les pensées insouciantes

(via MacDailyNews)

That’s all.

(h/t UrbanDaddy)

Musician Curt Smith, otherwise known as half of the international hit group Tears for Fears (along with Roland Orzabal), took a unique approach to finding a collaborator for a recent solo project: he used Twitter.

Some highlights:

Do you think this kind of asynchronous collaboration is one model of how music might evolve or how people might be able to be creative independent of geography?

On MySpace:

MySpace is just spam central. I mean, every day I just get mail inviting me to gigs that are nowhere near Los Angeles! No, I’m not coming to Florida tomorrow.

You also have a unique plan for releasing some of the upcoming solo work that you’re doing, track by track as opposed to, ‘Here I’ve worked for two years and here’s an album at the end of that time.’ Does that have to do with changes in the music industry — are singles becoming more important? Is the album format becoming more disintermediated?

I know you’re a big proponent of Creative Commons. Could you talk a bit about why you think this is something important that artists should know more about?

Read the whole interview here.

(via Mashable)

via The New York Post

This comes shortly after layoffs at CBS News.

Katie Couric took some heat.

“She makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year!” demands a veteran producer.

Diane Sawyer makes “Katie-bank,” as well, per The Observer, with an estimated salary of $12-15 million.

“Excessive pay is excessive pay,” right, populists?

Not cute anymore.

“One of the things many governors said is, ‘Our focus needs to be on getting the economy moving and getting people hired in the private sector,’” Jindal said. “What would help Louisiana the most would be for (the Obama administration) to be focused on job creation.” Jindal said a lot of companies are loath to commit “as long as there is uncertainty up here about card check, cap-and-trade and the health care bill and other tax increases.” He cited as an example the steel giant Nucor Corporation’s indecision about whether to build a big new plant in Louisiana.

“They’ve bought land in St. James Parish,” said Jindal. “They said it’s either going to be St. James Parish, Louisiana, or it’s going to be Brazil. You’re talking about 1,250 jobs over three phases, average pay $75,000, $2 (billion) to $4 billion private capital investment, one of the largest investments in our history from the private sector at one time, and they’ve said one of their top two or three concerns is what might happen up in D.C., about what the EPA might do, what might happen with cap-and-trade.”

Read the rest of “Gov. Bobby Jindal schools meets with President Barack Obama” here.

via NOLA.com/The Times Picayune

Markets hate uncertainty. Good policy/bad policy, people and businesses can deal with and try to adapt. It’s uncertainty that’s paralyzing.

(via Business Insider)