Countdown at the P-I

Via: Ruth Holladay
Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 17:54:14 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Everything is relative...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:25:11 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Now this is just plain MEAN

Amusing though*.

Seattle Post Intelligencer Garage Sale

Date/Time
January 10 (Saturday), 0800
Location
Seattle Post Intelligencer 101 Elliot Ave W.
Sponsored by
Hearst Newspaper Co.

Seattle P-I Garage sale.  Time to clean out the garage before putting the property on the market...

Perpetrated by AoS moron “IllTemperedCur,” who “wins the entire internets.”  *Here’s a screenshot in case of disappearance.

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 02:19:42 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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If you don’t read anything else about newspapers, read this.

Kenneth Anderson:

(I tried several times to write an introduction for this link, but none of my efforts satisfied me.  Since what’s important is that Anderson’s essay get wide circulation,  here’s the link with minimal explanation.  It is must-reading for anyone baffled about the way newspapers persist in alienating so many of their readers, and why newspaper companies seem hell-bent on committing suicide.  And it’s not just about the Times.)
Via:  IP

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 05:05:20 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Now class, what is the opposite of “progress”?

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 04:33:11 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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HDTV Follies: The Final Countdown

Would this be called “putting a cat amongst the pigeons”?

Six weeks before the nation’s television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, an aide to President-elect Barack Obama is asking Congress to consider a delay.

In the most significant sign to date of concern about the impending digital TV transition, the Obama transition team co-chairman John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are “woefully inadequate” and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be “reconsidered and extended.”
...
Major broadcasters, including ABC and NBC, have signaled that they support a delay.

Hey Roberta, looks like you may have to keep that old drive running a bit longer!

Elsewhere (added 090109 16:00):

Via: Slashdot

Previously:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 03:34:00 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Panetta CIA pick

NR’s Kathryn Jean Lopez has found a former CIA agent who likes the idea:

“Partisan political conflict during the Bush years allowed CIA dysfunction to thrive and grow.  The CIA may have difficulty running basic espionage operations, but when its way of life is at stake, it fights like a retrovirus regardless of the commander-in-chief’s political party.  The CIA’s sophisticated system of press leaks has been a textbook covert-action operation...

“Obama’s choice of a loyalist shows he understands the threat he faces from a dysfunctional CIA.”

Ed Morrissey, not so much:

Leon Panetta only has indirect experience with intelligence...  There must be thousands of people more qualified to run the CIA from an experience and competence standpoint, including several members of Congress...

but (Ed again)

The US is currently fighting an asymmetrical war on two hot fronts...

Actually, a review of the Plame affair, the WMD bungle, and the waterboarding controversy, leaves me believing there have actually been three fronts, the third being the one separating the CIA and the Bush administration.

It’s past time we got everybody on the same page.  Bush didn’t do it.  If Panetta can rein in the agency’s rogue elements and achieve that, more power to him.

At that point we can argue over whether it’s the right one.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:14:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Today’s boring blog stuff

Just spent half an hour fixing all the links in this month’s posts which I’d erroneously dated “2008” in their titles.  A slight nuisance, because it has to be done in the Edit Source window of mee.nu’s composing screen.  Which, every time you do a “save,” screws up the formatting.  (I want an em-space at the end of each sentence, dammit!)

And I note that while I was sleeping this weekend I received what I believe is my very first Insta-link.  Thanks Glenn!

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 09:16:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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More media turmoil

On Sunday, John Gorman predicted that this week’s Clear Channel general managers’ meeting at the radio chain’s Dallas HQ will prep the way for more layoffs.  Today’s the last day, so any shoes should be dropping shortly.  Stay (ahem!) tuned.

Yesterday, Jim Hopkins noted new rumors of more cuts at Gannett.

In The Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn wonders if cost pressures will make the “death of print”– in particular, the death of The New York Times– come much more quickly than anyone expected, and asks why the public doesn’t value “high-quality journalism.”

Steven Den Beste:  What high-quality journalism?

Alan Mutter: Why a “larger operating profit, percentage-wise, than Exxon” still isn’t enough for debt-burdened Lee Enterprises.

Plus, Dr. Dobb’s Journal joins PC Magazine in going online-only.

Interesting times, indeed.


Hirschorn and Den Beste via Insty, Dobb’s and PC Magazine links from Slashdot.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 07:13:24 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Liberty and The Medical Mindset

Via Cranky via Tam, a pointer to this from The Happy Hospitalist:

Kill Off The Cardiologists And Save America At The Same Time

How you ask?  Erect A Federal Smoking Ban.
...
It's amazing how we spent over two trillion dollars last year, the vast majority of which was spent on conditions directly attributed to smoking.  Heart disease.  Stroke.  Emphysema.  Cancer. It's all directly correlated to smoking...  We spend billions of dollars a year on medications trying to counteract the results of these preventable disease processes.
...
...If Obama really wants to make a dent in the health care expenditures, he should, by executive decision, in the interest of National Security, sign a federal decree banning smoking in all public places.  Talk about leadership.  He would save America, I believe, with that one act.  Decreased health expenditures, increased productivity, fewer sick days, no more smoke breaks.

Needless to say, the links from C&T have resulted in HH getting a beating from the libertarian side of the ’sphere.  In their posts, both Cranky and Tam address the issues of nanny-state-ism, the proper sphere of government, and personal liberty, but it seems those involved are shouting past each other.  I believe I know the reason why.

There are doctors on both sides of my family.  In addition to my father and grandfather, two of my uncles and a pair of cousins are/were M.D.s., D.D.S.s, or the like.  (I also have lawyers on both sides of the family; perhaps I should be considered doubly cursed!)  And after growing up surrounded by physicians (but not being one), I think I can write fairly about them.

Most doctors are tremendously dedicated.  The ones who aren’t don’t make it through med school and internship– or, if they do, find some non-practicing niche to occupy themselves (medical administration, perhaps, or employment at one of the drug companies).  The ones left– who actually see and treat patients– are saints, giving up their evenings, weekends, and Christmases to help frightened, cranky, uncooperative, and, frequently, ungrateful people.

But sainthood is only a step or two away from godhood, and there’s the rub.  After traversing the obstacle course of medical education, doctors feel, with some justification, that they are special; that the M.D. they’ve been granted also means “smarter than the average bear.”  And the whole medical environment encourages this.  In hospitals and clinics, the man (or woman) with the degree is boss.  Their orders are law, their opinions are solicited, their concernes are addressed, their whims catered to.  The deferential treatment given star specialists is comparable to that received by four-star generals, corporate CEOs, or members of Congress.

The only fly in the ointment is those damn patients.  Every time, it seems, it’s the same old scenario: Someone comes to you with a problem.  You diagnose it, and prescribe a course of treatment to cure (or at least alleviate) it.  The patient says, “yes, doctor,” and then proceeds to do as he damn well pleases.

Your hard living, Twinkie eating, cigarette smoking, drive-instead-of-walk lifestyle dug your own grave.

Medications prescribed but not taken, courses of treatment begun but left unfinished, lifestyle changes that never change... what’s a doctor to do?  It’d all be so much easier if we could make ’em do the right thing.  They’d live longer and be grateful, and doctors wouldn’t be frustrated.

So the doctor, accustomed to deference, accustomed to saying “let it be,” and having it be, thinks:  What’s more natural than to pass a law.  That’ll fix it.

And should someone object, the doctor will be amazed.  Isn’t he the expert, the one dedicated to taking care of people, the one who has the correct solution (and only the best interests of others at heart)?  Where is the understanding?  Why all the ingratitude?

Except...

Except people will still be people.  But now they’ll be lawbreakers, too.


(Note:  I added the 3^rd para from the end on 090107 08:20, because on rereading it didn’t seem sufficiently clear what my point was.  Demonstrating one problem with instant-posting: Insufficient time for the ideas to gel completely. - o.g.)

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