Daybreak, mid-July

6:25 am
"z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z"

WHAM!!!

"What What What!?"
Oh.  A strolling thunderstorm cell has snuck up behind us, and announced its presence with a nearby cloud-to-ground strike.

The birds, who began their dawn chorus a half-hour ago, chirp on unaffected.
Might as well get up.  The alarm will go off in a minute or so anyway.

Summertime in the midwest.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Dear Diary... at 15:25:48 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Bryan Caplan's Jock/Nerd Theory of History

Libertarian Class Theory at Volokh.
...and yes, I played french horn and worked stage crew.
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via Insty

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:18:22 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Newspaper death watch continues

Scripps-Howard to shutter Cincinnati Post and Kentucky Post. This after Gannett, owner of the rival Inquirer, decided not to renew the papers' joint operating agreement, which has been in effect since 1977. (How things change: Almost exactly 43 years ago Scripps owned both the Inquirer and the Post, and the Justice Department was suing to break up the ownership on monopoly grounds. Time story: Apartness in Cincinnati.)

80 employees apply for 20 buy-out slots at the Indianapolis Star.

In the Twin Cities, the St.Paul Pioneer Press wants to shed 30 more employees, after cutting 30 in December. Across town, the Star-Tribune's union has called for the paper's publisher to resign. [Minnesota Public Radio story.] And James Lileks asks:

Is there room for two newspapers in this town? What can newspapers do to stop the slump - or are they doomed to shrink until they collapse like guttered-out stars?

In slightly less than 3 hours, his 2:09pm (CDT) post has received only five comments.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 21:54:21 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Unfortunately, not satire

Lileks:

...niche genres... cannot complete with a station that decides you’d like to hear Pink Floyd’s “Money” for the 93,593rd time in your life. Because 93,592 times just left you wanting more, didn’t it?

jefferson101 .responds:

And now, we return you to your regularly scheduled hour of music-free commercials. We'll be back at the end of it to play a song or two before we try to sell you something else, and we'll try to pick the songs you hate the least!

Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 20:08:47 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Back-door gun control deferred

They got caught, and now they're back-pedalling:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it will significantly revise a recent proposal for new “explosives safety” regulations that caused serious concern among gun owners. OSHA had originally set out to update workplace safety regulations, but the proposed rules included restrictions that very few gun shops, sporting goods stores, shippers, or ammunition dealers could comply with.

Gun owners had filed a blizzard of negative comments urged by the NRA, and just a week ago, OSHA had already issued one extension for its public comment period at the request of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. After continued publicity through NRA alerts and the outdoor media, and after dozens of Members of Congress expressed concern about its impact, OSHA has wisely decided to go back to the drawing board. -- NRA-ILA site

We'll see...

LATER (070718): Kim Dutoit says we're engaged in a "holding action." (via DP.)
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Link and extract via Instapundit, as telia.net is dropping packets in Chicago, making the NRA-ILA site unreachable from here today.
Previously: More back-door gun control (July 9, 2007)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:50:57 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Tribal rule

The [UK] Telegraph prints an excerpt from Antony Jay's just-published Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer. Jay's article is an interesting examination of the media (specifically, the BBC) and its role in social change over the last half-century. It provides much insight into the mindset of the people who create "news," although much of what he has to say is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.

Jay introduces the idea of "tribes":

That our species has evolved a genetic predisposition to form tribal groups is generally accepted as an evolutionary fact. This grouping - of not more than about five or six hundred - supplies us with our identity, status system, territorial instinct, behavioural discipline and moral code. It survived the transition from hunting to agriculture... It even survived the early days of the industrial revolution... But the evolution of cities, of commuter and dormitory suburbs, has deprived millions of people of tribal living,... [and] fewer and fewer of us are now brought up in villages, even urban villages. The enormous popularity of television soap operas is because they provide detribalised viewers with vicarious membership of a fictional, surrogate tribe.

then goes on to say "...we in the BBC were acutely detribalised; we were in a tribal institution, but we were not of it."

But in his next paragraph, Jay proceeds to contradict himself^[1]:

We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual élite, full of ideas about how the country should be run, and yet with no involvement in the process or power to do anything about it. Being naïve in the way institutions actually work, yet having good arts degrees from reputable universities, we were convinced that Britain's problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge. We ignored the tedious practicalities of getting institutions to adopt and implement ideas.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world...

Surely, a "tribe," defined not by geography, race, or social standing, but by common beliefs and attitudes. And what did this tribe do?

[W]e were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it... From our point of view, the view from below, they were all potential threats to human freedom...

The topics we chose and the questions we asked were slanted against institutions and towards oppressed individuals, just as we achieved political balance by pitting the most plausible critics of government against its most bigoted supporters. And when in 1963 John Profumo was revealed as having slept with a call girl and lied to Parliament about it, the emotion that gripped us all was sheer uncontrollable glee. It was a wonderful vindication of all we believed. It proved the essential rottenness...
...
It would have been more than reasonable for us to have opposed specific abuses... But the focus of our hostility was the institutions themselves.

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 19:52:54 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Say, did'ja hear about...

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, [Rep.] Keith Ellison [D-MN]... compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler’s later seizure of emergency powers.

“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Mr Ellison said. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you”. -- The [UK] Telegraph

Gee, I didn't, either. Wonder why?

UPDATE 070718 22:50: After a almost a week^[1] the national MSM finally noticed, and now he's made a non-apology apology:

“In hindsight, I wouldn’t have used that reference point,” Ellison told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It was probably inappropriate to use that example, because it’s a unique historical event, without really any clear parallels.” -- Associated Press story via Yahoo! news [bolding mine - o.g.]

^[1] First (local) coverage of the event was on July 8th.
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Original and update via LGF.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 01:32:16 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Out of service

Over at Asymmetrical Information, Megan has been involved in the usual comedy of errors while trying to deal with Sony VAIO customer service:

They'll be happy to give me the tracking number so that I can check with FedEx and see where my box [to ship the computer back] went. And they're sure I'll get the box on Monday. I don't know how they could be sure, since they haven't, y'know, looked at the tracking information. Apparently, that's my job...
Did I mention that I am writing this as I sit on hold with Sony? I've been waiting to talk to a supervisor for fifteenthirty forty-five minutes. I can only assume that they think that if they keep me on hold long enough, I will forget that I don't have a computer and hang up...
Update They left me on hold for an hour, then hung up on me. I'm starting to believe it is deliberate.
Update II The plot thickens. It seems the reason I haven't gotten my second box is that . . . Sony has no record of ever having sent one.
Update III That's right. Apparently the somewhat English challenged help-desk interpreted "Okay, send me a box" as "I'll call you back" and put my request in the circular file.
Update IV After only two hours on the phone with Sony and a good bit of yelling, Sony has graciously agreed to email me a label and put me in a special queue which will see my computer turned around in only 3-5 business days. So I might have it as early as the week after next, provided there are no further hitches.

Awaiting further reports...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:18:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Maybe it's just a New York thing

New York's WCBS-FM drops "Jack" and reverts to its previous oldies format, and some radio-types say "Told-ja so!"

WCBS-FM had been a ratings leader and a solid billing station for years. As congolemeration hit Infinity the usual budget cuts came in. The standard bigco imperative was invoked, even at a top performing property like CBS-FM. Cut costs, reduce expenses, spend less on promotion. Sell more! Run lean! Yes, the typical "MBA-comes-in- wearing-a-pink- tie-and- ruins-a-good-business" sort of imperative and tragedy that occurs when Wall Street types grab up businesses in whatever category has the current bloom...

The format didn't sound or feel like New York, it had minimal interaction with the audience. It might as well ahve been radio for Topeka or Cedar Rapids. This was not a New York radio station, not by a long shot. -- Dean Landsman [italics and color in original - o.g.]

But Mark Ramsey sees no earth-shattering implications.

To a great extent, the Variety Hits formats continues to be one of American radio's secret success stories. As I travel from market to market I'm always surprised to discover just how many of these stations are out there and, more often than not, how well they're doing.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 17:55:23 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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You know, I believe they've detected a pattern here

Lawhawk^[1]:

Sharpe James, Democrat political boss and the former Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and a fixture in New Jersey politics may be facing his toughest fight yet...

It's official. He's indicted on 33 counts... What's missing [from the linked AP story]? How about his party affiliation! He's a life long Democrat. How'd that miss being included in the report? Will wonders ever cease?

UPDATE 070713 15:05: "nemo paradise" at Daily Pundit:

Today’s [July 13th] NYT ran a front-page story expanding to 4/5ths of a further page, including a sidebar. At no time in any of these articles was Mr. James identified as a Democrat.

Don Surber^[2]:

When federal agents found $90,000 in cold cash in the freezer of Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana, the AP waited until Paragraph 5 to identify him as a D.

This week, AP led its story on a sex scandal: Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana …

But hey, there is no bias in the news media.

But wait! There's more:

The Miami Herald did a 3-part series called “Poverty Peddler,” about a politically connected land developer. Today’s follow-up is “Rep. Meek defends role in land project.”

The follow-up does not mention the congressman’s party. The related story does not mention his party.

The call-for-action editorial does not mention his party.

In fact, I cannot find any mention of the congressman’s party affiliation in this series.

So is Rep. Meek a Democrat or a Democrat?

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Via: ^[1]Instapundit ^[2]Bill Quick All links in originals.
Previously: What party did you say that was?

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 23:44:38 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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