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Fair and balanced, too!

December 14: Iraq: Inform Yourself has been updated.

December 12, 2003 6:50 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

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Patriots fans are finally getting their wish. It only took their ninth straight win, but the Patriots have finally moved to the top of the Power Rankings, ending Kansas City's 12 week run at No. 1.

We've been bombarded by fans from all over New England this season, and while it's been tiresome at times to read all the angry e-mail, the passion is something you have to admire. And besides, it looks like all the e-mails were right. The Patriots are now a perfect 7-0 against teams that currently have winning records (Eagles, Titans, Dolphins twice, Broncos, Cowboys and Colts). That's pretty impressive.

New England isn't blowing teams out, winning by a margin of only 4.6 points per game. But they're winning and in line to be the top seed in the AFC.

New England plays the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday at 1 p.m. on CBS.
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Lost a tech job in Mass.? Sen. Kennedy needs to hear about it: Back in October, Gina Minks of Milford, Mass. wrote to me about outsourcing of jobs to India and other countries. I blogged her email then, with some links to stories on the issue.

Now Minks has a mission:

Email your stories to me!
Are you a Massachusetts resident who..

* Lost your job to an H1B or L1 visa holder?
* Had to train your replacement?
* Have been out of work for a while despite having a degree, years of technical experience, and sending out hundreds of resumes?

If so, please email your personal story to me asap.
A group of us are meeting with Senator Kennedy's aide that handles immigration in a little over a week. Kennedy is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee that handles Immigration. The Senator's office indicated in a press report a few weeks ago that the Senator had not heard from Engineers in his state who had been adversely affected by the H1B visa.

Why is it important that the Senator hear from you? In October of this year, despite intense lobbying from the software industry, the levels for H1B visas issued were allowed to fall back to the original cap of 65,000. The software industry, especially companies that bring in cheap labor to do consulting work, are fighting this reduction in allowable temporary visas because it means that they cannot continue underbidding on contracts if they are not allowed to bring cheap labor to do the jobs. Of course, if the levels are increased, it means that more and more IT people will be forced from our profession.

Please write a letter to the Senator, send it to me via email, so that I can show the him this visa category is destroying lives and families in Massachusetts. It would be best if you include your contact info, as the politicians give more credence to correspondence that includes contact info. If you don't feel comfortable with that, please send your story anyway.

If you could adhere to the following guidlines when creating your testimonial letters, I would appreciate it!

1. Send as a Word attachment, if possible. (If it isn't possible, just send it in the body of an email)
2. One page MAX! (we want these letters to actually get read!)
3. Mention how H1b, L1, or offshoring have affecting you (yes they are all related!)
4. I know alot of you are REALLY PISSED OFF about this issue, with good reason. But to make any progress we need to come across as sane, educated people who need help. I will not take any letters that include threats/profanity/etc.
5. Send the letters to me, g.minks@verizon.net , with the subject KENNEDY LETTER

The meeting with Sen. Kennedy's aide is Monday, Dec. 22, so get your stories to her soon.

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E-vote wrapup:

Electronic voting no magic bullet: Specialists seek input of academia, technology, election officials. CNN reports,

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland (CNN) -- After the debacle of the dimpled ballots and "hanging chads" of the 2000 presidential race, many election officials looked to technology to come to their rescue.

They rushed to buy new, high-tech electronic voting equipment, expecting features such as touch screens to prove more reliable than older systems' punch cards.

But at a sometimes boisterous meeting of election officials, computer scientists and voting machine vendors this week in the Washington suburb of Gaithersburg, it seems clear that technology will not solve all.

Several well-publicized flaws in "e-voting," or electronic voting, systems have not led to improvements, said Harvard University computer professor Rebecca Mercuri.

"When such problems are exposed, no one appears to be held accountable," Mercuri said.

"Officials are not removed from their posts, fired or sent to trial; vendors are not banned from participation; equipment is not recalled; standards are not rewritten; and elections are not re-held," she said.

For example, strange flaws, she said, occurred this year in California, Virginia and Indiana. ...

The Odd Conflict over E-Voting: Election officials want a digital solution to avoid Florida-style fiascos, while computer experts say only paper will work. In another take on the Gaithersburg meeting, Business Week reports,

The role of technology in U.S. elections has become the center of a curious fight in which the forces aren't lining up at all the way you might think. On one side, state and local elections officials, often thought to be technological troglodytes, are the most enthusiastic fans of the latest in computerized voting systems. On the other is a group of computer scientists and other academics who are deeply suspicious of the technology and believe the best answer is, of all things, paper ballots.

 

Under fire, e-vote companies form a trade group: News.com reports,

As electronic voting machines prepare to go to the polls in large numbers, major vendors are collaborating to shore up support for them.

Advanced Voting Solutions, Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic, Sequoia Voting Systems, Election Systems & Software and UniLect today said they had formed a trade group under the banner of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), an industry organization.

The newly constituted Election Technology Council pledged to establish a code of ethics for its members, a series of recommendations for standards and certification, and a review of best practices for security.

Diebold email suggests price-gouging Md. for paper trail: Gazette.net in Maryland reports,

ANNAPOLIS -- An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang" if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased.

The e-mail from "Ken," dated Jan. 3, 2003, discusses a (Baltimore) Sun article about a University of Maryland study of the Diebold system:

"There is an important point that seems to be missed by all these articles: they already bought the system. At this point they are just closing the barn door. Let's just hope that as a company we are smart enough to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules now and legislate voter receipts."

"Ken" later clarifies that he meant "out the yin-yang," adding, "any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive."

The e-mail has been cited by advocates of voter-verified receipts, who say estimates of the cost of adding printers -- as much as $20 million statewide -- have been bloated. ...

... Diebold spokesman David Bear would neither dispute nor confirm the accuracy of the "yin-yang" e-mail on Monday, saying it is "at best the internal discussion of one individual and does not reflect the sentiments or the position of the company."

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The color of money: Campaign contributions, race, ethnicity and neighborhood. You can see who's giving to which party. Look up your own zip code, or see Rhode Island's contributors (Top Contributing Zip Codes in Rhode Island ) by choosing the state on this page. The leading zip code is the East Side of Providence, which gives 68.7% to Democrats, 31.3% to Democrats. (Even in Newport, the money is going 2-1 to Democrats.)
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Debate fails to impress area residents: The Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph reports,

... The Telegraph asked if any candidate had surprised the participants “in a positive manner.”

In general, the group said they saw no standout performances, but three people were pleasantly surprised by Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich - partly because they had known little about him before and partly because he criticized moderator Ted Koppel for concentrating on questions about endorsements and fund-raising.

“I like the way (Kucinich) ripped into Ted Koppel and wish there would have been more of it because the debate was a complete sham. The questions stunk and the follow-ups were worse,” said Gary Dietz of Brookline.

“The media, and The Telegraph partially is guilty of it, focuses on the horse race rather than focuses on the issues - it gets really boring. I don’t really care about the horse race at this point.”

But if it was boring and diluted by the large number of participants - a common complaint - at least the debate was polite.

“I guess the biggest surprise . . . was that they thought it would be a slugfest because Koppel tried to get everybody to comment about Dean, and they refused to do that. They were all civil,” said Stephen Nodvin of Nashua.

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December 11, 2003 7:02 p.m.

If the GOP paints Dean as McGovern, can Bush as Nixon be far behind? I've been reading that the Bush campaign has decided to frame the election strategy against Howard Dean (despite no one having voted in a primary yet) as "He's the new McGovern," a reference to Sen. George McGovern (D-South Dakota), the antiwar liberal who became the Democratic nominee in 1972, during the Vietnam era, and lost in a landslide... to Richard Nixon.

If the parallel is to stick, George Bush would be the new Richard M. Nixon. Nixon resigned in disgrace with impeachment bearing down on him (for lying about his knowledge of the coverup of the burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex on June 17, 1972); his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, resigned first, in October, 1973, after pleading no contest to a tax evasion charge. (Indictments alleging conspiracy, bribery and extortion were not prosecuted, but a court ruled in 1981 that he violated his public trust as Maryland's governor by accepting kickbacks from highway contractors from 1967 to 1969.

Nixon then appointed Gerald Ford vice-president, and when Ford assumed the presidency after Nixon's resignation, he pardoned Nixon.

Do Republicans really want to go there? "Bush: He's the new Nixon" seems an inevitable rejoinder if the GOP opens that can o' worms.

(An interesting aside here: McGovern's running mate was Sargent Shriver, the father of Maria Shriver, Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

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"Just like Gore" was written about the Green party, but it's Politics 101 Now as well:

entry date: January 23, 2003

Just Like Gore

Remember the argument that you might as well not vote because Al Gore was really just George Bush in sheep's clothing? Look at the appointments that Bush has made. Please, people, vote and for the love of dogs elect someone who will get Bush out of office. Vote to elect. Not to prove a point. We have a lot of points to make. George W. Bush winning the election because we turned voting into self-expression is not one of them.

When Greens are effective at the local level they will be ready for a more national level. I think the Green Party can get a lot accomplished. They have some strong ideas. But they must prove themselves at the local level. They have no track record. Greens can't put all their energies into a campaign that's really about as possible as applying for the CEO position straight out of college because it's your dream job. Greens could also make some of their agenda happen if they would work on a local level. You have to gain experience and a proven track record answering phones, being someone's assistant, maybe someday working your way up to manager or editor. You can't expect everyone to hire the new kid to be CEO.

I crave change. I desire a difference between voting for the lesser of two evils. I want to vote for someone with political experience.

Most of all I want to vote for someone who will beat George Bush.

Once Greens (and other parties for that matter) get experience and show the positive effect they've had in communities can they garner the vote. People will start voting for Greens -- and I believe this to be so -- once Greens can show what they have done, not just what they think should be done. Affecting change within the community you hope to represent is one of the strongest allies you can have as a politician. It's also the only way to make your agenda happen: actually leading a community.

Right now though, I'm afraid we're voting to stave off the end of the world.

George W. Bush, just like Al Gore? I think we're only now learning how far off the sentiment was.

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Worms of Endearment: A worm blog. Gardeners will love this. Amy Stewart spent three years writing a book about worms (The Earth Moved), she's about to tour with it, and now she's blogging.

I want one:

One morning the nursery had a display of worm bins for sale. The bins, which are called Can-O-Worms, consist of three round stacking trays with small holes in the bottom. You stack the trays on a sturdy plastic base, introduce worms into the bottom level, and eventually they work their way through each level, eating kitchen scraps as they go. Once they’ve massed in the top tray, the bottom tray is usually full of castings—worm manure—that is ready to go into the garden. You empty the bottom tray, make it the new top tray, and keep going. The worms never leave the bin; they just move through each tray in an endless cycle of eating, reproducing, and—well, shitting.

It’s hard to say why the worms appealed to me so much, exactly. Part of it is that I wanted that worm shit, which is the finest cuisine you could feed a plant and extraordinarily expensive if you buy it retail. Part of it was that I liked the gear. A worm bin is hip, in an organic, northern California way. And part of it is just that a colony of anything is fascinating to watch. Ants, bees, worms—they all have curious customs, unfamiliar ways of life, and I thought I’d find them entertaining.

Now I have thousands of worms living in two bins on my back porch, and they’ve kept me entertained for years. They are good pets, loyal and hardworking, and they earn their keep. I wrote this book—the new one, The Earth Moved—for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that I wanted to pay tribute to the inveterate invertebrates that live their lives outside my kitchen door, devouring my coffee grounds and my morning paper, leaving their rich black castings behind.

I didn't know this:

It rained all night, and that can only mean one thing: worms on the sidewalk. Oddly, no one knows exactly why worms wriggle onto the pavement, a place of near-certain death, on rainy mornings. The best guess is that they can sense a change in barometric pressure or humidity and, fearing a flood, they stage a walkout. Earthworms breathe through specialized cells in their skin that exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. They like dampness, but they won’t live long underwater.

Worm farmers live in fear of a walkout, a kind of group-think behavior in which thousands of worms rise from their bedding at once and mass on the pavement, or even the walls of a shed, which makes it impossible to round them up and herd them back to their home. On a rainy night, a worm farmer will leave floodlights shining on the worms all night, hoping that their dread of light will overcome their fear of floods.

After our first snowstorm last weekend, you wouldn't think gardening would be on our minds here, but in typical New England fashion, the temperature is 53 degrees right now, it's pouring rain and all that snow is melting into our basements.

If it's Christmastime, seed catalogues aren't far behind. (I'm wondering now how to keep worms alive in winter.)
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Duck before clicking: Sony Full-Circle 360° Camera Module
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Colin Powell 'appoints' soul legend James Brown to new diplomatic post: Billboard reports,

" The Godfather of Soul" James Brown, country music icon Loretta Lynn and violinist Itzhak Perlman were among five stars honored in Washington, D.C., Sunday for their contributions to American culture...

...Brown, the energetic singer of hits like "I Feel Good" and "Sex Machine," was excited about the award. "I feel good," he said with a grin, clad in a shiny tuxedo and a bow tie embroidered with his initials....

...At a State Department dinner, Secretary of State Colin Powell dubbed Brown the "Secretary of Soul and the Foreign Minister of Funk." Turning to Perlman, Powell described his music as keeping the soul in "suspended animation" long after the notes had faded.

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Create a snowman: More Flash "drag the pieces" fun.
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December 10, 2003 7:44 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

AP

Debate in Durham: Democratic presidential hopefuls Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., Senator Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Rev. Al Sharpton, former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, Senator John Edwards, D-North Carolina, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., prior to their debate sponsored by ABC's Nightline and WMUR-TV 9, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003 at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H

Updated 11:59 a.m. Dec. 11: ABC recalls producers from three campaigns: The Boston Globe reports today,

A day after ABC "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel generated criticism for over-emphasizing strategic issues as moderator of the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire, ABC News confirmed yesterday that it has pulled three "off-air producers" from the campaigns of Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, former senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York.

Asked if the decision was related to the three candidates' low standing in the polls and longshot status, ABC spokeswoman Cathie Levine said "as we prepare for Iowa and New Hampshire, we are putting more resources toward covering those events. We'll continue to cover these candidates as other news organizations do. To date, we've logged more hours with these candidates than any other news organization."

Kucinich responded to ABC's decision by saying, "Obviously, ABC is retaliating for my challenge to Ted Koppel in last night's debate. They have proven my point, which is the media, and now specifically ABC, is now trying to set the agenda for this election."

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The Washington Post's story about Ted Koppel's debate prep and moderation (Ted Koppel, Anchor Provocateur) exposes more than a journalist's attempt to extract news from scripted politicians:

From the start, the ABC team knew they would be hamstrung by the crowd onstage. "How did Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun get into this thing?" Koppel asked. "Nobody seems to know. Some candidates who are perceived as serious are gasping for air, and what little oxygen there is on the stage will be taken up by one-third of the people who do not have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination."

This is America, Ted. It's a breakthrough that a black woman and man are running at all. And if Kucinich -- who proposes a Department of Peace -- seems a little odd to you, it may be because you're a member of the kingmaking establishment. The trio Koppel wants to boot are articulating issues that nobody else is going to raise on behalf of people like themselves, and very unlike Washington insider Koppel.

Koppel has a daughter, Andrea, who works for CNN. She might be able to relate to this, from Braun:

My niece the other night called me into the room and said, "Auntie Carol" -- she's nine. She showed me her Social Studies book. She said, "Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys."

The fact of the matter is that all the presidents have been boys. (LAUGHTER) And at some point -- at some point we have to make the point that women have a role to play in providing leadership for this country. (APPLAUSE)

I bring ideas. Dennis talked about single-payer for health care. A single-payer plan is the centerpiece of my candidacy.

Against the Patriot Act, I was the first of the candidates to raise the Patriot Act in our debates, to say what an aberration it was.

Against the war. The people want to hear ideas. They want some energy. They don't want to just embrace the status quo and expect change.

If you want to embrace the status quo, then let George Bush continue selling the White House and the American people out. But I think...

KOPPEL: Ambassador, I'm afraid we're out of time.

MOSELEY BRAUN: If I may?

KOPPEL: Please.

MOSELEY BRAUN: I am the clearest alternative to George Bush and I will take the "White Men Only" sign off the White House door. Thank you very much.

And then there's Al Sharpton, making sense:

...The suggestion is that if you can't buy your way now, that you can't seek the highest office in the land. That is to really sell the White House.

I think that people with no money that can generate the kind of support I'm generating, that can galvanize a lot of young people, a lot of people that left this party and voted for Ralph Nader, this is what wins elections. I refuse to allow us to continue to act like the person with the best dollar -- or the biggest dollar -- has the best message.

If money is going to win this, Bush is going to win. Nobody up here is going to raise the money Bush raises.

And taking on the war:

Now, we're saying that some of us are for occupation but against the war, like if there is a difference. Occupation is a continuation of the war, it's a continuation of operating on a unilateral strategy... (APPLAUSE) ... by this administration.

As raised by your question when you say that they're saying now that unless you help us, or unless you engage with us, you can't engage in contracts. That is, again, purporting the same unilateral intervention that began this war, is the philosophy of this war, in the beginning.

We must unequivocally say -- we must go to Kofi Annan and the U.N. and say, "This body or some body must take over the restructuring and redevelopment of Iraq; we will participate as partners," and withdraw.

Americans are dying around what cause and purpose?

I eulogized a young man in Orangeburg, South Carolina, four weeks ago. Young, 23-year-old man died 11 days before his birthday at war in Iraq. For what purpose? For Halliburton contracts? For us to continue to say that we need to control it all, and if the world doesn't come in behind us, then there's something wrong with them?

I think that we cannot fight George Bush by saying, "We support his occupation, but we think he shouldn't have gone in there in the first place." If he shouldn't have gone in the first place... (APPLAUSE) ... how can you support him staying in there? That's like calling the cops, saying there's been a breaking and entry, but the people that broke in can stay in the house. There's something wrong with that.

The "serious candidates" are running out of oxygen because only traditional politicians -- and traditional journalists -- find them worth following. They haven't caught the imagination of voters. Al Gore's endorsement of Dean seems not unexpected from a man whose 2002 campaign plane was full of Deadheads -- but those who knew seem to have forgotten that. From the Post's Koppel story again,

...Kucinich said that to kick off the debate by talking about endorsements "trivializes the issues that are before us."

Koppel then voiced his apparent disdain for Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun, asking whether they would eventually "drop out" or continue a "vanity candidacy."

Again, Kucinich punched back. "I want the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country," he declared to loud applause. Koppel had become one of the debaters, and he had just taken a hard right to the jaw. The candidates, many of them, were in open revolt against the moderator.

Here's what Kucinch actually said and how he said it, from the Post's transcript and clips at Kucinich's site (mp3 audio; video at 56K or Broadband):

KOPPEL: We're talking about two things. We're talking about money and we're talking about ultimately standing in the polls. There are only a couple of ways that you can measure how someone is doing at this stage in the election process, money and polls. You're not doing terribly well with money; you're doing even worse in the polls.

KOPPEL: When do you pull out?

KUCINICH: After I -- when I take the oath of office, when you're there to cover it. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE) ... and I can tell you, Ted, you know, we started at the beginning of this evening, talking about an endorsement. Well, I want the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country.

To start with endorsements... (APPLAUSE) We start talking about endorsements, now we're talking about polls, and then we're talking about money. Well, you know, when you do that, you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people.

Ted, I'm the only one up here that actually... (APPLAUSE) ... I'm the only up here on the stage that actually voted against the PATRIOT Act and voted against the war -- the only one on this stage.

I'm also... (APPLAUSE) ... I'm also one of the few candidates up here who's talking about taking our health-care system from this for-profit system to a not-for-profit, single-payer universal health care for all. (APPLAUSE)

I'm also the only one who has talked about getting out of NAFTA and the WTO and going back to bilateral trade... (APPLAUSE) ... conditioned on workers' rights, human rights and the environment. Now...

KOPPEL: Congressman?

KUCINICH: ... I may be inconvenient for some of those in the media, but, you know, I'm sorry about that. (APPLAUSE)

Ted's "losers" look better all the time, even as they look less and less like him.

If you missed it, you can watch the entire debate online at C-Span (RealMedia format).
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AP

December 9, 2003: Chris Farrell walks among the crosses and memorials at the site of the Station Nightclub fire where his uncle (Tommy Barnett) died. He and family members were briefly at the site to light candles and remember their relative and some of his friends.

6,557 Miles To Nowhere by Chuck Klosterman at Spin Magazine:

Death is part of life. Generally, it’s the shortest part of life, usually occurring near the end. However, this is not necessarily true for rock stars; sometimes rock stars don’t start living until they die. I want to understand why that is. I want to find out why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. I want to find out why plane crashes and drug overdoses and shotgun suicides turn longhaired guitar players into messianic prophets. I want to walk the blood-soaked streets of rock’n’roll and chat with the survivors as they writhe in the gutter. This is my quest. Now, to do this, I will need a rental car.

Death rides a pale horse, but I shall merely ride a silver Ford Taurus. I will drive this beast 6,557 miles, guided by a mind-expanding global positioning system that speaks to me in a soothing female voice...

I will stand where 112 people have fallen, unwilling victims of rock’s glistening scythe. And this will teach me what I already know.

And he visits death scenes, including the site of The Station nightclub in West Warwick, where 100 people at a Great White concert died Feb. 20, and captures the scene better than anything else I've read. Here's a little snip. The whole story is worth reading:

West Warwick, Rhode Island (Saturday, August 2, 5:25 p.m.): For some reason, I assumed the plot of land where dozens of people burned to death during a rock concert would look like a parking lot. I thought it would be leveled and obliterated, with no sign of what happened on February 20, 2003, the night pyrotechnics from blues-metal dinosaurs Great White turned a club called the Station into a hell mouth. Small towns usually make sure their places of doom disappear. But not this town: In West Warwick, what used to be a tavern is now an ad hoc cemetery -- which is the same role taverns play in most small towns, really, but not so obviously....

...A kid pulls into the parking lot and hauls an upright bass out of his vehicle; it’s one of those seven-foot monsters like the Stray Cats’ bassist used to play. He faces the grave markers, whips out a bow, and begins to play Eccles’ Sonata in G Minor. Either I am at the Station at the absolute perfect journalistic moment, or West Warwick is America’s new Twilight Zone.

“Oh, I used to play at this club all the time,” he says when I wander over. “I was in a band called Hawkins Rise, and I played upright bass through an amp. We were sort of like Zeppelin or the Who.” He tells me his name is Jeff Richardson, that he is a 24-year-old jazz fanatic, and that he knew five of the people who died here. He was vaguely familiar with many of the other 95.

“The same people came here every night,” Richardson says. “When a band like Great White or Warrant would come into town, all the same people would come out. There was never any pretentiousness at this club. You wouldn’t have to worry about some drunk guy yelling about how much your band sucked.”

To me, that’s what makes the Great White tragedy even sadder than it logically should be: One can safely assume that none of the 100 people who died were hanging out at the Station to be cool. These were blue-collar people trying unironically to experience rock’n’roll that had meant something to their lives when they were teenagers. ...

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Parting advice for newspapers: The late Sen. Paul Simon's last column, at Editor & Publisher:

...If the newspaper or television station is making a 15% profit, they want to boost it to 16%. I have sympathy for an appetite to make money but not for the all-consuming zeal that looks only at the short term. I once published small, weekly newspapers, 13 of them in four printing plants. I wanted my newspapers to make money or they would fold. I also knew that if those newspapers served their communities well, the communities would prosper, and in the long run, so would the newspapers. I can't prove that formula works, but my strong impression is that it does.

Pulitzer prizes are nice, but I sense they're not as important to most of today's CEOs as the profit margin, though they know that a good reputation adds to marketability. So news treatment by reporters, who are spread too thin, tends to be superficial. Personal scandals and controversies that would not have made the news 30 or 40 years ago often are the big news items. "It's what the public wants," we're told.

This excessive attention to the trivial, to the scintillating, is not good for the nation and is not responsible journalism. ...

...A 2001 survey of newspeople by the Columbia Journalism Review showed 84% of those polled found newsroom morale low, while only 15% think it is not low. One of the major reasons: profits taking priority over good reporting.

Excessive pandering to stockholders is as bad as any other form of pandering. It is of more than passing interest that the major mutual funds that try to invest in socially responsible corporations do not have any newspaper stock. I do, but I buy in companies that I believe are more than money machines.

It is important to remember the words of Tim McGuire, who stepped down in mid-2002 as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors: "We do not make Wheaties, and we do not make car bumpers. We make newspapers for a free society." To make profit an all-absorbing pursuit does not serve the nation well, and in the long run, it will not serve the media outlets well.

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The best of Bozeman police reports... calendar: Here's how Jim Romenesko blogged this one:

Writer turns newspaper's police reports into a calendar
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Heidi Ross began collecting police briefs from The Bozeman Daily Chronicle in 2000. "She was so taken with the jocularity and peculiar aspects of some of the police reports that she decided to make a 365-page tear-off calendar for family and friends as a Christmas gift," writes Angus Lind. "Little did she know what a hit this would be."

Some samples:

Jan. 1: A man believing himself to be God appeared in the lobby of the Lewis and Clark Motel at 7:40 p.m. and refused to leave. He was later identified as a 26-year-old man from Butte.

Feb. 9: Two men stole a picture of John Wayne from Santa Fe Reds of 1235 North Seventh Ave. during regular business hours. Witnesses tried to tell an employee of the theft as the men left the building, but the employee thought they said pitcher, not picture, and did nothing.

April 11: A man in the first block of West Main Street reported at 1:53 a.m. that his girlfriend came home drunk, wielded a knife, stabbed a box and poured wine on his head. He didn't want to press charges.

June 11: A house cat knocked over a can of static guard in a residence in the 800 block of North Grand Avenue, triggering a chain of events. The can landed on a heater vent, got too hot, exploded, knocked out two windows, started a chair on fire and put a hole in the ceiling.

Aug. 22: A man in a chicken suit and a man in a cow suit were reportedly wandering around a parking lot on South 11th Avenue at 12:45 a.m. The man in the cow suit was allegedly wearing an Afro wig.

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To the moon, Alice...: I've been thinking about the President's plan to go back to the moon. (It's odd we never did.)

The White House was seeking a "Kennedy moment" for President Bush, according to one unnamed consultant close to the President, quoted by The Washington Post. The moon project shaped the legacy of president John F. Kennedy, who proposed a moon mission prior to his assassination in 1963.

The first moon landing in 1969 is much more closely associated with his presidency than the Vietnam War, which he also set in motion.

These are such different times. One might legitimately wonder if we're planning to set up a government on the moon.

But there's a stronger reason to go for it: Now we want to know if there are really aliens on the moon. Which leads to ...
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...Deep thoughts: At the end of Part 4 of an interview headlined Lonely Planets: Welcome Earthlings at astrobiology magazine with Planetary Scientist David Grinspoon about his newest book, "Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life" comes this "lost forever" moment:

There is something spooky about the way mathematical relationships are so enmeshed with the physical nature of our universe. Complexity theory allows us to follow this intimate relationship beyond physics and into the realm of biology. Nobody knows why equations work so well in describing things. Maybe it's the handprint of God, or an ancient, advanced, powerful alien race. I saw the answer in its entirety once at a Grateful Dead show. I wish I could remember it.

A poll at the same site asks, "How did life first arise on Earth?" Here are the results today:

Common ancestor species 10.37 % (28)
Arrive from cometary debris 18.52 % (50)
Planetary exchange 9.63 % (26)
RNA replicants 22.96 % (62)
Species migration 17.41 % (47)
Unknowable 9.63 % (26)
Other 11.48 % (31)

Considerations of who we are: The Universe as a Hologram.

"We are really 'receivers' floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram. This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature."

What? The ideas are in the air: We're radios, picking up the events that become our lives.
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December 9, 2003 6:58 p.m.

It's apparently about a problem the industry didn't want to raise until a solution loomed.

Steve Connor, science editor of the Independent (UK), reports,

A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.

Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.

It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. ...

...Dr Roses, an academic geneticist from Duke University in North Carolina, spoke at a recent scientific meeting in London where he cited figures on how well different classes of drugs work in real patients.

Drugs for Alzheimer's disease work in fewer than one in three patients, whereas those for cancer are only effective in a quarter of patients. Drugs for migraines, for osteoporosis, and arthritis work in about half the patients, Dr Roses said. Most drugs work in fewer than one in two patients mainly because the recipients carry genes that interfere in some way with the medicine, he said.

"The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don't work in everybody."...

His solution is interesting: Test people to see if they have genes that block drugs before they're prescribed.

..."Roses is a smart guy and what he is saying will surprise the public but not his colleagues," said one industry scientist. "He is a pioneer of a new culture within the drugs business based on using genes to test for who can benefit from a particular drug."

Dr Roses has a formidable reputation in the field of "pharmacogenomics" - the application of human genetics to drug development - and his comments can be seen as an attempt to make the industry realise that its future rests on being able to target drugs to a smaller number of patients with specific genes.

The idea is to identify "responders" - people who benefit from the drug - with a simple and cheap genetic test that can be used to eliminate those non-responders who might benefit from another drug.

This goes against a marketing culture within the industry that has relied on selling as many drugs as possible to the widest number of patients - a culture that has made GSK one of the most profitable pharmaceuticals companies, but which has also meant that most of its drugs are at best useless, and even possibly dangerous, for many patients. ...

Here are the numbers:

Response rates

Therapeutic area: drug efficacy rate in per cent

* Alzheimer's: 30
* Analgesics (Cox-2): 80
* Asthma: 60
* Cardiac Arrythmias: 60
* Depression (SSRI): 62
* Diabetes: 57
* Hepatits C (HCV): 47
* Incontinence: 40
* Migraine (acute): 52
* Migraine (prophylaxis): 50
* Oncology: 25
* Rheumatoid arthritis: 50
* Schizophrenia: 60

The trick is to figure out what will work for you.
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Not for the bathtub: Think of it as a replacement for the floppy disk you used to carry big files from home to work and back, but it lights up when plugged in, and comes in three colors. Oh, and it holds considerably more data: 16 megs. And it's shaped like a duck.

Here's the blurb:

For those light-at-heart and animal lovers out there, Solid Alliance (Japan) has released a new i-Duck USB Memory Storage device. The i-Duck uses a USB 1.1 interface and has a maximum storage capacity of 16MB. When plugged into your computer’s USB port, the i-Duck will light up. Three different colors are available: pink, yellow and blue. A three color set is also available.

List price is $49. I don't think it floats.
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The Twisted Chipmunk Song animation: There's a cosmology unfurling around this tune. You know The Chipmunk Song -- and, if you're over the age of 10, you probably cringe when you hear it.

There's a The Twisted Chipmunk Song, written by Bob Rivers (whose site streams his assorted twisted parodies as "Twisted Christmas Radio") as part of his Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire album. And now there's a cartoon that goes with it (that's the link on the headline). Since it's not too clear, here's what they sing:

Christmas chipmunks sing each year
Squeaky rodents hurt your ears
We’ll sing bad till Christmas past
Hurry Christmas pass real fast

We’re a pain to listen to
Been around since ‘62
You could hardly stand us then
Now here we come again

Ah boys excuse me
Hold it, look you guys

You can hardly stand to hear
Three weasels every year

The 'toon has action afterwards that's pretty funny.

Here's some background on the original chestnut by Danny McBride at The Muse's Muse:

...what do you suppose the biggest-selling hit was during that time period, not counting Rudolph and White Christmas, as Casey Kasem would say "During the rock era"? Yup. You feared it was true: The Chipmunk Song from 1958. Ross Bagdasarian recording as David Seville, had had a novelty hit the year before called The Witch Doctor in which he used the variable speed of a reel-to-reel tape recorder to pitch his voice into the stratosphere, and sing along with himself. He duplicated the effect the next Christmas, more correctly TRIP-licated the effect, to create Simon, Theodore, and Alvin- -The Chipmunks. This smash novelty hit on Liberty Records won three Grammy awards, and was the only Number One Hit of the "rock era". Other mainstays, such as Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms, charted for many years after its debut in 1957, but never peaked any higher than Number Six in Billboard. Oh, and you should know this- -The names of the three top executives at Liberty Records in 1958? Right! Simon, Theodore, and Alvin.

And just when it looked like this was wrapping up, there's a parody of The Twisted Chipmunk Song called The Twisted Destiny's Child Song.

If this is all too tacky for you, you can buy more elevating holiday cheer right now on eBay: Tidings of Comfort and Joy. After starting at 25 cents, the bidding has roared up to $15.50 in the 10-day listing. You still have another day to win it.
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Why the Current Touch Screen Voting Fiasco Was Pretty Much Inevitable: Robert X. Cringely at pbs.org writes,

Now here's the really interesting part. Forgetting for a moment Diebold's voting machines, let's look at the other equipment they make. Diebold makes a lot of ATM machines. They make machines that sell tickets for trains and subways. They make store checkout scanners, including self-service scanners. They make machines that allow access to buildings for people with magnetic cards. They make machines that use magnetic cards for payment in closed systems like university dining rooms. All of these are machines that involve data input that results in a transaction, just like a voting machine. But unlike a voting machine, every one of these other kinds of Diebold machines -- EVERY ONE -- creates a paper trail and can be audited. Would Citibank have it any other way? Would Home Depot? Would the CIA? Of course not. These machines affect the livelihood of their owners. If they can't be audited they can't be trusted. If they can't be trusted they won't be used.

Now back to those voting machines. If EVERY OTHER kind of machine you make includes an auditable paper trail, wouldn't it seem logical to include such a capability in the voting machines, too? Given that what you are doing is adapting existing technology to a new purpose, wouldn't it be logical to carry over to voting machines this capability that is so important in every other kind of transaction device?

This confuses me. I'd love to know who said to leave the feature out and why?

Next week: the answer.

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Hubris alert: Doc Searls quotes a brand new blogger -- Mango Lama, by nom de plume -- who writes,

I was just reading Doc Searles' weblog which has an entry about the Howard Dean campaign for president. There are several references to how "Big Media" (of which I'm a small cog) just do not get the way Dean's campaign is "using" the Internet, specifically the weblog, to communicate and listen to supporters and voters. Permalink at Doc Searles

...When the dust settles, I think it will be these "stern corportate editors" that separate the 'blog from Big Media. "Big Media" will become the fallback for reliability, as far as that can be established in any sort of journalism. Most blogs won't can't don't rise to the level of fact-checking and editorial standards of a good newspaper. Chew on that.

Doc: Okay. Just one small fact-check. It's Searls, not Searles.

Ain't no "corportate" editors in this newsroom setting the standards, that's for sure.

Poetic justice lives.
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All shook up: Lou Josephs blogs today's earthquake in the Virginia-D.C. area. He lives in Potomac, Md., 10 miles west of D.C. The earth that quaked was 35 miles west of Richmond.
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Not your mother's Mad Magazine: Mad was one of my early loves. But I don't remember it as political -- or maybe it all went over my head.

The current issue targets The 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things of 2003 and includes The George W. Bush G.I. Joke Action Figure.
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Club owners, ex-band manager charged in Station fire deaths: A grand jury handed down Indictments today in The Station fire case. (Feb. 20, 100 concertgoers died when the tour manager of '80s band Jack Russell and Great White set off "gerbs" -- big sparklers -- near highly flammable soundproofing.

Projo.com reports (reg.req),

WARWICK -- The owners of The Station nightclub and the former tour manager for Great White were indicted today by a grand jury on charges related to the Feb. 20 fire that started after the band's pyrotechnics ignited the club, killing 100 people and injuring scores of other concertgoers.

Club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian were each charged with 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter with criminal negligence, and 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter in violation of a misdemeanor. Each of the 100 counts is linked to an individual's death.

Former band tour manager Dan Biechele, who lit the pyrotechnics that sparked the blaze at the West Warwick club, was also charged with the same counts, bringing the total number of charges against the three men to 600.

Members of the 1980s' rock band Great White, who have been named in several civil suits, were not charged by the grand jury.

The three men were arraigned this afternoon in Kent County Superior Court before Judge Netti C. Vogel, in proceedings televised on local stations.

... Bail for each of the Derderians was set at $50,000 with surety or $5,000 cash, despite an effort by lawyers Jeff Pine, representing Jeffrey Derderian, and Kathleen Haggerty, representing Michael Derderian, to have them freed on personal recognizance.

The lawyers argued that the the brothers' strong ties to Rhode Island would be enough.

However, Vogel would not agree, saying, "We're talking about charges arising out of the deaths of 100 individuals. It's the magnitude of those charges which prompts me to set that surety bail."

Both brothers had made bail by 3:15 p.m., Pine said.

Bail for Biechele was set even higher, at $100,000 with surety, or $10,000 cash, because his residence is in Florida, in Winter Springs. He was also expected to make bail this afternoon, according to his lawyer, Thomas Briody.

... After the arraignment, Biechele's lawyer, Briody, said in a statement, "While we are deeply sympathetic to the victims, the fact remains that Dan Biechele is not guilty of the charges brought in the case. He could not have known of the dangerous conditions that existed inside in The Station -- the limits on the crowd, the flammable and toxic foams on the walls. He relied on the word of the people who told him that Great White could perform and perform with the use of pyrotechnic devices."

Biechele helped fight the fire, Briody noted, and has cooperated with the attorney general at every step in the investigation.

On behalf of both Derderians, Pine also spoke to the press after the arraignment, saying, “They are not criminals – they did not commit criminal acts – and they should not be charged with any crime.”

He continued, “We feel other people are responsible for this tragedy " -- specifically, he said, Jack Russell, the leader of the Great White band, and those who set off the pyrotechnics.

He also reiterated the Derderians' position that they did not approve the use of the pyrotechnics by Great White, which has been disputed by the band.

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December 8, 2003 7:35 p.m.

Providence Journal/Bob Breidenbach

December 7, 2003: Fans send up plumes of snow to celebrate Tedy Bruschi's pass interception and waltz into the Miami Dolphins' end zone, effectively clinching the New England Patriots' AFC title in a game played after two days of snow dumped a couple of feet of it on Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.

It's a dogged, low-scoring game in the snow, nobody moving the ball all that well. The Dolphins, up from Miami, look like they just want it to be over so they can go home.

But it's a nailbiter: The Patriots have led for three points for most of the game. Then, in the fourth quarter, newbie Brooks Barnard, in his first-ever NFL game, puts a 36-yard punt down on the Miami 4-yard line. Next play, Tedy Bruschi intercepts a Jay Fiedler pass and runs it in 5 yards for a touchdown. Pats fans erupt, celebrating with what they had: They threw snow. Exuberant, powdery, fluffy snow.

The scene melted crusty sportswriters :

Jim Donaldson, Providence Journal (reg.req):

Following Bruschi's interception -- his second of the season, both of which he has returned for touchdowns -- fans began tossing snow into the air, the powdery flakes looking like puffs of wintry smoke.

It was a fun-filled combination of Winter Carnival and Fourth of July, the celebration resembling the grand finale of a dazzling fireworks display, the bright white of the snow sparkling in the lights illuminating the frozen field.

At first, it was a random burst of enthusiasm. But then, as the sounds of Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll, Part II," reverberated through the stadium, the fans began to toss snow in unison every time the word "Hey!" was broadcast.

Ba-da-da-da-dum -- hey! Flurries of snow flying into the air. Ba-da-da-da-dum -- hey! Flakes flying everywhere.

"That was pretty cool," Pats QB Tom Brady said.

"It got me in the holiday spirit," said Bruschi.

Steve Solloway, Portland (Maine) Press-Herald:

The touchdown was Tedy Bruschi's but the moment belonged to you.

Poof. Poof poof poof. Poof.

Bruschi ran into the end zone but his celebration had nothing on yours. Poof poof poof.

Handfuls of snow were thrown into the air where the swirling wind caught the flakes and scattered them like some magical squall. Poof. Poof.

The bursts of swirling snow looked like the smoke of fireworks. But there was no bang. Just the sound of cheering and laughter.

Just the sight of something so childlike, so unrehearsed, it made tough men in New England Patriots uniforms stop what they were doing and smile.

"That was so cool," said Damien Woody, the big left guard. "I'd love to see that again."

We live in a world where sports fans mug incessantly for the cameras, as their testosterone levels soar. But this, in the frozen landscape that was Gillette Stadium Sunday, was something different.

Years from now, when snow flies everywhere on big plays (astro-snow some places, probably, sold at the game), remember: It started here yesterday.

Just as flicking a lighter at rock shows began at Woodstock (when Melanie suggested we do that so we could see how many we were, and lights started appearing that seemed to come from miles away), a new tradition has been born.

As for the football, we're in awe. This modest team with no arrogant superstars and a brainy coach is just perfect for New England. We love these guys.

Related: Read 'em and gloat. Reports from the losers' papers: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald, Florida Today
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How to shut down the spam factory in your computer: In a story headlined Hackers Steal From Pirates, to No Good End, John Schwarz in the Times reports that

Programs like Sinit infect target machines and surreptitiously open back doors that allow outsiders to control the PC's. The rings of infected computers have been used to send spam, to present online advertisements for pornographic Web sites or to trick people into giving up information like credit card numbers.

In fact, at least a third of all spam circulating on the Internet is now sent from or relayed by personal home computers that have been taken over, said Jesse Dougherty, director of development at Sophos, an antivirus and antispam company.

But the story doesn't say what to do about it. Here's a web page from Symantec that will let you check to see if you have the "Trojan horse" called Backdoor-Sinit on your system, and how to remove it. (Only if you know what you're doing!)
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Dave Barry's annual Gift Guide: The wags on the desk headlined it, WRAP STARS: Looking for a talking toilet-paper dispenser or bird diapers?...
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States scrutinize e-voting as primaries near: News.com reports,

Renewed uneasiness over e-voting technology is manifesting itself in new security audits and demands for paper-based recount safeguards. In recent weeks, four states representing nearly a fifth of the U.S. population--California, Maryland, Nevada and Ohio--have taken official steps to re-evaluate the systems or require paper trails. In case you missed this, "Last month, The International Herald Tribune convened a roundtable at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan to discuss how job migration is changing the landscape.

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Exporting jobs: "Last month, The International Herald Tribune convened a roundtable at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan to discuss how job migration is changing the landscape.

"The participants were Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington that receives a third of its financing from labor unions; Diana Farrell, the director of the McKinsey Global Institute, which is McKinsey & Company's internal economics research group; Edmund Harriss, the portfolio manager of the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong fund and the Guinness Atkinson Asia Focus fund; M. Eric Johnson, director of Tuck's Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College; and, via conference call from Singapore, Stephen S. Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley . Following are excerpts from their conversation. "

...MR. ROACH Over the September to November period, employment has turned up, but many of those jobs came from the temporary hiring industry. These are service jobs, contingent workers without benefits and significantly lower pay scales. We're getting the G.D.P. growth, and by now any recovery in the past would be flashing green on the hiring front. This one isn't. With all due respect, I don't know what you guys are talking about. This is a profoundly different relationship between hiring and the business cycle. And I think these jobs are, by in large, lost forever.

Q. Who wins in offshoring and who loses?

MS. FARRELL There is an assumption by protectionists that these jobs are going somewhere else, and all this money has been pocketed by C.E.O.'s who take it home. A little more sophisticated version is: It's being pocketed by companies in the form of profits. One step further and you say those profits are either going to go as returns to the investors in those companies, or they're going to go into new investment by those companies. Those savings enable me, if I am an investor, to consume more and therefore contribute to job recreation, and if I am a company, to re-invest and create jobs. That's important because I agree that we are migrating jobs away, some of which will never return, nor should they.

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Pill earrings: "Celebrating decades of medical and pharmaceutical research... It's fashion time for the Drug Nation." Truly strange times.
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Limbaugh Pokes Fun at Pain-Killer Probe: No street smarts at all.
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Bad bugs: J.D. Lasica spent the weekend in the hospital with pneumonia:

I completely lost my voice on Thursday. Finally, on Friday, I pried a last-minute appointment out of my doctor, and it's a good thing I did. Two chest X-rays revealed that I had somehow contracted pneumonia.

So, this is the sickest I've ever been. Not life-and-death stuff (though that would have been a different story in a different era), but nasty enough to require a three-day stay in the hospital. I just got out an hour ago, after a weekend filled with IV drips of the antibiotics doxycycline and avelox, with some prednisone thrown in for the lungs.

This is nasty stuff. My daughter had it over Thanksgiving. If you have a barking cough, go to a doctor. Now.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com