Hillary knocks ’em dead at UA
Hillary Clinton’s campaign appearance Saturday drew a crowd of more than 4,000 to Bear Down Gym, as the presidential hopeful campaigned in Tucson two days before Arizona’s Democratic party primary. Students on campus this weekend couldn’t miss the hullabaloo over Hillary’s stump speech – the line for admission stretched past McKale Center to Sixth Street, and several student groups used the long lines and media attention as an opportunity to launch noisy demonstrations for other candidates or political causes. Although the senator delivered a more-or-less standard speech to the packed-in crowd (punctuated by a few explicit digs at Barack Obama over healthcare and the collapse of several audience members in the sweltering gym), her decision to stump in Arizona this weekend – instead of one of the 24 other states holding primaries on Super Tuesday – demonstrated the importance of Arizona’s primary elections in this year’s presidential race. Whether Hillary’s UA appearance made you sick or psyched, we hope you’ll get out and vote in this week’s primary elections.
Strike out?
Get ahead on that homework while you still can: The months-long Hollywood writer’s strike that has put popular TV programming off the air for months could soon come to an end. According to Variety, the entertainment industry’s daily trade paper, negotiations between studio executives and the Writers Guild of America, on strike since Nov. 5, drew close to settlement this weekend, and could soon be resolved for good. That’s good news for TV fans fed up with reruns and reality programming – and bad news for students with upcoming midterms. Any breakthrough in strike negotiations will probably be seen as a welcome relief, but we’ve enjoyed a few months without TV. As nice as it is to hear that TV shows may come back on air after a long drought, we’s all do well to spend a little less time in front of the idiot box.
Innovation, not acquisition
Thursday, software giant Microsoft made an unexpected $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, an offer that could potentially combine the world’s biggest provider of desktop software with one of the world’s most-trafficked Web sites. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in a letter to Yahoo’s board that the proposed deal – in which Microsoft would pay a 62 percent premium over Yahoo’s current share price to acquire their online rival – is a response to an Internet services market “”increasingly dominated by one player.”” That means Google, one of the most powerful presences on the Web today, thanks to its innovative research and almost endless pool of capital. A clash of Internet titans raises some troubling questions about the future of a Web controlled more and more by a few key companies. But it’s not reason to be too concerned: Although big buyouts and massive mergers may be useful business strategies in the corporate world, success on the Web requires innovation and talent – which can’t always be bought.
