Tehran Bans Paper Showing George Clooney Wearing "Je Suis Charlie" Button

The current Iranian regime has recently put on a diplomatic smiley face, presumably to make a nuke/sanctions deal with major Western nations. However, behind the smile remains a ruling, militant Islamic theocracy. Those fun loving beards in Tehran just revoked the license of a newspaper which had the (dare I say it) chutzpah to publish a photograph of George Clooney wearing a "Je Suis Charlie" button. According to a Reuters report reprinted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the offending three-week-old publication had supported a reform movement in the Islamic Republic. Now the Iranian newspaper will not be free to speak its mind, or anything, for that matter.

Amazon Deepens Reach into Federal Contracts

In March 2013, I wrote a blog post about Jeff Bezos' Amazon juggernaut landing a contract to handle CIA data storage and related data management needs. The Seattle-based firm muscled out IBM to win the deal. IBM squawked and had the contract assignment reviewed.

Reuters reporter Alistair Barr has followed up on the contretemps. His piece, which was picked up by the Mercury News, notes the impact of the shock waves the Amazon cloud computing triumph on Old School tech firms, including "Big Blue," as IBM is sometimes known.

The story quoted some investment analysts for attribution. They noted how AWS -- the heart of Amazon's cloud computing initiative -- allegedly strongly shapes Amazon's current stock market valuation. Reuters' Barr grasps the notion that Amazon is really a tech company, an inconvenient fact most journalists ignore. To that end, his article cites AWS' impact on Oracle, cloud computing competitor Rackspace Holding, Microsoft, and other tech heavyweights.

Barr also cites some of AWS' publicly identified clients. One of them is NASA, which, as with the CIA, happens to be involved in highly classified operations. (An ironic aspect of this situation is that Jeff Bezos recently sponsored the retrieval from the Atlantic Ocean of what he claimed were Apollo 11 rockets. A related report and images appear in a gizmodo.com post.)

Another AWS client is PBS. Inquiring minds are wondering why a federally and viewer-subsidized media outlet requires Amazon's cloud computing clout. (In late 2011, PBS and Amazon signed a deal in which PBS would show some of its programming on Amazon Prime.)

What's most interesting in the increased coziness of the Obama Administration's bureaucracy and Amazon is why it's happening at all. Just don't expect that story to appear on the News Hour anytime soon.

NY Hilton to Eliminate Room Service

The New York Hilton
(photo: wikipedia.com)

According to a Reuters story in today's New York Times, the New York Hilton intends to KO its room service feature. The massive hotel chain has asserted the elimination of room service would improve the property's profits.

It's hard to imagine the New York Hilton -- or any major hotel -- losing money on room service. A look at a typical room service menu often reveals outrageous prices for the simplest dishes. Twenty dollars for eggs, toast, juice, and coffee is not unusual. The absurd pricing, designed for expense account travelers, has simply run aground as businesses tighten their spending. However, there are times room service makes sense for a customer. To take that option away, and compel hotel guests to trudge to the lobby for "gourmet take-out," as the New York Hilton intends, cheapens the brand and the experience of staying at a "name" hotel.

The Hilton should go back to drawing board, keep room service, and identify more sensible, customer-friendly ways to increase the hotel's profit margin.

Google Case Judge Thwarts Class-Action Lawsuit Option for Copyright Holders

A federal district judge in New York recently ruled that copyright holders could not file a class-action suit against Google. The litigation involved files uploaded without the copyright holders' permission to Google-owned YouTube. According to a Reuters story picked up in today's siliconvalley.com, the judge in the case is the same jurist who dismissed Viacom's lawsuit against Google filed in 2007 for copyright infringement.

Student Loan Write-Offs Hit $3 Billion -- And Counting -- in 2013

While the drumbeat of "our economy is getting better and better every day" keeps pounding, the reality of the situation is something else. A Reuters story in today's Chicago Tribune noted that student loan write-offs for the first two months of 2013 reached $3 billion. That's a lot of money, even by contemporary standards of wealth measurement.

In case you're keeping score at home, the overall student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion in 2011. That seems like a lot of risk. The old saw that says "If you piled the debt, it would surpass the height of ____________" applies here; in fact, one could fill in the blank with "a college administration building" and conceptually be on target. Meanwhile, the corrupt American university system continues to raise its tuition and fees well beyond any level close to the official inflation guidelines.

Feds Extend Spy Probes Into Citizens' Banking Data

For some time, the privacy rights of Americans has been depicted as a "fringe" issue. Its strongest advocates have tended to be connected to the Tea Party or to the Occupy movement. The Occupy crowd found out just how quickly their privacy wasn't worth a damn. What really mattered was social control and the perpetuation of a fraudulent sense of class harmony, notably in the supposedly liberal bastion of New York City.

The Obama Administration has been something less than progressive regarding privacy rights. The federal government's ambivalence comes across in matters of "national security," the boundaries of which remain as ill-defined as the more remote areas of the Mexico-US border. The basic notion appears to be that just about anything in one's personal life is fair game to investigate, collect, and keep indefinitely. Anything labeled "national security" trumps due process.

This disturbing trend is only gathering momentum. A Reuters story picked up (ironically) in today's Chicago Tribune claims the Obama Administration is creating a plan that would allow US spy agencies "full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country..."

The Big Brotherish scheme is unsurprisingly cloaked in national security imperatives. The idea is to follow the money and snag the forces of evil. This is hardly a novel idea. The question isn't whether the proposed snooping will be effective; the doubt stems from the plan's erosion of fundamental democratic rights. Relying on a government's good intentions, from those who think they know what's best, is a dangerous road for a democracy to travel.

Silicon Valley's Startup Culture Vs. Employment Law

Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial spirit embraces a free-wheeling startup culture. Few rules animate these typically small firms, whose key employees essentially disdain boundaries and imagine social laws apply only to others. This atmosphere and belief system occasionally creates legal and moral issues for the enterprise founders, principal investors, management, and yes, the "staff."

Keith Rabois
(photo: NY Daily News)

A case in point is the recent resignation of Square's Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois. According to a Reuters story picked up by siliconvaley.com, the COO said auf weidersehen due to a legal contretemps involving an employee with whom Rabois had canoodled for two years. The story suggested that startups and their key assets could essentially do, say, or suggest anything to anybody on the staff at any time. It was as open and as vulgar as a frat house on a drinking binge, or as dangerous as a physical game of "truth or dare."

The story didn't really pinpoint Silicon Valley's all-male executive suites as a cause of these behaviors. Yet, it's hardly a secret that the tech world is the boy's club, filled with young guns who've made money too easily and too quickly. They sometimes come from environments where privilege quickly translates into repellent actions taken without consideration for their consequences. The movie The Social Network, spotlighting the actions of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, shows Harvard's arrogant, implicit encouragement of entitlement. In that respect, Silicon Valley companies aren't greatly different than that Athens on the Charles.

What's most off-putting is the current American idealization of Silicon Valley's lack of ethos, I suppose.  "Creativity," "innovation," and "progress" apparently make objectionable behavior by very intelligent, ambitious under-25-year-old men acceptable. Behind this sleazy facade is not sexual drive as much as a drive for power and status. These young 'uns, intoxicated with their uninhibited use of control, become behavioral monsters or tricksters, such as the Sean Parker character Justin Timberlake so convincingly portrayed in The Social Network.

The Reuters piece mentions other activities, such as whitewater rafting, that had to be curtailed once a startup approached a significant financial scale and staff size. There was a sense of melancholy as small enterprise owners realized those "exciting" team-building activities were fraught with legal peril. The owners also realize employees might prefer getting paid via a lawsuit than through a problematic IPO. That is also the time when Silicon Valley's libertarian zillionaires discover they live in a land of laws, and not in a self-created nation of one-man rule.

Silicon Valley's Andreessen to NY Times: Go 100 Percent Digital Now

Marc Andreessen
(photo: CrunchBase.com)

Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley's star venture capitalists, told a San Francisco audience that The New York Times should go 100% digital "as soon as possible."

A Reuters report published in siliconvalley.com quoted the Netscape founder that the Good Grey Lady should go all in with digital's brave new world.

 'It's not that you can't make money in print newspapers,' he said. It's not that there aren't people who love them.' But successfully dealing with transformative technology requires going 'on 100 percent offense,' he said.

The irony of his remark is that it was given at a New York Times Dealbook event.

Larry McMurtry Auctions 300,000 Books

Larry McMurtry (photo from LA Times)

Larry McMurtry has led a charmed life, as authors' professional lives go. He's produced commercially successful books for over a generation. A number of works have achieved critical recognition, notably his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove. Some of the Texan author's books have become fully realized movies, with The Last Picture Show and Brokeback Mountain among the best known projects. McMurtry has also opened and continues to operate an independent bookstore. If the adage "do what you love, and the money will follow" has any practical substance, McMurtry's activities would qualify to support it.

The 76-year-old author-businessman, who recently married Ken Kesey's widow, recently decided to auction two-thirds of his bookstore's 450,000-unit inventory. His rationale, according to a Reuters story picked up by the Chicago Tribune, was estate management. The decision had nothing to do with e-books, declining patronage, or "content yearns to be free" ideology.

Commercially successful authors such as McMurtry are increasingly becoming business enterprises. In that way, writers now mirror other highly individualized talent, such actors and athletes. "Personal branding" will only exacerbate this trend toward sophisticated business structures. We've come a long way from Henry Miller and Anais Nin, whose erotic works were among the items sold at McMurtry's auction.

Peter Thiel Returns To Stanford University As Star Lecturer

Peter Thiel (photo from vator.tv
and The Founders Fund)

Silicon Valley icon Peter Thiel, who made his first zillion with PayPal, has agreed to offer a lecture course at his alma mater, Stanford University. His course, to be held in the school's largest lecture hall, is fully booked at 250 paying customers. The story, as reported by Reuters, appeared in today's siliconvalley.com.

Thiel's decision struck some observers as a curious one, given the Bay Area investor's assertion that, for many, a college education is a waste of money and time. However, Stanford students who have the entrepreneurial fever are clearly flocking to listen to Thiel's ideas. Hopefully, some of them will quiz Thiel on his unabashed financial support for fellow libertarian Ron Paul.

One glamorous aspect of Thiel's class is the unannounced roster of guests he will include in his course. Speculation has centered on Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, quite possibly the world's richest college dropout, and Sean Parker, Silicon Valley's Prince of Darkness, for whom a sheepskin was something to cover his very active schwanz.

Wallenda High-Wire Act Across Niagara Falls Gets Canadian OK

Blondin carrying his manager
across the Niagara River, 1869

Nik Wallenda will be bringing his high-wire act to Niagara Falls later this year.

According to a Reuters report picked up by Yahoo News, Canada's Niagara Parks Commission recently approved Wallenda's request to perform the stunt. Months ago, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation permitting a one-time Niagara performance.

Wallenda's intention is to cross directly over the falls, rather than the gorge, where previous high-wire crossings have been attempted.

Expect an enormous media buildup and carnival-like flavor of its coverage of the Wallenda crossing. It will be interesting to note what prime event seats or standing room areas will cost. I will be quite curious what "oddsmakers" will post for Wallenda's safe passage over mighty Niagara.

Former "News of the World" Staffers Discuss Their Experiences

Tabloid journalism, by its very nature, ventures into the profession's gray areas and dark corners. If one works that trade, one learns very quickly what the beast is, its voracious appetite, and its unforgiving nature.

A window into this unseemly world has become available, thanks to the UK's collective revulsion over tactics employed by Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloids. Yahoo News provides a link to a Reuters story in which former News of the World staffers discussed their working environment. It tells the truth, unlike the specious, initial claim of Murdoch management that the phone hacking was done by a "rogue" journalist. The Reuters piece talks about editors' control of budgets, the mother's milk of the payoffs at the heart of blackmail journalism. The article also notes how stories are traded (i.e., hushed) in exchange for influence. The Reuters piece effectively counters the notion that senior management, such as Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, had no idea of the extent of its publication's illegal activities.

However, those who feel Murdoch is principally responsible for tabloid excesses ought to consider publications such as Gawker ("Today's gossip is tomorrow's news"), magazines produced by editorial divas such as Tina Brown (a/k/a Lady Evans, CBE), or newspapers such as American Media, Inc.'s National Enquirer. They're in the same game. So is Vanity Fair. It just doesn't put photos of women with ample bosoms on page three. That valuable real estate is reserved for the high fashion industry.