Alessandra Stanley, on Jon Stewart’s interview with President Obama last night:

Mr. Stewart seemed to feel that he needed to voice the concerns of liberals who are disappointed in Mr. Obama’s legislative record, one he described as “timid” instead of coming up with more offbeat questions of his own. And the president, who had earlier in the day answered questions from radio talk show hosts and liberal bloggers, easily parried Mr. Stewart’s complaints about the lack of real change in Washington. As is his wont, he gave long, reasoned answers about the economy, unemployment and populist frustration that Mr. Stewart couldn’t or wouldn’t interrupt. Sometimes, Mr. Stewart showed his own frustration by making fun of his inability to get a word in, interjecting in a high, squeaky whine, “It’s just been hard not to talk.”

As someone who’s interviewed relatively famous people before, my sympathies lie with Stewart. His interview prep for last night was probably one of the most difficult he’s ever done. Still, Stanley’s points about the end result are probably on the mark.

Check out the interview here.

The NYTimes reports on the plight of the Parents Television Council, whose finances are a complete disaster and who can’t seem to get anyone to get outraged about breasts and bad language anymore:

Escalating costs collided with declining donations, resulting in a 2008 loss of almost $1 million. In 2009, as the recession battered fund-raising efforts anew, council revenue totaled $2.9 million, a 26 percent drop from the previous year. To cut costs, the organization has reduced its staff by 38 percent over the last two years. The council’s elaborate reports — given provocative titles like “MTV Smut Peddlers” — have grown infrequent, severely hampering the organization’s lobbying and fund-raising efforts. In 2008, the council published four major reports; it published one in 2009 and has published none so far this year. (Mr. Winter said he planned to publish three reports in the next two months, including one centered on online video.)

Don’t get me wrong: When I have kids, I’m going to protect them from all the adult content I can for as long as humanly possible. But I don’t need some organization doing that for me, and I certainly don’t need them exacerbating the already-stifling U.S. creative climate in the realm of TV or films. Enjoy your trip to oblivion, PTC!

Those of you who have followed me on Twitter or on Facebook over the past few years know that I love sharing interesting things I find on the web. The overwhelmingly vast majority of my tweets feature links to stories that I find provocative, enlightening, and/or infuriating.

That being said, I’ve decided to move as much of this content as possible over here to my blog. My tweets will still continue, with snarky movie commentary, scintillating discussion with colleagues, photographs, and veiled references to my personal life, plus the occasional fast-and-dirty link. But I’m making as much of an effort as possible to move my linked content here. Why, you might ask?

• Equity – Twitter is a media company now, selling advertising/promotions off the backs of millions of users who contribute to Twitter’s content for free. This is completely Twitter’s prerogative. But it is my prerogative to want to derive some value or equity from the time that I put into building my online presence. If I’m just posting everything I find on Twitter, Twitter is getting all the value.
• Archival purposes – Twitter’s search function is atrocious and there is no easy way to access tweets that are more than a few months old. Having a blog that contains all your linked content is great in that it gains you the ability to search through old things you’ve written/linked, not to mention you can search via good-old-fashioned pagination (a feature that Twitter got rid of ages ago).
• Some things require more than 140 characters to comment on – This is self-explanatory, but in addition to allowing longer-form writing, a blog also forces me to think about the stuff I’m posting and possibly even express a cogent opinion about it.
• Response –  Blogs allow people the ability to comment on stories, and potentially engage in dialogue with you. This is superior (slightly) to Twitter’s @reply functionality for a variety of reasons, primarily because it preserves the timeline and allows for categorization.
• I own it – Ultimately, it comes down to this: I own davechen.net and all the inbound traffic/links here. I’ll probably never monetize it, but the point is that companies come and go, they change and make poor decisions. Twitter won’t die anytime soon, but I don’t want to just surrender all my content to a Silicon Valley startup and hope it ends up for the best.

My hope is that eventually, more people will come here (or come here more frequently) than check my Twitter account. I’ll keep putting in the work if you guys keep reading. Thanks.

From USA Today:

On Monday, Kimberly-Clark, one of the world’s biggest makers of household paper products, will begin testing Scott Naturals Tube-Free toilet paper at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores throughout the Northeast. If sales take off, it may introduce the line nationally and globally — and even consider adapting the technology into its paper towel brands.

For some reason, my mind drifts to an episode of Seinfeld:

George: We discussed toilet paper.
Jerry: Toilet paper?
George: Yeah, I told her how toilet paper hasn’t changed in my lifetime, and
probably wouldn’t change in the next fifty thousand years and she was
fascinated, fascinated!
Jerry: What are you talking about?
Elaine: Yeah.
Jerry: Toilet paper’s changed.
Elaine: Yeah.
Jerry: It’s softer.
Elaine: Softer.
Jerry: More sheets per roll
Elaine: Sheets.
Jerry: Comes in a wide variety of colors.
Elaine: Colors.
George: Ok, ok, fine! It’s changed, it’s not really the point. Anyway, I’m
thinking of making a big move.
Jerry: What?
George: I might tell her that I love her.

The Cyberbullying Research Center has released a new report, surveying cyberbullying among children ages 11 to 18. Among the findings:

• 7% of youth admitted that they prevented their romantic partner from using a computer or cell phone.
• 6% of boys and 4% of girls say they posted something publicly online to make fun of, threaten, or embarrass their romantic partner.
• About 7% of youth said they sent a threatening cell phone message to their romantic partner.
• 5% of boys and 3% of girls said they uploaded or shared a humiliating of harassing picture of their romantic partner online or through their cell phone

Alarming, but consider this piece by danah boyd about cyberbullying, which has shaped my thinking around the topic:

When are we going to recognize that the main issue is bullying and, rather than focus on the rapidly shifting technology, focus on the bullying itself? Like it or not, the technology is going to keep magnifying bullying in new and unexpected ways. Focusing on the technology will not make the bullying actually go away, although the more we push it underground, the less visible it is to adults. (For example, private profiles have made a lot of previously visible bullying now invisible.)

Jay Caspian Kang has written my favorite read of the week, a deeply personal essay on his life as a gambling addict that happens to feature a deconstruction of the gambling narrative:

Unlike drug narratives, which fixate on withdrawal and destruction, gambling narratives tend to glamorize the upswing—the writer/gambler will always tell you about his biggest score, how quickly he blew the money, and how fast he was back at the tables, but he will rarely tell about the scraped-out bottom. Massive losses are almost always followed up by a massive rallying—a man’s last five dollars turned miraculously into the $10,000 dollars he needs to pay for his fiancée’s wedding ring. Indeed, the only truthful gambling narratives are told by the family members and friends who witnessed the fallout: the bank account receipts, the early morning arrivals, the hanging stench of re-circulated cigarette smoke. Whereas drug literature comes from those who have bottomed out, there exists no bottom in gambling because every new hand brings fresh hope and possibility. Is it any wonder why most narratives written by gamblers read like boyhood fantasies—every casino a palace, every bellhop a best friend, every dealer an alchemist? Gambling narratives are projections of casinos’ fantasies—the tracers of lights that flash inside a gambler’s head as he watches the ball spin around the roulette wheel. 

A brilliant, droll illustrated essay by Christoph Neimann.