some downward slides.

Some authors noted that they’d gotten large advances in the 90s but were being paid less now.

Tip: Boing Boing