2005 Sweet Corn Queen Lindsey Eilbacker
Public Knowledge – June 20, 2007:
Thanks to NBC, we now know who would be most endangered by a free and open Internet – our nation’s corn farmers.
If that argument seems a bit illogical, here’s the reasoning. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission calling for far more regulation of the Internet than even the most vociferous advocate of Net Neutrality, NBC Universal (the combo network and studio) painted a picture of an Internet overflowing with evil peer-to-peer traffic carrying pirated movies that lead to losses of money and jobs in the movie industry.
Now the money shot: “Because of our nation’s interlocking economy, two-thirds of the lost earnings and lost jobs are in industries other than motion picture production. For example, in the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theatres would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment.”
#26 – Interesting question… would love to know the answer.
#29 – I believe you’re right on the reason… they want us to get hooked on ethanol, so instead of being dependent on the oil barons, we’ll be dependent on the farmers.
Next up, the damage to corn growers because of the fact that corn syrup has replaced sugar in the gallon drinks at the theaters!
J/P=?
$4 a bushel? When I stop at a farmer’s roadside veggie stand, I pay that much foe a dozen cobs… = about 3 cups of corn.
$4 a bushel is a crappy price if you think about it.
This sounds logical….but then, I believed Bush when he said he was a compassionate conservative. 🙂
4.00 a bushel is like hitting the lottery for the normal corn farmer. It means they will be able to pay ALL of their loans and feed their familys this year.
As someone said above….farmers make crap from popcorn, but the sale of corn for ethenol is about to become manna from heaven.
I don’t begrudge NORMAL farmers all the money they can get out of the biofuels craze. They have been taking it on the chin for 60 years, after doing what the goverment asked and made farming so efficient that they get 40 times the amount of yield that any farmer anywhere in the world gets from an acre. Then the goverment screwed them by importing vast amounts of product, artifically holding down prices, and keeping farmers in perpetual debt. It’s no wonder there aren’t many family farms anymore.
Long live the goverment.
SInce I can’t add anything intelligent to this conversation, I’ll answer some inquiries instead.
#15, possibly.
#17, I also agree with #13 on that topic, and Alt+0153 = ™. You can always type in “charmap” in Run Program or find Character Map… somewhere. I’m too lazy ATM to find target paths.
#22, I don’t think you can do that. Selling it as cow manure is false advertising. (and besides, nobody wants HUMAN manure!)
#27, YEAH!!!
#29, use NotePad or any other text editor with a truly monospaced font and copypaste to the appropriate field
All – Please correct your typos. Either type in word first, use Google Toolbars’ spell checking or get Mozilla Firefox and use its context spell check.
Amazing. Movie and music producers still think piracy is why their profits are down and falling year after year. It’s because no one is watching or buying their $hitty products! Consumers are finally getting wise to the fact that most new TV shows suck, most new movies suck, and most new music sucks and they’re voting with their wallet.
I’ll bet that NBC moguls don’t watch their own TV shows or Universal movies or listen to their music labels’ products. These are the same people that actually said that TV audiences don’t want scripted shows or comedies anymore. Really? Did they ASK the viewing public? I bet not! God knows no one’s asked me or anyone I know what they wanted to watch or hear.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall at their ivory tower meetings to listen to their logic and reasoning.
“You see, it’s not just gnawing on an ear of corn from the garden.
Corn starch is used in virtually every bread or pastry you can buy in a major chain grocery store. And with a few scattered exception, every bread you can buy anywhere else too.
Corn starch, syrup and cellulose are used in every medicine you can put in your mouth.
Then there’s the sugar. Any time you see the simple word sugar on an ingredient list you can substitute “corn syrup.” That means in soda, in cookies, in candy bars, even in BAGS OF SUGAR. And not just sugar. Almost every sugar-free sweetener on the market today is made from a corn product.
But just because it doesn’t taste sugary doesn’t mean you’re clear. Corn syrup, starch and/or oil is added to french fries, peanut butter, saltines, steak sauce, table salt, margarine, iced tea, fruit juice (even ones that claim to be 100% juice), “raw” honey, fish sticks, soy milk, wine, beer, liquor, chicken nuggets, flour, barley, caramel, Vitamin C, vanilla extract, vinegar and/or yeast. Corn-derived glycerin is found in almost every soap, lotion, toothpaste and shampoo.
Anything on the label you can’t pronounce is better than even odds to be corn.
Considering all this, you would think the corn industry would be a fiercely independent group of farmers who are sitting pretty on the fruits of their labor.
Not so! The U.S. corn industry (easily the world leader) gets $5.5 BILLION in federal subsidies, an ample amount of which is kicked back to politicians in the form of campaign contributions, thus perpetuating a system in which the national interest is heavily invested in creating more and more and MORE avenues through which to feed corn to an unsuspecting public.”
More at:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhn
But then there’s:
http://isohunt.com/
I hope you all know that Potatoe farmers get about $2.36 per 100 lbs..
39–Good Info. Worse than I thought. So–oil, oil, oil==corn or petroleum its all the same?–Corrupt, Corporate, Fraud. I believe it as it is consistent with everything else this government does.
38–Of course movie and dvd sales are down due to piracy. Only honest issue is “how much?” and perhaps could it be overcome if movies were designed for a wider audience?
But in the main, movie producers ((or content providers aka RIAA)) are probably just like FARMERS–not small guys but corporations making more money than they can really justify, crying for and getting government subsidies or special legislation protecting their markets.
Conservative “free-market” fantacists. There is no free market, and if there was, we wouldn’t want it. Question is–in who’s favor are you going to regulate it?
Was it a DU item that showed how bio-ethanol production was going to to use up so much corn all the other corn-dependent prices would go up.
So piracy should help all those prices come down, including gas prices via a corn surplus. Lower prices means more disposable income. And that should be a nice ripple effect on our economy. What a great bunch of guys those pirates are.
RBG
#38 – This blog sure attracts a brain trust…
Cripes!
I dont know how much these folks are paying, NOR how many persons work for them Filling out paper work all day long…
I would like to know HOW much they are paying for the individual product, THE DVD burning.
Im sorry…But as I see it…its the same with the music industry.
MORE money for the lawyers, and copy protection, then anything else.
IF, I went to my bank, right now, with a contract to burn DVD’s at $1 each for a corp, and had an order for 1 million+..
I think I could have a system setup and running, with about 10-20 employees, and PROBABLY save these folks about 50-90%. If they supply the Original DVD burn.
IF they would drop the price 25%, they would sell TRUCK loads.
Mass Media News has turned in to a bad version of a 24hr Entertainment Tonight, I could go on and on…..but I won’t. Sum it up “BubbleHeads”
But, if I have the pirated copy I can watch it twice and eat twice as much popcorn!
Now if Hollywood put out more material like this: http://tinyurl.com/2eq7ts or this: http://tinyurl.com/36cyjr we’d all be a lot better off.
This all makes perfect sense to me. I mean it’s not like anyone ever makes microwave popcorn at home to watch their pirated movies … or better yet uses an air popper and real butter instead of axle grease.
47–Bubba is playing now on cable. A little weak in the confrontation with the Mummy, but a nice change of pace. Will look for Aqua Teen.
You know, the problem with movies is that they are a capitalist product–ie aimed at their paying audience. That is a high school boy==only ones that will go to the same schlock 15 times in one month. Usually, one white guy, one black guy, a bunch of evil white authority figures, one or more hot babes, and a monster/cartoon character.
I’m actually surprized “anything near good” comes out of Hollywood.
I think the obvious is missed here: piracy actually helps the farmers, because people are spending less money of DVDs, but still watching movies, they actually have more money to spend on popcorn and butter while watching the films…. if it were for piracy, I reckon the corn farmers would be having a real tough time of it right now….
#50, that’s true, but some number of them would have gone to see the movie as well. If it’s 10 percent, then a million downloads lost them 1 million dollars.
When it comes to free trade, the usual suspects tell us that the savings to customers is a net benefit to the economy.
It costs me about 6 bucks to see a movie in a theater. It costs me $6.99 to to the #1 Golden China Buffet across the street. I don’t buy popcorn because I don’t particularly care for it and I can usually sit through a feature without munching. (It bears mentioning though that concessions are the primary source of revenue for a theater because box office receipts are
Movies are cost effective and still a better bargain than any other form of mass entertainment. I’m not sure where you guys see movies, but I go weekly at least and I can’t remember the last time I was bothered by chatty teens or cell phones or any of the mythical uncultured swine who ruins your movie experience.
I think most complainers are just cheap bastards, who if they could figure out how to download a Corvette, would all be driving free Corvettes.
Further, my disc collection is over 500 titles. I realize that isn’t very big, but keep in mind that I’m rebuilding after the “unfortunate events” of recent history. Still, I rarely paid more than $10 bucks per title or more often paid less.
I fail to see why you people think film is such a bad deal, other than your ingrained cheapness. And I submit that those who say the majority of movies are bad simply haven’t seen the majority of movies.
#55 – I didn’t finish this… :-/ Sorry…
(It bears mentioning though that concessions are the primary source of revenue for a theater because box office receipts are almost entirely returned to distributors. In the first week of release, an exhibitor only keeps 10% of a ticket.)
the moral of the story is….make sure you eat a bag of popcorn with every pirated movie you watch.
54–I like general touch stones like that, but I wonder how “economy” is defined in those evaluations? Any good references.
55–Just interested–a short list of good movies?
56–Harvard MBA study just out that theathers could save alot of money if they concentrated on their revenue generators and got rid of the weaker elements. Recommendation is to stop showing/renting movies and just sell the popcorn and sugar water.
57–good one.
55. “I’m rebuilding after the “unfortunate events” of recent history.”
Curious. Would that be the advent of HD and the subsequent trashings of everyone’s precious SD DVD collections?
RBG
#58 – 56–Harvard MBA study just out that theathers could save alot of money if they concentrated on their revenue generators and got rid of the weaker elements. Recommendation is to stop showing/renting movies and just sell the popcorn and sugar water.
I like that… and its true… 🙂
55–Just interested–a short list of good movies?
2006 forward… Not a complete list… Not in any order…
The Good Shepard
Perfume
Knocked Up (oh yes… Judd Apatow is turning out to be a brilliant director. I liked this better than 40 Year Virgin)
The Departed
Blood Diamond
Waitress
Miami Vice
Reign Over Me
Talladega Nights (sorry… I laughed till I couldn’t breath)
Hot Fuzz
Zodiac
Cars (Pixar)
Little Miss Sunshine
The Namesake (deeply moving)
300
Away From Her
Inside Man
The Proposition
Mission Impossible III (Hey… I liked it)
Running With Scissors
Hard Candy
Children of Men (Better than Blade Runner)
V For Vendetta
Ocean’s 13 (Soderberg does no wrong)
28 Weeks Later
Last King Of Scotland
Venus
Breach
I avoided documentaries and except for Hard Candy, I avoided the smallest indy films. Your mileage may vary. Film is subjective.
Given the last two, I expect The Bourne Ultimatum to be exceptional. Despite the silliness of it, I also anticipate liking the new Die Hard Movie as a popcorn spectacle, much as I liked MI:III.
#59 – No… It more involves having things… having something bad happen… then not having things…
Did you happen to notice that I have a fair DVD collection, but I have many times written that I have no TV?
I own a PC, a bed, and a Foreman Grill. But I’m working on the DVD collection because I have my priorities straight.
60— “BETTER THAN BLADE RUNNER!?!?!?!?!?!” – – – – – Impossible.
I’m leaving the house now for Blockbuster.
Admirable list from those few I have seen myself.
#62 – You might say its the anti-Blade Runner
It’s almost impossible for a good sci fi movie fan to not like Children Of Men. The average film goer might find it too depressing (despite the hopefulness of the theme) but I think you have what it takes to like the movie.
63–Well, reading on the internets, there are quite a few “last fertile woman on earth” movies out there. All of them watchable. Blade Runner deals with whether or not electric sheep dream—surely unique.
I have it on order and will report back===although I would be shocked if it were not watchable. Golden China Buffet? Theres one down my street too. Course there is a Starbucks too.