Don’t rely on your radio

Epic fail in Cincinnati:

WLW news light must be burnt out
Posted by: John • Sunday, September 14 at 06:24:22 pm

My brother-in-law, who lives in the Cincinnati area, called me because he knows I'm a radio nerd... His power's been out for 4 hours, and with the storms that have blown through today [Sunday - o.g.] (700,000+ customers without power in the tri-state area). His one source for news, was his battery-powered radio, and he was wondering if there was a radio station that would have coverage. WLW? Nope, the Reds are more important. WXVU? Nope. WKRC? No, but ironically the intro for the [weekend repeat of syndicated] Glenn Beck show samples some old cold war civil defense message telling folks to grab a radio and go to a fall out shelter. At this rate, if we ever did have to tune-in from a fallout shelter, I'm not optimistic there'd be anyone left on the payroll at these radio stations who'd know what to do.

2 million people without power across Ohio. 620,000 still without power (24 hours later) in Duke Energy’s service area (Cincinnati and environs). States of emergency declared in Ohio and Kentucky. Station boss’s response:

"In hindsight, I should have pulled the Reds"

Gee, ya think so?


(Sunday morning I had breakfast with the Sibling-In-Law in Columbus, Indiana. On the way home, shortly before noon, I drove past the building at 3212 Washington Street that houses three.radio.stations. The parking lot was empty, and Sunday morning’s paper still lay on the building’s front steps.)

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Get-cher answer, right here...

HT:  Toren at DP

Previously:  Well, it’s Wednesday, and I see we’re still here...

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Missing birthdays

Roberta X writes:

“Can you hear the reason I did things like miss a friend’s birthday?”

Yep, been there, done that.

In the days when I worked in the movie business (“exhibition” division), one of our company rituals was the monthly lunch to honor any staffers whose birthdays fell during that month.  These lunches involved the owner, the office staff (treasurer, film booker, and secretary), the “birthday people,” and any other miscellaneous employees who wanted to show up.  The birthday folks got free lunch and drinks,

more...

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“Too Much Information” Yeah, that’s the problem.

Somebody named Dusty Horwitt (who, after we get to the bottom of the article, turns out to be “a lawyer who works for a nonprofit environmental group^[1]”) writes in the Washington Post that he is worried. Worried that Data is drowning out Vital Information:

The information avalanche coming from all sides -- the Internet, PDAs, hundreds of television channels -- is burying us in extraneous data that prevent important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience.

“Important facts and knowledge.” Such as...?

...To achieve their goals, political movements need to reach and influence tens of millions of citizens...

Okay, propaganda. And...

“It's much more difficult [to reach people] today -- and much more expensive,” said Steve Eichenbaum, creative director of a Milwaukee-based marketing firm that helped engineer Russell Feingold's upset U.S. Senate victory in 1992...
...
...Media fragmentation has driven up TV advertising costs as candidates compete for the shrinking number of time slots that can reach voters, says Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin...

Propaganda, political campaigning, and advertising. I see. And...?

The opportunity to educate millions of citizens, so essential to significant movements of the past, has dwindled. In the early New Deal era, the Roman Catholic “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin...

(We’ll skip the discussion of whether Father Coughlin is best characterized as an “educator” or as a “rabble rouser, socialist propagandist, and bigot.” Meanwhile, say on...)

...promoted ideas for economic reform to a weekly audience estimated at 40 million... Today’s top talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, reaches only about 14 million people per week.

So the problem is that Rush’s audience isn’t large enough?

(Didn’t think so...)

Anyway (skipping some direct quotes; the piece is badly organized), Horwitt goes on to lament the decline of newspaper circulation, blaming “the overload” which “siphons audiences and revenue” (while carefully failing to note that, although some of the decline can be blamed on new alternatives, a lot has been existing subscribers getting fed up with a shoddier– Cut that news hole! Gotta maintain those profit margins!– and more biased newspapers).

And nobody seems to be watching network television anymore, either. Why, what’s a poor community organizer to do?

The challenge is to find ways to strengthen democracy in the era of TMI. It won't be easy, but the situation may not be irreversible, either.

“Strengthen democracy,” huh?  And I’ll bet you’ve got a plan, don’t-cha, bucky...

Rather than call for government regulation of technology itself, perhaps the best way to limit the avalanche is to make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread.

I’ve got it!  We’ll abolish the internet and send everybody back to steam radio!

But Dusty, the great unwashed might resent us raising the price of, and then taking away, their toys.  What to do...what to do...?

It could be done via a progressive energy tax designed to keep energy prices at a consistently high level...

That’s it!  We’ll tax it out of existence!  Brilliant!  (Smithers!  Some single malt for the gentleman!)

... (while providing assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans).

Our clients! Of course. (Have another single malt!)

This solution may sound radical and unlikely,

Not to mention stupid.  You are writing in the Washington Post.  What’s less energy-efficient than printing stuff on dead trees and then hauling it around town on trucks?  Hey Post editors, did you read this before you printed it?

...Modern information technologies are highly energy-intensive. According to Arizona State University engineering professor Eric Williams, a desktop computer “is probably the most energy-intensive of home devices, aside from furnaces and boilers.^[3]” ... It’s possible that over time, an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels

Hey, what about regular TV channels. After all, using millions of watts of electricity to throw something into the air is almost as inefficient as printing stuff on dead trees and hauling it around town on trucks. Has the NAB heard about this yet?

too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information...  A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers

which print stuff on dead trees and then haul it around town on trucks

instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

If the thought of more expensive information technologies makes you flinch, consider economist Alan Blinder's warning that the Internet could lead to the outsourcing of 40 million American service jobs over the next 10 to 20 years, including such jobs as financial analysts, lawyers^[4] and computer programmers...

So. Under the guise of “strengthening democracy” (and saving energy and jobs), this clown wants to return us to those glorious pre-Rathergate days when the Recognized Media told us what to believe, and we believed it. When there were no alternate sources to contradict a Walter Duranty (or a Walter Cronkite).

When all the activists had to do was convince a few gatekeepers. When the Received Wisdom remained unquestioned.

Noooo thank you.


(And then there’s that little thing called Moore’s law.  I imagine that, tax or no tax, on the day the final issue of the last newspaper comes off the press, you’ll still be able to find us, sitting in front of our solar-powered computers, blogging away.)

HT:  Comment by “AlanDP” at Hell In A Handbasket
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Why we love them

Whenever the nation is faced with a big problem that the people demand be solved, we can always be sure of one thing: A group of Republican senators will scramble away from their party’s principles to join Democrats in some grand “compromise” scheme. - Investor’s Business Daily

Via:  Howard

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As it happened

World Trade Towers and Pentagon Attacked
Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Sep 11, 2001 09:12 AM
from the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept.

The World Trade Towers in new york were crashed into by 2 planes, one on each tower, 18 minutes apart. Nobody really knows who did it, but the planes were big ones. Normally I wouldn't consider posting this on Slashdot, but I'm making an exception this time because I can't get news through any of the conventional websites, and I assume I'm not alone. Update We're having server problems. Sorry. Updated info, both towers havecollapsed, pentagon hit by 3rd plane. Part of it has collapsed.

And as for all that talk about how 9/11 “brought America together” (only for it to be driven apart by Evil Bush):

We had it coming... • (Score:5, Insightful)
by takochan (470955) on Tuesday September 11 2001, @10:37AM (#2277494)

They hit tower one of the WTC and *now toppled both over*. And got the pentagon too..

Now, a couple things.. this is bad, this is really bad..

Apparently it was Palestinian terrorists that did it (so TV is reporting)..

If it really was Palestinians, as much as I hate to say this.. I sort of understand..

before I start, I am a normal American white guy, am open minded, and think every race in the world has a right to their own safety and piece (including Americans).. I have absolutely nothing to do with the Arab israeli conflict (I am not arab, or Jewish, or anything like that), nor do I know any of either side closely at all..

But I was in Isreal once on business, and I saw what the Israelies do to the Palestinians, and what I saw made me sick to be an American because of how our government supports what the Israelis do to those people..

Basically, the isrealis take palestinian land bit by bit to make settlements for Israelis only, and shoot/run over/kill Palestinians with the guns, helicopters and bullets that we, America give the Israelis.

We dont report these travesties on American news (though you can get it on the BBC, CBC and other foreign outlets, and watch Israelis shoot with machine guns, 12 year old arab kids throwing rocks).

It is worse than south Africa, and I go as far to say, that the Israelis have put the Palestinians in concentration camp like conditions for the last 20 years or so, bulldozing their houses for their land, shooting their kids, controlling their land, their economy and choking them off one by one..

And when other countries like the Africans try to tell the truth (yes, the Israelis are racists..absolutely, they have dual licence plates for Palestine cars, dont let them drive on the same roads as Israelis, and occupy their country).

And we, the United states government, give more money, bombs, guns and weapons to Israel than to any other country in the world in foreign aid.., knowing (and allowing0 the Israelis to shoot, maim and rob more palestians of there property, lives and freedom.

And we have been doing that for 20 years now at least..

What else should we have expected really?

This terrorism really sucks, .. but we should also look at what we have been doing too the last 20 years.. and why a people felt so driven to do this to us..

Good old moral equivalence. I wonder if “takochan” has rethought his position over the last seven years. Along with the folks who moderated him “+5.”

The entire thread (which contains many cut-and-pastes from various MSM sources, posted in real time) is here.

LATER: My point isn’t to attack “takochan” in particular (I’ve removed his contact info, although it’s available in the original post), but to demonstrate that the meme that the events of 9/11 produced instant unanimity is false. There were plenty of apoligists, excuse-makers, and blame-America-firsters, both in the Slashdot thread, elsewhere on the internet, and bloviating in the MSM. Most were shouted down, only to resurface when it became evident that America might actually attempt to do something about its radical Muslim enemies.

Many of those people excuse their positions by blaming George Bush.
They are liars.

Elsewhere:  9/11, Again

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Close encounters of the Tam kind

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Carol Fowler provides an opportunity...

...to put all.that “lipstick” ugliness.behind.us.*

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” - Jonathan Martin

Whew, glad to know we can get back to the issues.

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Storm warnings?

In the comments to this post (via Ace):

Comment by Linda | 2008-09-09 21:39:59

Freedom…a moment please.

Do you see the reaction of people HERE on this blog to your charge of “staged”. [Note: this incident - o.g.]  YOU are looking at the future.

There are Democrats hanging by a thread to justify their vote for Obama.  I mean it.  Those huge shifts have just begun.  40% of this party is NOT going to vote for him if you keep it up.  1/3 if you stop it.

I want Obama to lose.  I DO NOT WANT downticket Dems to lose.  If YOU can’t learn to control your hyperbole, blame and accusations, you are going to cost them an election as people disgusted with Dems just pull a straight Republican ticket to teach THE DEMOCRATS a lesson.

You really need to take a deep breath.  THIS is no longer the primary where the MSM and the DNC will let you get away with whatever you wanted to do to HRC.  It’s the GE and the republicans are going to take your head off and hand it to you in the GE if you keep handing them the ammunition.  And they won’t only take down the Precious…they’ll take down the other Democratic candidates on the ticket by flashing non stop pictures of them with Obama… the disreputable and smearing demon of the Democratic party.

You really need to stop.

Does this represent a trend?


Related:   Meeting Chloe

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The Heinlein FAQ

(Via: Slashdot)

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