NPR: The NPR News Blog

August 31, 2007

A Web That Can Accommodate More Than Itsy Bitsies

As we prepare to take off for the Labor Day weekend and enjoy the traditional end of summer, we'd like to leave you on a note of utter revulsion. That is, unless you like spiders. (Ick.)

A worker at a park in Texas has found a HUGE spider web — we're talking hundreds of yards here — that's home to millions of the creepy crawlies. It has scientists fascinated and park workers determined to protect it from human hands.

But has anyone stopped to consider that maybe this is just a clever marketing ploy for Rob Zombie's Halloween?

We'll be back on Tuesday. Send any good leads to newsblog@npr.org.

- Erica Ryan

4:42 PM ET | 08-31-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Iraqis Questioned After Speaking Arabic on Plane

African-Americans have a term for it: DWB ("Driving While Black"). It basically means that they were stopped by police for no other reason than the color of their skin.

Arab-Americans also have a version: FWM ("Flying While Muslim"). And its variation, FWA ("Flying While Arab"). If you look Muslim or Arab, and you fly, you can be immediately suspect.

Tuesday's American Airlines Flight 590 from San Diego to Chicago was delayed after passengers heard people on board speaking Arabic. The Associated Press reports that it turned out "six Iraqi men on board work for a defense contractor and were reportedly taking the overnight flight home after a job at Camp Pendleton training Marines headed for Iraq."

The men were quickly questioned and released, but by then it was too late for the plane to leave, which meant everyone had to wait until the next morning.

"We were hired for this government. We can prove ourselves. We are good people, not a bad people," Dave Alwatan, an Iraqi and a U.S. citizen, told the media. "How can we be bad if we are helping our people here — American people? Why are we getting treated like that?"

Good question. Now, I understand that people are nervous these days, but would terrorists trying to take down a plane really begin speaking Arabic to each other when others could hear?

Then again, as Rhonda Roumani wrote for Beliefnet, the fear of FWA can make even Arabs suspicious of each other.

NBC Universal Says It Won't Renew Deal with iTunes

"Save the cheerleader, save the world." But it doesn't look like anything will save the deal between iTunes and NBC Universal, the owner of shows like Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock.

Daily Tech writes that NBC is tired of the almost iron-like grip that Apple likes to keep on, well, pretty much everything it touches. In this case, it's the pricing model used to distribute music and video on iTunes.

NBC Universal feels that it should ... have the ability to package content together. Apple on the other hand has stood its ground with regards to pricing and contends that packaging video content would lead to confusion for buyers and decrease demand.

NBC Universal is currently the top provider of videos on iTunes, making up 40 percent of the site's downloads. You'll still be able to get the shows you like until the end of December, but after that, well, you'll have to go back to watching the cheerleader get saved on regular TV.

There is always the chance of an 11th-hour agreement. But right now, it looks like NBC is not playing Apple's tune ... or, should I say, iTune. But it is a familiar one for Apple. In July, Universal Music Group decided not to renew its long-term contract with Apple over similar pricing concerns.

1:29 PM ET | 08-31-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Iowa Judge Strikes Down Same-Sex Marriage Ban

Judging from the reaction, an Iowa county judge's decision to strike down the state's decade-old ban on same-sex marriage seems to have caught most conservatives in the state by surprise.

Only Polk County, Iowa, is affected by Judge Robert Hanson's ruling. But couples from across the state can come to the county and apply to get married. One gay couple has already applied for a marriage license and five more have made inquiries. There is a three-day approval process after the application is made.

The Associated Press reports that Hanson ruled that "the state law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman violates the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection."

"Couples, such as plaintiffs, who are otherwise qualified to marry one another may not be denied licenses to marry or certificates of marriage or in any other way prevented from entering into a civil marriage ... by reason of the fact that both person comprising such a couple are of the same sex," he said.

Polk County Attorney John Sarcone says he will appeal the decision to the Iowa Supreme Court and ask for an immediate stay of Hanson's order so no gay couples can get a marriage license.

State Republican lawmakers have vowed to take action and pass a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. They want Gov. Chet Culver to add the gay marriage debate to a special legislative session he has said he might convene to deal with the date of the Iowa caucuses. Otherwise, the lawmakers say they will take it up when the regular session starts in January.

(Update: Two men were married in Des Moines this morning after a judge waived the three-day waiting period for them. However, Hanson stayed his ruling about two hours later.)

August 30, 2007

Helping Students Deal with On-Campus Drinking

During much of the '90s, I lived in university housing at a big school on the East Coast. My wife was finishing her degree and was an "assistant senior tutor" assigned to monitor students in the residence where we lived. That made me a tutor by default. And one of my jobs became what I called "the alcohol patrol."

Many freshmen come to college unprepared to deal with the pressure of campus drinking. And I mean, there is a lot of pressure — almost every "unofficial" student event seems to involve alcohol. Universities try to deal with it in a variety of ways, but kids tend to find ways around the rules. Because beer is too hard to hide, the underage kids I encountered tended to slip pints of liquor under their coats, meaning they often drank way more than they could handle.

Several times I found over-intoxicated freshmen who I had to take the campus infirmary.

That's why I was interested in Karen Grigsby Bates' piece on Day to Day about Choose Responsibility, a program headed by a former college president that advocates "a legal drinking age of 18 years old, administered through a graduated, licensed-to-drink program." Through my personal experience, I have seen how having a drinking age of 21 can encourage binge drinking in college.

Another option schools are using is "drinking education." While it would be incredibly difficult to stop college students from drinking altogether, programs like AlcoholEdu can help them understand the consequences of alcohol both personally and academically ... before a tutor has to scrape them off the bathroom floor.

New Study Shows Renters Are in Trouble Too

I'm actually working from home today. I'm moving into a new house, and in between posts I'm packing boxes. But I'm not buying — I'm renting. Until my house in Massachusetts sells and I save enough for a reasonable down payment ... and the housing market picks itself up off the floor ... renting is my only option.

Apparently, I'm not alone. As more and more owners lose their homes to foreclosure in the housing crunch, increasing numbers of people are going to need to rent.

The Center for Housing Policy issued a study today that shows a quarter of renters are shelling out more than half of their income to landlords. And the market is likely to get worse for middle- and low-income people as more former homeowners move back to renting or as people who might have gone from renting to buying decide to stay put. The two worst places in the country to rent are side-by-side: Anaheim and Los Angeles.

Sam Eaton of Marketplace tells Day to Day's Alex Cohen that rents are likely to increase by about 4 percent this year and next. And renting is not just getting harder in big cities — Denver and Indianapolis are two medium-sized cities being hit hard.

Eaton says this is only the calm before the storm. As more people default on loans, experts are saying that 2008 is going to "a pretty bad one."

IAEA: Iran Slows Uranium Enrichment

In what it calls a "significant" development, the International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has slowed enrichment of uranium and increased cooperation with the agency — meaning Iran could be cleared of suspicions that its nuclear work in the past was part of a plan to build nuclear weapons.

Bloomberg reports that IAEA officials in Vienna say that it's the first time that they've agreed with Iran on a plan to resolve the outstanding issues that triggered sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

But the development probably won't satisfy Iran's biggest critic, the United States, Bloomberg reports.

Today's report "is good news in itself, but I doubt it will be welcomed wholeheartedly by the UN Security Council," Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history and an associate fellow at the Chatham House international affairs institute in London, said in a telephone interview. "Washington will say Iran is being manipulative, giving a little to avoid sanctions in the short term.''

The United States is expected to press for a third round of sanctions next month. But Iranian officials have threatened to pull out of the agreement with the IAEA if the sanctions go ahead.

When 'Witness Protection' Is Really a Misnomer

"Witness protection," eh? Perhaps it might be better called the "We'll help you hide out for a few months, and then you're on your own" program.

That's the feeling I had after listening to Scott Shafer's All Things Considered report on San Francisco's witness protection program. Witness protection is an idea that TV and movies have turned into a cultural touchstone. (For instance, it was one of the options bandied about when people were debating what might happen to Tony at the end of The Sopranos a couple of months ago.)

But in real life, only 14 states offer this kind of deal for potential witnesses. (The federal program covers all the states but only covers federal crimes, and it has problems of its own.) And as Shafer reported, "...the programs don't literally protect anyone. There's no round-the-clock surveillance, and no fancy safe house; witnesses are simply moved out of the place where the crime occurred into a safer location."

The San Francisco program lasts three months after a criminal is convicted and then "the witnesses are basically on their own." Efforts are being made to improve the program — California is doubling the funding available for witness protection next year to more than $6 million.

But I can see why people might be reluctant to talk if witness protection often isn't.

10:52 AM ET | 08-30-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Report on Iraq Conflicts with Administration Assessment

This could make it a little harder for the president to get that extra $50 billion for the war in Iraq.

The Washington Post has obtained a draft of a report that the Government Accountability Office will present Tuesday to Congress, and it ain't pretty. According to the Post, the GOA report, entitled Securing, Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq, says that the Iraqi government has "failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress."

"While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."
"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised.

And there's a dig at the White House in the report as well. Future assessments from the administration would be more useful, the draft suggests, if "they backed up their judgments with more details and 'provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies.'"

Interestingly, the Post says the person who provided the draft said it was being passed on from a government official who was afraid it would be "watered down" before it was officially released.

(Tom's Update: Well, there you go. The Associated Press is reporting that the Pentagon has asked for changes to be made in the GAO report before its final release, asking that some of the negative assessments be revised. A Pentagon spokesman said that "policy officials 'made some factual corrections' and 'offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades' assigned by the GAO.")

9:28 AM ET | 08-30-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

August 29, 2007

Is Bacn Filling Up Your Inbox?

I love bacon. But it's not all good for you, and I'm not talking about the fat content.

NPR.org's Eric Weiner has a great piece about "bacn." (No, that is not a typo.) Don't know what bacn is? Bacn is, well, spam that you want (a concept that sends shivers down my spine, truth be told). Think bank statements, specials on pizza from your local store, notices from your kids' school or even news updates from NPR. It's stuff you want, but it can still slow you down and clog your Internet arteries, just like spam.

Bacn, like spam, can be annoying, but it's a specific kind of annoyance. Like pornography, you know it when you see it. An e-mail from your wife is not bacn — that's personal. An e-mail from Nigeria offering to send you $3 million is not bacn — that's spam. Bacn is everything in between, the "middle class of e-mail," [Tommy Vallier, a Canadian blogger] says.

There is also "FakinBacn" — spam that poses as bacn.

I'm getting a stomachache. But there may be a cure in the advice of Bruno Giussani, who's described as "a popular Swiss blogger" (that's a phrase you don't see too often). As Giussani says, you can just use e-mail filters to put your bacn into various folders in your e-mail program. Giussani doesn't think it's a big deal: "So five or six geeks meet at a conference, start tossing names around, and then pretend to have identified a new trend."

In the end, it all leads to various existential questions: If you leave bacn in your inbox too long, does it spoil? Does Weight Watchers send out low-fat bacn? And wouldn't Canadian bacn be ham?

The Voices of Those Who Couldn't Save New Orleans

Before Katrina, New Orleans was my favorite American city to visit. And when the storm hit two years ago today, I remember thinking that things would be fine, based on the reactions of the cable news outlets. (I distinctly recall one national TV reporter sounding almost disappointed that nothing catastrophic seemed to be happening.)

Then the levees broke.

In the past week or so, there have been lots of stories highlighting the efforts to rebuild New Orleans. But the voices that have remained with me are those of the people who tried and failed. Residents who really wanted to stay and rebuild or people born there who returned to put New Orleans back together again — and just couldn't do it.

On Tuesday, Morning Edition featured a commentary by Matt Roberts, who had moved to the city to teach high school English because he wanted to make a difference. But he has decided to quit — it was just too much for him. His description of feeling like a quitter is bracing.

And All Things Considered aired a commentary by freelance reporter Eve Troeh, who says she was the poster girl for New Orleans last year. But she felt her blinders start to come off after a friend was murdered in her home and other friends were mugged. Then she was attacked one night this summer. Now, she's left.

The stories of the great progress some people have made in just two years are amazing. But when you listen to Roberts and Troeh, you realize that two years, after all, is really not all that much time — and that things don't seem all that much better.

Study: Cramming Works for SATs, But Not Long Term

I always suspected this was true, but now there is scientific research showing that you can study too much for nothing. I just wish someone had told me that in college.

Cognitive Daily reports on a new study about studying by University of South Florida psychologist Doug Rohrer and Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego. The two researchers had groups of students study vocabulary in different ways. Here's a good description from the blog on the Web site of the Association for Psychological Science, which published the research in one of its journals.

So what did they find?

Well, cramming actually makes sense if you're studying for something with a lot of questions on stuff you might not need to know forever, like the SATs. The research showed people could retain stuff like that really well for about a week, and then it kind of disappeared from their brains. At four weeks, the advantage that the crammers had over the non-crammers had totally disappeared.

If you want to study for something that you need to know over a long period of time, like medicine or law, let's say, then cramming is not a good idea. Instead, building in breaks between studying helps students retain knowledge over a much longer period of time. If you really want to remember something, "massing knowledge" is your worst option.

This may explain why I can't remember a thing from my college physics or calculus courses.

Bush Sells War Optimism, but Not Everyone Is Buying

You really have to give President Bush credit: He stays on message. Regardless of what is happening, he doesn't seem to waiver in his depiction of the war in Iraq — that the latest strategy (currently, the surge) appears to be working and that momentum is on the American side.

That's the message he gave to the American Legion convention on Tuesday. It's almost the same message he gave the group last year as well, when he said, "America has a clear strategy to help the Iraqi people protect their new freedom and build a democracy that can govern itself and sustain itself and defend itself."

But The Washington Post reports that the message was greeted with more skepticism this year. A few months after last year's speech, U.S. officials acknowledged that sectarian violence had spun out of control and that the strategy to increase security had collapsed. That has some vets wary this time. "His credibility went way down" after past predictions fell short, said Dave Rehbein, a Vietnam War-era veteran at the convention.

Recent upbeat assessments by visitors to Iraq have helped bolster the president's message, but some analysts say Bush has a tendency to oversell that may hurt him.

"The history of this presidency has been to over-promise and under-perform," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The resulting expectations have often led Americans to feel like we are failing. From what I have seen to date, we are repeating the process."

Well, it looks like we'll soon get a chance to see what Congress thinks about the momentum. On the same day Bush spoke to the Legion, a White House official told the Post that the president plans to ask Congress in September to give him an additional $50 billion to fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

August 28, 2007

Magazine's Terrorism Index Catches Attention in Israel

Here's a tidbit that didn't get much attention in the United States but "raised eyebrows" in Israel, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Last week, Foreign Policy magazine published its Terrorism Index, which surveyed American foreign policy experts from across the political spectrum on various U.S. national security issues. One of the questions asked the experts to choose the country that least serves U.S. national security interests.

Russia led the list at 34 percent. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were next. But tucked away in fourth place was Israel at 14 percent.

One diplomatic official in Jerusalem, while acknowledging that 14% is a considerable minority, said he was still worried by the trend. "Considering the closeness and importance of our ties with Washington, this is something we need to watch," he said.

In the past, the Post articles notes, that kind of argument only seemed to come from far-right voices like former presidential candidate and TV pundit Pat Buchanan or far-left ones like outspoken MIT professor Noam Chomsky. But after John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University argued in a paper last year that the U.S.-Israel relationship needs to be rethought, the idea is beginning to make its way into the mainstream of American intellectuals.

And the debate will likely deepen when Mearsheimer and Walt's book comes out next week. It argues that, with the end of the Cold War, Israel is a strategic liability for the United States.

We're an Overweight Nation of Skinny Celebrities

Wow. As a nation, we are really packing on the pounds.

A new report by the Trust for America's Health said obesity rates climbed in 31 states last year. They did not decline anywhere. Mississippi's population has the highest percentage of obesity — more than 30 percent of residents fall into that category. Washington, D.C., has the highest rate of overweight kids.

And all this despite the warnings we've received from health officials about how all this extra weight will kill us, the efforts by food manufacturers to cut back on trans fats and sugars in food and the endless infomercials pitching weight-loss programs, exercise equipment and weight-reducing pills.

I think Brenda Wilson's report on Morning Edition today caught the real problem. It included a question from a reporter in Mississippi who wondered if making kids exercise more will change the culture of a state where people eat "fried catfish five times a week" and the last official in charge of the state's health department weighed 300 pounds.

Poverty is part of the problem. When you don't have the income, it's harder to buy the foods that have higher nutritional value. But as the report shows, obesity is a problem in states with high and low average incomes. I keep thinking of the speech Bruce Willis' raccoon character gives in the animated film Over the Hedge, describing how people worship food.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times recently wrote about how the problem of women celebrities being too thin is getting worse, not better. There is even an acronym for these waifs: MAWs (for "model, actress, whatever"). They have taken the idea of "you can't be too thin" to ridiculous extremes.

We seem to be truly a messed-up nation when it comes to weight. From one extreme to the other.

Gul Finally Elected President of Turkey

Newly elected Turkish President Abdullah Gul

STR/AFP/Getty Images

A new president has been elected in Turkey: Abdullah Gul, the former foreign minister and a devout Muslim with a background in political Islam. His election is a victory for the pro-Islam government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But Gul's election is not likely to sit well with Turkey's strong secularist military.

"Our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who can't embrace Turkey's unitary nature, and centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic," Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, said in a note on its Web site Monday. The BBC reports that although the statement on the military's Web site did not name anyone, analysts believe it was aimed at Gul. The Turkish military has ousted four governments since 1960.

The leading secularist opposition party did not take part in today's vote and has said it will not participate in any presidential ceremonies.

When Gul ran for president earlier this year, the military produced a similar warning on its Web site, part of a campaign against him that led to a constitutional crisis. After a parliamentary boycott prevented Gul from being elected, Erdogan called for general elections, and his party was returned to power with 47 percent of the vote.

The victory, combined with the way Turkey's election system works, gave him the opportunity to nominate Gul again. Gul has repeatedly said he would uphold the country's secularist constitution.

Reports: Taliban Agree to Release S. Korean Hostages

It looks like there might be some good news out of Afghanistan. The Associated Press is reporting that the Taliban have agreed to release the remaining 19 South Korean missionaries who they have been holding captive since July. The Taliban have already killed two of the male hostages and released two women.

The New York Times adds a cautionary note, however, reporting that it is not yet clear if the reports from Seoul and elsewhere are accurate.

AP reports that as part of the deal, South Korea has pledged to end all Christian missionary work in Afghanistan and to keep a promise to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Then again, if true, South Korea didn't agree to anything new. The Seoul government had already said it would pull its 200 non-combat troops out by year's end and would stop missionaries from "causing trouble" in countries where they are not wanted.

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo notes that the agreement does not mean that the hostages will be released immediately. Negotiations will continue with the Taliban. The paper quotes a government spokesman who mentions one potential reason that the Taliban were ready to deal — it was just getting too inconvenient to hold so many people for such a long time.

Internet Jumps on Story of Craig's Restroom Arrest

This is the kind of story that must give GOP leaders nightmares. It's getting a lot of play on the Internet, for sure.

Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho pleaded guilty this month to disorderly conduct after he was arrested in early June by an undercover police officer in the Minneapolis airport. Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, reported that the plainclothes officer was investigating reports of sexual activity in a men's restroom.

According to the arrest report, "Craig entered a bathroom stall next to the police investigator, placed his bag against the front of the door and tapped his foot in a gesture commonly used to try to pick up men in public toilets," Reuters writes. The arresting officer, quoted by Roll Call, said he recognized this as a signal "used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct."

NPR's Brian Naylor reports that Craig, who was fined and put on probation, issued a statement Monday saying that he had complained to the police at the time that they had misconstrued his actions, that he made a mistake when he pleaded guilty to the charges and that he should have talked to a lawyer first. No kidding.

This is not the first time that Craig has had to deal with allegations of this sort. In 1982, he denied rumors that he was under federal investigation as part of a probe into allegations that lawmakers on Capitol Hill were having sex with pages. He was not implicated or charged in that investigation.

And in 2006, Craig called allegations from a gay rights advocate that he had engaged in homosexual behavior "completely ridiculous."

August 27, 2007

Iraq's Sectarian Death Toll Doubles from Last Year

The surge in Iraq is working, according to military and administration officials. Some experts who have visited Iraq also say they see signs of progress. But then again, to paraphrase a former president, it might depend on what your definition of "is" is.

Over the weekend, The Associated Press released some eye-opening figures on the rate of deaths from sectarian violence in Iraq — it's about double last year's rate. The figures — which AP considers conservative and do not include insurgents' deaths — show that Iraq is suffering an average of 62 war-related deaths a day. In 2006, it was 33 a day.

Also, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization says that, as of the end of July, 1.14 million Iraqis have been displaced by the violence. On Jan. 1 of this year, it was 447,337.

However, the figures do show that Baghdad now accounts for 52 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in the country, down from 76 percent in January. What that seems to show is that insurgents and al-Qaida fighters who have been pushed out of Baghdad by the surge are taking their deadly business to other parts of the country. This appears to be particularly the case in the north, where the death toll has risen this year.

Meanwhile, senior U.S. military figures, who insist violence is down, are also warning that we can expect major assaults in the next few weeks because of three factors: the report to Congress on the situation in the country; the start of Ramadan; and the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Political Animal blog offers this comment: The military is "simultaneously trying to suggest that the surge is responsible for the recent seasonal decline in fatalities and preemptively insisting that no one should blame the surge when seasonal deaths go back up in the fall."

I think it's going to be another long fall in Iraq this year.

Could the Idea of Civil Unions Be 600 Years Old?

You know how it is with history. We keep doing the same things, again and again. Now, a new study suggests unions between people of the same sex might be another thing to add to the list.

A new study in the Journal of Modern History "reviews historical evidence, including documents and gravesites" and finds that civil unions may have existed in France as long as 600 years ago. The term "affrerement" — roughly translated as brotherment — referred "to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe." While they were often used for members of the same family when parents left the same property to two brothers who continued to live together, they were also used between men of the same sex who weren't related.

The author of the report can't prove it one way or another conclusively but says the evidence seems to point to, well, something that looks remarkably like homosexual civil unions. Which would only prove, as the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pundits Say It Was Time for Gonzales to Go

Now that Alberto Gonzales has given his three-weeks' notice, pundits on the left and right are weighing in on his resignation. Although they differ on the reasons why, most write that his resignation is a good thing.

Ed Morrissey at the conservative Captain's Quarters blog writes that it was "far past time" for Gonzales to go. Although Morrissey contends nothing illegal was done in the firing of federal prosecutors, he writes that "Gonzales and his team made it into a royal botch-up anyway." Morrissey says Gonzales should have resigned "after telling people publicly that the attorneys had performance issues when their reviews showed that they had performed well."

Conservative Michelle Malkin is glad Gonzales is gone. But, she writes, if White House officials are thinking of replacing Gonzales with Michael Chertoff, it means they've learned nothing from the recent "shamnesty debacle" about illegal immigration. (Chertoff was roundly criticized by conservatives for his efforts to push for the president's legislation.) Malkin argues in favor of a golden oldie for AG: "If they want the best qualified, most experienced AG candidate who is serious about enforcing all of our laws, including our immigration laws, and who is best equipped to serve in a time of war, the choice would be obvious: John Ashcroft."

Liberal blog Daily Kos comments that if the Democrats had not won control of Congress in 2006, Gonzales would still be in office.

Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice writes that Gonzales, who "leaves in shambles a Justice Department that he willingly helped the White House to transform into a branch of the Republican Party" has one great accomplishment in office ... He made Janet Reno and Ashcroft look good.

Troops Told Not to Follow New CIA Interrogation Rules

Top military lawyers have told U.S. senators that President Bush's new rules for CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists could allow violations of the Geneva Conventions, The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage reports.

Savage reports that the Judge Advocates General of all military branches believe "a July 20 executive order establishing rules for the treatment of CIA prisoners appeared to be carefully worded to allow humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques when the interrogators' objective is to protect national security rather than to satisfy sadistic impulses."

After the meeting with the senators in late July, the top JAG for the U.S. Army, Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, told lower-ranking soldiers in a note that Bush's order applies only to the CIA and not to the military. Black told them that the standards of the Geneva Conventions are still their standards.

In an e-mail to Savage, the Justice Department said the president's order follows the Geneva Conventions.

However, law-of-war specialists zeroed in on a particular section of the new order for criticism. The new order forbids "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual." The key phrase is "for the purpose," according to the experts. Many believe it creates an "escape clause" for interrogators that would allow abusive treatment if done for "national security."

Attorney General Stepping Down

The New York Times is reporting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign today, according to a senior administration source.

NPR's Ari Shapiro has a timeline of events leading up to this morning's anticipated announcement.

CNN reports that administration sources say the top choice for Gonzales' replacement is the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff.

(Tom's Update: Gonzales confirmed this morning that he submitted his resignation to President Bush and it was accepted. He will step down as attorney general on Sept. 17.)

August 24, 2007

Model-Turned-TV Anchor's Show Lasts One Episode

Friends, couch potatoes, remote control freaks, lend me your TVs. I come here not to praise Anchorwoman (because that would seem darn near impossible) but to bury it. And I mean way deep.

The much ballyhooed Fox reality show about Lauren Jones, a former model and wrestler who becomes a news anchor at a local channel in Texas, drew a tiny rating of 1.0 in the 18-49 demographic, according to Broadcasting and Cable ... proving that being an anchor is not just about the hair, teeth and, er, other attributes.

Apparently, Rupert Murdoch's folks had seen enough. Literally. The show was immediately canceled, bringing back painful memories of Emily's Reasons Why Not, the ABC series that also only lasted one episode. If you're REALLY interested ... or looking for a way to cure insomnia ... you can watch the "lost" episodes of Anchorwoman on Fox's Web site or Fox On Demand.

But this could also be a lesson for the journalists who jumped the gun and spilled a lot of ink while hand-wringing over the show. Turns out that it wasn't the "nadir" for women journalists that some people said it would be.

It was just a bad TV show.

OK, that's all for this week. If you see or hear anything interesting, don't forget to send it along to newsblog@npr.org.

6:00 PM ET | 08-24-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

'Jihad: The Musical' — Terrorism as Musical Comedy

Watch Jihad: The Musical's big number, "I Wanna Be Like Osama."

YouTube

Years ago, my brother and my sister and I wrote, produced and performed a satirical look at our hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The great thing about satire is that there are no sacred cows. We tried to offend everyone we could think of, in a funny way, of course.

But even I might think twice before creating a musical about terrorism. Not the producers of Jihad: The Musical, though. The satirical musical comedy is playing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and is billed as a "madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism." It's already drawn protests, of course, from people who don't get the joke.

Which is great for the show because, as Oscar Wilde once said, "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

And uneven reviews, I'm afraid. Some folks loved it; others thought it was stupid.

It seems most reviewers actually wanted the show to be a little more offensive than it is. Alan Chadwick of the Evening Standard described it this way: [The protests were] reminiscent of the furore surrounding Monty Python's Life Of Brian, which the show resembles in style and tone if not quality. But Zoe Samuel and Benjamin Scheuer's knockabout musical comedy — in which a naive Afghan flower-seller finds himself co-opted into becoming a suicide bomber — no more causes offense or offers a Jihadi blueprint than The Producers advocated Nazism, or The Sound Of Music nunneries."

In his piece for All Things Considered, Rob Gifford says the real target of the show seems to be terrorists and the rightwing media in America who — a song in the play claims — can't live without one another.

Well, you can judge for yourself. The link to Rob's piece includes a couple of the toe-tapping numbers (including a tune sung by a Frenchman called "Turned and Ran," a joke that, I confess, is getting a little old). And here's a YouTube video of the big number, "I Wanna Be Like Osama." Pretty catchy, actually.

But you're not going to want to be singing it to yourself as you walk around, OK?

Boy, Is It Hard to Sell a House These Days

Today, Morning Edition's Your Money segment looked at just how hard it has been to sell a house in America this summer.

I know this story. I'm living it.

When I moved to Washington in late spring to take this job, I had to put my house in Milton, Mass., (just south of Boston) on the market. It's a great place — four bedrooms, big yard, two-minute walk to the subway — in a community that a magazine just named the seventh best place to live in America. My real estate agent figured it would go in a jiffy.

Hardly a sniff all summer. Alcatraz gets more offers.

Just like the Cascones, the family featured in Jason Beaubien's Morning Edition piece, we've had to knock down the price on the house ... which is very hard to do because it makes you feel like a loser. And Ken Fears, an economist at the National Association of Realtors, says that it's likely even more concessions on price will be needed nationally before the worst is over. Ouch.

OK, time for a big pity party. Anybody else have a house horror story to tell?

FDA: It's Time to Tell the Truth About Sunscreens

I am the whitest guy on the planet. I am day-glo, all-Canadian white. In the summer, I never attempt to tan; I just try to neutralize the blue. One of the most humbling experiences of my life was when a group of smiling Turkish children danced around on a Mediterranean beach several years ago calling me "Uncle White" — they told my wife, who speaks Turkish, that they had never seen anyone so pale before.

In the old days, before SPF 45, I kept completely covered up at the beach. I looked like a mugger on holiday — pants, hoodie, ball cap pulled low. But sunscreen freed me to be able to entertain small children on foreign beaches.

So I was interested to find out that government regulators, under pressure from Congress, have proposed, as the Los Angeles Times reports, new "truth in labeling" rules for sunscreen to "give consumers clearer, more complete information on protection against cancer-causing ultraviolet rays."

Seems that the sunscreen industry, which is worth $450 million a year, has only been testing for one type of ultraviolet radiation — UVB, which can burn the skin. But, as NPR's Patricia Neighmond reports on Morning Edition, it turns out that UVA rays, which tan the skin, can also cause cancer. So the Food and Drug Administration says it wants to change the rules to force manufacturers to test for both.

And forget all that waterproof stuff. The FDA says it doesn't believe those claims are accurate. Lotions would also carry warnings that they alone offer "no guarantee against the sun's rays, and that consumers should also stay out of the midday sun and consider wearing hats and long sleeves," the Times writes.

Ah! The return of my mugger look.

How the 'Phishers' Almost Got Me

It was that close — I was one mouse click away from possibly having my identity stolen. I had entered my user name into what I thought was my online bank account. Then at the last second, I happened to glance at the URL of the site I was visiting. It was not my bank's Web address, even though it looked just like my bank's home page. I realized that I was being scammed. I closed the browser window and thanked my lucky stars.

"Phishers" will do anything to steal the information they need to get into your bank account or into your credit cards. They almost got me because I wasn't paying attention one day and got careless.

Morning Edition's John Ydstie talked to me today about my "escape" and what people need to do to reduce their chances of falling into the evil clutches of these thieves.

Have you ever fallen victim to a scam? Any suggestions on how to avoid them?

August 23, 2007

Mother Teresa's Spiritual Crisis at Center of New Book

Mother Teresa in April 1995.

AFP/Getty Images

She was easily one of the most recognizable women in the world. She was seen as a living saint by many. And she was a particular inspiration to Catholics.

But a new book about Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, based on the many letters she wrote to her spiritual counselors and confessors over an almost 50-year period, show a spiritual life that was, as she described it, dry, dark and lonely.

Three months before she accepted her Nobel Peace Prize, she wrote to a spiritual confidant: "Jesus has a very special love for you ... [but] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

It's not uncommon to hear of religious people going through periods of doubt. For instance, Father James Martin, in a commentary on All Things Considered, says Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles remind him of his own during a recent retreat.

But Mother Teresa's extensive spiritual crisis is surprising for a woman of her influence ... and ammunition for her critics. Time quotes well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens (who also wrote The Missionary Position, a scathing attack on Mother Teresa), who says, "She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself."

But in the same piece, the Rev. Matthew Lamb, chairman of the theology department at the conservative Ave Maria University in Florida, said Come Be My Light — compiled and edited by the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk — will one day rank with "St. Augustine's Confessions and Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain as an autobiography of spiritual ascent."

NIE: Iraqi Leaders 'Unable to Govern Effectively'

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must be sensing a pattern in U.S. reaction to his government: Tuesday he was down, Wednesday he was up, so he's due for another down day, right?

Today, the negative reaction comes in the form of a National Intelligence Estimate. The Associated Press reports that the intelligence analysts who wrote the 10-page document (the consensus judgment of the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies) doubt he "can overcome sectarian divisions and meet benchmarks intended to promote political unity." The document also says Iraq's security services, while performing better, are still not ready to operate without help from U.S. forces.

The silver lining for the Iraqi prime minister is that the report also says that any attempt to replace him right now could "paralyze the government."

Meanwhile, papers around the Middle East tend see the Bush-al-Maliki relationship in two ways: Either Bush is trying to set al-Maliki up to be a scapegoat for failed policies in Iraq, or al-Maliki is to blame for not being able to unite the factions in his country.

'Something Freaky' in Baltimore: Rangers Get 30 Runs

Take me out to the football game, take me out to the crowd...

That's what the box score of the first game of a double-header Wednesday between the Texas Rangers and the Baltimore Orioles resembled. Texas got four touchdowns and a safety, and Baltimore got a field goal — 30 to 3. But in the land of baseball, Texas' 30 runs broke the previous record of 29 for the most scored by an American League team.

Baltimore Sun sports reporter Roch Kubatko notes that Baltimore now falls to 0-1 in games decided by 27 runs. As Marlon Byrd, who hit one of two Texas grand slams, said after the game, "This is something freaky." (If you want to know more about what it's like to see so many runs scored in just one game, Day to Day's Alex Chadwick talked to Dallas Morning News sports writer Evan Grant.)

The last time a major league team got that many runs in a game was in 1897, when the Chicago Colts (now the Cubs) scored 36 against Louisville in the National League. Did players even use gloves back then?

No doubt this will start a debate about the need for a mercy rule in baseball.

Google Adds Space to Its List of Offerings

Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Google. Its mission — to boldly go where no online site ... OK, maybe NASA was there first.

Anyway, I digress ... The folks at Google, working together with astronomers, are giving you THE UNIVERSE. Really. As an addition to Google Earth (the feature that allows you to get an up-close and personal look at almost every spot on the planet), you get to whirl around and look out into space. And not just the randomized dots that they generated on Star Trek to make it seem like you were traveling at warp speed.

They are, as The Baltimore Sun described them, "digitized photos — a million of them — stitched seamlessly together from some of the world's most complete sky surveys." One hundred million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. That's a lot of space.

It is wicked cool and one day will be a great way to plan the family's next visit to Wolf 359 or Epsilon Eridani. And, just like Google Earth, you can create a version with your own stuff in space. You know, for Valentine's Day, give your loved one a real star with her face on it; don't just name one after her.

Sky at Google Earth is available on the newest versions of Google Earth, which can be downloaded for free at http://earth.google.com.

11:13 AM ET | 08-23-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Is Vietnam the Right Comparison for Iraq?

President Bush took a big chance Wednesday and drew comparisons between the situation in Iraq and the situations that the United States has faced over the years in Asia, such as in Japan in World War II and in Korea and Vietnam.

But are those appropriate analogies? All Things Considered talked to four scholars to find out.

Francis Fukuyama of the School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins University says the analogy to Southeast Asia is more appropriate than the president's previous use of the Cold War. Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations favors comparisons to conflicts in Algeria and Malaysia. In Malaysia, the British were able to overcome an insurrection. In Algeria, the French won militarily but ultimately lost politically.

Ronald Steel of the University of Southern California thinks the U.S. involvement in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century is the best example — an analogy I've always favored as well. The United States overthrew a then-dictatorial power, Spain, but failed to recognize that there was a strong liberation movement among the people, who wanted the U.S. to let them run their own country. When the U.S. didn't leave, a long period of violent insurgency followed, during which U.S. troops committed several atrocities.

Then again, Joseph Nye at Harvard doesn't like any analogy, although he says Vietnam may be appropriate or perhaps Britain's role in Iraq in 1920s. But in the end, he believes, all analogies fall apart on some level.

Maybe it's like the old Shiite saying that host Robert Siegel quotes: "The first to reason by analogy was the devil."

August 22, 2007

Bush Says He Supports al-Maliki, But Is It Returned?

On the one hand...

On Tuesday in Canada, President Bush seemed to back away from supporting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, saying that he has "a certain level of frustration" with the Iraqi government's failure to solve its secular divisions.

But then today, Bush reaffirmed his support for al-Maliki while speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, describing him as "a good guy, a good man, with a difficult job, and I support him."

On the other hand...

NPR reports that al-Maliki had a few things of his own to say. During a trip to Syria, he lashed out at U.S. criticism of his government, saying, "No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government." And then he added, "Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere."

Friends elsewhere, eh? Hmm.

Are We Hearing from the Right People About Iran?

Boy, there sure seems to be a lot of chatter in the media these days about bombing Iran. Perhaps that's why I'm having that feeling of deja vu all over again — the feeling I got in the weeks before the attack on Iraq in 2003. It seems possible that the groundwork is being laid for an attack on Iran.

So I find myself wanting more comprehensive information about the situation. NPR's six-part series about Iran's relationship with both the West and its neighbors in the region has been a good place to start.

Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist/blogger Dan Froomkin is calling on journalists to talk to more than the usual suspects. He argues in a piece for the Nieman Foundation's Nieman Watchdog that reporters are relying too much on the same people who said invading Iraq would be a good idea. He suggests that they interview some of the experts who believe there are many downsides to attacking Iran. (Most of the experts surveyed for Foreign Policy magazine's Terrorism Index, for example, were not in favor of military action in Iran.)

Froomkin says the media should be talking to people like Paul R. Pillar, formerly the CIA's top Middle East analyst and now a Georgetown University professor; Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations; and Shaul Bakhash, George Mason University professor and former Iranian journalist, to a name few.

YouTube Starts Showing Ads with Videos

It's fairly safe to say that we all knew this day was coming. Google, the owner of YouTube, has decided to combine ads with videos it shows on the video-sharing site. After all, Google spent $1.65 billion on YouTube -- I guess it's time to start making a little of that investment back for the shareholders.

But I give the Google folks full marks for creativity -- they may have finally figured out a way to get people to watch ads on the 'Net. Just as long as it doesn't interfere with the old Monty Python skits I'm watching or the latest Obama Girl video.

The Los Angeles Times explains it this way: "Fifteen seconds into a music video for the band Madina Lake, an animated pink doughnut rolls along the bottom portion of the video with Homer Simpson in hot pursuit. Viewers can click on Homer to watch a trailer for 'The Simpsons Movie' while the video they originally chose is paused. If they don't click on the ad, it disappears after 10 seconds."

The ads are called "transparent" and use a Flash-based overlay. And if you don't like 'em, you don't have to wait until they disappear -- you can click to kill them right away. (The Times piece says Google executives claim their test runs show people watch the entire ads 75 percent of the time.)

I see this creating a whole new kind of ad -- the five-second ad, designed to get the message across before the viewer can hit the cancel button. Talk about our shrinking attention span.

Tabloid Editors Acknowledge Role in Diana's Death

British tabloid editors and reporters are a pretty tough lot, willing to do almost anything to scoop their rivals. I worked with two of them for several years in Canada, and what they would do to get a story defies the imagination.

They also hate to admit they've made a mistake. So I was totally amazed to see Tuesday's story in The Daily Telegraph in which the editors of the three largest British tabloids at the time of Princess Diana's death admitted they helped create "an atmosphere in which the paparazzi, who were chasing Diana when her car crashed in a Paris underpass, were out of control."

Phil Hall, who was editor of the News of the World, said it was a "circle of culpability": the readers who wanted the photos of Diana, the photographers who chased her everywhere she went and the papers that published the photos. A Diana scoop could mean an additional 150,000 copies sold for a single issue.

Hall's comments were echoed by Stuart Higgins, who edited The Sun in the '90s, and Piers Morgan, then editor of the Daily Mirror.

I actually have personal experience with "Diana frenzy." The first place that Diana and Prince Charles visited after their 1981 wedding was Halifax. My then-boss, one of those former Fleet Street reporters I worked with, took an off-the-record conversation that his wife (also named Diana) had with Princess Diana during a private party and turned it into a front-page exclusive: "Our Di talks to their Di." It created an international furor, and the paper was banned from all royal events for a decade.

I'll always remember that a Buckingham Palace reporter for a tabloid, who had once crawled through a half-mile of underbrush to get a picture of Diana in a bathing suit, called my boss "sleazy."

Petraeus Report's Outcome 'Practically a Fait Accompli'

Political pundits hate August in D.C. Once Congress leaves Washington, the town slows to a crawl. The one subject that has been keeping the talking heads on their toes, however, is guessing what Gen. David Petraeus will tell Congress in September about the troop surge -- and if that might lead to a quick exit from Iraq.

But why bother? It seems that the Petraeus report will have all the suspense of an episode of Happy Days. NPR's Guy Raz reports that the White House has been working Congress hard to build support for the as-yet-unheard report and head off any opposition to extending the surge -- which is exactly what the White House wants.

Not only that, but NPR's Ron Elving writes in his Watching Washington column that there are concerns that the White House is basically writing the report for the general. Seems that the administration might be worried that the general will be a little too honest and, particularly on the issue of Iraqi politics, might undercut the "good news" on the military front.

Paul Hughes, a retired Army colonel now at the U.S. Institute of Peace, argues in Raz's piece that a report that has the White House's fingerprints all over it is seriously compromised. "For them to be writing this report is going to diminish whatever ground truth that Gen. Petraeus or Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker have put into the reports," he says.

August 21, 2007

AFL-CIO Names America's Worst Boss

Ever had a bad boss? I mean, a real stinker? I once had a boss who walked into the room where I was working, threw $5 down on the table and told me to go get him a pack of smokes. I stood up and walked out, never to return to that job.

But there are worse bosses ... such as the winner (or, perhaps, the loser) of this year's AFL-CIO My Bad Boss contest. The employee involved -- a young father with three children under the age of 8 -- filed paperwork to take some time off to help deal with the bills from his cancer treatment. John Dimsdale of Marketplace explained on Day to Day that the boss threw away the paperwork and then lied about receiving it, knowing it would take months, perhaps years, for the issue to be resolved.

Then there was the guy who hired the "creep" who had been stalking one of his waitresses -- and put him on the same shift as her. And the boss who made his employees continue to answer phones when there was a fire in the building -- until a security officer forced them to leave.

Abusive bosses are apparently a common problem. In a recent national survey, 44 percent of those polled said they had worked for an abusive boss, while 33 percent said their supervisors failed to keep promises. The Los Angeles Times reports that experts believe one reason for this trend may be that "short-staffed companies tap managers with lousy people skills." And the Internet has made it easier to share complaints about bad bosses -- just take a trip over to ebosswatch.com.

How about you? ... Got a terrible boss story to share? (Like the AFL-CIO contest, let's keep the boss's name anonymous.)

Experts, Left and Right, Say U.S. Losing War on Terror

The United States isn't winning the war on terror, and the world is becoming a more dangerous place for Americans.

That's not my opinion. It's the overwhelming consensus of about 100 experts from across the political spectrum surveyed by Foreign Policy magazine for its yearly Terrorism Index. The survey is "an attempt to discern the American foreign-policy establishment's assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror," Morning Edition reports.

Pakistan is seen as the country most likely to become the next al-Qaida stronghold and Russia as the ally that least serves America's interests.

And, although military strikes against Iran seem to be the strategy increasingly favored by the White House, according to some media reports, only 8 percent of those surveyed favor that option.

In some ways, this survey is just more of the same stuff we've been hearing for a while. Do you think reports like this make any difference to the people making the foreign policy decisions in the administration?

Thank Goodness No One Important Was Hurt!

Most of the time, spokespeople respond to the media in a very careful, guarded way. But every once in a while, you run across someone who doesn't beat around the bush. For instance, Reuters reported Monday that 11 people were injured in Berlin while shooting Tom Cruise's new film about a plot to assassinate Hitler. They fell from a truck when it rounded a corner and the side panel gave way.

"We have no findings to suggest anyone famous was involved in the accident," a police spokesman told the media, giving everyone what they really wanted to know and showing that extras in movies are called that for a reason -- because you can always get extra extras if they, well, fall off a truck.

Doctor Once Charged in Terror Case Gets Visa Back

It seems the Australian government just doesn't want to admit that maybe it made a mistake. Almost as soon as a federal court ruled today that Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews had erred when he canceled the work visa of Dr. Mohamed Haneef, the government announced it would appeal the decision.

Haneef, you might remember, had originally been charged with providing support to a terrorist organization because he had given his mobile phone's SIM card to his cousin several months before the relative was charged in the failed bombing plot in London and Glasgow in June. The charge against Haneef was dropped after it was reported that the police and prosecutors had made misleading statements in court. But the immigration minister did not reinstate Haneef's visa, citing character issues.

The New York Times reports that a federal judge dismissed Andrews' application of the character criterion.

In the court's ruling today, the judge, Jeffrey Spender, said that perhaps even he could not pass that test, because as a defense lawyer, he had "associated with" known criminals. And a woman who was the victim of domestic violence would theoretically fail the test because she had "associated with" her partner, he said.

But the government still might win: The court left open the possibility that the government could cancel the visa for a different reason.

9:57 AM ET | 08-21-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Should Cell Phones Be Totally Banned While Driving?

Sunday night, I pulled up to the light at the intersection near my home. As I waited for a green, I glanced over at the car next to me. The young driver wasn't paying any attention to the light -- instead, she was madly texting on her cell phone. I thought once the signal changed she would stop, but no, she continued one-handed as she drove off.

And she's not the only one risking her life and yours -- Morning Edition reports that a survey by Zogby International shows that two-thirds of drivers ages 18 to 24 are using their phones to text message while driving. It makes me want to just stay inside my house and never go out on the roads again, ever.

You might yell, "There oughta be a law," but as Morning Edition found out, laws don't matter diddly squat. In New York, where the law says you can only use a cell phone while driving if you have a hands-free device, authorities say very few people observe it anymore. One self-admitted offender described it as being like "a jaywalking law."

Assemblyman Felix Ortiz of Brooklyn, who wrote the New York law, says enough is enough. He wants to pass a total ban on using phones while driving -- including hands-free devices -- unless it's an emergency.

Are you in favor? Or should we just bow to technology and hope that the next time the driver in the car opposite us makes a left-hand turn one-handed while talking on the phone, he or she is paying at least enough attention not to hit us?

August 20, 2007

Is the Blogosphere Just a Lot of Sound and Fury?

Like the cherry blossoms appearing each spring on the Washington Mall, it is now a regular occurrence for someone in the traditional media to fire a broadside at the blogosphere.

The problem with these attacks -- the latest from Michael Skube of Elon University on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times -- is that they rarely seem to plow any new ground. Critics used to make similar riffs about the Internet itself: traditional media pleading that we had to hold back the 'Net barbarians at the gates, when we were already inside having a beer. Now we're seeing the same kind of rants against the blogosphere.

That's not to say they don't make valid points. I liked what Skube wrote about bloggers' lack of doubt about their opinions. It does sometimes seem that bloggers can have their own little cults of personality.

My own bugaboo about bloggers is that I think sometimes physical isolation can lead to cultural and political nearsightedness. I would love to see "newsrooms" for bloggers in various cities.

I know, I know, there are lots of "virtual" places where this happens, and it's easier to arrange. Those are good, too. But I'm talking about a physical place where they could regularly throw ideas at each other before they actually go out and publish them online. One of things I enjoy the most about this job is tossing around ideas with the editors and reporters I work with.

We've heard all the old arguments about blogging, so I want to hear fresh criticism or praise. Got any?

22 Tips for Surviving a Hurricane

Hurricane Dean is all over the news today as it moves over the Cayman Islands. The Category 4 storm is forcing the Space Shuttle Endeavour to land a day early.

As Dean rumbles its way toward Mexico (it still might swing toward Texas -- who can tell with a hurricane), I found this video on 5min.com from the Long Island Power Authority that gives 22 tips to help survive a hurricane. Now before any of you scoff, "Long Island? Why in heaven's name would they be worried about a hurricane there?" remember that hurricanes have also been known to sweep up the Atlantic coastline.

Four years ago, Hurricane Juan hit hard in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Two people died. Huge trees all over town were tossed around like matchsticks. My brother didn't have electricity for almost a week, and phone service was out for even longer.

I also remember another hurricane in the early '70s and watching a house float down the main street in Dartmouth, just across the harbor. So if you live near the ocean, don't buy the idea that "It'll never happen here."

3:37 PM ET | 08-20-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Quick! ... Name America's No. 1 Trading Partner

OK, pop quiz. Can you name America's No. 1 trading partner in 2006?

China? Nope. It's No. 2, despite the glut of news stories about potentially dangerous toys, toxic pet food and contaminated toothpaste.

Mexico? Wrong -- No. 3. Japan? Germany? Britain? Korea?

No, the correct answer is ... Canada! Yes, the land of Celine Dion, curling and socialized medicine is both the United States' largest market for exports and its biggest source of imports. Must be all those BlackBerries -- assuming they're not counting comedians and media types.

In honor of this honor, allow me to present "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Canadian Idiot." Apologies to Green Day.

ADL Struggles with Dispute over Armenian Genocide

Between 1915 and 1923, as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in what many historians consider a genocide -- a deliberate policy of extermination. Turkey has vigorously denied this label for decades. And now, that term has thrown a prominent Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, into a serious internal dispute.

The irony of this story is that the conflict began over a program called No Place for Hate. The Armenian-American community in Watertown, Mass., objected to the town's involvement in the program because the ADL refuses to call the massacre a genocide.

Soon after, the ADL's New England regional director, Andrew Tarsy, who had first defended the organization's position, was fired for saying he now supported calling the massacre a genocide. On Friday, two prominent members of the ADL's New England board resigned in protest.

National ADL Director Abraham Foxman has been getting hammered by members of the Jewish and Armenian communities in New England over the Tarsy firing, The Boston Globe reports. So why is the national ADL refusing to back what many of its members seem to consider a fact? The group appears to want to avoid angering Turkey, one of the few Muslim governments in the world to have a solid relationship with Israel. (Although Foxman says the group officially has no position on the issue.)

The conflict is not likely to disappear soon. This fall, the House of Representatives plans to debate a resolution that would officially recognize the killings as a genocide.

(Tom's Update: On Tuesday, the ADL posted the following statement on its Web site: "We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide."

You can read the ADL's entire statement here.)

Chinese Officials Only Want Happy News

When I first read that China has told its media to report only positive news, I imagined Chinese Communist Party censors putting great big smiley faces on every news story. No bad, unsettling news for the people of China. Just happy news from Big Brother!

The Guardian reports that officials are clamping down as the party prepares for its congress, held every five years. This year, the party will introduce a new generation of leaders and apparently doesn't want any nasty headlines about lead-painted toys or a bridge collapse or a mine flood to ruin the announcement.

In Beijing, where a four-day traffic-easing test is about to be begin that will take a million cars off the road, editors of local newspapers and TV have been told they can't interview disgruntled commuters or show pictures of overcrowded buses. Stories have to focus on improvements to the transportation system and the environment.

Not everyone in China is happy about happy news. In eastern China, where a flood has trapped 172 miners, distressed relatives, desperate for news, scuffled with guards, The Associated Press reports. On Sunday, state-owned media reports "focused on the successful mending of the breach, but said little about the trapped miners -- a sign that the government remains nervous about public anger over perceived mistreatment."

No mine officials have talked to the families and no list of the missing has been given out. Zhang Dekuan, spokesman for the government of Shandong province, told reporters that "social stability" remains a top priority. And then another official told reporters to stay away from the miners' families.

Don't want worried relatives to mess up the happy headlines.

August 17, 2007

Russia Resumes Long-Range Bombing Patrols

As if we needed another sign that Russia wants to throw its weight around like the old Cold War days, the BBC reports that the country is resuming the Soviet-era practice of sending nuclear bomber aircraft on long-range flights after a 15-year break.

Today, 14 planes took off from Russian airfields to fly over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Last week, Russian pilots flew close to the American island of Guam. They reportedly "exchanged smiles" with the U.S. pilots sent to track them.

This reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit -- Russia wants to get "pumped up." But I suspect that this long flight business is as much for domestic consumption as it is for international. It probably plays really well on the evening news.

That's all for this week. If you see or read anything interesting, drop us a line at newsblog@npr.org.

The Debate Over 'Getting Somewhere in Iraq'

It all started with "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq." Those words, written by Brookings Institution analyst Michael O'Hanlon and his colleague, Kenneth Pollack, were part of an op-ed piece in The New York Times that sparked a rush of media attention -- and more than a bit of backlash.

The lasher-in-chief in this case was Salon blogger and columnist Glenn Greenwald, who revealed, based on his interview with O'Hanlon, that the trip to Iraq that sparked the piece had been coordinated by the U.S. military. Basically, Greenwald's argument was that the duo reached their relatively optimistic appraisal of the situation in Iraq because they were given the "golden tour," so to speak.

Greenwald's contentions clearly ruffled O'Hanlon's feathers. When O'Hanlon appeared on Boston's WBUR's On Point this week, he said, "I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time rebutting Mr. Greenwald because he's had frankly more time and more readership than he deserves." Ouch.

But Greenwald did zero in on an important point -- by not disclosing the details of their trip, O'Hanlon and Pollack made it easier for critics to accuse them of being military cheerleaders (a point that O'Hanlon acknowledged). However, what Greenwald doesn't note is that the military also helped to set up the duo's interviews on their previous trips to Iraq, which they use as points of comparison (I checked on this with Brookings). Their argument that things have improved since those trips carries a little more weight when you know they were planned similarly.

Another major complaint made about the piece was that, in the media, the two were being cast as "critics" of the war who had found good things happening in Iraq, when, actually, O'Hanlon himself has rejected that characterization. (O'Hanlon supported the initial invasion but has been critical about how some aspects of the war have been managed.)

But looking at all the backlash, one does get a sense of piling on here. And, leaving aside the particular criticisms of this piece, it makes you wonder: How willing are people to accept any good news coming out of Iraq?

Attempted Murder -- By Underwear

Over the years, countries have devised some ingenious schemes to try to kill their political opponents. The United States wanted to kill Fidel Castro with exploding cigars (to name just one wacky strategy). Old Soviet-era Eastern Bloc countries used poison-tipped umbrellas. A former Russian spy has been accused recently of putting radioactive material in tea.

Now comes the news that South African police authorities used underwear laced with nerve agent in an attempt to kill a prominent anti-apartheid activist in the late 1980s. South Africa's former law and order minister, Adriaan Vlok, received a suspended 10-year sentence in the case today.

Vlok, the only senior politician in the former white regime to be convicted of apartheid-era crimes, and four other high-ranking policemen had pleaded guilty. They attempted to murder the Rev. Frank Chikane in 1989 by putting the poisoned underwear in his suitcase while he was traveling.

(As part of their plea bargains, the men agreed to testify against any others brought to trial for crimes from that era. There is an ongoing debate in South Africa about these trials and whether they help or hurt the country.)

Vlok, who became a born-again Christian, had already asked Chikane for forgiveness. For his part, Chikane, now the director of President Thabo Mbeki's office, said he had forgiven the men who had tried to kill him.

Will We Get Our White House Wedding After All?

Oh, I love a wedding. I'm thinking maybe next summer.

News that President Bush's daughter Jenna is engaged to Henry Hager (a guy who Laura Bush once dismissed as "not a serious boyfriend") has Washington atwitter. Hager has impeccable conservative credentials: His dad is a former lieutenant governor of Virginia and now heads the state's Republican Party; Hager himself once worked for Karl Rove. It's a marriage made in GOP heaven.

The cable TV networks, looking for something to balance the terrible news out of the Utah mine today, played it up big time. If the couple goes for a White House wedding, that would make Jenna the first presidential daughter to be married there since Tricia Nixon in 1971. No date has been set yet, but my money is on next summer for a couple of reasons.

First, the weather -- everybody wants good weather, and it's not too often you get a chance at a Rose Garden wedding. Second, and perhaps I'm being too "Roveish" here, but it could give the party a good-feelings bump just before the election and serve to underline a big issue for the GOP -- traditional marriage.

Whatever the date and place, mazel tov!

The White House wedding of Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox on June 12, 1971.

National Archives

The Continuing Saga of Gonzales' Hospital Room Visit

Ah, that Alberto Gonzales. He seems to be having such a problem with his memory these days.

The latest potential example involves the attorney general's visit to the bedside of then-AG John Ashcroft in 2004 for the now-infamous "We want you to OK this possibly illegal surveillance program right now, even if you just had a major operation" trip. Last month, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Ashcroft was "lucid" and "did most of the talking" during the brief meeting.

But FBI Director Robert Mueller, who saw Ashcroft right after the meeting, made some notes (those FBI guys -- such sticklers for details) that paint a different picture of Ashcroft's condition. Five pages of heavily censored notes were released on Thursday, and, in Mueller's opinion, Ashcroft was "feeble" and "barely articulate." (Which makes sense for a guy who had just had surgery.) The notes support the description of Ashcroft given by then-Deputy AG James Comey, who was in the room during the surveillance discussion.

Hmm. Is this another case of Gonzales' memory misfiring -- or is one man's "feeble" another man's "lucid"?

August 16, 2007

Do Candidates Have to Talk about Religion?

Considering the role that religion plays in U.S. political life, is it OK for politicians to take a pass on talking about it?

After all, stating your religious beliefs is pretty much de rigueur for anyone running for public office in America these days, unlike in many other Western countries. Back in the Great White North, for instance, the idea of a politician standing up and making a public issue of his or her religious beliefs would be considered, well, kinda weird.

So, should it be OK for a U.S. politician to take the stance Bill Bradley did a few years ago -- that it's a personal thing? Commentator Joe Loconte, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, argues on All Things Considered that this is just fine -- that it's OK for politicians to opt out of talking about it.

Do you need to know the religious views of the presidential candidates? Does it make a difference when you're deciding who to support?

U.S. Toy Sellers Afraid of a Nightmare at Christmas

If Chinese toy makers were counting on getting Christmas cards from the U.S. companies that sell their products, they shouldn't hold their breath. On the contrary, American toy companies and stores that sell toys are already saying that they're worried safety concerns and extra testing in the wake of recalls could lead to the nightmare at Christmas.

We all know that companies count on Christmas as much as the kids do. Many companies live or die on the profits they make at Christmas, and toy companies are in that situation more than most.

"This could be a disaster," Jeff Holtzman, president and chief executive of Goldberger, which sells dolls made in China at stores like Toys 'R' Us, told the International Herald Tribune. "Everything is planned and is very time-sensitive. There are millions and millions of dollars at stake."

It's my guess that the 20 percent of toys sold in the U.S. that are not made in China -- like those of the Danish company Lego -- are going to have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

It's Cough Medicine Deja Vu

The Food and Drug Administration is warning parents against giving children under the age of 2 over-the-counter cough medicine without doctors' orders. Seems some parents have been overdosing their kids on the stuff.

I can't figure out, however, why so much ink is being spilled. I mean, the packages themselves say not to do it, right? At least every one I remember seeing. Shouldn't parents be a little more on the ball here?

Even more important, over-the-counter cough syrup doesn't even work on coughs that come along with colds -- at least according to the American College of Chest Physicians (everybody has a college these days).

Last year, it published a report (in its aptly titled journal, Chest) that said not to bother wasting your money on OTC cough medicines. Cough medicine companies disputed it, of course, arguing that people would stop buying them if they didn't work.

The doctors' response: Can you say "placebo effect"?

2:22 PM ET | 08-16-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Just Your Average, Ordinary ... Terrorist?

I worry that life may have just gotten a whole lot harder for any immigrant Muslim male in America between the ages of, oh, 15 and 35, especially if they have steady, unremarkable jobs, don't smoke or drink, grow facial hair and like the Internet. Because the New York Police Department advises looking more closely at them as potential terrorists.

At least, that's the impression I got when I read the department's report, Radicalism in the West: A Homegrown Threat. (It's 90 pages, so be ready for a long read.) The report says, as The New York Times puts it, that the key for law enforcement officials in the United States and abroad to prevent terrorism is "understanding how seemingly ordinary people become radicalized and hatch homegrown terror plots."

The report, which looked at several recent examples of "homegrown" terrorism, lists several reasons why these ordinary people can become radicalized, including "Personal crises -- such as losing a job or suffering from racism." And it says this radicalism happens not necessarily in mosques, but in "cafes, cab driver hangouts, flop houses, prisons, student associations, non-governmental organizations, hookah bars, butcher shops and bookstores." The Internet also plays an important role.

The report calls for more "intelligence gathering," which is, of course, another way of saying "spying."

The NYPD says that these potential terrorists "look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them." So if ordinary, everyday behavior means that anyone could be a suspect, how does one behave? And if everyone is a treated like a suspect, then might that create stronger feelings of discrimination, leading right back to radicalization? It could be a great big neat circle.

The report's analysis of how people become radicalized can be a useful tool for law enforcement if used in the right way. But if it is used as an excuse to be suspicious of every young Muslim, it could backfire.

Hugo Chavez: President for Life?

Some stories just don't come as a surprise at all.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants to eliminate current limits on his re-election and extend presidential terms ... so, basically, he could be president for life. The Los Angeles Times reports that Chavez proposed 33 radical changes to Venezuela's constitution to the National Assembly on Wednesday.

He also wants to end the autonomy of Venezuela's Central Bank, which would give him access to billions of dollars he currently can't get his paws on.

"It's not that I want to enthrone myself," Chavez said. "This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's done this way in any number of countries."

Riiiiiight. That and a $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.

August 15, 2007

It's National Relaxation Day ... So Relax

Before I leave today, I just wanted to remind you all that it's National Relaxation Day -- designated for just chillin' out. Here are experts' recommendations for relaxing:

*Get a massage at a local day spa.
* Treat yourself to a manicure or pedicure.
* Curl up in a comfortable pair of pajamas and read a good book.
* Slip into a soft bath robe after a long soak in the bath tub.
* Take a nap.
* Light a scented candle and take a bubble bath.

Well, I'm not metrosexual enough for a pedicure. But I like the sound of a nap. I hear it also can help you live longer.

So Why Can't Conservatives Do Political Humor?

I am about to postulate Regan's Comedic Theory #876: Conservatives' ability to do political humor is inversely proportional to their ability to do talk radio. The right wing rocks on talk radio, while the left comes off sounding like a bunch of whiny losers (Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller being the most notable exceptions). But when it comes to political humor, the right is just plain unfunny (P.J. O'Rourke and Dennis Miller ... sometimes ... being those exceptions.)

I write this as I read that the Fox News Channel has decided to cancel The 1/2 Hour News Hour, a show designed to be the conservative answer to The Daily Show. It was a pretty good idea, but it just didn't work. I tuned in twice and it was painfully unfunny, straining at times for a hint of humor. Producer Joel Surnow will just have to go back to helping Jack Bauer save the world on 24.

It doesn't have to be this way. O'Rourke makes me roar with laughter because he finds the things in liberal culture that are naturally humorous -- he doesn't strain to make them funny, and he's not an ideologue. The same is true of Jon Stewart on the liberal side.

The 1/2 Hour News Hour failed, in my opinion, because being conservative came before being funny. Next time, let the folks who write King of the Hill or Family Guy do it.

Who's Been Messin' with My Wikipedia Entry?

When I started here at NPR several months ago, my orientation included a session with our incredibly knowledgeable librarian Kee Malesky. She gave me lots of great tips and only one real warning: Don't trust what you read on Wikipedia because you just don't know where that information came from.

I thought of Kee's warning as I read this piece on Wired about a new data mining service, called WikiScanner (that you can see at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/), that lets you see who has gone into Wikipedia to make edits -- including in entries about them. And some of the names might surprise you.

Fox News is there. So are The New York Times, Al Jazeera and WorldNetDaily. Corporations like Diebold, Raytheon, Pfizer, Exxon Mobil and Wal-Mart. Not to mention the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, members of Congress, the CIA, the Church of Scientology and the Catholic Church. They all made changes of some kind to entries that included references or information about them.

Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith, who wrote the data mining program, used IP addresses from millions of Wikipedia entries to trace their sources. "Everything's better if you do it on a huge scale, and automate it," Griffin told Wired.

Another reason why I love the Internet -- it just gets harder and harder to hide the fingerprints on the virtual cookie jars.

Turkey's Ruling Party Wants Gul for President Again

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul

STR/AFP/Getty Images

You know the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed..."

It seems that Turkey's ruling party, the AKP, (described by The Guardian as "mildly Islamic") has adopted this as its new motto. Word came from Istanbul this week that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose party won a substantial victory in the recent national election, is renominating foreign minister and former Islamist Abdullah Gul for president. It's a largely ceremonial role, but the president can veto legislation.

Needless to say, the secularists in Turkey are red in the face. They believe Gul, who is a practicing Muslim and whose wife wears a headscarf, is the first step on a slippery slope to Turkey becoming the next Iran. For his part, Gul said today that everyone should just relax because he has no intention of undermining Turkey's secular constitution.

The last time Erdogan nominated Gul, there were mass demonstrations by secularists and grumbling from the army. Then, the opposition party boycotted the parliament during the vote to block it. But the reality is that Erdogan may get his way this time. Following the election, there are now two official opposition parties, and the newest one has already said it would not walk out on a vote.

Now we have to wait and see what Turkey's overwhelmingly secularist military has to say about old adages.

9:37 AM ET | 08-15-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

August 14, 2007

Being a Diplomat May Be Risky for Your Mental Health

It's not easy being an American diplomat these days. Not only is America's image in the world taking a consistent beating, but it can also be downright dangerous, as the recent threat from al-Qaida showed. And now an internal State Department survey shows that it can also really mess up your mind.

The Associated Press reports that the document shows that 2 percent of the 2,600 diplomats who serve in locations where spouses and dependents are not allowed for security reasons likely have post-traumatic stress disorder. Another 15 percent "possibly have this disorder but would require a more thorough examination to make a definitive diagnosis."

But the union that represents U.S. diplomats, the American Foreign Service Association, argues the survey underplays the number of these cases that occur in places like Baghdad or Kabul. AFSA says its information shows that 40 percent of diplomats, especially those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, "struggle to readjust to civilian life and suffer from stress disorders, including thoughts of suicide."

The State Department questions some of AFSA's numbers but also announced today that it plans to create a new mental care office and require employees to take more vacation time to relax.

I confess there are days when I worry that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq is creating a whole generation of mental health problems for this country.

5:58 PM ET | 08-14-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

People Say Media Are Sloppy, Biased ... But Doing OK

To paraphrase Sally Fields, you sort of don't like us, you really, really sort of don't like us. The news media, that is. OK, maybe that's going too far. You still like us, but you're feeling more than a bit iffy. And you're really grumbling if you read or listen to us online.

According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, "Views of Press Values and Performance: 1985-2007," a majority of you think that we're biased and inaccurate, and more than a few of you see us as uncaring about the people we cover and too critical of America. I won't go into all the percentages -- you can read them on the report summary.

But you still think we're very professional and doing a good job keeping politicians in line. Go figure.

The real news to me is the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans about the media. Conservatives have long considered the traditional media too liberal, but the gap is growing. No doubt reporting on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is influencing this divide. (For instance, more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats say news organizations are too critical of America -- 63 percent vs. 23 percent.)

Jay Rosen over at PressThink tries to shed some light on the debate and concludes that what really undermines the news media's better instincts is not being liberal or conservative but being addicted to "savviness."

Deep down, that's what reporters want to believe in and actually do believe in -- their own savviness and the savviness of certain others (including operators like Karl Rove.) In politics, they believe, it's better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It's better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere or humane.

The idea that many important journalists have replaced tough reporting with an adoration of "savviness" is a very interesting one. Your thoughts?

Boston Lays Claim to Title of Bloggiest City in America

Beantown bloggers rule!

Or so says OutsideIn.com, a Web site that tracks neighborhood blogging in 3,345 neighborhoods in 54 cities across the U.S. In its most recent survey, which covered the months of March and April, Boston beat out Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., for top honors.

Why Beantown, you may ask? Think of all those colleges, jammed with students happily blogging away the hours instead of studying. All those tech people who work in or around the Hub. Boston.com reports that Outsidein.com Chief Executive Steven Berlin Johnson offered an additional theory: Blogs thrive where locals are wired, well-educated and obsessed with politics. (Boston? Obsessed with politics? Surely you jest.)

But as always with Boston, there's a New York factor involved. Brooklyn is actually the nation's bloggiest neighborhood -- if it was considered a city on its own, rather than just a borough, it might have come close to eclipsing Boston.

At least it's not the Bronx. Damn Yankees.

Tiger Woods Is Just Playing the Numbers Game Now

All summer long, I've been hearing one number -- 755, the number of home runs that Hank Aaron hit and that a certain San Francisco Giants player needed to pass to become baseball's all-time leader. Now that this number has passed us by, get ready to hear a lot more about the number 18.

I've always felt fortunate that I've been alive to see some of the world's great professional athletes play during the prime of their careers: Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr in hockey, Michael Jordan in basketball, Alex Rodriguez and Pedro Martinez in baseball, Peyton Manning and Joe Montana in football, Roger Federer in tennis and Annika Sorenstam in golf.

But few of these superb athletes come close to Tiger Woods.

Bob Ryan, The Boston Globe's great sports columnist, writes that Woods may turn out to be the greatest athlete of all time, in any sport. For instance, since the 2006 British Open, Woods has won 11 of the 19 tournaments he has played in, including three majors. He also finished second in two majors. He now has 13 victories in golf's big ones: the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA.

The record is 18 victories in major tournaments, held by Jack Nicklaus. Playing at this rate, Woods will probably pass him by 2010. So get used to hearing that number 18 a lot over the next couple of years.

Vick's NFL Career Seems Headed Down the Drain

Atlanta Falcons star quarterback Michael Vick is now in more trouble than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The two remaining co-defendants in the case have now scheduled hearings to enter plea agreements. That leaves Vick as the only one of the four people charged still facing trial. And ESPN reported Monday night that Vick's attorneys met with federal prosecutor Michael Gill and the investigators.

The end is nigh. Prosecutors will probably only make a deal if Vick spends some time in the big house. Karl Rove has a better chance of returning to the White House than Vick does of returning to the NFL in 2007. The bigger question is whether Vick will play football again. Ever.

I'm not much of a gambler, but I don't think I'd be putting any money on Vick's chances.

August 13, 2007

Do Reports on the Stock Market Rot Your Brain?

I'm going to rant for a second, so bear with me.

Reporting on the ups and down of Wall Street has become like the coverage of a car chase on an L.A. freeway. It's all quite exciting and unnerving at first, but in the end it seems small potatoes.

It normally goes like this. The Dow falls by, oh, 200 points by noon. It's doom, despair and fear in the media for hours!

Then the next day, the Dow goes back up, and the crisis is over faster than a Lindsay Lohan vow to stop drinking. We hear it was a minor correction because the market had actually "been too high." Or that the mortgage problem isn't quite so bad because the rest of the economy is just fine, thank you. Or that traders were trying to "take some profit." Or that the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. Who knows!

Last week, for instance, the Dow dropped sharply one day, and yet when all the weekly numbers were examined on Friday, the Dow had actually experienced a modest gain.

I know all this economic stuff is important, and complicated factors are at work. The mortgage problem is not one to be dismissed lightly. But sometimes it all just gives me a headache.

Harry Potter Makes Journalists Do Strange Things

One of the first things I learned in journalism was that the public had a right to know what was going on. The moment you got news and had it confirmed, you printed it. And that was true whether the story was about the president or your mother.

So how come Harry Potter got so many breaks? I mean, newspapers and broadcasters have gone out of their way for weeks not to let people know what happens at the end of the seventh and final book, even when copies made their way to the public before the official publishing date. There were more spoilers on articles than on cars at the Daytona 500.

In a very interesting piece, Patrick Reardon of the Chicago Tribune writes that maybe that was a good thing. That the decency that journalists showed to a fictional boy should also be shown to other people. That maybe all the news isn't fit to print, and we need to be a little more discerning.

Reardon wonders if we really need to know so much about Elizabeth Edwards' battle with cancer, or anything at all about the blonde woman seen recently with New York Yankees' slugger Alex Rodriguez.

Do people in the public eye deserve to be treated with Potter-like care? Would that kind of journalistic discretion make the country a more civil place or just encourage some people to try and get away with behavior the public might deem unfit?

Next Big Health Fear: Too Many Espressos

Watch out for that espresso!

iStockphoto

I always knew that there was something about drinking espressos that seemed dangerous.

Jasmine Willis, a 17-year-old British girl, was hospitalized when she "developed a fever and began hyperventilating" after drinking seven double espressos at her family's sandwich shop, the BBC reports.

Jasmine has had a "full recovery" and is now warning people about the dangers of excessive coffee drinking. (She needs to come and do a seminar for NPR staff; I can tell you that right now.) Before the side effects of her binge wore off, however, she also cleaned every house on her block from top to bottom and wrote 37 versions of her final essay for school. Just kidding.

So America, tell your children to stick to the safe caffeine pleasure of lattes, coffee ice cream and decaf before they too fall victim to the scourge of demon espresso.

To Goo or Not to Goo: Will NASA Fix the Shuttle's Hole?

This handout photo provided by NASA gives a close-up view of the damaged tile on the underside of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

NASA via Getty Images

The news of a hole about 3 1/2 inches by two inches in the bottom of Space Shuttle Endeavour is not so good. And the memory of what happened to the last teacher to try to go into space makes it even more unsettling.

At least NASA found it in time and has options, which include: do nothing and hope for the best (not the one I would personally choose), using something called "goo" to plug the hole, putting a protective plate over it or just keeping everyone on the International Space Station until a rescue mission could be mounted -- by October.

October is a long way from now, and nine people (seven shuttle folks and two Russians already on the space station) living for two months in a space designed for three or maybe four sounds like some new reality TV show.

These days it seems every shuttle launch has a problem like this, caused by falling ice or foam on liftoff. A friend and I were musing this morning on how often this happened before Columbia was destroyed. It's my guess that it's like the dangerous intersection that needs a light or stop sign but doesn't get fixed until someone gets killed. There must have been times in the years before Columbia when there were holes in the protective shield, but no one got killed, so nothing was done.

Life and Death Decisions in the Middle of War

I hear a lot of radio, but few pieces can actually make me stop what I'm doing and just stand there listening. However, Steve Inskeep's interview with former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell on Morning Edition had me riveted this morning. Seldom have I heard a better example of the conflicting moralities that slam together during war.

Luttrell's tale of sparing the lives of several Afghans -- which in one case he believes led to horrific results and in the other kept him alive -- shows how hard it is to make life and death decisions when you're not sure who's your friend and who's your foe.

Luttrell questions in his book Lone Survivor, co-written by Patrick Robinson, if Americans should be following the rules of war if they really want to win against foes like the Taliban and al-Qaida. After all, these bad guys don't seem to follow any rules. On the other hand, Luttrell's experience shows how important those rules can be. Would any Afghan villager have tried to save him if the U.S. military had a policy of shoot first and ask questions later?

During vacation, I read in The New York Times that our British allies in Afghanistan already think that U.S. troops aren't careful enough -- resulting in more civilian casualties than necessary. I was struck by the words of one Afghan villager, who said that, after his village was allegedly bombed by U.S. airplanes by mistake, most of the surviving men joined the Taliban.

What do you think? Is it important for us to "be different" from our enemies in the way that Luttrell was, even if lives are lost? Or do we just need to forget the rules and fight in whatever way will ensure victory?

Karl Rove to Call It Quits at the End of August

Well, this is one heck of a way to return from vacation. I plopped down at my computer this morning and was greeted by the news that "Bush's brain" is leaving. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Karl Rove, the political guru behind George Bush's two successful presidential campaigns, is leaving Aug. 31 for "the sake of my family."

Oh, come on -- that family stuff is like a running joke, used every time someone involved in politics quits. The real reason, as Cokie Roberts said today on Morning Edition, is that Bush's political life is over and there really isn't any reason for Rove to remain as the president's political adviser. But it wasn't until Josh Bolten, White House chief of staff, told staffers that, unless they left the administration by the end of this month, they were in it until the bitter end that Rove decided to pull the plug on his 14 years with Bush.

Not to mention that the Democrats have been pretty aggressive in their efforts to have him testify in the U.S. attorney firings investigation. Rove had already been through one wrenching investigation: He was frequently mentioned during the probe into the leaked identify of then-undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. In fact, as The Associated Press notes, the lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (who was ultimately convicted of lying and obstructing justice in the case) told the jury at his trial that "Libby was the victim of a conspiracy to protect Rove. Details of any save-Rove conspiracy were promised but never materialized."

While Rove is "spending more time with his family," he'll probably be doing something else popular among those who have stepped out of the political arena (for now anyway): writing a book.

(P.S. Many thanks to Robert Smith for manning the fort while I was in the wilds of Massachusetts.)

August 10, 2007

Computers Can Waste Time More Efficiently Than You

And... solved! The zero-move solution.

iStockphoto

It's official. No matter how long it took you to solve a Rubik's Cube back in the '80s, it was way too long. Mathematicians have proven that no matter how scrambled a cube is, you can theoretically solve it in 26 moves or less. Or at least a computer can.

I would love to print some elegant formula here that would allow you to solve it faster or do the cube with your feet or nose. But alas, they used a supercomputer to churn through the 43 quintillion possibilities (after cutting them down a bit). Cheaters!

Before you dust off the cube and start to work on the 26-move solution, you should know that it is probably not good enough. Mathematicians suspect that 20 moves are likely enough to solve any Rubik's Cube. They just can't prove it yet.

By the way, there is a zero-move solution. Take off the stickers.

- Robert Smith

Porn 2.0

(NOTE: None of these links go to adult sites. Not NPR's style.)

The porn industry always seems to be on the cutting edge of technology. Many credit the early success of the VHS tape and DVD to people who wanted dirty movies in their own home. On the Internet, the industry pioneered video streaming, subscription services, pop-up ads and electronic billing.

But it seems like porn is behind the curve of Web 2.0. There's a fascinating article (with no dirty pictures so don't get excited) on Wired about how the adult industry is slow to adopt social networking and community elements.

I guess it makes sense. There is a certain amount of trust involved in making friends online and sharing your photos and such. People still want anonymity on porn sites. And the Wired piece notes that U.S. law requires strict record-keeping for adult content, including verifying the ages and real names of everyone in the picture.

There are (so I hear) a few sites like PornoTube (no link for you), where people can share their explicit videos, but with nothing like the community-building aspect of YouTube, Flickr or Facebook. Maybe that's for the good. It's already a little creepy to get a friend request from someone you don't know. At least you don't have to see them naked.

- Robert Smith

Tonight We Pull the Plug on the 30-Second Ad

I'm sure you wouldn't dare miss Friday Night Smackdown on the CW tonight, but be careful not to rush to the bathroom during the breaks. Tonight, we bid farewell and good riddance to the 30-second ad.

The video game company Electronic Arts will debut 10-second ads in the program. Which matches up with the attention span of the teenage audience they hope to reach.

But there's something serious going on here. The CW network calls them "cwickies" and hopes to sneak these ads in before you can reach for the remote. And just to totally throw you off your fast-forwarding rhythm, the company will have a 90-second ad at the end of the program. Ad Age points out how revolutionary this is:

Model-busting ad ideas, such as the cwickies and "content wraps" -- CW's series of long ads placed over the course of a single night -- do something that gives network executives the willies. They make one marketer's commercials more memorable than others airing in the same program, threatening to ruin a decades-old ad system. In the past, one TV ad had as good a chance as any to get noticed. Now, as the old saying goes, some ads are becoming more equal than others.

Thank God. It's hard to believe that the 30-second spot has gone unchallenged this long in a revolutionary media environment. And who knows what's next? Advertisers have already floated some other ideas: company logos dancing on the bottom of your CSI episode, split-screen ads during Grey's Anatomy. In order to save TV, sounds like they are willing to destroy it.

- Robert Smith

Who Needs Experience?

Hillary Clinton spent the week touting her experience in foreign policy after taking her rival Barack Obama to school on his "irresponsible and naive" stances. But the gonzo campaign reporter Stump Connolly asks a good question: Does experience matter?

Indeed, if you look back at politics over the last 50 years, America has elected three "experienced" presidents -- Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and George Bush I -- and five "inexperienced" ones -- John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. How have we fared under each?

Experience, Stump argues, led us into some pointless wars. But if you elect an inexperienced president, you have a 60 percent chance of getting someone decent. (I'll let you figure out which ones Stump likes.)

This is a good time to reread the article Ted Sorensen wrote for The New Republic about how Obama's inexperience reminds him of his former boss: John F. Kennedy. What do you think? Is inexperience in national politics an asset?

- Robert Smith

When the Economists Say Don't Panic, I Usually Do

I have a handy guide for whether or not the economy is in crisis. If I actually start to listen to the business news updates at the end of the newscast, it's already too late. We're doomed. Time to climb into the bomb shelter with gold Krugerrands.

This morning it dawned on me that this "liquidity crisis" that everyone has been screaming about all week was not, in fact, about rising beer prices. And I freaked.

So let's look around for something to get me off the ledge.

Will this affect my mortgage? If you have an adjustable loan, especially if it's pegged to an overseas rate, it's time to sell the baseball card collection. If you have a fixed mortgage, please don't point and giggle at the rest of us. If you are looking for a mortgage, listen to this guy. His word is gospel.

Will this hurt my investments? Oops. I guess it already did. What can I say? I only look at my retirement funds when I've had a stiff drink. Liquidity, indeed.

What should I do with my investments? Oh, you know what they always tell us. Think long-term. Don't panic. Blah, blah, blah. Oh, here's some good advice. Focus on shares of high-quality, larger companies. I guess they already have gobs of money and don't need loans as much as high-growth companies. Or something like that. I'm going to stay in denial.

What can I say at a cocktail party this weekend to make me sound smart? Well, you could try my liquidity joke about beer. I thought it was hilarious. Or if you are cool like NPR's Economics Correspondent Adam Davidson, you will bust out with, "I think the countries that learned the lessons of the Asian financial crisis of the late '90s are going to weather this just fine. It's the folks that ignored the warning that are in trouble." Take a sip. Make a liquidity joke.

- Robert Smith

Top 10 Signs the Fellow at Your Door Is a Zombie

Torn clothes, drool... It might be a zombie.

iStockphoto

I usually try to open each blog day with the most pressing, useful information I can find on the whole wide Web. It's clearly a Friday in August. So here goes:

An artist at Ask MetaFilter wants to know how to depict a zombie. The answers?

1. Deeply sunken bloodshot eyes.
2. Rotting flesh.
3. Slack mouth.
4. Asymmetrically balanced posture.
5. Lack of steamy breath on cold days.
6. Torn clothes. Their shoelaces would be untied as well, since they lack the motor skills or inclination to tie them up again.
7. Emerging from a covered grave. That would probably be a pretty good tip-off.
8. Emaciated, although nothing is creepier than an obese zombie.
9. Low, throaty growl. Imagine Stevie Nicks first thing in the morning.
10. Drool.

I expect this to appear in the next press release from the Department of Homeland Security. Add your own zombie warning signs in comments.

- Robert Smith

August 9, 2007

Another Day, Another Political Hoop to Jump Through

Tonight, the Democratic candidates have their third forum in a week, this time sponsored by the gay/lesbian cable channel Logo and the Human Rights Campaign. (You can watch it online here.) I suppose it's a good test for politicians to see if they can empathize with a crowd without pandering to it. But it's getting tough for the Democrats to please everyone.

First, they had to pay homage to the liberal bloggers at the YearlyKos convention. Then they had to fly their union flags at the AFL-CIO forum (good highlights here). But the service workers union, SEIU, isn't letting them off that easy. To compete for the union's endorsement, candidates have to shadow one of its workers.

On Wednesday, Sen. Barack Obama mopped floors and made breakfast for a man in a wheelchair as he followed a home health care worker on her daily rounds. Sen. Hillary Clinton will reportedly work a shift as a nurse in a Las Vegas hospital next week. These days it's not enough to kiss butts, you have to wipe butts to get elected.

Maybe those union guys are onto something. Maybe the candidates should have to work in an industry before they are allowed to tout their ideas for changing it. You have a great plan for universal health care, fine. But first spend a day with a doctor fighting insurance companies for coverage. Then, heck, spend the next day with the insurance workers and see their side. Get moving, candidates. Drive the buses. Fight the wars. Write the blogs. Then, maybe the American worker would finally get something out of presidential politics: A day off.

- Robert Smith

5:40 PM ET | 08- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

A Political Primary Pile-Up

The way things are moving we might as well just have the presidential primaries next week and get it over with. South Carolina Republicans just announced that they will hold their primary on Jan. 19, 2008. That means the me-firsters in New Hampshire will have to move their primary up to, at latest, Jan. 12. And yes, they have to. It's state law.

Iowa may leapfrog them all. But unless voters there want to be kissing Barack Obama at a New Year's Eve caucus, Iowa may be forced to schedule before the holidays. To all those reporters who complained that there's nothing worse than January in Iowa, wait until you feel December.

None of is this is set in stone, yet. The states are locked in battles with the political parties, which want to impose some sort of rational order on the primary schedule. And Iowa knows that anything that happens before Christmas is forgotten by Boxing Day. CNN quoted one official there:

"Iowa is not going to be driven by the Republican Party in South Carolina making a change to their primary date," said Carrie Giddins, communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party. "Nobody wants to go in December and Iowa will remain first in the nation."

Hmm. Using that logic, though, the state may only have one option: At 12 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2008, Iowans will be forced to pop the champagne cork, sing "Auld Lang Syne" and caucus the night away.

- Robert Smith

Barry Bonds Knocks Advertisers into History

Whether or not he deserves it, the video and pictures of Barry Bonds hitting No. 756 will go into history. And for advertisers, that could be priceless. Advertising Age notes that on the now-famous section of the outfield wall at AT&T Park are signs for Charles Schwab, Bank of America and Diamond Walnuts. Ads that will be played endlessly on sports highlight shows for years to come.

Of course, this was all part of the secret plan. Marketing expert Steve Rosner tells Ad Age that "the normal cost of a sign in the outfield is between $500,000 and $750,000, and that the Giants most likely marked up the price at the beginning of the season, knowing that the historic home run would come soon."

Remember that kid in Yankee Stadium who reached over the railing to catch a fly ball that helped send the Yankees to the World Series? Rosner estimates that the endlessly replayed video of the catch was worth $6 million to the sponsors on the wall right below him.

- Robert Smith

Networks Promise to Unshackle Their Debate Video

Another small victory for the citizen activists on the Web. They have convinced two more broadcast networks to make footage of presidential debates available on the Internet. ABC and NBC have joined CNN in allowing the video to be "legally shared, blogged, excerpted and put on sites like YouTube," MoveOn.org announced. Fox is still holding out. CBS is, so far, mum. (NPR already agreed to share tape of its debates next year.)

The New York Times' Caucus blog is amazed that conservative and liberal bloggers banded together to pressure the networks to open source the debates. They note that groups on the left like MoveOn.org joined with rightwing sites like Redstate.com. But we are seeing more of this cooperation. Both sides want the Internet to have a significant role in the 2008 elections, and if that takes a momentary truce, so be it. Both sides, for instance, are pushing Republicans to make sure that the GOP's CNN/YouTube debate actually happens.

There are, by the way, already more than a thousand questions for the Republican candidates waiting on YouTube for the debate to go forward. Remember the snowman at the Democratic debate? Over on the blog PrezVid, they found Santa Claus waiting for the GOP.

Watch Santa Claus ask the presidential candidates a question.

YouTube

- Robert Smith

10:45 AM ET | 08- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

August 8, 2007

Who Said Shopping Wasn't a Spectator Sport?

My friend at Cool Hunting pointed me to an addictive site. ThisWorld is an interactive map of the Earth that shows who is shopping for what and where. It's part of a new social networking site called ThisNext, where people can recommend stuff to their friends. That's fine, but watching bored consumers shop in real-time has me screaming at the computer like I'm at a hockey game.

"Hey. Dude in China. You're paying too much for that coffeemaker!"

"Come on, UK hipster. Pirate boots?"

I watched a surfer in Redwood City, Calif., flip through shoe after shoe until he seemed to stop at some gold lame sneakers. Do none of these people listen to me?

I suppose there's something I should be learning here. People around the world buy the same crap. Literally. Someone in San Francisco was shopping for coffee-scented soap in the shape of dog poo. Oh Internet, you never disappoint me.

Watch people shop in real-time at ThisWorld.

ThisNext.com

- Robert Smith

5:44 PM ET | 08- 8-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

The New Republic Stands By Its Baghdad Diarist

The Army says he's a liar. The conservative magazine The Weekly Standard calls him reckless. But The New Republic is still supporting Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

In three articles in the magazine, Beauchamp detailed the petty cruelties of the U.S. Army in Baghdad. In one anecdote, he talks about a soldier playing with the skull of an Iraqi child. In another, he writes about making fun of a woman whose face was disfigured.

On today's All Things Considered, NPR's Media Correspondent David Folkenflik tries to sort out who's telling the truth and concludes the story is at an impasse. The New Republic claims to have verified almost all of the details in Beauchamp's writing, except for one. The story about mocking the injured woman happened in Kuwait, not Baghdad. Folkenflik writes:

Leaving aside how one mistakes a base in one country for a base in another, that would mean, if true, Beauchamp's agonizing self-analysis occurred BEFORE his time in combat areas, not during or after, which would seem to undermine the validity of the origins of his cruelty. TNR Editor Franklin Foer stands behind the veracity of the event for now, however, saying he spoke to the other soldier.

The Weekly Standard claims that Beauchamp admitted that the stories were lies. The New Republic denies it. And the man in the middle says nothing: Beauchamp has been stripped of his laptop and cell phone, and no one has heard his side of the story.

- Robert Smith

Another News Wall Comes Tumbling Down

Everyone in journalism knows that it's a little bit of a rigged game. We reporters always get the last say. Sure, you can complain all you want on blogs. Send in those letters to the editor. But we decide which ones to air and publish.

Well, Google may soon change all that. It's starting a service on its news site that allows people quoted in news stories to e-mail their responses to news-comments@google.com. Once Google verifies a person's identity, his or her comments will be attached to the story. The Google site explains that this "will allow Google News users to find out the story behind a story and to know exactly what the people in the news think about the news." GULP!

Steve Rubel from the blog Micro Persuasion is already worried that Google is taking on a whole new role here:

The Google News team now makes decisions about what responses go up and what gets left behind. Think about that. What if Google somehow gets scammed with an email spoofer and posts a comment they shouldn't, for example.

And what about the poor journalists? Will we get to respond to comments? You have to admit, those Google kids are canny. If this works, it will draw the debate over news stories away from news outlets and blogs and to the Google site. Another reminder to us reporters that these days our stories are not the end of a process, but just the beginning of a discussion.

- Robert Smith

'Tornado-Like' Storm Hits Brooklyn; Hipsters Freaked

If your favorite blogs (including this one) are a little slow to update this morning, blame the wrath of God. New York's blogging epicenter, Brooklyn, was tossed around by a freak storm early this morning. Trees are down. Subways are flooded. And I had my daughter cowering in my bed at 6 a.m. as the thunder shook the walls.

Bloggers like me are taking cover in wi-fi cafes, sipping each latte like it could be our last. I'm stockpiling biscotti, just in case. Pray for us.

- Robert Smith

11:42 AM ET | 08- 8-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Something About Barry

Oh, what a beautiful morning for sports fans! Now that janitors at AT&T Park have mopped up the tears of joy and rage at some guy's 756th home run, a glorious new day has begun. We can finally stop talking about Barry Bonds.

I don't quite understand what personal demons the public was wrestling with over this one. Sure, there was the steroid issue. The race issue. The relentless needs of 24-hour cable channels. But it got crazy. Near the end, there was no factoid too small to analyze. Editor and Publisher magazine (who knew they had a sports page?) ran a piece about the elbow brace worn by Bonds and whether it created some sort of mechanical advantage. Uhhh, OK. You couldn't watch a baseball game on TV without constant interruptions updating you every time Bonds took a swing.

So, now he did it. It's been filmed for posterity. (The best part of the video is seeing the fans fight over the ball. Now THAT'S drama.) Let's move on. You record geeks can spend the afternoon poring over a nifty chart in The New York Times that compares the trajectory of baseball's great home-run hitters. Judging from the lines, my man A-Rod will hit the 756 mark in about six years. Until then, let's just watch the games.

- Robert Smith

August 7, 2007

Sending Terrorists Running for the Bathroom

If the war on terror makes you sick, well, soon you won't be the only one. The Department of Homeland Security is developing a new weapon to fight the bad guys: a flashlight that makes a person throw up. It looks like an old-fashioned, if somewhat bulky, light. But don't look too closely. The bright light pulses, which vary in color and duration, induce disorientation, vertigo and nausea.

The DHS says the flashlight could be in use by 2010. Of course, terrorists could just close their eyes or wear dark glasses or run away. But if they look, watch out: barf-o-rama.

Technology Review reports that researchers are now analyzing combinations of wavelengths and light intensities to see which ones make you sickest. And this fall, they will test the device on subjects who have some experience driving the porcelain bus, Penn State University students.

- Robert Smith

Final Words from Baghdad

The New York Times' man in Baghdad, John Burns, is finally going home. After five years of covering Iraq, what he calls "the most compelling story of our time," Burns is headed to England to become London bureau chief. NPR's Day to Day did an exit interview with Burns and got some surprising stuff.

Burns' early reporting on the brutality of Saddam Hussein helped cement U.S. public opinion against the dictator. But looking back, Burns says:

I would have spent more of my energies trying to write about what lay beneath, if you will, the carapace of terror here. The deeply fissured sectarian society that was just below the surface and into which the United States was stepping. ... It was certainly not ... fertile ground in which to implant Western, democratic ideals.

But even if the mission was doomed from the start, Burns is reluctant to conclude that it is now completely lost. How does he explain the contradiction?

The head tells us that this situation is close to, if not, irretrievable. The heart tells us that once America makes that judgment, and inevitably, if it does, decides to come home, the trauma of the Iraqi people is going to become very much worse. ... The alternative to some kind of limited success here is so ghastly that it is very hard to give up on the idea that there might be -- even now, there might be -- a turning of the tide, improbable as it seems.

And Burns has a personal stake in the outcome. His wife is staying in Baghdad. She runs the Times' bureau there and feels like she has to stay. So Burns is stuck in the uncomfortable position that is all too familiar to military families: He will now have to get any bad news from Iraq secondhand, always, as he puts it, keeping "my fingers crossed."

Read one of his last stories from Iraq, about Saddam's grave, here.

- Robert Smith

3:44 PM ET | 08- 7-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Dawn of the Dead Bacteria

Isn't this the way horror films start?

Scientists in New Jersey have taken bacteria from 8-million-year-old polar ice and brought it back to life. The blob was last seen approaching Manhattan. Just joking. The bacteria are in a lab. But it could mean that as global warming melts ancient ice around the world, some of our old bacteriological friends could return to haunt us. The authors of the research say that glaciers and polar caps can be considered "gene popsicles." Yum.

The folks at the New Scientist blog say it's probably not worth worrying about because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease. Besides, the old bacteria grow really, really slowly. You could definitely outrun them.

There are some questions about the research. It is apparently very easy to contaminate ice samples with younger bacteria. More testing will need to be done to make sure the Lazarus cells are really 8 million years old and not trying to pass off some fake ID.

- Robert Smith

The Seven Wonders of the Totalitarian World

If you followed the voting last month on The New 7 Wonders of the World, you might have noticed that the romantics won out. Sure, Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal are beautiful and uplifting, but what about the other side of the coin? What about the tacky, egotistical monuments to self that only a dictator can erect?

Esquire magazine takes us through The Seven Wonders of the Totalitarian World.

It must have been hard to pick a favorite in North Korea, but the truly ugly hammer, sickle and painter's brush won out. Then there's the atrocious giant gold fist crushing a U.S. fighter plane in Libya. I don't know if all the good artists are in prison or if ugly art is a cunning method of psychological control. Perhaps it might have helped the U.S. in Baghdad if we had spent some time putting up a monument to our victory.

Just make sure you visit the Seven Wonders soon. These things have a tendency to get pulled down and blown up after the inevitable coup.

- Robert Smith

Shining a Light on a Dangerous Method of Mining

Imagine it. You are working underground. The only thing holding up the rock above your head is a pillar of coal. Then, to squeeze out a little extra profit, your bosses tell you to take out that pillar as you leave, collapsing the earth behind you.

That's the method known as retreat mining. And it could be the culprit in a collapse that trapped six miners underground on Monday in Huntington, Utah. As we wait to see if they can be rescued, there are renewed questions about the safety of the technique.

The Associated Press quotes a former mine safety official who calls it "the most dangerous type of mining there is." Each pillar has to be removed in a precise sequence to control the collapse. But it's almost impossible to catch rule violations because any evidence is buried under tons of rocks.

Still, mine officials say that it's been done for 70 years and has an acceptable safety record. In Kentucky, after four miners were killed while retreat mining, the state commissioned an independent study of the practice. The study concluded that it could be done properly with better planning and communication.

For a diagram and pictures of retreat mining, check out the United Mine Workers site on the practice. The Department of Labor lists all the safety rules for the technique and notes that most collapses happen during August.

- Robert Smith

10:54 AM ET | 08- 7-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

August 6, 2007

I'll Be Kicking Off Early in the Name of Science

iStockphoto

After a hard day toiling in the blog-field, I was happy to finally find something useful. Researchers in Canada (naturally) are studying the physics of beer bubbles. Maybe I'm already too tipsy, but I can't understand any of the calculations. The scientists, however, say that by measuring "multiply scattered acoustic waves" in beer, they may someday be able to predict volcanic eruptions and monitor the structural health of bridges.

Or at least that's what they tell their lab assistant when they send him for another case of Molson's.

There's a Nobel Prize waiting if the team can just confirm the existence of the elusive deliciousness particle. Time to build that beer accelerator. Prost!

- Robert Smith

Mr. Facebook, Tear Down This Wall!

Scott Gilbertson over at Wired is demanding that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace open up their little worlds. If you have ever used them, you know that these sites are like segregated neighborhoods. Facebook people can only link to Facebook friends. MySpace people have their own 'hood. And the more photos and music and contacts and friends you add to your page, the more tied you are to your particular site. He writes:

Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.

So Gilbertson is asking the Web community to build its own open social networking system. It's technically possible, but he may not find people flocking to his cause. Segregation exists online for the same reason it does in the real world. People want the comfort of hanging around with people just like them.

Danah Boyd of the University of California-Berkeley recently wrote about how the closed ecosystems of MySpace and Facebook are evolving in different directions.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. ... MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm.

Even if you take down the technological barriers to sharing between the sites, would the users want that? You can make all the kids go to the prom together, but you can't make them dance.

- Robert Smith

Utah's Coal Towns Know the Human Cost of Mining

I used to be a reporter for a public radio station in Utah and would often drive through the small town of Huntington, the scene of the mine collapse this morning. Six men are reported to be trapped underground after a nearby earthquake.

It's an area that's familiar with the dangers of coal mining. Not too far from the town is a cemetery that used to hold dozens of rotting wooden markers, honoring the dead from one of the worst mine disasters in U.S. history. On the morning of May 1, 1900, coal dust ignited in mine No. 4 outside of Scofield, Utah. More than 200 men were killed, some by the explosion itself, but many more from the toxic fumes that seeped into adjoining shafts. The disaster left 107 widows and 270 fatherless children.

I would occasionally take a detour and drive through Scofield, which is a ghost town today. The blast left deep scars on the region. Many families still talk about grandfathers and great-grandfathers who never came home from work that day.

- Robert Smith

The Banality of Torture

I have been fascinated all morning with Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece about allegations of torture in the CIA's secret prisons. She pieces together the path of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka K.S.M.), the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack, from capture in Pakistan, through secret prisons to Guantanamo.

By the time the CIA got done with him, he had admitted to 31 plots, including the attempted shoe bombing, the Bali nightclub explosion, the 1993 World Trade Center blast and planned attacks on President Clinton, President Carter, the pope and London's Big Ben and Heathrow airport. After he claimed to have personally decapitated Daniel Pearl, Pearl's father told the New Yorker, "Something is fishy. There are a lot of unanswered questions. K.S.M. can say he killed Jesus. He has nothing to lose."

A lot has been written about the alleged use of waterboarding to get the confessions, but Mayer's article details the other psychological techniques likely used by the CIA on K.S.M. One interrogator tells Mayer about inducing "learned helplessness":

It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners' ability to forecast the future -- when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn't after intelligence.

Mayer documents the precision and ingenuity of CIA techniques. Even innocuous things like varying the size of meals from one day to the next can add to the confusion. And the article goes to show how difficult it can be to regulate interrogation techniques when even mild methods like forced standing and sleep deprivation can be extended to such lengths that only the word "torture" is appropriate. One expert she quotes says:

People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process.

Over at the blog Metafilter, one poster noted that once again real life seems to be imitating the satirical world of The Onion.

- Robert Smith

2:22 PM ET | 08- 6-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

If NASA Faked Moon Landings, It Did a Heck of a Job

An image of the moon from the Apollo 15 mission.

Courtesy NASA Johnson Space Center and Arizona State University

Check out these fascinating, detailed photos of the surface of the moon (or is it a soundstage in Area 51 of the Nevada desert? I always get confused.)

For almost 40 years, the complete photographic record of the Apollo moon missions has been locked in a freezer. But now, Arizona State University is teaming up with NASA to scan the 36,000 photos and make them freely available on the Web. The project will take three years, as each negative has to be carefully warmed back to room temperature, cleaned and scanned down to the very grain of the film. The digital files are so large (some up to 11.8 gigabytes!) that the photos are copied to a hard drive and shipped via UPS, rather than bogging down the university's Internet system.

So, other than the coolness factor, why bother? Scientists say that they can use the digital photos to find changes in the surface of the moon over the last 40 years. Plus, it will keep the conspiracy theorists busy for the next 40 years looking for suspicious flaws. (Somebody over at the blog Slashdot already found a stray hair on a photo. Hmmmmm.)

Now, if we could just get the government to release detailed scans of the Zapruder film.

- Robert Smith

11:45 AM ET | 08- 6-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Blogging May Be Hazardous to My Career

(Tom Regan is away this week. NPR's New York correspondent, Robert Smith, is filling in.)

This is my first post, and if I'm not careful it might be my last. It makes a public radio blogger a little nervous to hear that the CBC (the Canadian version of NPR) is cracking down on its employees' personal blogs. Along with the standard boilerplate about not blogging on company time and computers, the CBC's new editorial guidelines go further.

The blog cannot advocate for a group or a cause, or express partisan political opinion. It should also avoid controversial subjects or contain material that could bring CBC/Radio-Canada into disrepute.

This applies not just to journalists, but to all employees at the network who identify the CBC in their blogs. Receptionists. Janitors. Librarians. Over on the official Inside the CBC blog, employees and others are arguing over whether the network has gone too far. Gillian writes, "God forbid that people find out that CBC employees have opinions! What, you mean they're real people?"

The real sin of the CBC is not that it wants to appear impartial. That's normal. But the network doesn't seem to understand how touchy the blogosphere gets when Daddy tells it what to do. Here's a much more constructive approach. A year ago, some CBC bloggers made their own rules, such as:

Use common sense and don't do anything stupid. Blog to make the CBC better, not to kill it.

See, it's basically the same rule the CBC made, but much more chill. As for NPR, our ethics guide doesn't specifically mention blogs. Still, I hope my bosses don't discover my personal blog, where I share my deepest and most heartfelt secrets.

(Update: Looks like I should have been a little more careful with the link to my "personal blog." Although it was a just a joke, it turns out that blogs are indeed mentioned in the updated NPR ethics guide. Here's the language:

"NPR journalists must get written permission for all outside freelance and journalistic work, including written articles and self-publishing in blogs or other electronic media, whether or not compensated. Requests should be submitted in writing to the employee's immediate supervisor. Approval will not be unreasonably denied if the proposed work will not discredit NPR, conflict with NPR's interests, create a conflict of interest for the employee or interfere with the employee's ability to perform NPR duties."

So, technically, my link was blogging without permission. Now, you will note that NPR's rules only apply to journalists with the organization and not all employees. In that way, we are different than the CBC.)

- Robert Smith

August 3, 2007

Time for Vacation

Man, I need a vacation. And I'm happy to say I'm going to take a week and go in search of one in Massachusetts.

While I'm gone, NPR reporter Robert Smith will blog in my stead. He's also Canadian (all part of our secret Canuck plan for world domination). He says he's like the substitute teacher, so there won't be a lot of homework next week.

I'll be back on Aug. 13. Don't forget that you can always send ideas, suggestions, complaints, etc., to newsblog@npr.org.

5:29 PM ET | 08- 3-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Bush Invites Nations to Climate Change Conference

When I first saw this headline from The Associated Press, "Bush invites nations to climate change summit," I thought the next one I'd see might be: "Hell freezes over." (The last time hell froze over was, of course, in October 2004, when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.)

Not that I'm questioning the president's intentions. He wants "to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiating table so they are part of the solution, not the problem." Maybe the relentless beat of reports that have confirmed the reality of global warming has changed his mind. Or maybe his buddy, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who feels very passionately about global warming, convinced the president that he could no longer ignore the elephant in the corner of the Oval Office.

Whatever. For the most part, Bush appointees have relentlessly underplayed the effects of global warming, if not denied them altogether, or have said it's not a problem we necessarily need to "wrestle with."

But if the president is really serious now about dealing with climate change, then, as Blair has often said, he could have a huge positive effect.

The conference is set for September and will be hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The United Nations also has a similar meeting set for a few days before the Bush conference.

News Corp. Fires Back at Edwards over Book Money

Lately I've been reading Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's great book about Lincoln and his Cabinet. One thing that really shines through is Lincoln's genius for not putting his foot in his mouth. It's a book that I would heartily recommend to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

As news of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of The Wall Street Journal circulated, Edwards demanded Thursday that Democratic candidates return all donations from Murdoch and his News Corp., owner of the much-despised-by-Democrats Fox News cable channel. Edwards was particularly aiming his ire at Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has received about $20,000 from News Corp. executives.

Not so fast there, Johnny boy.

Today's Murdoch-owned New York Post brings the news that Edwards received about $800,000 from News Corp.: Its HarperCollins unit published Edwards' 2006 book Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.

"We assume the senator is going to give back the money from his advance," News Corp. spokesman Brian Lewis said. Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post reports that an Edwards spokesman said "his boss donated the book payments to charity and that the expense money went to staffers and vendors."

Now, the money you earn for writing a book might not be exactly the same as campaign donations, but when Edwards made his comments, he could have brought up the HarperCollins money and explained. But he didn't. As a result, he has opened himself up to charges of being a hypocrite.

When you're running for president, you can't make these kinds of mistakes.

White House Looking to Expand Eavesdropping Powers

Stampede! Stampede!

That's how critics of President Bush are describing his effort to push Congress into passing legislation expanding eavesdropping powers before lawmakers go on vacation Monday. They say this "stampede" bears resemblance to the one on Capitol Hill after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Congress passed terrorism bills without bothering to read them.

So why is the White House seeking expanded powers now? While no official has said it directly, various media sources are reporting that a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act panel recently rejected a Bush administration request to intercept certain e-mails and telephone calls of suspected terrorists overseas on a legal technicality involving the way data moves through the United States.

So the administration is using that to argue for a complete overhaul of the 1978 act that would give it greatly expanded powers. The White House and its supporters warn that if it doesn't happen before Congress' vacation, the country will be in grave danger ... like right NOW!

The Democrats seem willing to pass some form of legislation, but the stumbling block is that the White House had wanted the bill to allow the attorney general -- now Alberto Gonzales -- to OK eavesdropping without going to the courts (as long as the target is "reasonably believed to be outside of the United States") and be able to compel U.S. telephone and Internet companies to cooperate.

The Democrats (especially Sen. Patrick Leahy, the head of the Judiciary Committee), who believe that Gonzalez has repeatedly misled them about intelligence matters, aren't going to buy that at all. The White House has tried to soften the legislation by making the national intelligence director part of the approval process and permitting the FISA court to review certain activities.

The Los Angeles Times offers this approach to the problem: "Hurry up and wait." Fix the technicality hindering intelligence gathering, but wait until after Congress returns to debate broader changes.

Russia Tries to Claim North Pole, Canada Says No Way

So, Russia thinks it can claim a huge chunk of the Arctic Ocean's floor by dropping a cylinder with a flag at the North Pole. But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says, "No way, eh."

Well, maybe he didn't phrase it exactly like that. The prime minister actually said he was puzzled by what Russia did. The even more fitting comment comes from my fellow Nova Scotian, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, who, The Globe and Mail reported, said: "We've established a long time ago that these are Canadian waters and this is Canadian property. You can't go around the world these days dropping a flag somewhere. This isn't the 14th or 15th century."

I don't know; the way Russian President Vladimir Putin has been acting lately -- verbally sparring with Britain and turning his back on arms treaties -- sure feels a few centuries old. And a Canadian parliament member from the Western Arctic says the Canadian government can't afford to "shrug off" Russia's move.

One undersea expert, however, said that Russia might be overreaching a bit. Kim Holmen, research director of the governmental Norwegian Polar Institute told The Guardian that Russia claiming the North Pole is a bit like Scotland claiming part of the United States because "the Appalachians and the Scottish mountains are the same geological formation."

This dispute is, of course, all about the Benjamins -- in this case, the ones you make from oil. Experts believe about a quarter of the world's untapped oil and natural gas lies under the Arctic Ocean. Under the law of the sea agreement, a country can claim a larger section of the ocean bed if it can prove that it is an extension of its continental shelf. Russia says that the North Pole is an extension of the Eurasian continent. In 2001, this claim was rejected by the United Nations, but Russia is preparing to resubmit its claim in 2009.

I know an easier way to settle this. We all know Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. When children write letters to Santa, they write him at the North Pole, Canada. He even has his own Canadian postal code -- HOH OHO. Seriously. And if the guy in the red suit gives his address as The Great White North, I for one am not going to disagree with him.

August 2, 2007

Tommy Makem Dies in New Hampshire

In the midst of all the news about the bridge collapse in Minnesota, my friend Dave Beard at Boston.com sent me an e-mail to tell me that Tommy Makem had finally succumbed to lung cancer.

When I was a kid in the '60s, my house was filled with music, primarily coming from my dad's record player. We listened to Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Vaughn. But more than any other musician or group, we listened to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

As All Things Considered reports, the group became a part of the folk music revival in the '60s, specializing in, of course, Irish music, which they played a key role in popularizing in America.

And we had every record. Their concert at Carnegie Hall. Their concert back in Ireland. All their studio albums. I knew their songs by heart, and years later, when my brothers and I formed a college folk band, we sang many of their songs and chanted their ditties at the tops of our lungs: "Up the long ladder and down the short rope, to hell with King Billy and God bless the pope, if that doesn't do, we'll tear 'em in two and send 'em to hell with their red, white and blue."

My house was a touch republican.

In the old days, my brothers and I would hold a wake whenever a great musician died. Over the years, we held wakes for Harry Chapin, Stan Rogers, Jim Croce and John Lennon, to name few. We may all be in separate places now, but tonight we will lift a parting glass to Tommy Makem.

Minneapolis Bridge Scored 50 Out of 120 in Inspection

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis on Wednesday had scored 50 on a scale of 120 in a 2005 inspection, which means it was rated as "structurally deficient." But The Swamp notes that Snow added that this did not mean there was a risk of failure -- or that "the national system of inspecting bridges will be reevaluated."

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters agreed, saying that the ratings didn't mean there was any danger.

"What that rating of 50 means is that the bridge should be repaired, should perhaps be considered for replacement at some point in the future," Peters said. "It was by no means determined that this bridge was not safe. Had that been the case ... Gov. Pawlenty would have shut this bridge down immediately.

OK, let me get this straight. Scoring 50 out of 120 does not mean there was a risk of failure? In almost everything else I can think of, scoring 50 out of 100 (let alone 120) doesn't mean there is a risk of failure -- it means failure. In fact, Thomas Rooney, a civil engineer interviewed on Day to Day, said he wasn't exactly sure what the problems were, but he believed the score meant the bridge should not have been in use. As he said, 50 out of 120 would not mean a pass even in a fifth-grade elementary class.

Even if bridges have an evaluation system that's different from school test scores, it would seem to me that the inspection would raise a flag somewhere in some state or federal department. Officials say that as many as 80,000 bridges in the U.S. share a similar score -- no doubt in an effort to show that getting such a score is not such a big deal.

I'm not so sure people who now have to drive over these bridges feel the same way.

Worries About Organ Donations After Doctor Charged

I'm signed up to be an organ donor. I'm sure lots of you are as well. The way I figure it, when the day comes that I can't use them anymore, I'm glad to let someone else have them.

But I do want to make sure that day has actually come and that I'm not being "helped along" by anyone who wants a new liver or gall bladder or something.

That's why accusations that a transplant surgeon tried to hurry the death of a patient so his organs could be harvested have experts in the field worried that fewer people will be willing to be donors. The Associated Press reports that "prosecutors on Monday charged transplant surgeon Hootan Roozrokh, 33, with prescribing massive amounts of drugs in an attempt to hasten the death of 25-year-old Ruben Navarro, who was physically and mentally disabled."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Roozrokh is believed to be the first doctor in the country charged in a case of this kind. Roozrokh's lawyers say he is innocent and did nothing wrong.

But the idea of a doctor "hurrying up" a potential organ donor's death can send chills down the spines of people considering signing a donor card and give those who don't support the idea of people being taken off life support for any reason grist for their mills.

Does this case change your mind about donating your organs? If you're already part of a donor program, does it make you consider dropping out?

MP: Economic Policies Driving Iraq 'to Brink of Collapse'

As if Iraq didn't have enough problems with ongoing sectarian violence, al-Qaida in Iraq and key parties in the government's tenuous coalition dropping out (just to name a few), now the country is getting bad economic news.

The Daily Star reports that Mehdi Hafedh, the former Iraqi planning and cooperation minister and a current member of parliament, warned at a conference Wednesday in Lebanon that current economic policies are "not viable and are pushing the country further toward the brink of total collapse." He also said that Iraq's "dependence on oil is not sustainable" and called for diversifying economic activity.

Hafedh said too many obstacles stand in the way of the private sector in Iraq, including interest rates that run higher than 23 percent. The Iraqi MP says this means businesses need to make a return of more than 30 percent to have a chance at making a profit.

But Safa Saber al-Helou, a member of the Union of Iraq Businessmen, told The Daily Star that there are areas of the country where investing makes sense: "Although many Lebanese might not be aware, the fact is that north Iraq is almost 100 percent safe, and the south is around 85 percent safe. Investments in these areas are not risky. The danger is mostly in the center of Iraq and the capital."

11:38 AM ET | 08- 2-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Bridge Collapse Sends Dozens of Cars into Mississippi River

It's the kind of scenario you see in a movie: A much-used bridge, jammed with cars during rush hour -- including a busload of children and teachers -- suddenly collapses. But, unlike the movies, no superhero appears to save the day.

I gasped when I saw the photos of the 40-year-old, 1,907-foot Interstate 35 West bridge that collapsed Wednesday between Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota. It looked like a child's toy that had been twisted and destroyed during rough play.

At least four people are confirmed dead, The Associated Press reports -- although initial death tolls were higher -- and dozens injured. Several of the about 60 children on the school bus were also injured, but the bus landed on all four tires as it fell and did not go into the Mississippi River. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that authorities estimate at least 20 people are still missing.

But police are now saying that what began as a rescue operation has turned into a recovery operation -- meaning they are looking for bodies now, not survivors. Authorities estimated 50 vehicles fell to the water and land below when the bridge collapsed. As one survivor said in a video on the Star Tribune site, you never know when your time has come.

Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep talked Jim Foti, the Star Tribune's transportation reporter, about reports of the bridge's condition. While the governor said the bridge had passed inspections in the last two years, Foti says there were reports of problems with the bridge.

You can watch live local coverage on KSTP.com, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, but you'll need to use an Internet Explorer web browser (FireFox won't work) and the latest Windows Media Player. WCCO.com, the CBS affiliate will allow you to use Firefox for viewing live updates.

August 1, 2007

Survey: Young People Slack Off More at Work

Morning Edition reported today on a new survey that shows young employees waste more time at work than their older co-workers. But I don't think that necessarily means that young people don't work as hard.

The survey by salary.com finds that we all waste about 1.7 hours out of 8.5 hours a day. (In fact, the number of hours wasted is down from 2.09 in 2005.) Well, what did you expect? As Peter Cappelli, a professor at Wharton Business School, pointed out to ME host Steve Inskeep this morning, who the heck works eight hours a day nonstop, particularly in a white-collar job? As comedian George Carlin once remarked, no one has ever seen a memo marked "9:01."

While those aged 20 to 29 reported spending about 2.1 hours a day on activities that qualified as "wasting time" -- like going on the Internet or making personal calls -- it's been my experience that young people are regularly called on to work more than their fair share.

We old timers more often have to deal with kids getting sick at school or caring for an ailing parent, etc. When we need to take time off to deal with these situations, young people are almost always expected to fill in, with little complaint, because more are single and "have the time." Not to mention that those lower on the totem pole often get less vacation time.

And, as Cappelli points out, even if young people "waste" more time, if you factor in that they are almost always a lot cheaper, they're probably getting more done per dollar spent on them.

So take that, all you number crunchers!

Mullen's Plain Talk About U.S. Mistakes in Iraq

U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, President Bush's nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has some pretty interesting answers to a question posed to him by the Senate Armed Services Committee. As the IraqSlogger blog notes, the admiral listed in writing seven major mistakes in Iraq in response to a policy question asked in advance of Tuesday's hearing. The seven mistakes Mullen noted are that the United States:

1. Did not fully integrate all elements of U.S. national power in Iraq.
2. Focused most attention on the Iraqi national power structures with limited engagement of the tribal and local power structures.
3. Did not establish an early and significant dialogue with neighboring countries, adding to the complex security environment a problematic border situation.
4. Disbanded the entire Iraqi Army, a potentially valuable asset for security, reconstruction, and provision of services to the Iraqi people, providing a recruiting pool for extremist groups.
5. Pursued a de-Baathification process that proved more divisive than helpful, created a lingering vacuum in governmental capability that still lingers, and exacerbated sectarian tensions.
6. Attempted to transition to stability operations with an insufficient force.
7. Unsuccessful in communicating and convincing Iraqis and regional audience of our intended goals.

U.S. News & World Report's Terry Atlas writes that Mullen "didn't name names, but he hardly needed to since these mistakes were based on key decisions and orders so closely tied to former Iraq occupation chief Paul Bremer (who disbanded the Army and ordered de-Baathification), former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who held down troop levels and froze out the State Department in post-war planning), Vice President Cheney, and President Bush himself."

Always nice for the president when his own nominee hangs him and many of his top appointees out to dry -- even if he's polite enough not to use names.

British Army Operation in Northern Ireland Ends

I remember having this same feeling when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I didn't think I would live long enough to see this story reported.

The nearly 40-year-old British operation in Northern Ireland is coming to an end. Morning Edition reports that the campaign involved more than 300,000 soldiers deployed there over the years. While 5,000 British troops will remain, the regular police handle security these days.

Not everyone is happy with this situation -- not all Protestants believe the Catholic IRA will live up to its promise to renounce violence. But no one wants to return to the way it was during "The Troubles."

Back in the early 1980s, a friend of mine from Nova Scotia had a run-in with a British soldier in Belfast while visiting family. One night, he went with his cousin to a local pub. Later, as he left, he walked out first, talking over his shoulder to his companions. Suddenly, he said, he was brought up short by something sticking in his stomach.

He turned his head to see a soldier, weapon pointed right at him, wanting to know who he was and what business he had in the area. It seems strangers in the neighborhood were always a matter of suspicion to the Brits. My friend told me that he decided to leave the next day.

Child Abuse Rises When a Military Parent Is Deployed

A new study shows that child abuse rises, particularly by mothers, when military spouses are deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And I think I understand why.

The Pentagon-funded study found that cases of neglect, abandonment, physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse rose by about 40 percent when a parent was deployed in families with previously confirmed cases of abuse.

Women were far more likely to mistreat children during their partners' deployment. Researchers say it suggests that fathers whose wives go off to war are able to get help from extended family or elsewhere. As we all know, our culture doesn't really expect men to be able to handle childcare by themselves, while women are often expected to be able to handle the load singlehandedly.

The Associated Press reports that the military will add more than 1,000 additional "family readiness support assistants" to work with stressed-out military parents. The Army also "recently added $8 million to its respite child care program" and increased home visits at bases that have high levels of reported neglect.

I can understand the pressures that build on a parent left alone because I've lived it -- to a much lesser degree. As I've noted, my wife was recently away for a month. Her job requires that she frequently take such trips. And when she goes away, I feel a lot more stress. I'm more tired because I literally go from 5 in the morning to 11 at night with work and family stuff, seven days a week, no breaks. I'm happy to say there's no abuse, but I'm a lot more short-tempered with my four kids, for sure.

And that's in only one month. I can only imagine how stressed and tired parents on their own would be after 18 months or even longer in some cases.

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