Category: All Posts

The Economy, Frontline and center

Since the collapse of the credit markets in 2008, the PBS documentary series Frontline has been producing an outstanding, if perhaps overly dramatic, series of programs explaining the causes of the crisis and what’s been happening in the Great Recession since then. The latest is Money, Power, and Wall Street. It borrows a lot of interview video from the earlier programs, but there could have been more from the show about Brooksley Born and her warnings about the dangers of high-risk betting with borrowed money masquerading as “investing.”

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part One on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Roku

This isn’t a post about the Roku video player. Roku was the sixth startup venture for founder Anthony Wood, and roku is Japanese for the number six. Today was the sixth anniversary of this blog, and admittedly I’ve lost some momentum recently, but I promise that I’m not completely idle.

‘Toon Treasures

It’s a beautiful late summer Sunday, and before I get motivated to do my stretching routine and put some miles on my running shoes I’m enjoying a book I picked up last week at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. It’s the TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comic Books. The book came out a few years ago, and I was interested in it then, but now it’s a must-get item at a giveaway price of only $16. The audio player has a review by NPR’s Milo Miles, who provides some excellent background on the material.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2012/08/ToonTreasury.mp3|titles=Review: Toon Treasury]

Oh, Brother!

It’s been over four years since I first posted something about Lon & Derrek Van Eaton. Their debut album, the brilliantly varied Brother, has been a favorite of mine since I bought it high school, and it’s one of the reasons why I keep a couple of turntables working. Lots of memories linked to this vinyl disc! And now I’m very pleased that Brother is finally out on CD, with plenty of bonus tracks.

A minute ago I started listening, and their original demo track, “Warm Woman”, the recording that caught the ear of George Harrison, sounds strikingly better than it does on the LP. Sun Song sure has a lot more oomph to it. I can’t read the liner notes, however, because I don’t have the eyes I did when I was seventeen! I’ll have to dig out my stronger reading glasses.