« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
If you are one of the 2 million+ who have already downloaded and watched this video, you can skip to the previous/next post. If you haven't seen this, it's great. Bride-to-be doesn't like her hair and go bonkers an hour before her wedding. I loved that the person with the camera kept shooting. I thought --for just a moment-- this was bogus, but concluded it's the real thing.
Update: And I was right the first time...a hoax. But a pretty good one. [Thanks, Edward]
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi on HRC's announcement she's running for president:
"Had Hillary embraced head-on her undeniable role as an unwitting martyr/archetype for the modern professional woman, had she opened up her campaign by actually showing us what her private thoughts have been throughout all of these trying times, and what she might think the meaning of her journey has been or could be, she would have instantly established herself as an extraordinarily interesting and compelling story, at the very least. Instead, Hillary is clearly so spooked by the experience of not being taken seriously by the Beltway establishment that she's gone overboard in the direction of being a typical Inside-Baseball, full-of-shit Washington hack, spraying cardboard cliches like machine-gun fire. She's Joe Biden without the plugs.
It's obvious that Hillary sees the pursuit of the White House by means of the tireless upchucking of hollow, computer-generated horseshit as the ultimate man's game in Washington, and she wants to show she can play it with the big boys. So she's slinging twice as much crap, twice as much bullshit. What she fails to see is that, while she's playing the game right, the game is the problem, it's a crock of shit. It would have been nice if she'd had the courage to be different, which she incidentally already is, by default. Instead, she's choosing consciously to be just another lousy corporate politician -- one who'll deserve all the abuse she'll get for playing by the wrong rules."
"...the game is the problem, it's a crock of shit." Exactly.
From the Daily Dunklin Democrat (Kennett, MO): A Dunklin County man remains in critical but stable condition at a Memphis hospital as the result of a January 1st pit bull dog attack. Keith Allen Sawyers, 50, was attacked by his own dog, a 95-pound animal named Thumper who, according to the DDD, never displayed aggression toward anyone prior to the New Years Day mauling.
This is a horrific story but laced with can't-look-away images like:
"The dog chewed of the lower part of his face and part of his neck. All the muscles on the lower part of his face. It didn't take off the jawbone. The dog bit through his right eye, and he'll most likely be blind in that eye."
"What the dog done, it chewed off the lower part of his face, took off both ears, bit his eye and it pulled out all his hair."
"The only thing we can figure is maybe [Sawyers] got up and went outside to go to the bathroom and the dog seen him, thought he was an intruder, and might have attacked him that way."
Not only is Mr. Sawyers alive... "He got saved right after all this happened. A friend come in, prayed with him and he got changed that day."
There was, however, no saving Thumper. Officers shot him at the scene, at the family's request.
I sat for a few moments, with my fingers curled over the keys, but couldn't think of anything to add.
Baseball players are using their iPods to do their pregame video studies. According to a story by Jayson Stark at ESPN.com, Astros pitcher Jason Jennings thinks his iPod turned his whole season around. Stark predicts: "One of these days you'll see a pitcher take a walk behind the mound during a key at-bat, pull out his iPod and take a quick video-refresher course before launching the big pitch of the night. Heck, if NFL quarterbacks can get plays radioed right into their helmets, why not?" [Thanks, Barb]
Unrelated sports note: I'm guessing I might be one of the few people on the planet that has NO idea which two teams are playing in Sunday's Super Bowl.
XM Ben points to the story at washingtonpost.com. XM's Washington D.C. headquarters is infested with rats "the size of small house cats." They've called Orkin and instituted strict rules for the building's 600 employees. No food and drink in the studios and all magazines, posters and other junk must be tossed because rats like to use them to build nests. Shudder. I hate those meeses to pieces.
Our Learfield InterAction team convened at Chili's for a strategy session this afternoon. L-R: smays, Scott Brandon, Stan Koenigsfeld. Observe closely and you'll see Scott and Stan are doing the Blackberry thing while smays is writing on a napkin. I'm just sayiing.
So says pal Morris James. "The most money ever paid for a dot-com address for a city was for Branson.com. Commercial real estate broker Larry Milton and his wife plunked down $1.6 million for the address last year."
For that kind of money you'd expect to be at the top of the Google ranking and Branson.com is (the top of the non-paid results). The link reads: "Branson.com: The Official Website."
Like Morris, I wonder what makes the site "official?" Would the local Chamber of Commerce have a better claim on that distinction?
Stories like this always remind me how fortunate we were to register (waaaay back when) our company names (Missourinet.com, RadioIowa.com, Learfield.com). But one of my favorites is Legislature.com.
My buddy Chuck posted the following to his blog (AgWired) today:
"Hi there AgWired fans. This morning I’m doing a new media presentation with the folks at John Deere and their agency, BCS Communications. This is an example post for the presentation."
So what? For many (most? all?) of the people in the room, updating a web page is a Dark Art. Magic. At the very least, a pain in the ass. Some person or persons (or a committee) has to approve the copy and then send it to the web people and --eventually-- the web page gets updated.
Chuck just logged in to his Word Press account. Bangs in the copy above...hits the submit button...and publishes for the world to see. It took less time than it is taking me to tell you about it.
I've used this analogy before but it's a good one. When a room full of execs see a demo like this (I wasn't there but I've done a few of these)... it's like the scene in every Tarzan movie with the Great White Hunters "make fire come from stick," or when they crank up the movie projector (where did they plug it in?) for the pygmies.
LostRemote points to a survey of over 1,000 teachers that found that 57 percent use national or international news websites as a source of news for teaching purposes, compared to 28 percent for daily newspapers and just 13 percent for local TV news.
“Students do not relate to newspapers at all, any more than they would to vinyl records,” one teacher said in the study. Local papers “haven’t recognized how quickly this transition is taking place,” said the study’s author, Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. What about local TV sites? They weren’t even mentioned.
Uh, any mention of radio news?
William Gibson: "The thing that's going to be quaint about "cyberspace" (that already is, really) is the inherent assumption that it's a realm unto itself; that it's in any way elsewhere or other. Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism."
I just cast my votes in the 2007 Weblog Awards (the bloggies), a non-profit project created in 2001 to award the best blogs. The "lifetime achievement" category caught my attention because one must have been blogging since January 1, 2002, to be eligible.
While I would never put this humble effort in the same league as this year's nominees, I found it noteworthy that I'm only a bit over a month shy of that requirement.
This coming Saturday, February 3, will be the fifth anniversary of smays.com. Last year a few of my blogging buddies joined me for a beer. (I think I had four, one for each year. I'm not sure I can do five.) I'm thinking informal meet-up on Friday. Watch this space or ping me. SteveMays at Gmail dot com.
:: Bill Gates is going to be making an appearance on the Daily Show tomorrow evening to promote the launch of Windows Vista.
:: Find the best unused FM radio frequency for transmitting from your iPod to your car radio.
:: Google Docs is now incorporated into Gmail as an option for opening Microsoft Word documents. Reading Word attachments others send me is the only time I use Word.
:: What kind of affluent would you rather be? Many people would actually sacrifice 20% of their income (or more) to spend just a little more time with family and friends. Or to do something they love.
Rock star Sheryl Crow and movie producer Laurie David, who helped work on Al Gore's Oscar nominated documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," are teaming up for a two-week bus tour across North Texas and the Gulf states. The tour is designed to fight global warming and save the environment.
The tour hopes to stop TXU's controversial plan to build 11 coal-fired power plants across the state of Texas. Governor Rick Perry's plan to fast-track the coal plants has been attacked by environmentalists and a coalition of cities.
C. John Wilder, 48, is chairman of the board and CEO of TXU Corp., one of the nation's largest electric energy companies.
Brother-in-law Lew connects the Kennett dots in this story. Not only are Ms. Crow and Mr. Wilder from Kennett, they lived in the same house (on Emerson Street), although not at the same time.
Sounds like the beginning of a pretty good screenplay, doesn't it?
I still try to watch one of the network newscasts each evening. But, increasingly, I rely on The Daily Show for the latest news.
Jon Stewart devoted over a third of one broadcast last week to Wolf Blitzer's interview with Dick Cheney on CNN. Not only did Stewart go through numerous highlights from the interview, but the Daily Show staff gathered supporting video clips to provide context for the interview, using previous statements of position and policy to hold the veep accountable for the stuff he was saying now. You can watch the segment here if you missed it. [Eat the Press]
My Saturday Morning Ritual involves breakfast at The Towne Grill and then over to the Coffee Zone for Rocket Fuel and three peaceful hours of web surfing (free wifi). Getting strange looks this morning because I have my sweat hood pull up (to hide a killer case of squirrel-head). For some reason, I'm getting a lot of Star Wars references.
The firm Barb works for, Husch & Eppenberger, held their annual holiday dinner last night (delayed due to weather?). Good food, open bar...so meeting my spousal obligation was no challenge.
For reasons still unclear, several of Barb's co-workers read smays.com. One of the newer attorneys --a nice young man named Chris Benne-- asked why I had never mentioned him here. He had, he pointed out, been to our home for a cookout.
I tried to recall if there had been something blog-worthy about that event but nothing came to mind. But I decided I shouldn't be so stingy with the digital ink since I have a warehouse full of the stuff.
That's Chris in the foreground, listening to Harvey Tettlebaum, the senior partner in the Jefferson City office and Barb's mentor and "rabbi" since she became an attorney.
Harvey is something of a Sith Lord in the Republican Federation. Here's a little video of Harvey rubbing elbows with Karl Rove back in April of last year.
Last night I asked Harvey if he was helping prepare Karl's legal defense. Harvey smiled enigmatically, as if to say:
"As long as there is one more Scooter Libby to throw from the sleigh, the wolves will never get to Karl."
It was a nice dinner.
I hope I'm still blogging when I'm 93. I'll be 59 in a month or so but 34 years doesn't sound like as many as it once did. But this post by Donald Crowdis speaks to me.
"Adventures in Capitalism" was the tag line for The Wall Street Journal's previous ad campaign, in 1997, to promote the brand. The paper was recently made over -- taking three inches from the width and adding an emphasis on forward-looking journalism -- so it's time to freshen up with a new campaign. [MSNBC] "Every journey needs a Journal," says the new tag line, positioning the paper to speak less to readers' inner Striver than their inner Seeker.
The ad blitz -- which begins next week in major publications and Web sites -- are essentially celebrity endorsements, highlighting the Journal's role in the inspiring "life journeys" of a diverse mix of people including singer Sheryl Crow, "Freakonomics" coauthor and University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt and Jack Burton, founder of Burton Snowboards.
The Journal wanted people who weren't megafamous but who "had an interesting life journey, read The Wall Street Journal and were successful." Ping me if you spot one of these ads.
I refer you, once again, to AgWired for a good example of how easy it is to add video to your blog or website. Chuck Zimmerman is covering the International Poultry and Feed Expos in Atlanta. His posts include --as always-- still images and audio. But he is increasingly dropping in short video clips, like this two minute look at a Mechanical Egg Handler.
He's just roaming around the floor in this clip but he could just as easily have stopped to interview an exhibitor or speaker. The operative word here is "easily."
He ran the video through Windows Movie Maker (free) for a quick edit and a title...uploaded to YouTube (free)...and then embedded their flash player in his post. Done.
Contrast that to dragging around a cameraman and sound guy (expensive) who have to get back to a studio for post-production (expensive: time and money). Then you gotta get it to the TV station or cable channel and blah, blah, blah.
Chuck is carrying everything he needs on his back and if the expo hall is wifi'd...all he needs is a place to sit down.
Allbritton Communications launched The Politico today. It's a free tabloid with an estimated circulation of 25,000 aimed at political junkies and Beltway insiders, and its companion website.
The Politico has garnered attention by snagging high-profile journalists to run the paper. Two of The Washington Post's top political journalists -- editor John Harris and reporter Jim VandeHei -- left to become The Politico's editor-in-chief and executive editor, respectively. Reporters have been lured from Time, U.S. News and World Report and the New York Daily News, among others.
One of these superstars, Ben Smith, is blogging and includes our own Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa) in "Ben's Favorite Blogs." Just the latest high-profile link love for the Bloggerista.
In this 2003 post, I included Kay in my list of "Blogs I Would Read if They Existed." And now it does. And I do.
The Missouri legislature is in session and the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on several bills last night. I've been told these hearings are in many ways more interesting and important than floor debate. So I took my little Marantz down to the capitol and recorded a couple of hours.
SB 5 would modify Missouri laws on child pornography (32 min MP3). SB 27 would modify regulations regarding sexually oriented billboards (24 min MP3). I found the testimony on these two bill pretty interesting.
As I listened to the testimony pro, and con... I kept thinking how easy it would be for anyone to record the hearing. Many of those testifying drove a long way to do so. The issues were obviously important to them. Why not record the testimony and put the audio of the full hearing on online.
Admittedly, these hearings can be pretty dry. You won't see these on TV or hear them on your local radio station. But there's an audience for these and the web is the perfect platform.
Don't expect the people who conduct the hearings to make this happen. That might be a little more light and attention than they can stand. But any citizen could --I assume-- walk in and record the thing. And share it with the world. Or a hand full of people who care.
The reporters that work so hard for our radio networks have --at most-- three minutes to report all the top stories of the hour. A committee hearing like this will only get a few seconds...and our guys to a great job of boiling it down. But why not do both?
And if we can't or choose not to, the public can pitch in. And I bet they will.
Is HD radio a dangerous distraction? John Silliman Dodge thinks "...we’re not programming Channel One compellingly enough to worry about Channel Two." He elaborates at FMQB. [via RAIN]
A 29 year old Blair, Wisconsin man is recovering after a 16-story fall from a Twin Cities hotel early Saturday morning. Authorities are not releasing much information about the condition of Joshua Hanson except to say that he suffered multiple broken bones and internal injuries. Hanson and his friends were staying at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Minneapolis while attending a darts tournament. Hanson crashed through a window in a hotel hallway.
Felig Abrahamson was staying on the same floor as Hanson, and reported hearing a banging sound, followed by breaking glass. Abrahamson ran with Hanson's friends to the street outside the hotel lobby as paramedics reached the scene. They could hear Hanson screaming. "I couldn't believe he was still alive," said Abrahamson. Media in the Twin Cities reported that horseplay in the hall, after a night of drinking, may have led to the crash through the double-paned window.
[WRN.com. Thanks, Bob]
Doc points us to post by Steve Uruquart (The Revolution Will Be Wikified) who introduces us to Politicopia, a new site that "gives people a solid handle on the Utah Legislature. Users create summaries of bills, pro and con arguments, comments, links, and more."
One of the things our news networks do really well, is cover the state legislature. Adding something like Politicopia would be damned interesting. If this idea doesn't get me burned at the stake, nothing will. What's a wiki?
If you email the Missouri State High School Activities Association, you are likely to get an automated response that includes the following:
"The MSHSAA staff will respond first to more traditional means of communication such as telephone calls, written correspondence and faxes. The MSHSAA office can be reached at (573) 875-4880 during regular office hours. As time permits, staff will reply to email messages that include the sender's complete name, address and phone number."
I don't even know what to say about this. It speaks volumes about how the organization views its relationship with the public it serves (?). I am inspired to create a new category here at smays.com: Clueless and Proud. Say it loud!
One assumes the folks at BE (Broadcast Electronics) paid extra to sneak their ad in with the the latest news stories at Radio Ink. Yes, they gave it a dateline of "Advertisement," but the obvious intent was to trick the reader into clicking on the "story."
This would be like having one of our news anchors slide right into a commercial that was written and presented as though it were the next story in hopes the listener would hear it before figuring out it was a commercial.
I like Radio Ink. I like BE. I've purchased lots from them throughout the years. But this little scam leaves me with a negative feeling about both.
The Hardest Working Blogger in Show Business, Chuck Zimmerman, is in Berlin, covering the annual meeting of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. IFAJ is "a non-political, professional association for agricultural journalists in 29 countries." As far as I can determine (and Chuck is aware), he is the only person blogging this event.
You gotta figure that at least some of the attendees have laptops and digital cameras with them. Not one blogger in the bunch? Maybe there's coverage of the event at the official IFAJ website...nope.
Old Media types can't understand why I'm even asking? Bloggers can't imagine attending something like this and not putting up a couple of posts.
"A must read for everyone who will die." That's how one reviewer describes Deepak Chopra's "Life After Death." I ordered the book after seeing Dr. Chopra on The Colbert Report. The title pretty much describes the book which got a fair amount of highlighter (my measure of good non-fiction). Here's one graf from page 239:
"In spiritual terms the cycle of birth and rebirth is a workshop for making creative leaps of the soul. The natural and the supernatural are not doing different things but are involved in transformation on separate levels. At the moment of death the ingredients of your old body and old identity disappear. Your DNA and everything it created devolve back to their simple component parts. Your memories dissolve back into raw information. None of this raw material is simply recombined to produced a slightly altered person. To produce a new body capable of making new memories, the person who emerges must be new. You do not acquire a new soul, because the soul doesn't have content. It's not "you" but the center around which "you" coalesces, time after time. It's your zero point."
I've never studied or researched reincarnation, but I've always had a curiosity about and openess to the idea. In 1988 I wrote:
"As I think about the idea of a past existence, I feel a fondness for this “earlier me”. A sense of gratitude for whatever spiritual progress he was able to achieve. At the same time, I feel a sense of anticipation or expectation for my “next life”. And some responsibility to that future self. I’d like to move him (or her?) along as far as I can on this “cosmic lap.” To move him closer to…a perfect consciousness? Nirvana?"
"Mixed in with all of that is a sense of relief that I don’t have to complete everything in this lifetime. This is not the only shot I’ll get. And this awareness is vital because we all know --consciously or subconsciously-- that we won’t “get it all done” in a spiritual sense. We hope (and work) for progress but a single" lifetime seems hopelessly short."
Upon rereading the full post, I'm struck by how close I got (to Dr. Chopra's explanation), given my complete ignorance.
I confess I could never stretch my common sense and logic (and faith?) around many of the stories in the Bible. And my recent read of Richard Dawkins' case for atheism (The God Delusion) didn't convince me. But I really enjoyed Life After Death and will read more by Dr. Chopra.
My friend and co-worker David Brazeal has posted five handy tips for sinking your online media strategy. People who understand the new media world in which we live are rare and our company is fortunate to have David. I fear it won't be long before others come sniffing and lure him away. We will be foolish if we allow that to happen. Maybe that's number six.
Looks like we have about 4 of our predicted 6 inches of snow and it's still falling. But we have a nice fire going and Lucy and Ripley are snoozed out. Barb made a big pot of chilli and all is right with the world.
Where we live there's no traffic sounds or city lights and nights like this are peaceful and beautiful. I couldn't resist sharing a minute with you 
. If you listen closely you can hear the wind chimes just a couple of feet from where I was standing.
Update: It's Sunday morning and it appears we got about 8 inches. Here's the view this morning from our bedroom window.
Chris Pirillo thinks the iPhone "is going to kill." So does his non-geek brother, Adam:
"My brother Adam isn’t a geek - and he’s never written to me about any other device (from Apple or any other manufacturer). It’s not even out yet and I already hate the iPhone… largely because someone else didn’t make it four years ago. Seriously. Apple gets the consumer in ways that no other company ever will. It makes my new Smartphone seem so… ancient."
I'm still not convinced I need any kind of mobile phone but would like to have all other features of the iPhone. For the time being, it's much cooler to piss on the iPhone than gush over it. Good to see someone whose opinion I value, weigh in on this.
“The Office,” aside from being the best live-action sitcom in production, is delivering prime time's #1 concentration of adults 18-49 living in homes with $100,000-plus incomes.
read more | digg story
For those who missed it... Colbert on O'Reilly Factor and O'Reilly on Colbert Report. Lesson learned: Better to be funny and fast than loud and long.
Matt Taibbi offers a first-hand view of what our troops in Iraq are faced with:
"The argument for more troops assumes that the troops we have there already are actively engaged in making Iraq secure, only there aren't enough of them.
What I saw was that our troops were mostly engaged in keeping themselves secure -- and even that was a very tough job. The Iraq war has gone so wrong that it is no longer an occupation, no longer even a security mission. It's just a huge mass of isolated soldiers running in place in a walled-off FOB (Forward Operating Base) archipelago, trying not to get shot or blown up and occasionally firing back at an enemy over the wall they can't see. It's lunacy. Adding more guys to it just means more lunacy. But our government has a high tolerance for that sort of thing, and I wouldn't bet on it ending anytime soon."
Whether you're for or against more troops, you should read his full post.
Not sure who took these but they were being emailed around and I grabbed them. I believe they were taken near Neosho in southwest Missouri.
If they're yours, let me know and I'll give you the proper credit or pull them.
The forecast calls for 3-6 inches here tonight/tomorrow. I'm wearing long underpants so I can get out of my limo any damn way I like.
Radio Iowa News Director O. Kay Henderson chatted with Mrs. John Edwards this afternoon about --among other things I imaging-- blogging. Here's a couple of excerpts from her post/transcription:
"It's just a great medium and I'm really glad to have the opportunity to speak without having somebody say what I meant to say, you know, which happens whenever there's a reporter between you -- or even, honestly, your own press people -- between you and the people you're trying to get to listen to what you have to say."
"Here's what the Internet has to offer. It is a direct medium between people. There is no filter. There is no intervention and that is unparalelled. If you think back about the way we used to communicate in a democracy centuries ago where people stood in the town square, handing out pamphlets with their opinions on them -- isn't this the closest we've really come to that again? We've returned to that which is what we were based on, where people can stand on their little corner of the Internet, handing out their opinions to people who are willing to listen to them."
Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and potential 2008 presidential candidate, inked a deal recently to coordinate his Internet video campaign through Brightcove. Obama posted a video Tuesday announcing he's forming an exploratory committee for the 2008 election. Brightcove will provide ongoing publication of campaign videos, creation of an Obama channel, and a syndication function that will allow bloggers and Web sites to publish campaign clips.
Brightcove looks, on the surface, similar to YouTube. But it's very different, in that YouTube is designed for consumers to share videos with each other, while Brightcove is designed to allow businesses to publish videos to the Web.
Forget the politics for a moment... think of the implications of millions of people using their blogs to propagate the messages of their favortie candidates. We might live to see a day when it doesn't take bazillion dollars to run for office. [Information Week]
Despite the fact the product isn’t even out yet, Apple says its upcoming PC-to-TV device is the fastest-selling item on its website, even beating out iPods. Apple TV is poised to become a surprise hit, says analyst Shaw Wu of American Technology Research. “If Apple were to convert 1 percent of those iPod owners to Apple TV owners, it would be a success. That would be a million units,” he said. [LostRemote]
I ordered one, too. Supposed to ship in February. I'll report here once it's up and running.
"In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but isn't, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress.
Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself."
My friend RP introduced me (and many of our friends) to the board game Risk:
"Risk is a turn-based game for two to six players, and is played on a board depicting a stylized Napoleonic-era political map of the Earth, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. Players control armies, with which they attempt to capture territories from other players. The goal of the game is to control all the territories, or "conquer the world"—through the elimination of the other players. Although it takes advantage of area movement, Risk is relatively simple and abstract, compared to other war games, as it ignores realistic limitations, such as the vast size of the world and the logistics of long campaigns." (More at Wikipedia)
It took hours, sometimes days to complete a game of Risk. But we loved it. And nobody loved it more than RP. And he hated to lose and would do almost anything to avoid it. Break an alliance. Lie. Cheat, if he could get away with it.
He went so far as to modify the game by adding a nuclear card that could be used to wipe out the vastly larger army of a competitor. And in rare wild-eyed moments of back-against-the-wall desperation... he would over-turn the board, shouting "Earthquake! Game over!"
I've seen that same look in George W's eyes lately.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing another of its ongoing reports tracking Americans' use of the internet today. Among the findings:
More than 60 million people (31% of all Americans online) say they were online during the 2006 campaign to get information about candidates and/or exchange views via email. They call this growing group "campaign internet users." This group trends young; wealthy; well-educated; and somewhat more white than of color (33% of white Americans vs 23% of blacks and Hispanics). More at Personal Democracy Forum.
I was reminded this week of the scene in Miracle on 34th Street (1947) when Kris Kringle, the store Santa at Macy's Department Store, tells a shopper she can find the toy her child wants --and Macy's is out of-- at Gimble's, a competing New York store. Kris put the needs of the customer ahead of Macy's and is rewarded by none other than Mr. Macy himself. You've seen the movie about a thousand times.
Where was I? Oh yeah.
Last Friday, police and the FBI found a 13-year old boy who had been missing for four days, and a 15-year old boy who had been missing for four years in a suburb of St. Louis.
I clicked over to Missourinet.com to see what we had on the story and found a couple of grafs with some sound contributed by a radio station stringer in St. Louis.
I should explain that I am not a journalist and don't mess with the stories written by our reporters. I do, however, add photos when we have them (as in this instance). But because I knew there was a lot more on the story than we had, I added links to Yahoo! News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and NPR. Something I almost never do. I was definitely off the reservation.
Our reporter later pulled the link to NPR and explained: "We don't want to send people to a competing news organization."
I confess I hadn't thought of NPR as a competitor to our state news network but --again-- it wasn't my call to make. I found myself using the Miracle on 34th Street defense:
"I thought I was putting the needs of those visiting our site ahead of any competitive concerns. They'll appreciate the links and come back to us next time."
I got off with hardly a slap on the wrist but came away thinking about how much blogging has changed my thinking. A lifetime ago I wouldn't have dreamed of telling a listener to our radio station they could get what they wanted/needed at the cross-town competitor. But these day, I'm all about the links.
I think I was right in this instance but a) it really wasn't my call and b) I wouldn't know where to begin to convince our hard-working reporter. Somewhere on 34th Street?
"Maybe sometimes we need to go pound a country that’s harboring terrorists, for example. But do we need to stay and overthrow the government after the pounding is done? If the U.S. didn’t have troops in Afghanistan, would Osama be any harder to find?
I like to look on the bright side. The U.S. proved that it can destroy any country that it wants. Iraq has shown that no little country can be occupied without unacceptable costs. That seems like a good way to leave things."
Have cartoonists always been smarter than politicians, or is it just a W thing?
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2007 first quarter, ended December 30, 2006. The Company posted record revenue of $7.1 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.0 billion, nearly double last year’s profit. These results compare to revenue of $5.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $565 million, or $.65 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Apple shipped 1,606,000 Macintosh computers and 21,066,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 28 percent growth in Macs and 50 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter. [Podcasting News]
"It's just a fad. I can go down to Target and get a perfectly good MP3 player that will do everything an iPod will do and only pay $30. And why do a need an MP3 player when I can listen to music for free on the radio?"
Dave Winer passes along an idea for persuading George Bush to leave office early.
"We all contribute to a fund, that hopefully would contain a lot of money, say $150 million. If Bush resigns on the first day, he gets the whole $150 million. Every day he waits, the fund goes down by 10 percent, so there's a real incentive for him to act quickly. On Day 2 it's worth only $135 million. On Day 3, $121.5 million. And so on. It's kind of a simplified version of Deal or No Deal."
In the first new Mac ad, PC is getting surgery in order to receive all sorts of upgrades to run Windows Vista. Tech Support involves the PC receiving a camera upgrade (via masking tape to the head) so that he can do important business things like videoconference, only to find out that Macs come with built-in iSights now so they don't need to upgrade. In Sabotage, the PC has decided to sabotage the commercial altogether and replace the Mac with another actor who says everything the PC wants him to say. [Infinite Loop]
The men and/or women responsible for writing these commercials are the very same people that played Keep-Away with the fat kid's hat a lunch time in the 7th grade. Until he cried.
A search for "sheryl crow golden globes" (I added the quotation marks) produced 214,000 results. Crow received a Best Original Song nomination for her performance of Try Not to Remember from the film "Home of the Brave." She didn't win. And she did at least one other song that wasn't nominated. But that's not the point of this post.
Sheryl Crow has a bunch of fan sites. The Golden Globe Awards are pretty topical. And "sheryl crow golden globes" seems like a not uncommon search.
That a blog would show up at the top of the search results still amazes me. We outranked TMZ for christsake. If you want to improve the Google rank of your company or organization website... put a blog front and center.
Mark Ramsey at Hear 2.0: "Every so often someone in the radio industry trots out a study which says iPods really aren't that threatening to the radio industry's long-term health and welfare. 'Folks get tired of maintaining them,' they will say. 'They're just a new form of Walkman,' say others."
And the radio industry has (apparently) spent a bazillion dollars promoting HD radio. Check out the Google Trends graph posted as one of the comments.
Everything might turn out roses and sunshine for Radio but it won't be because of HD.
In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000. Like a fish needs a bicycle. [NYT.com]
The kids at Boing Boing pointed us to this Smoking Gun photo of a guy arrested after attempting to buy spray paint at a hardware store. A sharp-eyed employee noticed the guy's face was covered with gold paint and called the cops. While there, I discovered TSG's favorite mug shots of 2002 and laughed until I peed just a little bit.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
