"A Fire Brand Departs From GM"

Headline in yesterday's Wall St Journal.  From the headline one can see that the Journal is not in favor.  The firebrand in question, Joel Ewanick, was GM's global marketing chief.   He had a $4.5 billion dollar ad buying budget at GM, which is not chicken feed.  According to a GM press release, he "resigned".  GM claims that Mr. Ewanick "failed to properly vet financial details of a European soccer sponsorship deal."
   Sounds like office politics stabs again.  Mr. Ewanick was lured to join GM only two years ago.  GM managed to hire him away from top marketing job with Nissan North America, a job he held for only 6 weeks.
    Looks like bankruptcy hasn't taught GM's suits much.  They still don't have any cars that people want to buy, customers deride them as "Govt Motors",  their sales are down, and  their stock is in the tank  But they have plenty of time for back biting.
  

WMUR is back on Time Warner cable

Apparently the suits got their act together and I can now watch channel 9 on cable.  Only took 'em a couple of weeks to figure out that carrying WMUR is beneficial to both parties, the TV station and the cable company. 

Mists of Avalon

It's an Arthurian fantasy, with the title from a novel of the same name by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a well known science fiction and fantasy author.  It tells the story thru the eyes of Morgen le Fay, who is Arthur's sister in this version of the King Arthur tale.  The priestesses of Avalon, supporters of an ancient goddess, are dueling with the Christians for control of Britain's destiny.  Arthur is but one tool in their tool kit.  We see a lot of Vivienne (high priestess) Igraine, (Arthur's mother) Morgause (all purpose troublemaker) all thru the viewpoint character Morgen.    Poor Morgen is merely carried from scene to scene like a TV camera on a dolly, she never gets to do much under her own power.  Lot of nice camera work, galloping horses, small boats pushing thru the mists of Avalon.  The plot is complex and not really understandable.  None of the cast are familiar to me. 

Face the Nation foot in mouth

Face the Nation was stirring the Penn State pot yet again.  They were fricasseeing the University president over the Jerry Sandusky affair.  The moderator asks the Penn State guy "Do you think this whole affair was the fault of to great an emphasis on football?" 
   Well, actual no I don't.  Penn State hired a child molester, that was mistake #1.  And when the crimes came to light, the molester's boss (Joe Paterno) didn't report them to the police and covered things up.  That was mistake #2.  These mistakes could have been made in every department of Penn State, or any other university.  It happened that the athletic department is guilty this time, but that's just bad luck, it could have been any other department.   

Olympic Uniforms

The opening ceremonies went on so long that I went to bed before all the athletics marched in. So this morning I looked at still pix on the USAToday site.   The US uniforms, berets and all, were excessively undistinguished.  So was the rest of the outfit.  However there were worse.  The Brits turned up with the girls wearing Mother Hubbards...  The US Olympic committee needs to find a fashion designer with a sense of fashion. 

Class Action suit against NetFlix

Someone sent me an email about this.  According to the email, Netflix was keeping records of who watched what movies.  Didn't say Netflix was selling said records to telemarketers (yet) but surely that was coming.  Assuming this is real, and not a scam to get me to click on virus spreading  URL's,  it's breaking news to me.  I'll have to check around the web to see what's what. 
    If someone has huge amounts of time, and nothing better to do, and they review my movie watching habits, I should be OK.  Other than a taste for children's movies, my movie picks are depressingly ordinary, westerns, soap opera's, action and adventure, plain old Hollywood flicks.  I did watch a couple of Shakespeare plays this year.
   The email didn't say what happened to Netflix  "suggest a movie" features, which were supposed to suggest movies to watch based upon your stated preferences and viewing history, not that it ever worked very well.

Photos from WWII

I'm looking thru the photos in a coffee table book "The DC-3".  I'm struck by the number of photos from WWII, showing DC-3's at a variety of Podunk airports, loading or discharging passengers.  Somehow, in the depths of an existential war, the American economy can produce civilian air service into tiny burgs way out in the Great Plains. And do it with modern state-of-the-art aircraft too.  No beat up biplanes or wrinkly Ford tri-motors,  the Douglas DC-3 was top of the line in 1942.