Our industry and nuclear war

Cockroaches can survive nuclear war, but can they survive Sam Zell and Dean Singleton?

 

THEY'RE the cockroaches.

It's a twist ending straight out of Planet of the Apes.

 

BWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

How much money do we have to pay a (soon-to-be-ex-) Trib employee to yell "GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY COMPANY, YOU DAMN DIRTY APE!" at Zell or one of his minions?

 

Start the collection, 2MCM. I'll contribute to that one.

 

"Only two things I'm afraid of ... women and the po-lice."

Gator McCluskey as played by Burt Reynolds in "White Lightning."

 

That takes me back ...

 

about the media companies and the internet. Check out this article from last month's Vanity Fair. About halfway-3/4 down to Vinod Khosla (one of the founders of Sun Microsystems)

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/internet200807?currentPage=6

and then realize that the industry has been slowly dying ever since.

 

There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures ... and the Dutch.

 

I wish this was just a simulation, but I get the feeling the journalism today is the equivalent of Tic-Tac-Toe.


Stephen Falken: The whole point was to find a way to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn't afford to make. Except, I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.
David Lightman: What's that?
Stephen Falken: Futility. That there's a time when you should just give up.
Jennifer: What kind of a lesson is that?
Stephen Falken: Did you ever play tic-tac-toe?
Jennifer: Yeah, of course.
Stephen Falken: But you don't anymore.
Jennifer: No.
Stephen Falken: Why?
Jennifer: Because it's a boring game. It's always a tie.
Stephen Falken: Exactly. There's no way to win. The game itself is pointless! But back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be "acceptable losses."

 

Damn you! Damn you... all...to... HELL!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

There might be a way to monetize it right now. But it would require the corporate beancounters who run most newspapers of any size these days to take a temporary hit on their short-term profits to invest in the new infrastructure needed to make it happen. And heaven forbid those beancounters (and, let's face it, the shareholders and boards of directors who can hire and fire them) think big picture.

 

Yeah, we were never in any danger.