Dan Robrish's Blog

Elizabethtown

2009-12-16T17:29:00.000-05:00

I'm quitting my job and starting my own business.

more from Harvey Richards, Esq.

2009-08-31T11:43:00.001-04:00

Check this out. Also see this.

addresses

2009-08-20T14:02:00.002-04:00

Back in 2006, I wrote about difficulty in finding my way around Costa Rican cities:

The Spanish word for address is "dirección," which is especially appropriate here because the addresses are more literally like directions: I got a business card from the place where I ate lunch a couple of hours ago that gives its address as "25 meters south of the cathedral." To make matters more confusing for the foreigner, sometimes they refer to a landmark that doesn't exist anymore, such as the inkeeper where I stayed last night explaining that if I wanted to return, I should give directions from a former movie house. Of course, we sometimes do the same thing in the United States, such as "two blocks north of where the Schmidt's brewery used to be."

I was reminded of this problem because of this column, which is well worth reading.

funny

2009-08-14T14:02:00.000-04:00

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Be sure to watch this to the end.

Kiss my --

2009-06-07T16:30:00.002-04:00

I was walking down 16th Street yesterday when I saw a middle-aged man talking on his cell phone.

"Kiss my --" he said, then was cut off, perhaps by static on the line. He was silent as I passed by.

"Kiss my grandbaby for me," he said after I passed.

I smiled. I wasn't expecting that.

estoppel

2009-04-30T13:55:00.002-04:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about whether the U.S. government should prosecute people who are suspected of committing torture, but whose actions at the time were sanctioned by the previous administration's Justice Department.

What I haven't seen is any discussion about whether defense lawyers could use an "entrapment by estoppel" argument.

I learned of this concept when I was reporting in Ely, Nev., and covered the trial of a man who'd previously served prison time for a felony. He was charged with a crime for buying a long gun -- I forget whether it was a rifle or a shotgun. It was illegal in Nevada for a felon to do this and it seemed like the prosecutor had a slam-dunk case.

But while the trial was in progress, the defendant found some paperwork he'd been given upon leaving prison. He got a seldom-used form because he'd had served his entire sentence and had no parole officer to report to. It included a sentence that said something like, "You are also prohibited from owning a firearm that is capable of being concealed, whether it is actually concealed or not." That had been true in Nevada many years ago, but it was out of date when he left prison. A plea bargain was promptly worked out.

I discussed this with another lawyer who explained to me the concept of estoppel. He said that this man could have reasonably concluded based on the paperwork he got when leaving prison that he was only prohibited from owning a handgun, but rifles and shotguns were OK. Because he got that from an official form from the state of Nevada, the lawyer told me that the state of Nevada could not prosecute him for this. He said if this man had been his client, he would have encouraged his client to reject the plea bargain and go for an acquittal.

I am not a lawyer and I don't know if this would be a viable defense for someone accused of torture. But it could well be that the U.S. government will have difficulty prosecuting someone whose actions were approved at the time by the U.S. Department of Justice.

hard times, cheap saloons

2009-04-25T12:46:00.002-04:00

Two friends of mine who tend bar in cheap saloons report widely divergent results of the recession.

American bartenders typically make most, if not all, of their income from tips. A typical arrangement is that the house pays $25 or $30 for a day's work and the customers' tips provide the rest of the income. Sometimes the house pays nothing.

One works in a place that hosts a lot of live music acts and sells a "special" (a shot of well bourbon and a can of Pabst) for $3. He reports that many people are showing up because it's some of the most affordable entertainment there is. He says many people show up with $10, order three of the specials, and leave him the $1 as a tip. That's a shitty tip in my opinion, but he reports that he's making up for it in volume.

Another works in an old-school taproom where the entertainment is limited to sports on TV and a jukebox. He reports fewer customers, smaller bills, cheaper drinks and smaller tips.

Earth Day

2009-04-22T13:31:00.001-04:00

How to save the Earth.

zodiac

2009-04-21T13:47:00.002-04:00

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten talked in his online chat today that he thinks the newspaper horoscopes are a bunch of hooey. I agree.

But I think it's possible that there's some truth to zodiac signs having some link to personality. The time of year when you're born means that at a certain stage of fetal development, your mother was getting a certain number of hours of sun each day. In climates with distinct seasons, it means that it was very cold or very hot at a key stage of fetal development. I could easily imagine that the impact on fetal development would make certain personality traits more common among people born at a certain time of year.

It could be that someone in medieval Europe saw that certain personality traits were common in people born when certain constellations were high in the sky. That person may have incorrectly attributed the personality traits to the stars and we ended up with the zodiac.

If there's any truth to this, the personality traits should be the opposite for people from the Southern Hemisphere.

We're good. They're evil.

2009-04-16T14:21:00.002-04:00

I have no doubt this is true in the United States and I imagine it's true in every democracy: The ruling party and the major opposition party both have some people who are only interested in accumulating power. They both have a few total nutjobs. They also both have a great many people who love their country and want to see its citizens live in peace and prosperity -- though they disagree with the other party on how to achieve that.

Sadly, we have a great number of hyperpartisan Americans who won't recognize that the other party has good people in it.

April Fool!

2009-04-01T14:10:00.002-04:00

Here's a great prank I pulled on my boss a couple of years ago: I phoned him on April Fool's Day and said I'd gotten a registered letter from the Pentagon.

"I thought my connection to the ROTC ended when I dropped out of college," I said. (I was never in the ROTC, but my boss didn't know that. For any non-Americans reading this, the ROTC is a U.S. military training program that works on university campuses.)

I went on to say that the Army told me I was being recalled to service and needed to report to Fort Dix, N.J., on June 20. I told him that in addition to the military leave in the union contract, I'd need to take some personal days to get my affairs in order -- I said I'd need to either sell or rent out my condo because I wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage on my Army salary.

I had him going for a while, but after a few minutes, he realized what day it was.

California marriage referenda

2009-03-22T16:02:00.002-04:00

I read the other day that work is under way in California to get two marriage referenda on the ballot. One would permit same-sex marriage, reversing last year's Proposition 8. A rival referendum would have the state not recognize marriage at all, providing only civil unions for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

So what happens if they both pass?

presidential eligibility

2009-01-20T13:27:00.002-05:00

I got a phone call at work last night from one of those nutjobs who insists that Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president. Items debunking that can be found here and here.

As crazy as these people are, they do raise an important issue that's lost in the noise. What happens if there's a candidate whose eligibility is questioned by reasonable people?

For example, John McCain was born in Panama. Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona Territory. George Romney was born in Mexico. Al Gore was born in the District of Columbia. All were serious contenders for the presidency, but none was born in a U.S. state. Until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the meaning of "natural-born citizen" their eligibility remains debatable.

A way to solve this would be for Congress to pass a law appropriating a payment of $1 to a bunch of specifically named people providing that they're eligible to be president. It would include someone born in Alaska or Hawaii before statehood, someone born abroad to U.S. citizen parents, even someone born by Caesarian section. The Treasury would refuse to pay on the grounds that they're not eligible. A class-action suit would ensue. A federal appeals court would rule one way or the other. The losing side would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would either hear the case or let the lower court's ruling stand. Then we'd have some case law to refer to.

It would be much better to do it this way than to have the courts wrestling with the legal question at a time when there's a serious contender whose eligibility is questionable.

Katrina

2009-01-13T13:38:00.002-05:00

Last night, I was watching MSNBC after work. I don't normally do that, but the cable wasn't working for the channel that carries the Cartoon Network. Rachel Maddow was (among many other things) ripping apart the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

There's plenty of blame to go around for this. Maddow singled out the Bush administration, which may not be fair but is par for the course for cable TV talking heads. What bothered me about it was that she slammed Condoleezza Rice for going to New York during the hurricane, buying shoes and attending a Broadway show.

Rice was and is the secretary of state. She's in charge of foreign relations, not domestic crises. Obviously this was a huge event for Homeland Security (which oversees FEMA), Defense (the armed forces responded), Transportation (evacuating the Gulf Coast), etc. But what was State supposed to do to help in this situation? As far as I can tell, the biggest contribution possible was to stay out of the way -- which is exactly what Rice did.

Granted, it's possible that there was some Katrina-related problem that State wasn't handling well -- perhaps expediting visas for foreign volunteers. But if that's the case, Maddow should have explained why Rice was needed at work.

contest

2009-01-03T08:30:00.003-05:00

Two guys I know have decided to stop drinking for a while, starting today. They decided to make a contest out of it to see which one can go the longest.

It took a while to decide on the stakes. They considered wagering a large sum of money, but concluded that neither one had enough money to pay off the bet. Then one suggested that the loser would have to go into a police station and confess to multiple murders. That was quickly dismissed out of hand. I suggested going into a police station and confessing to something stupidly trivial, like an unpaid parking ticket from out of state.

Eventually they agreed: The loser must get drunk, walk into a police station and apply for a job.

newsroom pranks

2009-01-01T16:03:00.002-05:00

I just got back in touch with someone I used to work with at The Minnesota Daily, the college paper at the University of Minnesota. She is also the victim of one of the greatest pranks I've ever pulled, which I will recall as best I can remember.

For the non-journalists reading this: Nearly every daily newspaper subscribes to at least one wire service (either my employer or one of its competitors). The wire service has journalists all over the world who gather breaking news and provide it to customers. (It's called a "wire service" because this was originally done by telegraph wire, but these days it's by Internet and satellite.)

Once the news gets into the newspaper's main wire-capture device, it typically goes to each journalist's computer through the newspaper's internal network. In the summer of 1995, I realized that with the help of our computer-support people, I could write a fake wire service dispatch that would go through our network and appear to be real once it reached individual journalists' computers.

Once I got the computer-support people on board, I had to come up with a great fake story and a victim. The fake story was that somebody had shot the president of the university and ran off shouting about how the university was a scam (using language that had recently been spray-painted all over campus). The university president was reported to be seriously wounded, perhaps about to die.

The victim was someone who had just returned from a Washington internship and was about to be my new boss. (She has a good sense of humor about this, but I'm not naming her here because she might not want me telling the whole world about this.)

That would have been bad enough, but here was the beauty part: I called all editors over to discuss this and, by prior arrangement, we all gave various reasons about why we shouldn't cover this aggressively and whether it even belonged on the front page.

(I was probably influenced by a "Saturday Night Live" sketch in which a small-town daily in Oklahoma is having its news meeting on Dec. 7, 1941, and one man futilely argues that the bombing of Pearl Harbor should be the lead story in the next day's paper. His colleagues think local news should go first and won't budge. The Pearl Harbor story ends up buried on an inside page under a headline saying, "Asians attack 'base.'" A more prominent story is about the newsman's suicide.)

We gave all sorts of cockamamie arguments to the victim. Mine was something like, "I, for one, am sick of this blood-and-gore mentality in our news judgment." I pointed out that the Christian Science Monitor had placed the story of the Oklahoma City bombing on page 2 and only ran a few paragraphs and a small photo. (This was true; the Monitor tends to acknowledge that violence exists but doesn't report on it extensively.) I suggested that we should follow the Monitor's example.

Others gave similarly inane arguments. The victim got quite agitated in the face of so many people displaying bizarre judgment. Eventually, the editor in chief sang, "Smile! You're on Candid Camera!" The victim was literally rolling on the floor laughing. (I say "literally" to distinguish it from the Internet term ROFL, which I suspect is very seldom literally true.)

---

She sure got back at me months later at my going-away party before I moved to Nevada. The paper was in a legal dispute with prosecutors who were seeking unpublished photos from a protest on campus that led to a physical fight and a felony assault charge. Nearly the whole staff of the newspaper was in a saloon wishing me well in my new job. The victim of my previous prank pretended to get a call on her cell phone (they were a rarity at the time, but she had one) informing her that sheriff's deputies had raided our office.

Again, by prior arrangement, everyone argued that we had lost this dispute and we should just give up. At first I kept silent -- after all, I'd just resigned from the paper and was looking forward to my new job. People asked me what I thought and I would defer to the current editors. But eventually, I took the bait and made a fiery speech about the critical role of a free press in a democracy. I ended it with, "Let's go over there and throw the [expletive] Constitution in their faces!" I may have even waved the copy of the Constitution that I was then in the habit of carrying in my jacket pocket.

---

The original prank had a lasting effect that I hadn't predicted. Shortly after my prank, a new man joined the paper -- someone who'd gotten a bachelor's degree in some field other than journalism, started freelancing sports for his small hometown's daily and then got hired as a news reporter with absolutely no schooling in journalism. He learned by trial and error for a while, then decided to pursue a master's degree at the University of Minnesota. Since we so seldom had applicants with experience in professional journalism, we immediately made him an associate editor. The following year, when I was in Nevada, he was editor in chief.

Then one day a crazy woman walked into the university president's outer office and demanded to see the president. When his secretary rebuffed her, she pulled a gun from her purse and fired a shot into the ceiling. No one was hurt.

As this story was breaking, the editor in chief was at home. Someone phoned him from the newspaper office and said a gun had been fired in the university president's office. He thought the caller was trying to replicate my prank, said something like, "Nice try," and hung up. Others tried calling him, but he wouldn't believe them either. Later he heard a radio newscast, realized the story was real, and rushed over to work.

The next day, the story was covered in a banner headline in not only the student paper but also the Star Tribune, the state's largest paper. The victim of the first prank mailed me a copy of the Star Tribune with a sticky note attached, saying, "This time you've gone too far!"

lack of skepticism

2008-12-26T01:03:00.002-05:00

OK, here's another example of journalism that annoys me.

The gist of the story is that Montgomery County, Md., has automated devices to give speeding tickets by mail. The devices catch speeding cars and take photos of license plates. Allegedly, high school students are making realistic looking fake license plates with home computers printing on glossy photo paper, taping those over real license plates, then speeding through the areas that have the automated devices. They use the license plate number of someone they're trying to get even with and the victim gets a letter in a few days telling him to pay a $40 fine.

This is just plausible enough for many people to believe. The technology needed to do this is widely available and I'm sure plenty of teenagers are capable of making the license plates. Somewhere out there, there must be a teenager who would actually go through with it.

But the problem with this story is that not one of the reporter's sources claims to have firsthand knowledge of this. I will give the reporter the benefit of the doubt and assume he is honest and quoted people accurately. I will even give the anonymous parent quoted in the story the benefit of the doubt and assume that he or she sincerely believes this is going on after hearing teenagers talking about it.

Another source is an assistant principal who says he heard about it when he got a call from a parent. That parent could well be the same parent who talked to the reporter.

Police say they haven't heard of it happening. You'd think that the first person who got a ticket he didn't deserve would complain to the police. Here's a good sign that the whole premise of the story could be wrong.

The County Council president is also quoted, but it seems that he is just reacting to what the reporter told him. There's no sign that he had any independent confirmation that this is really happening.

small town news

2008-12-12T23:03:00.002-05:00

I'm visiting my mom in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and I was looking at the local newspaper, the weekly Yellow Springs News. Like many small-town weeklies, it has a complete listing in chronological order of every incident on the police blotter, even trivialities like this: "At 4 p.m. on Dec. 3 a U.S. 68 resident requested that police help her find her keys, which she lost in the yard between her garage and her house. Police helped locate the elusive keys."

But I was quite surprised to see that this police blotter item was the only thing in the paper about this incident: "On Dec. 7 a local resident reported that three bricks had been thrown into the window of a North Walnut Street space rented by the Nonstop Antioch institute. Police are investigating the report."

I would have expected this to make the front page. Here's why. Yellow Springs is best known as the home of the now-closed Antioch College, a small liberal arts school. The college was closed by its parent institution, Antioch University, causing a great deal of unrest in town. Professors decided to set up shop on their own and organized a group called Nonstop Antioch, though after they were threatened with a lawsuit for using "Antioch" in the name, they called it the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute. This institute and Antioch University have a pretty big feud going on. I have no idea if the bricks through the window has anything to do with the feud -- and it's quite possible that the institute is a party to some other feud.

But it seems to me that a reporter should have talked to the officer investigating this and somebody from the institute and ask them if they have any clue about a motive -- for example, if anything was written on the bricks or if a note was tied around one of them. They might be unwilling to talk, but it would be easy to write a 6-inch story that at least acknowledges the questions, e.g., "The police report did not specify ..." and adding the police and so-and-so from the institute declined to comment.

Brad (update)

2008-12-04T14:08:00.003-05:00

I just spoke to Brad. He's recovering well and said the only thing keeping them from discharging him from the hospital today is getting a special brace that they don't keep in stock there. He said he plans to spend some time at his mom's place at the Jersey Shore, where everything is on one level, until he's well enough to go up and down the steps to his third-floor walkup.

He said he's not certain if he'll be able to host next week's Pen & Pencil Club wine tasting. He won't be able to stand behind the bar and talk about the wine from there, but it's possible that he'll explain the wine while seated.

UPDATE (Saturday, Dec. 6): The wine tasting is postponed.

Brad

2008-12-03T11:01:00.001-05:00

My friend Brad Wilson got hit by a car last night. He's going to be OK, but he's in St. Mary's Hospital in Langhorne.

Secret Service

2008-11-24T14:06:00.002-05:00

Anyone who hasn't been living in a cave on Mars since before the Iowa caucuses has heard someone speculate that Barack Obama will be assassinated. I don't think it will happen.

I seldom have reason to deal with the Secret Service, but I did report in person on their protectees twice. One was a speech by then-President Bill Clinton in Minneapolis around 1995 or so. Another was campaign events in and around Philadelphia by vice presidential candidate Joe Biden in the 2008 campaign.

I won't go into details of the agency's security measures, but security was much tighter when I covered Biden. Obviously, a vice presidential candidate is a lesser target than the incumbent president. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Secret Service protection has gotten much tighter between the mid-1990s and today. And nobody has been able to fire a shot at a U.S. president since 1981.

End. Of. Civilization.

2008-11-01T13:51:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take credit for this

2008-10-23T14:14:00.000-04:00

more music charts

9/11

2008-09-12T12:43:00.001-04:00

A pleasant surprise: I didn't get one phone call at work yesterday from a nutjob screaming about 9/11.

duh

2008-09-03T14:29:00.003-04:00

Howard Kurtz writes in The Washington Post about Republican strategist Steve Schmidt being angry at the press. "Schmidt said mainstream journalists are giving 'closer scrutiny' to McCain's little-known running mate than to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama," Kurtz wrote.

Duh.

Think about it: Obama has been a national political figure for four years now. Controversies about his dealings with the likes of Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers have already been written about extensively. What wasn't written about him in the national press a year ago was certainly written about during his campaign -- over the course of many months.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was a virtual unknown outside of her own state as recently as a week ago. Naturally, the national press will pay more attention to her because she's new on the national scene.

Running mates always get a lot of attention when they aren't well known nationally: Geraldine Ferraro, Dan Quayle, etc. More conventional choices, like Jack Kemp or Lloyd Bensten, don't attract as much ink. If the McCain campaign wanted to avoid this crush of attention, it would have been a simple matter to pick someone who's already a national political figure.

Whether the coverage of Palin has been fair is a matter that's open to debate, and some of the complaints certainly have merit -- as do some by the Democrats. But the level of coverage is something the GOP should have expected.

UPDATE: A friend of mine pointed this out in the comments section; I've fixed the link in here.

Perry Mason

2008-08-10T09:27:00.002-04:00

Recently, someone was leaving a bunch of books, DVDs, etc. in a pile in my newsroom with a paper sign marked "FREE" over top. Presumably they'd been sent by flacks in an attempt to get us to write about them. I took home a three-DVD set of the third season of "Perry Mason," which started in the fall of 1959.

An interesting pattern emerges: It seems that if you retain this guy for a civil matter, you'll be charged with a murder you didn't commit. Eventually, the real killer will confess in open court, but you're in for a pretty bad situation in the meantime. (And, apparently you won't make bail, since Mason seems to always meet his charged clients in jail.)

It also raises another question: Did big-city lawyers handle both criminal and civil matters in the late 1950s? That's pretty much unheard of today, but maybe it was commonplace 50 years ago. (It's still commonplace in small, remote towns.)

Baldwin-Wallace disruption

2008-08-07T20:22:00.002-04:00

This week, there was a surreal incident at an Obama meeting at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. Some guy on the photographers' riser, who had a camera and press credentials, disrupted the meeting by shouting about the Pledge of Allegiance. He was angry that the meeting had begun without the pledge being recited. Obama invited the man to lead the pledge; he did.

Afterward, reporters questioned him about it and he would only give his name as "John Q. Public" and wouldn't say for whom he was working.

Turns out that the guy was a freelancer on assignment for Bloomberg News. I'm relieved to learn this; for a while I was afraid that the Secret Service might have allowed someone posing as a press photographer to get on the riser. (Bloomberg says the guy won't be doing any more work for the company.)

surprise

2008-08-01T15:59:00.002-04:00

Pollster.com had quite a surprise for me today. The site uses an amalgam of several recent polls to try to reach a consensus on voter opinion for upcoming elections. As of today, it shows McCain leading in states with 147 electoral votes, Obama in states with 284 and no clear leader in states with 107.

I'm surprised because I expected the Electoral College numbers to be a lot closer. If these figures are correct (which, granted, is highly debatable), it means all Obama has to do is maintain his lead in the states where he's already ahead. McCain could win every "toss-up" state and lose the election by 284 electors to 254.

Of course, the usual caveat applies: A lot will happen between now and November and it remains anybody's guess how that will affect public opinion.

insanely early

2008-06-30T02:15:00.001-04:00

I'm on the 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. shift for the next few weeks, so please don't phone me after 7 p.m. or so.

should've

2008-06-17T17:32:00.002-04:00

OK, this is a bit of a copy editing point. I realize that very few people are into that, but it interests me.

A copy editor (I think it was Bill Walsh, but I'm not certain) once wrote that everybody pronounces "should have" as "should of" and that copy editors should render the quote in print as "should have." I disagree. I think it should be "should've."

The Washington Post had what I thought was an interesting screw-up recently. Sen. Barack Obama was quoted as saying, "I screwed up more often than I should've, but I got plenty of second chances."

But when I watched a video of the remarks, I noted that he pronounced "should have" as two distinctly different words.

(I'm sure somebody out there thinks it's part of a plot to undermine Obama by making him seem less eloquent or a plot to promote him by making him seem more like a regular person. I seriously doubt that. Journalists are only human and are every bit as prone to make honest mistakes as everyone else.)

We don't sell that.

2008-06-16T12:27:00.002-04:00

I think this is pretty much a universal experience: You need or want some item. You go to a retailer that seems likely to sell it. The retailer doesn't carry it. You take your business elsewhere and eventually find someone who will sell you the item.

Usually, the merchant simply made a business decision not to carry the item. Occasionally, it turns out that he decided that his conscience wouldn't allow him to sell something.

Now it turns out that some druggists are getting into the act. They're opening up their own stores and declining to stock contraceptive pills and condoms. It's certainly an inconvenience for those seeking to buy contraceptives, but why not? They have the right to sell what they choose and decline to sell what they choose.

It's certainly better than druggists employed by big corporate stores who try to refuse to fill prescriptions for drugs their employers have decided to sell. Those druggists deserve what they get when they're fired.

jury tainting

2008-05-19T14:05:00.002-04:00

When I worked in Ely, Nev., my editor was mindful of the problem of jury tainting. He realized that 70 percent of households in the county got home delivery of our paper, so he figured if we ran a sensational account of a crime, it would be very difficult for the defendant to get a fair trial. We aimed to strike a balance between keeping the community informed and avoid screwing up the judicial system.

(This was less of a concern in New Ulm, Minn., where the paper didn't penetrate the market as well, and pretty much nonexistent in Pottstown, Pa., where we were near the intersection of three counties and couldn't possibly reach a large portion of any of the three.)

Now there are a couple of radio hosts in Los Angeles who are doing pretty much the opposite. According to a Washington Post story, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou have a regular segment on their show called "Taint the Carona Jury Pool," referring to the federal corruption trial of former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona.

From the Post story:

"You know your marching orders out there," Kobylt says in one segment. "If you're in Orange County and you end up on the Mike Carona jury, remember you have to lie to the attorneys.

"Tell them you have an absolute open mind, you pay very little attention to the coverage, Mike Carona looks like a good, upstanding Christian man, you never listen to KFI, you never listen to 'The John and Ken Show' -- and then you vote guilty at the end of it all."

They say what they call "blatant tainting" is intended to make a point about the judicial system, which they maintain is hopelessly screwed up already.

TV news

2008-05-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

Here is an interesting commentary.

cannibals

2008-04-26T22:38:00.001-04:00

Created by OnePlusYou

better yet

2008-04-16T12:58:00.001-04:00

Even more enjoyable than the wacky speculation I just blogged about below is a good spoof.

wacky speculation

2008-04-16T12:26:00.002-04:00

Some of the most enjoyable things about elections are the wacky speculations. One that I just heard is that the Rev. Jerimiah Wright's remarks might actually help Barack Obama.

As we know, there's a group of poorly informed people who oppose Obama because they think he's a Muslim. Wright's remarks, although offensive to most Americans, showed that Obama is a member of a Christian church. The speculation goes that it will be a net gain for Obama. I won't venture a guess about whether this is true.

St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T14:02:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, I had the misfortune of being in what is normally a civilized tavern that suddenly got overrun by morons dressed in green. I'm sure there will be a lot more of that tonight, since it really is St. Patrick's Day.

Normally, you might find one or two people who can't hold their liquor. For some reason, this holiday makes them all get together at once. Stay away from any place with the prefix "Mc" or "O'" today. And if you see someone with a green plastic derby, go elsewhere.

Zowee, part 2

2008-03-07T14:03:00.000-05:00

Here's an update to the wacky correction I blogged about below.

Zowee.

2008-03-06T13:17:00.002-05:00

Good news organizations admit their errors and correct them. The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer's Ted Diadiun recently wrote, "Name me another industry that presents its customers with a daily list of its mistakes."

But this is disturbing. I hope somebody got fired – out of a cannon, preferably.

mental health drugs

2008-02-17T10:50:00.003-05:00

Many times, when a bizarre crime happens, it turns out that the perpetrator was being treated with mental health drugs of some sort, but had stopped taking them. Last week's Northern Illinois University massacre is just the latest example. The problem, of course, is that once somebody misses one dose, he might not be lucid enough to realize that he needs treatment.

So why doesn't somebody develop a Norplant-like device for mental health drugs?

There's got to be a reason why this won't work. I can't be the first person to think of this.

UPDATE: There is a reason, which a friend of mine explained in the comment section. Thanks!

vandalism

2008-02-11T12:06:00.000-05:00

OK, we shouldn't be encouraging this sort of thing -- but this is funny.

It reminds me of a story I've heard about some teens who got a hold of four piglets and painted the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5 on them, skipping the number 4. They let them loose in the halls of their high school, creating havoc for a little while, but it didn't take long for the adults to catch the piglets. But once they did, they saw the numbers on them and spent hours looking for the nonexistent Piglet No. 4.

2008-02-02T02:15:00.000-05:00

Jena

2008-01-24T16:39:00.000-05:00

Here is an article from the American Journalism Review about the legal case popularly known as the Jena 6. The story explains how a political activist managed to draw nationwide attention to the case. The article says many major news organizations largely accepted the activist's account of what happened. According to local editors, a lot of the national coverage has been technically accurate but quite misleading.

longevity

2008-01-18T17:53:00.001-05:00

I've been at my current job since July 20, 1998. That's nine and a half years.

Guess where I was nine and a half years before I started this job?

from the skinny notebook

2008-01-10T19:09:00.000-05:00

Ninety feet between the bases is the closest thing man's ever come to perfect poetry.

-- Rick Almeida, Sept. 29, 2007

I really should go through my skinny notebook more often; I wrote that down quite some time ago.

personal experience

2007-12-31T13:52:00.000-05:00

It's often said that a big problem in journalism is that we write about things with which we have absolutely no personal experience. Although that's true, I'm awfully glad I haven't gone through what this guy has.

world leaders

2007-12-30T11:25:00.000-05:00

Naturally, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has been a topic of conversation lately. But in my circle of friends, the conversation peters out until some wiseacre refers to her as "the one hot world leader." I replied that Argentine President Cristina Fernandez should qualify. Further research, however, turns up Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Qualifications for entering this competition: Must be a president, prime minister, or primary opposition leader in a sovereign nation. Hereditary rulers do not qualify. This is based purely on physical attraction, not the leader's politics.

The parties to this conversation were all straight men. So naturally, this raises the question: Who, if anyone, is hot among male world leaders? Discuss.

back from Ohio

2007-12-19T19:55:00.000-05:00

I got back yesterday from a visit to my mom in Ohio.

Among many other things, we visited the William Wegman art show at Ohio State. This may mark a first for my family: I wanted to spend more time there than my mom did. My mom is an artist; my sister and I grew up being taken to art shows and we would typically get bored with them when our mom was eager to see more.

end of civilization

2007-12-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

Worried that civilization is about to end? Worry no more; it's already happened.

writers' strike

2007-11-14T01:50:00.000-05:00

If my union were on strike, you could expect to see a lot of us posting rants on the Internet about the importance of professional journalism in a democracy. Fortunately for your sanity, the current writers' strike involves a lot of comedy writers.

That came sooner than I expected.

2007-11-07T11:16:00.000-05:00

I read yesterday that the U.S. Census Bureau defines "middle age" as 35 to 54. Apparently I've been middle aged for a year and a half without knowing it.

phone

2007-10-27T16:06:00.000-04:00

I lost my cell phone this week -- it must have fallen out of my pocket when I was in a taxi. I now have a new one, but it doesn't have my contacts. So those of you who have my phone number, please call me.

how I dress

2007-10-23T01:17:00.000-04:00

Since I dress so distinctively, people often recognize me from a distance. As I was walking home from work tonight, I heard a woman shout "Robrish!" from across the street.

It turned out that she was in front of the saloon with the people smoking there. She told me about what could turn out to be a major story, assuming that her assertions are provably true. It's interesting how dressing in this way is so helpful for newsgathering.

up before dawn

2007-10-08T11:02:00.000-04:00

I don't start work till 3 p.m. today, yet I was up before dawn. I'm having trouble getting back in the swing of the swing shift.

UPDATE: I got a nap in. Maybe that will do it.

Emergency Broadcast System

2007-09-22T08:50:00.000-04:00

At work this week, I saw multiple tests of the Emergency Alert System. They're fairly easy to overlook -- just some brief audio that sounds like modem noise along with video explaining that it's a test of the system. On the radio, the modem noise is accompanied by a brief announcement. Of course, it reminded me of the old Emergency Broadcast System familiar to just about every American adult.

For the non-Americans reading this, or those too young to remember, here's what you'd hear on radio and TV from time to time. The script varied a bit, but it usually began with, "This is a test. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test."

That would be followed by a long, high-pitched tone, then something like:

This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area, in voluntary cooperation with federal, state and local authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. WORM serves the ______ metropolitan area. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

In Los Angeles, it would be, "If this had been an actual emergency, such as an earthquake ..."

I don't remember this so much as a Cold War relic, but that's how it started. Here is an interesting personal account of the accidental activation of the system a few months before I was born. (Note the references to the wire service industry in which I work.) And here is a funny approach that at least one radio station took.

Howdy, Gordon

2007-09-19T15:11:00.000-04:00

So, I was at the Pen & Pencil Club, sitting in the middle of the squared-horseshoe-shaped bar. Things were starting to get crowded; it must have been a little after 2 a.m. Much to my surprise, I saw my friend Gordon walk in, going to the far side of the bar. This was a surprise because although I've known Gordon for a couple of years, I don't think he's been to the P&P in that time.

"Howdy, Gordon," I said, before realizing that it wasn't Gordon at all. Some guy I didn't recognize had a remarkably realistic life-size ventriloquist's dummy made to look like Gordon.

I tried to get the man's attention to ask about this but couldn't, which isn't all that odd considering how crowded the club gets at that hour. Then I tried getting the attention of Rick, a friend of Gordon's and mine who was standing by the jukebox smoking a cigarette and drinking a Yuengling Lager. I figured he might know what was up.

Then Dan, the club manager, was standing on the customers' side of the bar, trying to get my attention. He raised his left hand a bit. I raised my head a bit. Then I woke up.

Apparently I'm not quite as used to this weird 5 a.m.-1:30 p.m. shift as I thought.

adjusting

2007-09-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

I'm managing to adjust to the insanely early schedule. I woke up at about 2 a.m. today, but much to my surprise, I was able to get back to sleep until 3:45 a.m. and get to work at 5 with adequate rest.

early, early, early

2007-09-12T02:47:00.000-04:00

For the next few weeks, I'm working 5 a.m.-1:30 p.m., so please don't phone me after 8 p.m. or so.

The secret I kept

2007-09-06T14:15:00.000-04:00

Millions and millions of years ago, in the late 1990s, I worked with a young man I'll call XY. He's no longer with the company, but I see him around town from time to time. For years, I've known that he has a crush on a co-worker, whom I'll call XX. Although he didn't ask me to, I always kept that a secret. I figured he'd tell her if he wanted her to know.

Several months ago, I was at drinking at the Tritone when XY came in. He told me that he'd seen XX at a party and told another guest about his crush. He said the other guest summoned XX over and told her, much to XY's embarrassment. He said XX smiled and said she knew.

Last evening, I was at work with XX and XY came up in conversation. I told XX that I was glad that I no longer had to keep XY's crush on her a secret. She had no idea what I was talking about, so I recounted the story above, which she said she had no memory of. We speculated that she'd been drinking too much to remember the event at all and that XY had been drinking too much to remember it accurately. (Another possibility -- XY had dreamed the event but had drank enough that he thought it had actually happened. These are both honest people; I can't imagine that either one of them is lying.)

Fortunately, she was flattered rather than creeped out.

"might"

2007-09-04T11:13:00.000-04:00

An op-ed piece in my hometown newspaper today argues for the preservation of the handgun ban in the District of Columbia. Here's the oddest part: "Although handguns might still be trafficked into the District illegally from other jurisdictions, the last thing the District needs is even more handguns."

"Might"? Are these folks arguing that there's any chance that illegal gun trafficking might not happen? This ban is more than 30 years old and has never gotten illegal guns out of the city. I respect everyone's right to argue either side of this debate, but let's be realistic.

The piece tries to argue that legal precedents give D.C. the power to ban handguns. A better article from answer man Cecil Adams says, "The legal precedents are far from clear. They are also pathetically sparse, suggesting a reluctance on the part of the courts and the legal community generally to deal with the issue."

Once the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in, we'll finally have an answer. If you don't like the answer, amend the Constitution.

(Edited to fix typo: "handgun ban" sted "handgun man." D'oh!)

How much longer will this joke work?

2007-08-20T04:27:00.000-04:00

The camping trip mentioned below was to celebrate a friend's 33rd birthday. I said to her, "In four months you'll be an LP." When she gave me a confused look, I said, "Thirty-three and a third."

She laughed, but it won't be long before people turning 33 won't understand the joke.

camping

2007-08-15T12:07:00.000-04:00

I'm going camping this weekend with some friends in Jenny Jump State Forest. I'm told that the odd name came from someone named Jenny jumping off a mountain to escape attackers.

Please, please, tell me what happened.

2007-08-12T05:49:00.000-04:00

Today my hometown paper has a story about the Iowa GOP straw poll. It begins by telling us that Mitt Romney won. So far, so good. (I'm commenting about the journalism, not the politics.) But not until the seventh paragraph does it tell me that he got 32 percent of the vote. And not until the 24th graf -- third to last -- does it tell us how other candidates did: Mike Huckabee with 18 percent, Sam Brownback with 15 percent, Tom Tancredo with 14 percent, Tommy Thompson with 7 percent.

Yes, I realize the argument behind this: People who care about politics would already know the percentages and will turn to the paper for analysis. But let's face it: I care about politics more than just about anybody who isn't in that field for a living and I had better things to do on a Saturday night than follow the Iowa straw poll. (In my case, I was on South Street meeting my friends, listening to jazz, flirting with the women and drinking bourbon and beer. I'm not going to stay in watching the results of a nonbinding straw poll in a faraway state unless I'm on the clock.) I didn't know any results until I checked the Post before dawn today.

Colleagues, when you're reporting on the results of a contest -- be it in politics, sports or anything else -- please, please, put the results up high. I can accept not having the results in the first sentence, but don't make people read beyond the third graf.

UPDATE: After writing the above, I read in another story that Ron Paul had 9 percent -- more than Tommy Thompson. What's up with that? You don't think it's newsworthy that a maverick like Paul got more votes than Thompson?

(Tommy Thompson, the former governor of Wisconsin, is not to be confused with Fred Thompson, the former senator best known as the actor who played District Attorney Arthur Branch on the TV series "Law & Order." Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain didn't participate in this straw poll.)

disturbing

2007-07-16T09:16:00.000-04:00

The other day I was talking with someone who was unsatisfied with her job. She said she was planning to re-enroll in college next spring and get a teaching certificate.

"Good for you," I said.

Then she told me why. I was disturbed that it was a matter of a decent salary, health insurance, consistent hours and summers off. Sadly, the teacher shortage in Philadelphia is bad enough that someone with that attitude will likely get hired.

coffee

2007-06-06T12:50:00.000-04:00

Back in 1996, my then-editor in Ely, Nevada, gave me a coffeemaker. He had switched to a French press, so he gave me his old automatic-drip Krups device. It's designed for someone living alone, so it only makes 20 ounces. If you drink two-and-a-half cups of joe in the morning, it's perfect.

Back then, I didn't drink coffee regularly, but it was useful when I had guests over or when I needed an extra jolt.

In 1998, I started working for the wire service. Around the summer of 1999, I was on the graveyard shift for three months. I drank a lot of coffee during the overnight hours. I started to feel awful on the weekends and worried that I was sick, until I realized that it was because I wasn't drinking coffee. Ever since then, I've been a regular coffee drinker.

The problem is that my 20-ounce coffeemaker isn't enough. I usually brew at least a second 20-ounce pot before going to work. (I'm on my second pot as I write this.) Then I have maybe four to six cups when I'm at work.

If you're going to have a drug dependency problem, though, this is the one to pick. It's cheap, legal and socially acceptable.

Yuengling

2007-05-29T18:54:00.000-04:00

The Teamsters are asking the public to boycott Yuengling products. I'm not sure what they hope to accomplish.

The union alleges that brewery head Dick Yuengling threatened to close the brewery in Pottsville unless the workers voted to decertify the union -- an allegation the company denies. Making such a threat would be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

The vote was held early last year and the workers chose to go non-union. What's disputed is whether they made this choice freely or if they did so because they feared the Pottsville brewery would close. (Yuengling would still be able to sell beer by using its new brewery in Florida and by contracting out the brewing.)

Nobody was willing to testify about the threats at a National Labor Relations Board hearing, so the government sided with the company and held that the decertification was lawful. The union maintains that people wouldn't testify because they were scared of losing their jobs -- which is entirely plausible.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that the union's allegations are true, why didn't the Teamsters call for the boycott before the decertification vote? What are they trying to get the company to do now?

My union, The Newspaper Guild, has lost similar elections in recent years in Allentown and Harrisburg. As far as I know, nobody asked the public to boycott The Morning Call or The Patriot-News.

(Edited to clarify sequence of events.)

war

2007-05-27T09:51:00.000-04:00

I can scarcely begin to imagine what this guy is going through, having lost his son in Iraq.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

I don't share his cynicism, but I can't blame him one bit. I'm certain I'd be awfully bitter if I were in his shoes.

Done.

2007-05-25T20:45:00.000-04:00

I just finished another week of the insane 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. shift. Since I normally start work at 3 p.m., it wreaks havoc with my body to start 10 hours earlier. If you normally start work at 9, imagine what it would be like to be put on week's worth of 11 p.m. starts.

WTF?

2007-05-05T13:02:00.000-04:00

Last night, I was talking with a guy and told him about how this story got taken seriously by a Chinese newspaper. What amazed me is that he'd never heard of The Onion.

checks for degrees

2007-04-30T12:58:00.000-04:00

This has been around for a while, but well worth noting.

Internet radio

2007-04-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

According to this site, the royalties paid by Internet radio stations are about to increase dramatically, putting online music out of business.

I have my doubts about the second part: It is, after all, a matter of U.S. copyright law. I find it hard to imagine that the Net broadcasters wouldn't just move their operations abroad.

"controversial"

2007-04-11T00:49:00.000-04:00

Don Imus' radio rant last week in which he called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" is being referred to on local TV news as "controversial."

Doesn't a controversy need to have at least two sides? Not even Imus is defending that statement anymore.

isolation

2007-03-29T14:32:00.000-04:00

I made some remark to my sister this week in which I mentioned Anna Nicole Smith. My sister didn't know who Smith was. I considered explaining, but I just said, "Be grateful."

I later thought about this and realized that my parents likely don't know either. My mom has no TV. She listens to NPR, reads some of The New York Times online and gets the Yellow Springs News weekly. Of the three, she's most likely to have seen news about Smith in the Times.

My dad has a TV, but he uses it mostly to watch DVDs and to see the NewsHour and Nightly Business Report on PBS. He gets The Washington Post daily, but he only reads the front and business sections -- it may have appeared in the front section, but he would likely find the article of little interest and forget about it quickly.

To anyone reading this who doesn't know who Smith was: You are extremely isolated from the mainstream of American discourse. Normally, that's not a good thing (assuming you're American). In this case, it is. Be very, very grateful.

on-the-job training

2007-03-23T16:30:00.000-04:00

Most anyone who knows me knows the generally low opinion I have of journalism schools: They crank out people with sheepskins but no idea how to actually ply the trade. The best way to learn it is on the job.

However, here's one thing you shouldn't learn on the job: press law, especially libel law. You don't need to learn it in school, but you should learn enough about libel law from books that you won't face a lawsuit with merit -- and that you'll know when someone trying to intimidate you with a vague threat is just blowing smoke.

It comes up repeatedly that I see copy from small-town news outlets that includes potentially libelous statements -- with no indication that the reporter made any attempt to determine that it's true.

bourbon

2007-03-13T14:11:00.000-04:00

To settle a long-running barroom discussion: Bourbon can be made anywhere in the United States. The law on this says, "the word 'bourbon' shall not be used to describe any whisky [sic] or whisky-based distilled spirits not produced in the United States." Nowhere does it say that bourbon must be made in Kentucky, though nearly all bourbon is made there today.

The A. Smith Bowman Distillery makes Virginia Gentleman brand bourbon and Virginia Gentleman 90 Proof Small Batch Bourbon in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Jack Daniel's is made in Tennessee, but that's not what distinguishes it from bourbon. It's because the whiskey goes through something called the Lincoln County Process. That link gives an insane amount of detail, but the Jack Daniel distillery's Web site describes it this way: "Charcoal Mellowing is what makes Jack Daniel's a smooth sippin' Tennessee Whiskey instead of a bourbon."

"I have a genius IQ."

2007-03-13T04:06:00.000-04:00

I was interested in her until she said that. Not that I have anything against women with high IQs -- just people who feel a need to say so blatantly. If you're really smart, I'll figure that out on my own after talking to you.

mayor's race

2007-03-10T13:46:00.000-05:00

OK, this is weird. All the Philadelphians reading this know about Bob Brady's problems by now. For those who live out of town, Brady is one of five major candidates for mayor in the Democratic primary. He screwed up his financial-disclosure forms and failed to list a city pension. This means others can go to court and have him thrown off the ballot. Failing to list a pension has gotten at least one candidate thrown off the ballot in the past, but Brady has the political pull (chairman of the Democratic City Committee) that makes some say no judge in his right mind would dare disqualify him.

So far, Milton Street, the mayor's brother, says he will challenge Brady -- but that could end with a ruling saying that Street has no standing to sue because he doesn't live in the city. Two other minor candidates, Queena Bass and Jesus White, could also file challenges. As far as I know, they do live in the city, but they have so little money that I'd be surprised if they could go up against Brady's lawyers. (Bass is fighting eviction from her apartment; White describes himself as "between housing" and listed his address at a homeless shelter. Unless someone represents them pro bono, they'd have to represent themselves in court.)

So whom does this leave to challenge Brady? My best guess is Tom Knox. The millionaire businessman has the means to hire lawyers that are as good as Brady's. He also has the most to benefit from knocking Brady off the ballot. Knox and Brady are both white; the other three major candidates are black. Although Philadelphia has made a lot of progress on this front, many still seek to vote for candidates of their own race.

more mistaken identities

2007-03-09T13:27:00.000-05:00

This item on being mistaken for Daily News columnist Dan Gross is timely again: I was recently mistaken for Inquirer columnist Dan Rubin.

Sometime around 1997, I was mistaken for Dan Barreiro, then a columnist for the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, who now works in radio. At the time, I was working for The Journal of New Ulm, Minn., and I drove to Mankato to buy a suit for my job interview at The Mercury of Pottstown, Pa.

The saleswoman was asking about where I was planning to wear the suit, what I do for a living, etc., and I told her I was a newspaper reporter planning to wear it to a job interview. We chatted briefly about my work and some guy who overheard part of the conversation says something like, "Hey, Dan! You should write a column about buying a suit in Mankato, Minnesota."

We got it straightened out pretty quickly, but the bizarre thing is I look nothing like Barreiro.

I got the job in Pottstown, but I doubt that the suit was a major factor.

Do democracies fight each other?

2007-03-08T16:02:00.000-05:00

This essay by a guy named Matthew White has been posted in various forms since 1998, but I just saw it for the first time today. Here's my gross oversimplification:

It's often said that democracies won't go to war against each other -- an idea that goes back at least as far as 1795, when Immanuel Kant said so in his essay "Perpetual Peace." But is it true? Depends on how you define "democracy" and "war." There are dozens of instances where nations that were at least arguably democracies went to war with each other.

As White puts it:

As we trim more and more dubious democracies from our list, we certainly make the statement that "democracies don't fight each other" truer, but we also make it a lot less impressive. If there are only 2 functioning democracies in the world (think, for example, the United States and Switzerland, ca. 1855), then peace between them is no big surprise. After all, how many times have two Mormon countries gone to war with one another? Or two nations led by people named Leslie?

And there are yet more instances where people quibble over whether the conflict was indeed a war. It's a pretty cool essay.

bad day at work

2007-03-05T02:22:00.000-05:00

All things considered, the fact that my prison time was for bookmaking and not homicide is amazing.

That's what a friend of mine said when dealing with idiots at work.

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

2007-02-23T17:13:00.000-05:00

Last night I tried absinthe for the first time. It's quite a good drink. It's illegal to sell it in the United States, but perfectly legal to possess it and consume it.

I didn't have any of the hallucinations that the drink is said to bring on.

drab rhinos

2007-02-16T17:45:00.000-05:00

Turns out my name is an anagram for "drab rhinos," among many other things.

progress

2007-02-10T13:40:00.000-05:00

Mmmmm .... progress.

I'm sorry. I have the wrong number.

2007-02-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

At 5:50 a.m. today, I got a phone call. I woke up and went across the room to where my phone was plugged into the charger. The call had gone to voice mail. The caller didn't leave a message, but must have known whom he reached because my voice mail has my name on it. I went back to sleep.

At 6 a.m., the phone rang again. I woke up and got to the phone more quickly and answered it. Right after I said "Hello," I heard the "call ending" signal. The caller had hung up.

Come on, folks, is it really that hard to say, "I'm sorry. I have the wrong number"?

It gets worse, though: It turns out these calls were from the same number.

smoking

2007-01-28T12:34:00.000-05:00

Some people complain that the smell of tobacco smoke dominates over everything else. I never realized how true that is until now. Philadelphia has banned smoking in most taverns.

The big problem (other than government interfering with liberty) is that in the dives where I hang out, there's usually something that smells a whole lot worse than tobacco. (Not any one specific thing -- it could be one of many foul odors.) It would be nice to have something to drown that out.

pet spa

2007-01-26T19:30:00.000-05:00

For dogs, maybe. For cats, no.

ignorance

2007-01-15T14:34:00.000-05:00

Something frightening from today's Washington Post:

In a recent survey of college students on U.S. civic literacy, more than 81 percent knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for "racial justice and brotherhood" in his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.
That's the good news.
Most of the rest surveyed thought King was advocating the abolition of slavery.

Note that these are college students. You'd think that an American high school graduate would know that slavery was long gone by the 1960s. As Oscar Wilde put it, "By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

Bill Watterson

2007-01-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting speech by "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoonist Bill Watterson from 1989.

men vs. guys

2007-01-10T12:58:00.000-05:00

This post is yet more evidence that I am a man, not a guy.

On another note, this post (which I learned of from Vvalkyri's blog) has an amazingly loooong debate about doctors' appearance. To summarize: Some patients, hospital administrators, etc. don't like to see a doctor with a mohawk, tattoos, piercings, etc. In some parts of the world, though, it won't matter much, because enough people won't care that the doctor will still be able to find work. In other parts of the world, attitudes are such that people won't want to see that doctor, no matter how competent. Yet the responses go on and on as if there were more to say on the subject.

400 homicides

2006-12-24T15:19:00.000-05:00

Philadelphia had its 400th homicide of the year early this morning. My neighborhood is quite safe, but many other parts of town are practically suicidal to live in.

They ratified it.

2006-12-19T13:45:00.000-05:00

The contract is ratified, so there will be no newspaper strike. But Guild members also had a vote of no confidence in the papers' owners -- stopping just short of calling them liars.

Ugh.

2006-12-17T14:16:00.000-05:00

The folks at the Inquirer and Daily News are to vote tomorrow (Monday) on the tentative contract. Below is the memo sent to Guild members there. This is not a good sign for the industry.

Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia bulletin

December 15, 2006

Dear Guild Members,

We the Bargaining Committee are asking you to vote YES for the tentative contract agreement.

What we will never ask of you is to not be angry about it.

Be angry. We are. But vote YES.

It is a contract full of pain and insult. It is a contract that requires sacrifice and trust.

It is a contract that Brian Tierney and the local investors should be ashamed of.

As one spirit-crushing proposal after another came across the table from our owners, we seethed.

And then we processed our anger and pledged to redirect it as constructive energy. The end result is the contract you’re being asked to support – one that is FAR better than the company wanted you to have.

Had we let our anger consume us, no good would have come of it. DO NOT let your anger drive your decision. DO NOT reject this tentative contract. If you do, you will see the worst of the company’s proposals replace those we have now – the ones the Bargaining Committee worked for months to secure.

We were insulted and angry, but we worked through that anger and focused on getting the best we could for you.

So spend the next few days working through your anger and focusing on the truth here: We need to take control of these newspapers through our work. We can be the true owners of these papers.

If we let our anger consume us, we will destroy the papers, destroy jobs and destroy families.

To Brian Tierney and his wealthy friends, it will be a mere tax write-off. They’ll move on, chalk it up as a bad investment and lick their wounds on their yachts in the Caribbean.

We are professionals first and foremost. We’ve been through a great deal together over the last few years. With each insulting development, with each new direction from management, we have endured. We have carried on with professionalism that our readers and advertisers have come to depend on.

We need to do that now more than ever. We are the heart and soul of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.

In the closing minutes of the contract negotiations, I told company negotiators to deliver this message to Brian Tierney: “This contract is something no amount of Tastykakes, soft pretzels or commemorative coins will make up for. On our ledger, he finds himself in the negative category when it comes to goodwill.”

With this contract, we are giving him the opportunity he asked for to get these papers back on track. This contract does not, however, require us to give up our dedication, our pride and our resolve.

And that, friends, is our leverage going forward.

In solidarity and hope,

Diane Mastrull
Bargaining Committee Chair and PNI Unit Chair

Jay Treaty

2006-11-26T15:11:00.000-05:00

Some of the most interesting things about government are the unforeseen consequences of an action many, many years later.

The Washington Post has an interesting article today about a 1794 treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom that said Indians should be allowed to cross the border freely. (That is, the border between the United States and what was then British North America, now Canada.) It's still in effect. But because of the treaty, Indians in Canada have a right to enlist in the U.S. armed forces and have served in every modern U.S. war.

Canada's armed forces are small enough that those who volunteer are often put on a waiting list. Significant numbers of Canadian Indians drive to the United States to enlist.

Apparently, U.S. military recruiters used to drive up into Canada to recruit at reservations, but the Canadian government banned this practice.

(Presumably, members of tribes who live in the United States would have the same ability to enlist in the Canadian armed forces if there's space available. The article doesn't address that, but I'd imagine the waiting list makes that unlikely to happen.)

Nate Wiley, 1923-2006

2006-11-25T13:42:00.000-05:00

Nate Wiley was a great American. He played the most American musical instrument -- the saxaphone -- as he carried on our venerable republic's greatest contribution to world culture. Here in Philadelphia, you could always count on him to play as the rest of us drank Jim Beam and Pabst Blue Ribbon in a smoke-filled room.

Rest in peace. You will be missed.

This can't be good

2006-11-22T12:01:00.000-05:00

Following is the text of a press release sent out yesterday (Tuesday, Nov. 21) by the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia:

Philadelphia Media Holdings, the company that cries poverty while demanding devastating cuts from Guild members, seems to be gearing up to spend a fortune on scabs to produce our papers and drive our trucks.

The Philadelphia Weekly reported today that an ad seeking "replacement workers" (aka scabs) was recently posted on careerbuilder.com. The mystery company seeks scabs to come to an East Coast city to work as reporters, photographers, graphic artists, news assistants and truck drivers in the event of a strike. The Weekly was told that the potential strike would be in December. The Guild's contract expires Nov. 30.

A Guild member responded to the ad and got a company calling itself Strom Engineering. Asking for more information about the jobs, he learned there is an expected strike in December. The Guild "job applicant" was told that the undisclosed company was a newspaper operation on the East Coast that "could be in Philly," but Strom declined to be specific.

When the "job applicant" said he was interested in politics and would love to cover City Hall and government, but had no experience except for penning a few letters to the editor, he was told that may not be a problem. Send your resume along and we'll try and take care of you, he was told.

When the caller said he had a couple friends looking for work too, including one who just got out of prison and was a great fighter, he was told to also have them send their resumes along, as there are no background checks.

The company is also advertising for scabs to drive trucks, filling in for Teamsters drivers who may also be on strike. All you need is a Class B license, the caller was told. Drivers would be asked to operate "small trucks, a UPS-type truck."

If they got the job, the company is willing to pay reporters and other editorial employees an hourly rate based on a minimum 60-hour work week, with no benefits.

Doesn't this East Coast newspaper company know that you get what you pay for?

"Bringing Home the News" with scab labor is not a new great era in journalism.

Direct questions to Voices@Local-10.com

my ancestry

2006-11-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

A while back, I decided to take a DNA test to help my cousin once removed who's working on a geneology project. She needed male cousins to take the Y-DNA test, so I did. When I got the e-mail message notifying me of the results, I didn't have time to follow the link and check. Today I did check and some of it was surprising.

It's no surprise that I have ancestors from Ukraine -- that's where the name Robrish comes from. The ancestors from Russia, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bohemia were no surprise either. "Galicia" was confusing until I looked it up and learned it's a former country that was in land that's now part of Poland and Ukraine.

I hadn't expected Iraq or Italy. Who knew?

This test is only for my paternal ancestry; I would need to order another test to learn about my mother's side of the family. I may well do so. I suspect there are more likely to be surprises on my mom's side, since her ancestors have been in what is now the United States since pre-Revolutionary times.

picking a doctor

2006-11-05T12:09:00.000-05:00

Back in 1998, when I started working for my current employer, I had to select a primrary care physician for the health insurance plan. Back then, I lived in Pottstown, so I wanted a doctor with an office there. I looked at the doctors in the health plan and saw them divided into categories. I ruled out the pediatricians and gynecologists right away. I figured I either wanted "general practice" or "family practice." But I didn't know the difference, so I phoned my dad. He's a retired scientist and knows about this sort of stuff.

He got very worried and asked if I had a health problem. Once I explained that it was just an insurance thing, he told me to get an internist if the plan would allow it.

That narrowed it down to the three internists with offices in Pottstown. I picked the one who was affiliated with two hospitals, figuring it was unlikely that an incompetent doctor would be affiliated with both. A nice, simple system -- albeit one that ended up with a doctor I don't trust. I never bothered changing doctors, even when I moved to Philadelphia.

So now my employer is changing health plans. Since I live in the middle of Philadelphia now, there are a lot more doctors to choose from. That ought to be a good thing. I tried searching for internists affiliated with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Then I eliminated the ones whose offices weren't within walking distance and those who worked in geriatrics. That left me with these:

Armstrong, Katrina A.
Aronowitz, Robert Alan
Baime, Michael
Barden-Maja, Ada Yvonne
Braunstein, Seth N.
Bruza, John Michael
Chou, Carol M.
Cirigliano, Michael
Cohen-Kogan, Jennifer Renee
Cruz-Alvarez, Rebeca E.
Curtis, Jacque Y.
Day, Susan C.
Ende, Jack
Ferguson, Monica O.
Fleischman, Carol R.
Forciea, Mary Ann
Fosnocht, Kevin M.
Givens, Jane Lucile
Gluckman, Stephen J.
Goldmann, David R.
Greenacre, Judith K.
Guerra, Carmen
Horowitz, David A.
Hu, Michelle
Hunter, William C.
Jaeger, Jeffrey R.
Kershbaum, Kenneth Lowell
Kosseim, Laura M.
Kostman, Jay R.
Krekun, Susan
Ladd-Lautenbach, Gillian
Lee, Anita C.
Leff, Alison
Marenberg, Marjorie Ellen
McKenzie, Judith G.
Mignott, Harold L.
Min, Patricia L.
Mounzer, Karam C.
Nierman, Eliot Hillel
Nizen, Jennifer S.
Oler, Allison
Popik, Sharon R.
Reynolds, Eileen E.
Rogers, Marisa Ani
Rusk, Matthew
Schwartz, Stanley S.
Slattery, Sara A.
Sparkman, Thorne
Strom, Brian L.
Szapary, Philippe O.
Thompson, Leslie Elizabeth
Thompson, Sarah G.
Turner, Barbara J.
Weiner, Mark G.
Wiener, Evelyn B.
Williams, Sankey V.
Wynne, Craig

So how do I narrow it down from here? I tried sending an e-mail message to a nurse I trust asking him, but he didn't know them. (He lives out near Pottstown but works a couple of days a week at the travel medicine clinic at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, so I thought he'd know. No dice.) I'm not about to ask my old doctor, since I don't trust him.

I could draw one of the names from a hat, I suppose. Or I could pick the one whose office is closest to my home.

election

2006-11-04T15:30:00.000-05:00

A really cool Web site I've been following a lot lately tracks all sorts of opinion polls in races for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and governors' offices.

It's done very well, but it has its problems. In addition to all the usual caveats about these polls (margin of sampling error, the fact that all sorts of things can change people's minds at the last minute, the effectiveness of get-out-the-vote efforts, etc.) the site rates a seat as Democratic, Republican or toss-up based on an average of the last five polls.

For a race that has a lot of polls, that's a good method. But most U.S. House races -- even the hotly contested ones -- don't have a whole lot of polls. So some of the five most recent ones will be quite old.

For example, consider the suburban Philadelphia race between incumbent Rep. Curt Weldon (R) and challenger Joe Sestak (D). The "five most recent" include one from May that showed Weldon ahead by a 10-point margin, then one from mid-September with Weldon ahead by 19 points.

But on Oct. 16, an FBI investigation into Weldon and his daughter became public when agents raided his daughter's office. The next poll showed Weldon and Sestak about even. The two polls after that showed Sestak ahead by seven points.

Since then, the national GOP has dramatically cut back on its spending for Weldon and the campaign has cut back on TV advertising.

With all this in mind, the conventional wisdom is that Sestak is virtually certain to win. Of course, the conventional wisdom can be wrong, so I won't call anyone the winner until election night (and possibly not even then -- we all know these things can drag on for weeks in some cases). Yet this Web site, with its automatic formula of averaging the last five polls, is calling the race a toss-up.

I don't blame the operators of this Web site for doing it this way. It makes sense when you're trying to collect data on all 87 House races for which polling results are available. (All 435 House seats are up for re-election, but many of them are so dominated by one party that there is no serious opposition candidate, and even many of the competitive seats don't have polling results released publicly.) For most seats, the five-poll average probably makes sense.

The take-home message here: Examine the poll results carefully. Don't depend on some automatic formula. And always remember that there can be some bombshell between now and Tuesday that will change the public's opinion dramatically.

Also, please vote if you're eligible to do so. Even if the high-profile races in your area aren't competitive, there are almost always lower-profile ones that are. If you think there's nobody worth voting for, write in a name -- even your own name. Not voting when you have a chance to only says you're willing to take whatever they dish out.

back to work

2006-10-22T22:14:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I return to work. It will be good to be back. This time, I planned ahead better than I have in some years past: I'll be working on election night and I'll have two full weeks before the election to catch up on whatever developments have been going on while I was gone.

Got back from D.C. tonight. My dad is doing well, as is his girlfriend. I spent Friday evening with the one friend from high school with whom I still keep in touch; it was good to see her.

back in Philly

2006-10-11T16:17:00.000-04:00

Got back into town last night. The canoeing trip was fun; I'd never been to that part of Minnesota (near Grand Marais) before.