Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy - Los Angeles Times

"Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong."

If Ex-WMAL Host Is Sorry, It's Not For Bashing Islam

"Graham hopes to have the last laugh. ABC is seeking bids for its radio stations, including WMAL, and the overwhelming response Graham has had from other radio companies makes him optimistic that a new owner might put him back on the air here."

WMAL, another train-wreck (err, make that ship-wreck in keeping with the post below) about to happen has in recent memory been a conservative talk show station, although I've continued to think it has been such only reluctantly. WMAL's local talk has been all over the map with an emphasis on early morning wake-up humor and traffic reports. I always got them confused with WTOP and WRC, one a news-only station and the other the original home of Larry Kings radio program before he hit the jackpot of... whatever you call what he does now.

With few exceptions, media companies have two separate agendas, one, "The Agenda" whatever that happens to be, and two, the bottom line. In the past they have been able to keep these two things blissfully unaware of one another. Is the New York Times the powerhouse it is because it is a liberal paper in a liberal city? Probably not. After all, the Wall Street Journal comes out of New York too, and there are lots of more liberal papers in New York.

WMAL's success has been well correlated though with the fact that they were the primary carrier of Rush Limbaugh for as long as I can remember, and they gradually added more conservative talk, as well as shifted their own local talk to a conservative slant, presumably to keep people from tuning away as soon as Limbaugh's 12-3 slot ended.

Thinking that the ABC-Disney combine was more centrally located on the political spectrum than the others I once signed up for a slew of "services" from the company (that my spam filters are still trying to cope with) and among other things checked in at a forum where you could leave comments about their on-air activities.

That is, in fact, what I did: leave a comment about the newly restructured program "This Week" which David Brinkly had turned over to Sam Donaldson and Cokey Roberts (with short appearances each week by token conservative Pulitzer Prize winner George Will). My comment was on the sudden departure of Donalson/Roberts and their replacement with the quite liberal commentator George Stephanopolis, who's main claim to fame was a kiss-and-tell book written after he left the Clinton administration. Nothing has changed my opinion that this fellow has no particular business (i.e. credentials) to host such a national show. And nothing has changed the opinion of ABC News, who promptly deleted my comment. Fair and open, as long as you say nice things about us I suppose.

Well, nothing pleases me more than to see these outfits have trouble. Their reign as arbiters of what we all are supposed to be thinking is long overdue for an end. If WMAL goes under, or gets sold and changes to an all Hari-Crishna format, or whatever, someone else will no doubt pick up the popular programs, even if, in the shuffle, a few good things are lost. In the long run, and in the big picture, the fat-cats of the fourth estate deserve to be taken down a peg, or several. All in all, a good start.

NY Times cuts 500 jobs; Philly papers cut 100 - Boston.com

"NEW YORK --The New York Times Co. and two Philadelphia newspapers announced major job cuts Tuesday as the industry grapples with severe financial problems including weak advertising and circulation declines. The Times said it would cut about 500 jobs, while the Philadelphia papers will eliminate a total of 100 jobs."

Reminding me of my favorite lawyer joke, the punchline of which is: "A good start."

More:

Mercury News plans to shrink newsroom by 52 jobs
"16% reduction ends week of newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs;
Cuts are 'painful,' says editor, but the paper will survive"

The Conservative Brotherhood

" The Conservative Brotherhood is a group of African American writers whose politics are on the right hand side of the political spectrum. Expanding the dialog beyond traditional boundaries, they seek to contribute to a greater understanding of African Americans and America itself through advocacy and commentary."

German Debate Results

In reporting about debate results for the top job in Germany it would seem that the German and international press are as confused as is the US press over who wins our debates:

"BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder beat his conservative rival Angela Merkel in a feisty U.S.-style TV debate on Sunday but may not have delivered the knock-out blow needed to catch her in the polls, surveys showed."

While other reporting claimed that she was a clear winner. Only the polls will tell.

Martin Sheen, Sharpton Visit Anti-War Camp - Yahoo! News

I'm always confused when "bereaved" people wear such big smiles.

Internal CIA report faults ex director, others for pre 9/11 faults

Yahoo! News: "Tenet, who resigned in July 2004 after seven years at the top, was censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks, two people familiar with the report told The New York Times."

Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

The Ergosphere:

"Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

All the attention in the nation appears to be on hydrogen as the ideal medium for energy in a renewable economy. It has a lot going for it, in particular the fact that it can be produced from nothing more than water and energy. But this comes at a high (and hidden) price, especially for production from renewable energy; it is far from obvious that the use of hydrogen is worth the additional costs. The consequence is that we should downgrade hydrogen research, and cease deployment efforts immediately.

Hydrogen is certainly a wonderful molecule. It's the lightest element and has a very high energy/mass ratio. It's also the foundation of many chemical synthesis processes, both artificial and natural; when plants make sugar, they begin by splitting a water molecule to make hydrogen. There are even some ways to persuade plants to yield hydrogen directly. And when hydrogen is required, nothing else will do. You need hydrogen to make ammonia (for nitrogen fertilizer) or synthesize hydrocarbons.

We can learn a lot from plants (biomimicry has yielded a lot of good concepts), but there are limits to how far this can go and still be useful. It's one thing to borrow inventions and techniques from nature when they are well-suited to the task at hand, and quite another thing to cut the engineering problem to fit the Procrustean bed of a biological prototype. I intend to show that the 'hydrogen economy', and particularly the hydrogen fuel-cell car, is a poor way to accomplish this."...

Follow link for analysis.

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn: "Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing."

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Pathetic.

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996 - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam 'well beyond the Middle East,' but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show."

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001)

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001): "Iraqi Spies Reportedly Arrested in Germany
16 March 2001

Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies."

Interesting, no?

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters: "'New England Republicans are different than most. They are more reasonable and thoughtful,' Dean said. 'You don't get as many right-wing wackos.'"

But of course, you do get quite a few left-wing wackos. Some of which go right to the head of the class.

NARAL Loses Nerve

My Way News: "After protests by conservatives, NARAL Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week.

'We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record,' NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

'Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,' she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad."

I call BS.

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud: "What is clear is that the Secretary General intends to spin the Volcker report not as an indictment of his tenure in office, but -- and this is amazing -- as another reason to endorse his reform agenda and, therefore, his continuance in office. 'As part of its investigation of Mr. Yakovlev,' a U.N. press release states, the U.N. 'will separately make recommendations for further reforms, particularly regarding strengthened supervision and controls over individual procurement officers.' "

Oil-for-food probe expected to accuse UN director

In a story pretty much fully explored by the Wall Street Journal back in the run-up to the latest Presidential election...Wired News, via Reuters reports: "An investigation into the oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion U.N. operation of getting cash from oil deals."

LA Times Overly Concerned

The (over)exercise of power: "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? I don't mean the fact that Bush would vet his selection for the highest court in the land in part on something utterly trivial. That's expected. What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy."

Well, no you are probably not the ONLY one, but more people find it disturbing that the money losing LA press doesn't have better things to be disturbed about. Were you disturbed by all those jogging pictures during the Clinton years? Were you curious that after all that supposed excercise he got fatter and fatter. Were you disturbed by the comparisons between Kerry falling off his 10-speed on a Washington street and Bush falling off a mountain bike riding up a hill composed of soft sand?

I'd be checking into the reasons behind all of your concern. We don't buy it any more.

independentsources.com also thinks it odd that Bush is critisized for something worthy of praise.

I guess I'm not the only one who is disturbed at their being disturbed. Do we have the makings of a Monty Python sketch here?

Last Farmland in DC Sold

Article here, thanks to Technocrat.com

Why do people move to big cities? Jobs.

What happens when a medium sized city gets to be a megalopolis? Ordinary people can no longer afford to live in the center. Roads in the center can't cope with individual travelers and mass transit copes poorly, forcing middle class people to move to the edge and commute AROUND, which is what the beltway was originally intended for (the overcrowded core of DC has long since passed beyond the beltway though).

If you change jobs a lot you are better off renting. If you insist on owning a home you had better get a real estate license on the side (at which point you realize you can probably make more money selling real estate than whatever else you were doing). That describes DC, LA, NYC and a number of other "hubs" right now.

All of this was pretty much inevitable for the non-farm worker in the past. But today we have no excuse for continuing this endless cycle other than "well, thats the way we've always done things".

Why do millions of stock brokers, computer programmers, customer support specialists, lawyers, sales reps, and a host of other white collar workers have to leave their home at all and clog up one means of transport or another with their sweaty bodies for 3 and 4 hours a day? And for most of these people, what do they do at work? Sit in front of a computer display and talk on the telephone. I'll skip the argument about whether 80 percent of the government workers need to be employed at all, but from my observation of them (over the course of 15 years or so, since computer networks became commonplace) there is almost nothing they need to be physically present to accomplish.

Only recently in the DC area did I work with sales reps who no longer had a permanent office. Not surprisingly it was mostly from foreign based companies that didn't see ownership of a building in the US with a logo on its side as an asset. These sales reps of course did pay me frequent visits, another waste. They could have e-mailed me the powerpoint presentation from Idaho or anywhere else and it would have been just as useful as a personal visit. "Ahhh" some will say, "that personal touch makes the sale!". But I don't think there is a lot of evidence to support that.

Hopefully in another generation or so we will finally be weaned off of notions that a TV ad reaches "millions" while an Internet ad only reach those who "click-through". My mailbox is full every day with print media desperate to count me as an eyeball to their advertisers when in fact I almost never open their publications.

In a civilization that takes the power of the Internet seriously I think big cities are going to die one last (and hopefully slow, painless) death. A well known tech pundit recently asked if Silicon Valley would ever make a full recovery from the dot-com crash. The answer is NO, and why should we want it to? That USED to be productive farmland and there is no reason it can't revive that tradition (at least it isn't QUITE as paved over as New York yet). It could be a nice place for a lot of technologists to live, but there is no need or advantage for ALL of them being there. Many of them would be surprised how many places between the east and west coasts are not only pleasant places to live, but still affordable. And just maybe having some of our technology brain power in less expensive parts of the country is a better alternative to using the brain power in other parts of the world.

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times: "'We went on a borrowing, spending and taxing spree, and that nearly drove us under,' said Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney. 'It was because we nearly went under that we got the courage to change.'"

Maybe we here in the US need to start electing Democrats again so we can nearly go under and get the courage to change.
Except I thought we tried that already. Apparently Democrats have forgotten. Or they just like being in power.

Is it Over Rover?

Is it Over Rover?
2004-04-06

Rover Daily
Update Spirit Sol 91: "Spirit woke up on sol 91, which ended at 6:38
p.m. PDT on April 5, 2004, as if it were any other martian day, but this
one was special. Finishing 90 sols of surface operations since landing
day marked completion of the last of the official success criteria for
Spirit's prime mission. The rover team at JPL had checked off the
next-to-last box for mission success two days earlier, when a drive of
50.2 meters (165 feet) took Spirit's total travel distance over the
600-meter (1,969 feet) mark."

This might hint at further cutbacks in rover coverage. From the once
daily hour long press conference to "daily" 2 minute mission controller
updates, which now seem to get regularly skipped, we are down to the
still daily written summary:

Rover Daily
Updates

I wonder how long those will last now. NASA people seem to be in a big hurry to declare the mission over so they can go home. Unfortunate really, since
in the beginning when the press was anxious to cover more territory they
were told that there was no hurry. The 90 day number was just the
MINIMUM life expectancy of the hardware. Now they are changing their
tune. The hardware is fine. Seems it is the personnel that is worn
out. Or maybe it has just exceeded the American publics attention span.
Ever shorter.

But no worry, USG will be happy to spend millions more to launch follow-on
rovers to cover the ground that these could have, but didn't.