Resident whiz evariste fixed the broken free ice-cream machine, and explained the problem (we’re having two: malformed comments from spammers seemed to shut down PHP, and akismet keeps going down) in language even I could understand.

Apologies all around…

The RSS excerpt on this incoherent New York Times editorial caught my attention:

Then the F.D.A. should move as quickly as possible to determine the effects of menthol and what should be done to regulate or ban it.

You know, this whole research and factfinding thing is kind of tiresome. We’re pretty sure it might be a problem – therefore let’s regulate or ban it. Because you can never have enough regulation, and you can never ban enough things to make people truly safe and healthy.

I’m becoming a Libertarian, I swear…the more I read this drivel, the more tempting a subscription to Reason looks.

*…I’ll leave the provenance of the quote to the crowd. No fair using Google.

In a story in the local Santa Rosa paper, it is suggested that the outburst by Sen Pat Wiggins I linked to below may be part of an emerging pattern of behavior, rather than simple rudeness:

The outburst did not come as a shock to a half-dozen past and current elected leaders, public officials and supporters who said they have become alarmed about what they see as the senator’s increasingly erratic behavior over the past few months.

The incidents include inappropriate comments, displays of temper and the need to speak from prepared scripts.

“It’s bad news. Clearly, something is wrong,” said a longtime supporter, who, along with others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

I hope she’s just having a bad spell…and it does appear that my suggestion that this was the product of an elected official’s arrogance may have been misplaced.

(…who only occasionally knows what I’m talking about).

Down in the comments on Georgia, I suggested sending in a hospital plane and unarmed troops.

Austin Bay has an interesting piece on his proposed response to a Georgia-type event…and kind of agrees with me (in a more knowledgeable way):

The fictional reply: Insert a Peacekeeping Brigade (PKB). Call it a Peacekeeping Organization (PKO) if you want to give it an extra diplomatic smudge.

A peacekeeping brigade comprises at least two engineer battalions with attached military police, medical, Civil Affairs, signal units and lots of media connectivity. Cameras matter. Add State Department personnel. Add Special Forces with their linguistic talents and a light infantry battalion for local security. Embed non-governmental organizations with the guts to participate and promise support to NGOs who choose to operate on their own but would accept clean water and blankets. Why, Mr. President, you can help the human shields. Aren’t they heading for Georgia to stop a super-power invasion? Tell the human shields our peacekeeping outfit will give them MREs and bandaids while they chain themselves to Georgian churches to protect them from Russian bombs.

Insert the PKB in a Russo-Georgia type situation and the emerging democracy gets on-the-ground support. The PKB is not an offensive military force, but an airborne brigade at the end of a long logistical tether isn’t either. The PKB serves as a military-diplomatic “transition signal” – Texas Hold’em and the emerging democracy get some of the value of a combat speed bump, while reducing though not eliminating the risks of inserting combat forces.

There’s more, as well as a really good analysis of the problem we face…

I did a podcast interview with Skewz editor Vipul Vyas this morning; it was a little unfocused, but a fun conversation. It’ll be up in a day or so and I’ll link to it here.

But I wanted to take a second and point you at their site – it’s one of a new breed of interesting news aggregators that potentially go a step beyond Digg or reddit by allowing useful user annotation of the stories that get promoted. I’ll comment more on these new critters as well as on my podcast when it comes up.

Not at John Edwards, who’s just a fallible person, but at the press who effectively acted as his beards during his affair.

Take a look at this picture, shot by Robert Scoble from the Washington Post today:

Take a look at the body language of Edwards and Hunter, sitting next to him as the reporters question him (Hamsher calls it “holding court”).

WTF?

Who are the two reporters sitting and talking to them? Either they are the most clueless and disinterested men on the planet – and thus unqualified to be reporters – or they were in the tank for Edwards and covering up his behavior – and thus unqualified to be reporters. Someone help me figure out who they are so I can publicly shame them.

Like I said, I’m uninterested in paying for crap media. How in the Wide World of Sports could a thinking reporter have sat there, looking at the two of them, and not gone “hmmmm…” and done a little digging or maybe asked a question or two?

At a state Senate hearing on California’s efforts to cut emissions and shadowbox global warming, an African-American Sacramento preacher was pushing for participation in this process by minority spokespeople – because they will have the most trouble bearing the higher energy costs associated with going green.

He got an earful from Democratic Sen. Pat Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa…

She’s since apologized, shockingly…

You read about people who have cancer, feel fine, and then get the news. The day before they got the news, they were still ill, they just didn’t know it. They might have had twinges, or some concerns. But until the test results came in, they thought they were fine. I feel similarly about Georgia – it’s the lab result that reminds us that we face a strong, ruthless, imperialistic power in Russia that fully intends to get its place at the superpower table back, by any means necessary.

I read a lot of the commentary over the weekend, and a lot of it makes the question of ’cause’ deeper and murkier than ever. It’s likely that Georgia overreached; it’s equally likely that Russia would have acted sooner or later regardless. The question is whether Russia intends to eat Georgia in one bite now, or just weaken it enough that the Georgian leadership reconsiders the value of a close relationship with the US.

One of the negative consequences of our balancing act on Iran is the fact that we’re dependent on the Russians and Chinese to help keep the situation there metastable – meaning that our freedom of action is severely limited elsewhere.

Sorry for the silence – we had another family road trip this weekend to fetch Littlest Guy from camp.

Here he is, looking all James Dean in front of his Stanford (boo!) dorm…

Afterward, we went over to Berkeley (yay!) for some high-end-dining.

We had a German Frankfurter, and it was just as good as I remembered it from 30 years ago. The libertarian literature was something I didn’t remember, tho…

All in all, a great trip. Good visits with friends, great time with TG and the boys (Middle Guy came along).

…catching up on work and blogging will resume shortly.

I’m sorry for stealing Gerard Vanderleun’s oft-used title for this, but I really can’t think of any other name for the opportunity the Ceiling Cat has placed in my lap today.

See, I was reading Jeff Jarvis’ feed, as I usually, do, and he was commenting favorably on the New Jersey Star Ledger’s video newsroom; he mentioned that there had been some dialog with a blogger, which I thought might be amusing, and so I clicked over and watched it.

The video is embedded below. Go to 5:55 to see the part I’m discussing…

Ledger Live – 08-06-08

All good?

See, today, I’ve been following another story about journalism, but couldn’t think of an angle to make it an interesting blog post until I watched the video.

Townhall apparently busted the Washington Post for a Page 1 story on McCain donations, which turned out to name suspicious donors – who never donated to John McCain. Here’s the Townhall followup:

That means these people Mosk alleged had been somehow forced to make campaign contributions to McCain through a third-party bundler NEVER DONATED MONEY TO MCCAIN. The very lede of Mosk’s front-page story, included in my previous post linked above, was wrong. What’s going on with the Washington Post? How could they have blown this one so badly? And where did the March 12 contribution date come from?

Update: I just remembered Mosk was the same reporter who tried to rustle up a McCain land-swap scandal on shaky facts earlier this year. I wrote about it HERE.

That’s one of the two national newspapers of record. Let’s go back to the video, OK?

“We have been under the mistaken idea that journalism is about getting out into the world, covering school boards, murder trials, digging through government documents. But we hear from a prominent New Jersey blogger that the future of the American newsroom will be people at home, in their pajamas, blogging. Perhaps, say, we can tell you what we had for breakfast, I don’t really know. But we thought that trying to be at the cutting edge in these difficult times that for a little levity we would perhaps remind people that there are real journalists who get out in the world and get you your news.”

Now Carol Ann Campbell may be a better reporter than she is hairstylist – although as someone who’s made legislation happen in my spare time, I’ll suggest they’ve set a low bar for her by using that as the measure of quality for her journalism.

And props – as Jarvis has offered – to the Star-Ledger for doing this exercise at all. Now Jeff has issues with their reactions as journalists to the new business reality:

But what struck me listening to them is that they are not prepared for that independent life. I was looking at this from the perspective of being both a former newspaperman who did find a new life in the academe and elsewhere and from the perspective of now being a journalism educator. It is vital that we prepare journalists for this new and independent life or we will lose their journalism. Preparation, to me, means both training – it’s a great thing that Ledger print people are making video in the Rosenblum Method – and setting up an infrastructure to help them create sustainable journalistic enterprises if at all possible. The first factor is why I’m trying to establish a continuing education program for professionals at CUNY. The second is why I’m holding a summit for new business models for news there. That’s my perspective.

But it’s more than that. The issue isn’t just that Americans don’t want to pay for traditional journalism – it’s that they don’t want to pay for crap traditional journalism, and there is enough crap in the line that the whole pipe is tainted. Rathergate, Gropegate, now Donorgate – look, I’m happy to pay for quality information. Mike Bloomberg made a few billion dollars selling it. But I’ll be damned – and most Americans will be damned too – if we’ll pay for junk when better junk is available for free.

This isn’t (just) about transparent agendas. You can be a good journalist and have an agenda, I’m sure. It’s just that the present generation of journalists seems incapable of following the basic dicta of their craft in favor of transparent posturing. And to be blunt, we bloggers are just as good at posturing and twice as entertaining.

So how about it journalists? Why not – just for grins – try doing real journalism (the stuff you’re claiming to sell us). And why not, editors, have some public consequences – OK stocks might be excessive, but firing and some front-page apologies might not be a bad idea. Eventually you might learn to self-correct.

Until then we’ll be sitting here in our pajamas correcting you.