Payam's Place

The tobacco industry is beyond clever. Their cunning and savvy in manipulating people, governments, media and markets are so enormous that the account of their mischief has earned at least one historian a Pulitzer Prize.

And, they are at it again when they attack Proposition 29. Back in 1998 The Washington Post National Weekly Edition published an article (click here to view it) detailing how effective California’s advertising campaigns had been in curbing teen smoking. This campaign reduced teen smoking so dramtacally that the tobacco industry engaged in a surreptitious campaign to divert tobacco tax dollars from anti-smoking advertising to smoking-related health care. (My scanner back in 1998 was pretty bad.) By pitting these two factions of the public health sector, they wreaked much havoc.

Their advertising against Proposition 29 is no different. They know that the additional advertising funded by Prop 29 taxes may well put the nail in the coffin of smoking in California. Don’t buy their lies. Vote for Prop 29. It will save countless fortunes and lives in twenty years in health care dividends.

Don’t be fooled by the anti-29 advertising. Vote yes on this measure and make sure that the price that people pay for tobacco is enough to cover the medical mayhem that this scourge causes.

Last year I downloaded a speed test app and tested the speed on my iPhone 4 from the confines of our lovely local downtown Irish pub, Dargan’s. The results were impressive, clocking it at a healthy 2.6 Megabits download, and 1.2 Megabits upload, the phone competed ably with my home DSL service from DSLExtreme. When the signal is good, bandwidth is darn nice.

Almost exactly one year later, I conducted the test from the interior of the Majestic Ventura Theater before the George Clinton concert started. I had received at least two text messages from AT&T telling me that signal in my area had been improved. I decided, therefore, to see if these improvements had any effect, and, indeed, they did. The theater is located 100 yards from last year’s test site, and the improvements seem to have doubled my bandwidth to 5 Megabits down and over 3 Megabits up. These speeds are, in fact, vastly suprior to the DSL service that I used to have. I now have cable service from Charter, and it clocks in at 12 Megabits down and 5 Megabits up.

Do I need 12 Megabits of speed? Not really. I was quite happy with my DSL service, but AT&T’s anti-competitive behavior made DSL grossly cost ineffective compared with cable modem. Now, all I have to do is wait for unlimited bandwidth via tethering to be cheaper than the $30 I pay monthly for cable service. Having one fewer bill to pay and three fewer modems and routers to operate will be very nice.

I just submitted this letter to the NPR ombudsman via their contact page. If it echoes how you feel, feel free to submit it as your own.

Dear Ombudsman,

Ever since Vivian Schiller and her CNN cronies took over the operation of NPR, the service has become an embarrassment. Accurate, comprehensive reporting has been supplanted by inane interviews in which incompetent hosts censor competent journalists. Coverage of cultural affairs has been replaced with the same coverage of pop culture that dominates the celebrity-obsessed commercial media. Unbiased, monotonic delivery that is characteristic of journalistic broadcasting has been abandoned for oratory intonations that characterize irrelevant entertainment sources like CNN. The accurate reporting of facts has been slashed in favor of the cheap, sensational and worthless chronicling of political drama in the nation’s capital. With every day, I find fewer, and fewer reasons to listen to NPR. Every time I turn off the insulting charades on NPR, I am overwhelmed by a strong desire to start a movement to cut federal funding for NPR and to encourage my local public radio stations to find alternatives to this poor adaptation of CNN.

In the meantime, I have found just about enough podcasts to obviate NPR’s sensationalist, worthless reporting. I’m getting the word out, and I’m finding many sympathetic ears. I am eager to see the day when NPR either becomes respectable and relevant again, or dies.

I finally received the 1000 bonus rollover minutes that AT&T had promised, and my suspicion was true.

The minutes arrived two days after the iPhone 4S was announced, along with its availability on both Sprint and Verizon. Of course, Sprint will be offering a completely unlimited plan for only $10 more than the severely limited plan that I have with AT&T. Were I a big talker or big downloader, I would dump AT&T for the unlimited plan at Sprint without hesitation. (This is something many are positively doing.) I will, however, stay with the evil cheapskates who like to grease government officials until my contract expires next year because my usage still falls well within the severe limits of the cheap plan that I have with AT&T, and, hey, $10 a month will support a much faster DSL connection at home.

Even if this particular post makes me especially popular around the world, the probability that people will call me enough to make a dent in the more than 2300 anytime talking minutes I now have is slim to none.

People will most likely pat me on the back via Facebook, email or text messaging. In the case of the former two scenarios, my 2 gigabyte cellular plan and my home wifi should suffice. In the latter case, however, I would quickly run against my 200 text limit. Once that happens, I would have to cancel text messaging altogether and resort to unlimited texting on my Google Voice number, or switch to Sprint.

I’m begging you people. Text me! I want some justification for the iPhone 4S. Any justification.

For the last 90 minutes this woman had me alternately crying and laughing. Lessons in perseverance, persistence and love.