The Dish

My Sunday Times column last week was on the future fusion of TV and the web. Michael Hirschorn has a longer, nuanced take:

As TV and the Internet converge into something generically known as broadband, the distinctions between the two will soon become nugatory from a consumer point of view. But will this resulting hybrid be more like TV, plus interactivity; or more like the Internet, plus TV? The distinction will be worth billions to whoever gets there first and organizes this mess in a fashion that’s satisfying for consumers. The networks and cable companies, therefore, will need to move quickly to find a way to package the different streams—professional and user-made, broadcast and Internet—into a huge, interactive library, all easily and pleasingly accessible on demand and portable to whatever device people are overpaying for at that moment.

From Dan Radosh.

Hilzoy questions McCain’s tax cuts:

The Gordon/Kvaal report estimates the cost of these changes at $2.17 trillion dollars over ten years. They think their estimates are conservative: for instance, they do not count increased spending on debt service. The Wall Street Journal, everyone’s favorite bastion of radical leftism, writes: "In all, his tax-cutting proposals could cost about $400 billion a year, according to estimates of the impact of different tax cuts by CBO and the McCain campaign." That would make the cost over ten years $4 trillion. […]

Let’s pretend that McCain’s advisor is right, and earmarks really do cost $60 billion a year. And let’s ignore the fact that some of those underperforming programs might actually be useful programs that should be reformed, not eliminated. The problem is: that still leaves $130 billion a year to make up, if you accept the Gordon/Kvaal report’s figures, or about $320 billion a year, if you accept the WSJ’s.

And that’s without taking into account the costs of paying for that hundred year war McCain keeps talking about, rebuilding the army, paying for veterans’ health care, or anything else we might take it into our heads to do.

An interesting contrast between his views on Wright and Falwell, and whether good deeds can eclipse bad words. Money quote on Wright:

HANNITY: Reverend Lawson, with all that we’ve heard from Reverend Wright, do you support everything he has said? LAWSON: Of course not. I don’t support everything anybody says, even members of my own family. But I do recognize him as a friend, as a prophetic preacher and as a person who has been extremely valuable, not only in Chicago but nationwide, almost globally. He is a good man.

HANNITY: He is a good man that says G.D. America, the U.S. KKK of America, all of these statements. Do you think that’s coming from a good man?

And on Falwell:

HANNITY: I’m sure you’re perfect in your life and that you’ve never made any mistakes.

HITCHENS: I’ve never committed treason like that. I don’t believe in the sincerity of his apology…

HANNITY: I knew Reverend Falwell, Christopher. I know the good work that this man has done.

HITCHENS: Tell me about it.

Marc Ambinder tackles the arguments of Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei.

He sure didn’t come from the ghetto.

"For half a century, right-wing populism has been the most successful political force in America, aided greatly by the tendency of liberals to fall into the competing claims of identity groups. Obama is a black candidate who can tell Americans of all races to move beyond race. As such, he is uniquely positioned to put an end to this era, and uniquely vulnerable to becoming its latest victim," – George Packer, New Yorker.

This isn’t my tradition, and I fear many also disdain it, but the photograph alone speaks to me at least of what Christianity really does and can mean. It’s from a born-again blog called Ragamuffin Soul, sent to me by David Kuo. Money quote from one of the musicians who was playing on stage:

I’m in verse 2 and I look to my left and am hit like a blind side pick and roll.
Swaying on the front row was a guy I later learned was named Matt.
Standing in front of him was another guy named Jefferson.
It was a moment that stands out above all else in my 11 years of leading worship.
You see Matt and Jefferson were worshipping God, together.
Literally.
Jefferson has severe cerebral palsy.  He has little, if any control over his body.
Matt was standing behind Jefferson.
Holding Jefferson.
20 minutes.
Dancing with Jefferson and singing at the top of his lungs.
Jefferson was singing too.  I think could hear him.
And it was the most beautiful song I have ever heard.

Here it is, Easter in an image:

Gallup’s latest: McCain, Clinton and Obama, all basically neck-and-neck whichever way you slice it.

A tissue-engineering group has created functional blood vessels and cardiac tissue by "using a ‘printer’ that dispenses cells instead of ink":

What makes this work different from that done in most other tissue-engineering labs is that Forgacs’s team does everything without a scaffold — they don’t start with an object shaped like the tissue or organ they are aiming to create, but instead plan to print the whole thing from scratch, from the vasculature up. This should make it easier to print any type of organ, they say, as they don’t have to develop different scaffolds for each tissue type.