Massive Relocation

The entire nation of Maldives is looking for a place to relocate in advance of rising sea levels.

Surprisingly, the country, which is comprised of over a thousands small islands in the Indian Ocean, has been on the hunt for over twenty years. The clock is ticking faster now as the world's climate begins to undergo changes noticeable even to casual observers. Inhabitants of small islands will be the first to be displaced by rising oceans.

The capital city of Malé has one of the highest population densities in the world. Even though its citizens are spread across tiny atolls which all together are only about one and a half times the size of Washington, DC, Maldives has a population of about 400,000.

New York Times Magazine has the story.

Saddam Hussein capture photos

This set of photographs was sent to the contact address on the News N Shit website back in January 2004. Because the photos were not released by the US Government and were never recognized as official images, they were never published on this site. 2004 was a different time than today and the atmosphere surrounding such things was less than accommodating for publishing unauthorized images. I'll say it, I was scared to post them.

The BBC published an article about the images which had begun circulating through email. Several other sites have also posted the images, but they were never officially deemed authentic. In comparison to many verified images such as the ones in this Newsday photo gallery, they do appear to be legitimate.

There was an additional image in the original set, but it was simply a cropped version of one of the photos you see here. The pictures are being posted now just for the curious and because the files are much higher quality images than BBC or any of the major media sites have published. You can click any of the images below to view a high-resolution photo.

Whatchutalkinbout Willis Tower?

Chicago Tribune readers are vowing to ignore the new name on the Sears Tower. And it's almost unanimous.

An insurance brokerage company, Willis Group Holdings, announced March 12 that in addition to moving its Chicago offices into several floors of the Sears Tower, they had also negotiated to rename the building in their own honor. But Chicagoans and people across the country just can't imagine referring to the tallest building in North America as the Willis Tower.

Sears, Roebuck and Company was the largest retailer in the world when the tower was built for them, but a lot has changed since then. Even though Sears relocated to the suburbs seventeen years ago, the structure has continued to bear their name.

Its imposing black silhouette is as recognizable and memorable as one could imagine as an icon of Chicago. At 110 stories and 1,454 feet, the Sears Tower opened in 1973 as the tallest building in the world, surpassing New York's World Trade Center which had held the title only briefly. Construction on the Sears Tower had already begun when the Twin Towers were completed in 1972.

In 1998, sixteen years after the Sear Tower opened, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, took the World's Tallest title away, though not without controversy. The Sears Tower's antenna masts were still taller than the highest point of the Petronas Towers, however, most people who care about stuff like this agree that antennae or other such supplemental additions are not technically part of the building. Regardless, the Sears Tower remains the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere.

Like an asymmetrical stack of smaller office towers, the building's unique design was a local project from Chicago architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Some of SOM's other notable projects include the John Hancock Center in Chicago, Manhattan's Time Warner Center, and the mammoth Burj Dubai tower in the United Arab Emirates, which, though not yet completed, is now the tallest building in the world. At 2,684 feet tall, the Burj Dubai positively dwarfs the Sears Tower. It would take an antenna taller than New York's Chrysler Building on top of the Sears Tower to compete.

Surprisingly, Willis Group Holdings does not own the building they are renaming. In fact, they will occupy less than 4% of the tower's 3.8 million total square feet of space. They procured the right to rename it from a real estate investment group, US Equities Realty, which manages and leases the building.

A March 13th online poll at ChicagoTribune.com asked readers, "Will you still refer to it as the Sears Tower?" Not surprisingly, after a few days of voting and about 15,000 responses, more than 95% of readers intend to continue calling it the Sears Tower.

The new name is scheduled to take effect in July 2009. Read more at ChicagoTribune.com and the building's official site SearsTower.com.

Seattle man's mission to prosecute Bush

From the Seattle Times: "Of the millions who read Vincent Bugliosi's best-seller The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Seattle coffee merchant Bob Alexander may be the only one to act on it in a substantial way, sending copies of it to 2,200 prosecutors around the country...

Now he and his volunteers are following up with each one of them by phone and e-mail, as well as gathering signatures for petitions urging the prosecutors to indict the former president."

Read the whole story on the Seattle Times website.

The Impossible Project

In late 2008, after Polaroid ceased manufacturing of its instant film, a group supported by Ilford Photo and Harman Technology ambitiously purchased the facilities in the Netherlands which produced the film.

Polaroid's instant film has remarkably been made using the exact same recipe for several decades. The new group, Impossible BV, has set a goal to re-invent the way instant analog film is produced within just one year. It's no small undertaking and the group is faced with many challenges in re-inventing and simplifying the instant film process. Each pack of Polaroid instant film contained roughly twenty components. Some of these elements are extremely expensive, while others could be classified as hazardous or simply no longer available.

The new film, set to go on sale in 2010, will be completely compatible with existing Polaroid instant cameras, but will be sold under a new brand name. Presumably, most people will continue to call these instant photos "Polaroids."

In the meantime, unexpired packs of genuine Polaroid film are going for stunningly high prices of up to $40 per pack on eBay. At $4 per photo - or more - it's still a small price to pay for those who cannot live without instant tangible photographs for business purposes, or creative types who cannot let go of the inimitable Polaroid aesthetic.

The last batches of "real" instant film produced by Polaroid will expire before the end of 2009, which should drive prices even higher. The cost of a pack of Polaroid instant film has roughly doubled during the past twelve months.

The Impossible Project has a beautiful website detailing their challenges and progress. The site is highlighted with serene Polaroid photographs of the factory, offices, and production equipment sitting quietly unattended in Enschede, The Netherlands, and an apt quote from Polaroid inventor Edwin Land: "Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible."

Acept Food Stamp

Aii Cappucinnos 79¢

Insight CEO perpetuates friend-of-consumer image while editing discussions

In May 2008, in order to continue to expand the ruse that his giant, manipulative cable company is a friendly neighbor, Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner started his own blog.

He opened his blog with a post reading, "When it comes to communicating with the public, most companies take the safest path. They usually play their cards pretty close to their chest. I'm joining the blogsosphere to challenge that 'wisdom.'" Presumably, like Insight's television commercials (in which Willner stars as some sort of Dave Thomas character, complete with aw-shucks punchlines), he envisions this blog as another way to put a friendly face on the company.

My September 2006 article regarding Insight here on News N Shit, We Want the Airwaves Back, has been among this site's most popular pieces. So needless to say, as soon as I was made aware of his site, MichaelsInsight.com I became an active reader and commenter.

On the site Willner says, "Comments are posted immediately. I review the comments and will remove those that are not germane to the topics being discussed on the blog."

It may come as no surprise that Mr. Willner, or whomever is actually moderating the comments, has found none of mine to be "germane to the topics being discussed." I would be surprised if he is actually the one watching these comments come in as late on a Sunday night as my most recent one did.

One of Willner's latest entries is entitled "Shame on you AT&T" and scolds that company for an ad campaign with "tiny fine print" that he says is "misleading consumers." His description of AT&T's advertising techniques could almost be mistaken as a rewording of my previous article's criticism of Insight's advertising (shown here).

He says they have "stooped to a new low" in Louisville. What he doesn't say is that no other company is legally permitted to offer cable service in Louisville (AT&T is delivering television service via satellite) so the playing field has been tilted in Insight's favor since the '90s. "Tilted" as in Insight has what amounts to an exclusive franchise with Louisville Metro Government that keeps out any conceivable prospect of competition - and they've fought in courts and against grassroots appeals to the Metro Council to keep it that way.

The user comments that follow Willner's anti-AT&T post read like a chorus of "yes" men at a board meeting. "Yes I hate those misleading ads!" ... "I agree..." ... "I wish Insight would come back with a advertisement that compares ATT (slow,slower,slowest)-vs- Insight speed, performance and cable reliability." ... Even one that says, "It's too bad that they're threatened by such a small company, but good for Insight."

Either these comments are posted by the same board of "yes" men (possibly, since there are as many spelling errors in the comments as there are in his original posts) or perhaps (gasp!) Insight's friendly approach is working.

I was so flabbergasted by his characterization of something his own company does as "misleading" and the comments that followed, that I decided to try my hand again at leaving a comment on his website. Just as before, my comments appeared for only a matter of minutes before being deleted from the site.

Luckily, I cut-and-pasted a copy of what I posted, so if Insight and Mr. Willner aren't genuinely interested in a dialogue with customers, you can at least read it here. Maybe you'd like to cut-and-paste it as well and repost it, or write your own opinions and questions, back on MichaelsInsight.com, say, I don't know, forty times a day.

Anyway, here it is:

I can't believe my eyes. Somebody at Insight actually has the nerve to call another company's ads misleading? Beyond that, they use the word shame? If there is a company in this picture that doesn't know the meaning of either of these terms, it is Insight.

My previous post on this site was deleted within minutes of it appearing, despite the fact that everything discussed was relevant to the topics. I'm not sure why such a "blog" would exist if it were not intended for discussion. Perhaps nobody has informed Mr. Willner of the definition of that term either.

I'm certain the vast majority Insight customers know nothing of the following topics, which I'm also certain will never be addressed here nor in any other Insight-sanctioned forum. However, I urge Mr. Willner to leave this post on the blog to demonstrate that this site actually is intended to be a dialogue with customers. I am not the only one with these concerns and I would love to see them addressed. If anything I have stated is inaccurate, I would like that pointed out as well. Thank you.

1. Insight has an exclusive deal with Louisville Metro Government to be the only provider of cable television service in the city. No other company is allowed to compete. Insight flagrantly broke the terms of this exclusive arrangement by transferring ownership of itself without the approval of the city. Louisville residents have no choice for cable service. It's either Insight or something that comes through the air.

2. Insight's internet service blocks the auto-complete function of their customers' web browsers in order to feed advertisements to users instead of directing them to the site they intended to view. If you've ever typed a web address and expected your browser to auto-complete the ".com" on the domain and ended up being forwarded to a site beginning with "ww33.not-found-entry.org" full of ads, this is Insight's way of making even more money from you than what you are paying them directly. The opt-in/opt-out function on the page is a joke and still holds your browser hostage, preventing it from auto-completing addresses.

3. Insight CEO Michael Willner contributed the maximum allowable amount to Republican Ernie Fletcher's campaign for Kentucky governor. Shortly after his election, Fletcher announced a restructuring of Kentucky tax laws that was to Insight's benefit so much so that Willner was quoted in the governor's press release: http://www.e-archives.ky.gov/_govfletcher/records/pressreleases(dec.03-june04)/JOBSTelecommunications.htm. Around the same time, another Insight executive Keith Hall (who also contributed the maximum legal amount to Fletcher's campaign) left the company and was appointed by Fletcher as Kentucky's chief of homeland security. Hall later left Kentucky government amid controversy and returned to work for Insight as a government lobbyist. Fletcher was denied a second term and was repeatedly investigated for questionable ethics and hiring practices.

4. Insight has refused to run advertisements which criticize Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's catering to special interest groups. The Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan group with 150,000 members, reported that Insight rejected their ad and wouldn't accept their money, even though every other media outlet the ad was submitted to aired it. No surprise, since Insight executives have contributed nearly $20,000 to McConnell's campaigns.

5. With regards to the comment another user posted above that suggests AT&T is "threatened by such a small company" as Insight; Insight is owned by a gigantic $19+ billion private equity firm called the Carlyle Group. It's so huge that if every single person on earth pitched in a dollar, we couldn't afford to buy a third of it. Carlyle also controls United Defense, one of the world's largest military machinery manufacturers. They have profited immensely from the war in Iraq which has cost the lives of thousands. Again, no surprise nor coincidence, since the players in Carlyle have included former heads of state and policy makers like the president's father former President Bush, James Baker, Frank Carlucci, and John Major, even members of the Bin Laden family. This is not conspiracy theory or Wikipedia nonsense. This is fact from public records, including Insight and Carlyle's own websites: http://www.insightcom.com/documents/Insight_07292005a.pdf and http://www.carlyle.com/Portfolio/Alphabetically/item8775.html.

Insight is by no means the friendly neighbor their own misleading ads would have you believe. Insight is part of a massive apparatus that influences laws by funding lawmakers' campaigns. They edit what you see on television and through their internet service so it serves their purposes. And in the event that they cannot work within the confines of common ethics and their previous agreements, they simply ignore the laws that are inconvenient to their objectives.

- Scott Ritcher

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