Tea Party of Florida Defends Right To Break The Law

You are here: Home ? News ? Crime ? Tea Party of Florida Defends Right To Break The Law

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on February 20, 2013.

English: Manatee at the Sea World Exhibit in Orlando Florida (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my favorite quotes comes from John Milton. It specifically reads ?None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license which never hath more scope than under tyrants.? Another that I love comes from a more modern writer, namely Terry Pratchett that reads ?No practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences.?

The Tea Party is, apparently, all about license to do whatever they want while pretending to do so under the guise of freedom. They do not want to take responsibility for the harm that their actions could do to others or to the world around them even though they claim that they are opposed to that.

Last night, The Daily Show highlighted one of those incidents where the Tea Party pushes for the license to do what they want while pretending to be about freedom.

Source: http://lezgetreal.com/2013/02/tea-party-of-florida-defends-right-to-break-the-law/

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Texas manufacturers lay out priorities for 2013 legislative session

Manufacturers have a plan for the 2013 Texas legislative session.

Molly Ryan, Houston Business Journal

The Texas Association of Manufacturers unabashedly declared 2013 to be the ?Year of the Manufacturer in Texas? during a Wednesday celebration of Texas? Manufacturers? Day.

The statewide manufacturing organization also outlined its priorities for Texas? legislative session, which are designed to ensure that manufacturers can live up to the hype of ?The Year of the Manufacturer.?

Included in TAM?s priorities are: defending manufacturers against ?excessive? taxation for capital-intensive business; creating more efficiencies in the permitting process; ensuring Texas has affordable electricity prices; ensuring the state upkeeps its critical infrastructure, particularly water sources; improving Texas? education system to create more skilled workers; and developing incentives to attract research and development activity in Texas.

TAM?s priorities align similarly with those of the Texas House of Representatives? Interim Committee on Manufacturing. The committee released a report in January recommending that the Legislature simplify complex regulations and permitting, create new education processes to train skilled manufacturing workers and introduce a tax credit for R&D.

Speaking of R&D tax credits, Texans for Innovation, a coalition of business leaders interested in establishing a state R&D tax credit, released a report Wednesday stating that the economy would benefit if the state modifies its R&D tax policy.

The report found that Texas loses at least $1.3 billion in R&D activity each year from not having an R&D incentive.

However, if Texas passes R&D tax credits, such as extending existing manufacturing sales tax exemptions for R&D materials and equipment and reinstating an R&D franchise tax credit, the state could create more jobs and economic impact. The study found that the state would create $13 billion more in economic activity each year with the tax credits and add 97,600 new permanent jobs.

"Texas should be doing all it can to encourage growth in the manufacturing sector," Jim Murphy, chairman of the Houston Interim Manufacturing Committee, said in a statement. "Broad-based, low-rate taxes and smart incentives that encourage research and development are central to this growth equation."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vertical_49/~3/R_E5SRnCLvo/texas-manufacturers-lay-out-priorities.html

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Cancer Society 'Relay' returns to Sitka | KCAW

Dr. Gordy Klatt ran the first Relay ? 24-hours non-stop ? by himself in 1985.

The Relay for Life is coming back to Sitka.

For twenty-eight years, the Relay has been one of the primary fund raising activities of the American Cancer Society. This year, over 5,000 communities across the country will participate in the all-night event.

Chase Carter is the community relationship manager for the American Cancer Society in Anchorage. He says the Relay for Life began informally in 1985, when Dr. Gordy Klatt, an oncologist in Tacoma, Washington, decided to make a personal statement to raise awareness about cancer prevention and treatment.

?So he went out one night, himself ? he was a marathon runner ? and ran for 24 hours. And it was such a crazy, novel idea that the next year when he was doing it again people joined him and paid to relay along with him, because no one really wanted to do the whole 24 hours. But they were willing to do an hour. So it?s just sort of evolved over the past twenty-eight years.?

Carter says the Relay never developed as a race. He calls it a family-friendly night out. Marathoners can carry Dr. Klatt?s tradition forward if they like, but the Relay now is all-inclusive.

?Everyone is welcome. We really encourage survivors to come, and a lot of times cancer survivors have mobility problems. So it?s a walk, and you get a team together of five to fifteen coworkers, family, and friends. You get this little campsite, and there?s one member from your team walking throughout the overnight event.?

A big part of the Relay is simply raising the profile of the American Cancer Society. Carters says the American Cancer Society is sometimes discouraged when cancer patients and their families fail to use free services and support available to them around the state. Most patients simply don?t know that they can obtain rides from the Anchorage airport, for example, if they?re arriving for treatment, or get help with hotel bills.

?Relay really helps get the word out in a community. We know we?re underserving the residents of Sitka, and we?re hoping that when we bring Relay to Sitka, we can work in conjunction with the local cancer groups to get the word out about what?s available to Sitkans.?

Planning for the American Cancer Society?s 2013 Relay for Life in Sitka gets underway tonight with a kickoff event at the Sitka Pioneer Home. Anyone interested in helping with the Relay ? or any businesses interested in sponsoring the event or teams ? are welcome to attend.

The location and time of the Sitka Relay have not been firmed up yet. Carter says the organization is thinking about using Moller Field, next to Sitka Community Hospital, as a starting location. He says summertime usually works best for the event. Organizers are looking at dates sometime in June or July.

KCAW?s Ed Ronco contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.kcaw.org/2013/02/19/relay-to-raise-profile-of-am-cancer-society-in-sitka/

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LG Optimus F7 and Optimus F5 get a pre-MWC outing in leaked images

LG was all about the tease yesterday, with its mysterious, alphabetic MWC warm-up video. Today, the covers have potentially been unceremoniously whipped off from at least two of the forthcoming offerings. The ever fruitful evleaks comes up with the goods again, and claims that what you see are the Optimus F7 (left) and Optimus F5 (right). There's little to go on specification-wise, other than these are undoubtedly Android devices, with a design language not quite in keeping with the recently spotted Optimus G Pro behemoth. So, while you try to join the dots on what might be underneath those displays, we'll keep an eye out for any remaining L-series and V-for Vu "surprises."

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments

Source: @evleaks (Twitter)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/20/lg-optimus-f7-f5-get-a-pre-mwc-outing/

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The Most Interesting Online Video Trend

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch.

By now many of you know the Harlem Shake?but what you may not appreciate is the broader trend behind the video and it?has mirrored my general views on how TV will work in the future

Harlem Shake is a YouTube phenomenon that in just 2 weeks has gone from nothing to on air on both Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert and collectively the Harlem Shake has been viewed around 200 million times. Two weeks. 200 million views. Suck it traditional TV.

Summary Version
Global audiences of prosumer video producers will create content that is viewed by global audiences in numbers far in excess of traditional TV. TV will enter the era of ?participation? which is a much more important trend than ?social video? even if it seems less sexy or less fundable.

It means the ?torso TV? consumption patterns will be more important than the head or the long tail for the next era of media companies.

TV of the future will not always have linear stories. I know that?s hard for many people to accept but when the medium changes from one-way broadcast to the millions to the ability to interact with each other through video it is unlikely that the future will resemble the past. Why would it?

I have started thinking about what the future might look like and I?ve started imagining what I call, ?MMOV? or massive multiplayer online video.

Sure, the revenue & margin will be significantly lower than traditional TV. ?You should only worry about this if you?re a large, traditional media company with fat margins. The future of TV will follow the rule of Deflationary Economics as I outline influenced by the book?The Innovator?s Dilemma.

It will enable the naturally creative but geographically and socially disenfranchised to make money doing what they love ? participating. Maybe small amounts of money for what founders reading these pages dream of but life-changing for many.

Gangnam Style Meets Torso TV
Of course you know Gangnam Style, which is now the most viewed video in history at 1.3 billion views. Before this South Korean wonder spread across the globe I had written about a trend in global audiences that exists when the costs of production are nearly zero and the costs of distribution are also nearly free. I called this trend ?Torso TV? because the ?head? of consumption (largest number of views) was dominated by platforms that had massive distribution (think TV stations, radio or retail outlets that sell CDs and DVDs. think Apple. think Amazon) and therefore hits with high production costs were more suited to the medium.

The problem with the ?long tail? content is that only the platform provider (ie YouTube) makes money. So if you want to be a content producer and want to make money you can develop content for global ?niches? of watchers who might like: Japanese Anime, South Korean drama, Bollywood productions, reality TV on any topic ? fashion, cooking, travel.

I saw this trend with the growth of companies such as Viki, Drama Fever, Crunchyroll and the like. Global niches that turn out to be much larger than you?d imagine.

Gangnam Style is the manifestation of this trend which turned what should have likely been a medium size global audience into an global phenomenon like we?ve never seen. The Macarena on steroids. Every now and again you can strike lightning in a bottle. Who knows why hits turn into memes? But it shows that when content is unleashed we can all appreciate it no matter of the country of origin.

Harlem Shake
For those who still don?t know the origins, the Harlem Shake started as a small skit from a YouTuber named Filthy Frank?(10 million views as of this writing) on January 30, 2013. It was then popularized into an Internet meme 3 days later by text an Australian group of guys called Sunny Coast Shake??in what garnered about 300,000 views in a short period of time (now at 11.3 million views).

But then the Harlem Shake went batshit crazy when Vernon Shaw of Maker Studios saw the video on Reddit and suggested that Maker should, well, make a video of the Harlem Shake in an office environment. That video is the most viewed Harlem Shake?(with more than 15 million views as of today). It was loaded on the channel of Hi I?m Rawn, a long-time YouTuber.

At 12.30pm in the afternoon the idea to create the video was hatched. They taped it at 3.30pm for 2 minutes. 1 take. Then back to work, people!

It was uploaded at around 4pm.

Maker?s talent started commenting on it and sharing it. ShayCarl?(a Maker Studios co-founder) in particular. And then ?

Boom.

It made national news. Maker was contacted by every major news outlet. And suddenly every office in the country was doing their own version of the Harlem Shake.

And here?s the thing. This is not Gangnam Style, a catchy tune consumed by billions.

This is Harlem Shake, a catchy tune produced by tens of thousands. As of this writing nearly 50,000 versions have been created and uploaded and watched by some 200,000,000 people. Yes. Two followed by eight zeros.

It is the production angle that is most fascinating to me and the biggest unspotted trend by most venture capitalists and traditional media executives.

I have been talking about the battle for the living room for years?and then followed up with?Why the TV Market is Ready for Disruption?with a more recent?discussion about Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley here?(the video version with an LA interview that can be viewed here?and then a subsequent session in NYC with Jon Miller which can be viewed here).

And I?ve opined on why the traditional media companies aren?t well poised to win at this new TV world. and again here.

So here?s the thing

The Broader Trend
While way too many startup companies (and investors) are focused on ?social TV? or on ?Instagram for TV? I believe they are missing the more fundamental shift in our industry.

There is a world filled with professional producers of video content who are extraordinarily talented but lack access to Hollywood. In fact, that?s how Maker Studios got started in the first place.

I first wanted to invest in this trend by backing a company called Filmaka. I didn?t end up investing but I always loved the concept. They help find talented film makers globally, enter them into competitions and advance the best of them toward winners that get to produce full-length films. Filmaka is the creation of Deepak Nayar who is the producer of films such as Buena Vista Social Club and Bend it Like Beckham.

But when you think about the movement we once called ?Web 2.0? it was the recognition of the fact that media doesn?t only want to flow one way.

Media in an age of:

• low-cost capture from mobile devices
• cheap post-production process by tools (think Pro Tools for audio, Instagram filters)
• cheap local storage (without which media creation is not possible)
• available bandwidth for uploading (which is assumed away as easy but only in recent years has been solved. most Internet connections have been asymmetric & optimized for downloads)
• cheap or free cloud storage (YouTube, DropBox, Facebook)
• easy sharing (through social networks or platforms like YouTube)
• social amplification (from which memes are spread) by Twitter and the like; and ?
• commenting

means specifically one thing. People are going to want to participate. Participation. We are the media. We want to be in it. Create it. Take part in it. Have a say, a vote. Think American Idol voting, where the audience gets to feel like they?re participating. And where they?re willing to pay by dialing a paid number to feel like they?re, well, participating.

And the end of the Maker Studios show, Epic Rap Battles of History, the end the show ways ?Who won, you decide?? where the audience gets to weigh in. Participation. At whatever level.

Serialized TV with Audience Participation
I?ve been thinking a lot about what I want to fund in the video creation world. One idea I?ve been searching for is a platform that enables the creation of serialized programs with audience participation.

And this is a concept that has been at work since at least the 17th century. An example of a great serialist was Charles Dickens in which Oliver Twist & Nicholas Nickleby and others were written and distributed serially.

From Wikipedia on Charles Dickens

?The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience?s reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback?

I have talked to several YouTuber?s about my idea but haven?t yet gotten any takers.

Here?s what I imagine. You create a narrative episodic show and do the first four episodes to get the story arc and characters going. On the fifth episode the audience gets to create it?s version of the next show. You look at submissions and pick the best one. You reshoot that episode with a higher budget and your original cast but that producer now gets a financial take in the show or gets to participate in the production or whatever. Then you move on to the sixth show with new submissions.

You need to build a platform that allows submissions, workflow, multiple story flows, awards, producer profiles and the like. It can?t just be videos on YouTube but I?ll be that YouTube is the distribution platform.

Here?s the thing ? if well done I think you could see the Harlem Shake effect where many people want to have a go at participating on the production. Most won?t be of the quality that you want but you now have tons of material and inspiration for your show and you own all of the submitted IP. You share financial results and/or fame as the incentive to participate. It?s American Idol for makers.

The first time you do it the participation will be light. The next time you?ll get more. And the fan producers all help market your show because they too want the attention. Whether they are selected or not! I repeat ? free marketing. Done by the masses.

And finally you could stitch together multiple narratives or versions of shows for people who WANT to watch all of the derivative shows. Your costs of production of these additional versions ? zero.

To all of the traditional TV people who keep telling me this ?low cost, low quality YouTube content will eventually go away. The production quality is terrible? I say, ?Please study The Innovator?s Dilemma because it predicts the disruption of your industry presciently.? Let me remind you of the math: Gangnam Style = 1.3 billion views. Each episode of Epic Rap Battles of History gets between 30,000,000 ? 75,000,000 views.

And to those who keep telling me that the CPMs are too low to make a business please stop thinking about two-way entertainment in only CPM terms. ?There are many more ways to monetize an audience of fans that simply pre-roll ads.

Think creatively. Study the video game industry. The music industry. Your world is changing, too. And you have so many examples from which to build your future that you have no excuse to put your head in the sand.

MMOV
The other theme I?ve been playing around with in my head (and in the numerous debates with media execs who aspire to do startups) I?ve started calling MMOV.

It?s a play on MMOG (massive multiplayer online games, think World of Warcraft).

What exactly is World of Warcraft?

It?s entertainment. With rich graphics and characters. It has a story, a world, that unfolds. It has interaction with other players. It is ? by definition ? participation. It exists precisely because there is a network. I grew up in the era where we got to play video games alone. I was inspired by Zork. It was a computer challenging my imagination and crying out for logic and participation. It was text-based. And anything but MM or O. But it scratched the same need ? participation. Engagement.

And when the O is attached and thus other humans are on the other end of your game and when graphics are professional it is the ultimate in computer entertainment with other human beings letting young people all over the world who feel disconnected from other human beings form friendships.

I once heard a father describe how his son played World of Warcraft. He said this to me, which formed an impression, ?My son leaves World of Warcraft to play other video games with his friends. But then they always come back to World of Warcraft to talk about it with their friends. WoW is their home base.?

So WoW in a way is his son?s social network.

I imagine MMOV this way.

You start out watching video. And this might be humans but it might also be animation. It might feel like TV or might feel like an animated video game or maybe there is no difference? You start watching with friends, peers or strangers ? who might become friends or peers in the future (think that?s weird? check your Twitter stream. It?s filled with people like this. Aren?t all online communities like this?).

You watch the first ?episode? together. Then you discuss it with those in the room with you. They are watching it?synchronously. It is your job to get them watch the next video based on plot or character development you want to see. Which way do you go next? The audience decides.

And the show develops like this. No linearity. Only the evolution through a video game board with other players trying to agree how the story unfolds. Maybe for a fee you get to choose your own direction without the crowd?

Don?t like how Homeland has become a total farce like 24? Chart a different path. Don?t like that a characters in Downton Abbey gets killed or another might get banished from employment? Chart a different course.

In an online world, why wouldn?t we?

Television today is being charted by those who grew up in a one-way world of: we decide, we write, we broadcast. Doesn?t that sound like the websites of yore that implored us to read their stories?

We have too much evidence from the text-based Internet that this model doesn?t hold in an online world.

Think Zork. It?s how things were. Then think World of Warcraft. It?s how things will be. It?s why we use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. To be part of a conversation. And even if it?s only very occasionally that you want to chime in, it?s why UGC works. 1/9/90.

And read this MG Siegler piece on TechCrunch. He?s one step ahead of the rest of the market. And he?s spot on with this analysis about how Apple will enter the TV market. Spoiler ? video games.

Online Events
Finally, I?m fascinated with the future of live events. We?ve only just scratched the surface. As you now know 8 million people tuned in to watch Felix Baumgartner jump from 24 miles above the Earth in a Red Bull capsule.

It will always be a milestone in the Internet, YouTube, Twitter, Mobile world etched in my memory. And that of my two boys.

Like many of you we were laying around watching NFL football games. And also paying attention to the Twitter. Watching only is so one-way. With our second screen we suddenly have ? participation.

And that?s where I first saw it. I know many of you knew the Felix was going to jump. I hadn?t been paying attention.

But Twitter cried out that I MUST! Tune in. NOW. As only Twitter can dictate.

So on my iPhone I clicked on a link and saw Felix going up. WTF? What is that guy doing?

I called my boys over. We sat transfixed to my iPhone. Was he really jumping from outer space? Is this real? Is this really live? Did I just click on a button and watch a man prepared to jump from that little capsule watching real-time streaming from my mobile device that I only knew about because random people (some of whom I?ve never met in real life) demanded that I do so on Twitter?

I was sincerely amazed by all of those things. And we watched. And watched. And watched. And the NFL seemed so uninteresting at that moment. I?ll never remember who was playing or who won (probably not the Eagles).

But along with 8 million people globally we shared a moment. And then another 32 million people (at least) watched on YouTube afterward.

That fascinates me. Twitter. YouTube. Mobile. Live. Watch this space. It?s going to form a larger part of our future.

Oh. And it won?t be brought to you by Comcast. That interests me, too.

Source: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/02/18/the-most-interesting-online-video-trend-where-its-headed/

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The Corsair : Hot. Sticky. Sweaty. Music.

Rachael Garcia
February 18, 2013
Filed under Arts & Entertainment

From ?80s Brit alternative rock, powerhouse DJs, rappers featured on your mix CDs in middle school, and this year?s hottest indie acts, Coachella is bringing a wide variety of performers to the Indio Valley beginning on April 12.

The Stone Roses, Blur, Phoenix, and Red Hot Chili Peppers are headlining, backed by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Lumineers, Wu Tang Clan, Bassnectar, Social Distortion, the Postal Service, Modest Mouse, Jurassic Five, and more. With a lineup like that, no wonder passes sold out in a matter of minutes.

But Coachella is just one of the many music festivals happening in California this year for music lovers to attend.

Downtown Los Angeles? FYF Fest brings in cut-off-short-wearing kids ready to jump in the pit. Last year?s tickets cost $89, about a third of the price of Coachella tickets.

Strictly a hip hop fan? Not a problem. San Bernadino?s Paid Dues has you covered. This year, Murs, Dom Kennedy, Scarface, Immortal Technique, TECH N9NE, Macklemore, De La Soul and Nipsey Hussle will be taking the stage.

Then there is the annual alternative punk and rock festival, Vans Warped Tour, which kicks off at Club Nokia on March 28.

If you start heading north, you have the option of San Francisco?s Outside Lands and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, both held in the famous Golden Gate Park. Outside Lands has the same type of layout as Coachella and similar pricing. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is a free festival featuring bluegrass bands as well as sporadic big names such as Patty Smith and Led Zeppelin?s Robert Plant and John Paul Jones.

This year?s Bottle Rock Napa Valley brings four days of the region?s best wines to festival-goers, along with performances from The Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Flaming Lips, Janes Addiction, and The Shins.

How do you choose from the smorgasbord of options? According to Santa Monica College students, price is a big factor in the decision-making process.

Evan Schunk, 22, says he grew up listening to the Postal Service and would love to see them at Coachella, but claims ?I?m not rich,? so he will not be attending. Though he has never attended Coachella, Schunk has been to Outside Lands, and prefers the all-weekend experience over a single night show.

Most large-scale music festivals cost around $300, while a solo concert ticket price normally averages around $60.

Chris Perkins, 23, says he?s planning on attending Paid Dues, but not Coachella.

?I wish I could, but it?s too damn expensive,? he says.

For some students though, these festivals are worth every penny.

Lindsy Warner, 20, has been attending Coachella for the past two years, and is planning on keeping this tradition going.

?It?s worth the money for me because it?s a once in a life time opportunity,? Warner says. ?You can?t not have an amazing time while you?re there.?

These festivals showcase other things besides music, whether it be art, sustainability, comedy acts, up-and-coming artists, or award-winning wine and food.

So find the one that fits your niche, and start saving up that loose change in your tip jar.

Source: http://www.thecorsaironline.com/arts-entertainment/2013/02/18/hot-sticky-sweaty-music/

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