You’ve never heard Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love like this

He was wasted in those Police Academy movies.

And here he is doing Jimi Hendrix:

Some FDR quotes

by kevin dooley

Just a reminder that we have faced these sorts of problems before.

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The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson — and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson’s fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis. (1933)

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Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. (1935)

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It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man. (1936)

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The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor — these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age — other people’s money — these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise. (1936)

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For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor — other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. (1936)

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These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike. (1936)

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The task on our part is twofold: First, as simple patriotism requires, to separate the false from the real issues; and, secondly, with facts and without rancor, to clarify the real problems for the American public.

There will be — there are — many false issues. In that respect, this will be no different from other campaigns. Partisans, not willing to face realities, will drag out red herrings as they have always done — to divert attention from the trail of their own weaknesses. (1936)

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The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. (1937)

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Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. (1938)

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A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head. (1939)

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In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. (1941)

Great! Android cell phones are moving backwards in time by getting larger and clunkier

the Motorloa DYnatac, the first handheld cell phone in America (10 inched long, weighting almost 2 pounds)

The Galaxy Nexus Is Big
[Via Daring Fireball]

At 4.65 inches diagonally, this isn’t just a little bigger than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch display, it’s way bigger. Here’s a sketch I whipped up in a notebook. I like Kottke’s take:

Ben: That’s no moon. It’s a phone.
Han: It’s too big to be a phone.
Luke: I have a very bad feeling about this.

It’s always hard to judge color reproduction in a photo of a display, but, man, the colors looks crazy over-saturated to my eyes. Check out the orange on the side-by-side renderings of This Is My Next’s home page.

[More]

It is always fun to watch shows from the old days with cell phones. The original Prime Suspect wit Helen Mirren used cell phones all the time. The first ones were large handheld models almost a foot long )as seen above). As time went on they got smaller and smaller until they were reasonably easy to hold.

The iPhone is just about a perfect size. You can do some things with it one handed, using only your thumb. The earphone and mic are about the right distance appart. And it just fits – in a hand, in a shirt pocket, in a pants pocket.

Now Androids are becoming much, much larger. Here is the picture from  The Verge:

What a behemoth. ANd notice that the resolution is not any better.  In fact, almost as much content is shown on the Android as the iPhone, yet the iPhone has bars along the top and bottom. That extra space is not really providing a whole lot of benefit.

I think they like it bigger because it gives them some space to add a bigger battery so they can compete with the iPhone here. In fact, I bet they simply can not make as small a phone as the iPhone with its battery life and speed.

So they make a larger one, give it a larger menu and claim it is a feature, not a bug.

Only it is a retro-feature, not a forward one. Helen Mirren laughed in 2006 when she saw how huge the cell phone she had used in Prime Suspect was. Now, just 5 years, Android seems to be moving back in that direction.

Calvin and Hobbes educates us on what is wrong with Wall Street – only they did this 20 years ago

by walknboston

Decades-Old ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Strip Succinctly Explains Occupy Wall Street Movement
[Via Daring Fireball]

Remarkably apt.

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This Sunday strip was so much funnier when it first came out than it is now –  when we are living in a world where the outrageous demands of big business have really been met by our government.

It exactly encapsulates what has gone wrong with many of our corporations and why the corrupting influence of corporate money on both parties has resulted in the disappearance of moral hazard from the corporation’s decisions.

Calvin calls it subsidize; we know it as bailouts.

I miss Calvin and Hobbes so much.

Almost need a log scale to describe Cain’s 999 plan

Visualizing Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich
[Via Boing Boing]

Maybe you’ve heard about Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan for America: 9% sales tax, 9% income tax, and 9% corporate tax, and wondered how it would play out in the real world. Here’s a chart that illustrates the answer neatly (click for full, farcically long-ass version): the poor will pay a little more (or a lot more, relative to their income), and the rich will pay a lot less, and the very rich will pay so much less that it takes 9403 vertical pixels to express how much they’ll save.

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

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That’s what we need – a plan to give move money to the rich and try to make up for it by taking more from the poor.

This is like something from the Gilded Age, which has many similarities to today. That period came to an end with a financial panic that lasted 4 years. It ushered in the Progressive era.