Save The Glob?

UniversalHub and co are having a rally in defense of the Boston Globe. And while I think a good newspaper is a good thing, and will probably feel nostalgic for it, I wonder if there’s really much left to save. It’s already, de facto, a regional edition of the New York Times. You might as well acknowledge that, and cut it back to a metro desk and local art coverage, and just run wire stories. At which point it would be… well… a daily version of the Phoenix or the Dig.

And there are plenty of people who would really cheer if the Globe shut down entirely: Paper Economy blames it as being a cheerleader of the corrupt, sinful, unsustainable practices of the past fifteen years of economic malfeasance.

Rupert Murdoch vs. Godzilla

Ol’ Rupert is angry that Google keeps linking to him and sending him valuable web traffic.

“Google devalues everything it touches,” he said. “It divides content quantitatively rather than qualitatively.”

That’s wrong in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. On the one hand, Google’s algorithyms do indeed have an amazing knack for judging the likelihood that people will be interested in a particular set of data. On the other hand, to the extent that Google doesn’t make value judgements, that’s beneficial to News Corporation. If Google were able to truly judge the quality of News Corporation properties, nothing Rupert Murdoch produced would ever sully my search results again.

The Price Of Metal Makes No Sense To Me

Until I started shopping for jewelry this past week I didn’t pay much attention to the price of precious metals. Certainly not to the relative prices of precious metals, although I was vaguely aware that gold was very expensive these days and that certain less-than-trustworthy characters were cheering it on.

But today I learned that gold is almost three times as expensive as palladium, and in fact almost as expensive as platinum. The price of non-precious metals like copper and aluminum has sunk with the economy, and the price of platinum, which has both industrial and jewelry applications, is cheaper than it was a year or two ago. Only gold, which is not really that useful, has risen.

This seems totally wrong to me. Can anyone explain?

Loyal Opposition

It’s not fair to judge the level of national discourse by blog or newspaper comments. I know this.

And yet I can’t help but make broad generalizations when something that is basically a complaint about cliche and exaggeration in political writing draws a comment like this:

I got it I find I queation my own mind the Obama in office I see him trying to bankrupt the country I see him wanting to put our kids education camps It not just financial its every thing My family just loves him I tryed but I cant I hope I am nuts because our country seem be in deep shit.Free trade worked all this long I hate this new world order They will have to drag me I think he is a communist.

Local grass-fed beef, global recession

Megan’s friend John knows a guy whose parents have a farm west of town with a few head of cattle. They’re pastured, grass-fed, not pumped up on anabolics, generally not drugged unless they need it. Uncertified organic, if you will. Every year, John and a few of his friends pool their money and buy one of them, and split it five or six ways – they butcher it locally . If you’ve got a deep freezer it’s a serious bargain.

Of course, delivery is a little tricky. John’s schedule didn’t match up with ours, so he gave our share to his friend Giovanni who lives in Newton, and we planned to go by his place and get it, but put it off til the next weekend, and then the next, and the next.

And then Giovanni got laid off. I guess he’s on an H1B visa, because he’s now moving back to Italy with his family, and selling his appliances on Craigslist. He had an offer on the freezer, so I had to go get the meat right away. Midweek rush-hour driving in Boston isn’t exactly my idea of a great way to spend a Wednesday evening, and of course I got totally lost (I’ve learned Somerville’s little warrens of one-ways and missing street signs, but Newton?), but now I have seventy-some-odd pounds of grass-fed local protein.

And a sore back from carrying it.

And a sinking feeling about the global economy.