Weekend Tids and Bits

The Sun Wasn’t All That Was Rising in Rising Sun, MD. last week where the AP reports cops pulled over a 41-year old guy for speeding to discover he couldn’t have been driving by the seat of his pants because he wasn’t wearing any. He was charged with going 69 miles per hour in a 50-mph zone. He lost his pants, he told the cop who wrapped him in a drunken driving charge.

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Microsoft Binged Google and Google Announced A Windows-breaker as Microsoft’s Bing, an attempt to establish an alternative to Google as the Search Engine of Choice, rose to a 10 percent user share. Google blew a return kiss to Microsoft, whose Windows operating system dominates, by announcing an OS based on Google’s Chrome browser. The target is netbooks, cheap PCs aimed mostly at surfing the net on the fly, now mostly limited to Windows. Google hopes Chrome OS will be available in the back half of 2010. Microsoft hopes the Blue Screen of Death will sit upon Google. As for the search engines, give http://bing.com a look.

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Piss On This Energy Idea – Please! Eric Bland reported for Discovery that scientists from Ohio University have developed an electrode that turns urine into hydrogen cheaply. Hydrogen hasn’t played a major part in transportation since that nasty business with the exploding dirigible Hindenburg, but this report says converting hydrogen on the fly, so to speak, gets around storage issues and could allow soldiers in the field to “carry their own fuel.” No word yet on plans for toilets that pay you or a move towards energy independence under a Piss On OPEC campaign.

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Humans got swine flu from pigs and now they’re returning the favor says a Reuters piece on human-hog transmission of the H1N1 virus. Concerned authorities fear a virus that dates pigs and humans interchangeably could mutate in nasty ways. Look for major swine-flu vaccine campaigns before the fall onset of flu season, but bear in mind that ordinary flu routinely kills many, many more folk than have been reported victims of Porky’s Revenge.

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Republican Sexual Sillies Roundup – South Carolina Governor Mark “Soul Mate” Sanford seems to be edging to forgiveness and moving on after disclosure of his affair with an Argentine woman. State funds don’t seem to have been involved, his party has censured him instead of telling him to resign, and his wife is willing to reconcile. Note to other Republicans lost in LibidoLand – Michael Jackson can only die once, so don’t count on getting a similar pass when the jig is up and your pants are down.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s Sen. John Ensign says his parent’s gave his mistress and her family $96,000 out of concern for their well-being. Ensign admitted an affair with Cindy Hampton, his long-time aide and family friend. Cindy also got more than $25,000 in “severance,” according to her husband, Doug Hampton, also a one-time Ensign aide. The senator is a conservative, so resist the temptation to ask him his position on the fight against AIDS

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Too Much Club seems to have been the problem that got a Kent, Washington man 1 1/2 years in prison for using a six-iron on the head of a other golfer in a dispute over slow play. No word on whether the use of a pitching wedge might have resulted in a reduced sentence or probation.

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Show And Tell got a lot more interesting for fifth graders in Elk Grove, CA, when their teacher inadvertently included a homemade x-rated sex tape in a DVD of “classroom memories” given to the kids and their families. Parents say she’s a good teacher who made an embarrassing mistake. School official are investigating.

Last Week’s Discussions:

n Alaska’s Gov. Go Go announced she’s Going, Going and soon Gone at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/gov.html

n Wonder what some are willing to write to make a buck? Get the lowdown on a reported Jackie/RFK affair turned into a book at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/summertime.html

n Another government conspiracy of silence as simple as 123456789 was unveiled at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/vast-conspiracy-uncovered-media-silence_08.html

n A World War III weapon was tested on the United States -- with some success – at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/world-war-iii-this-is-only-testso-far.html

n And Jacko and the news media were both DOA on June 25 at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/jacko-and-news-media-both-doa-on-june.html

Have a great weekend!

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Jacko and News Media

Both DOA on June 25

Michael Jackson died on June 25 and the common sense of most American news media died with him.

That’s the only way to explain the endless coverage of Jackson’s death that refuses to stop two weeks after Jackson did. Yes, he was a major and very troubled pop-culture icon. Yes, although the last dozen or so years hadn’t been kind, he was planning a comeback.

Much the same could be said about American news media – once grand, now in sad decline, hoping for a comeback. Since autopsies were performed on Jackson, here’s the beginning of one on news media, with numbers from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

During the week of June 29-July 5, California declared an economic emergency and began issuing IOUs to “pay” its bills. California’s economy is bigger than that of Spain, Canada, Brazil or Russia, for starters, so some might think this an important story, one that would dominate last week’s TV newscasts. But the numbers from Pew say Jackson took 28-30 percent of the airtime on cable and network news, and when you only look at the morning television shows, the number is 56 percent.

Clearly a troubled economy bigger than that that of most nations is not as vital to television news as decades-old film clips, discussions of cosmetic surgery, pedophilia allegations and speculation on who might have really fathered whom.

That collective news media judgment made Jacko the lead newsmaker last week in more than three times as many stories as the president of the United States. President Obama shouldn’t feel too bad – the amount of news hole devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan and the health-care debate together still totaled less than that devoted to Jackson.

Not to mention the Governor of Alaska deciding to step down, con man Bernie Madoff getting a 150-year prison sentence, Minnesota’s Al Franken doing a comedy career lateral and joining the U.S. Senate, and the Republican Sexual Sillies Squad just throbbing with new developments.

Of course, those were just breaking news stories and not the thought-provoking revelations that serious news media can provide. You know – Jackson’s musical legacy, his contribution to race relations, innocent fun with boys in his bed. Important stuff. World-class important stuff.

Clearly much more world-class important than the 16,000 children of the world who die every day from hunger and preventable disease. So we lose a kid every 5.4 seconds or so – how important is that compared to where Michael Jackson will be buried?

And while we do nod to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the news media’s duties don’t seem to encompass the other 40 or so armed conflicts that scorch around the globe. What is that when compared to reporting what drugs Jackson was taking and where he got them?

Eventually the Jackson story will die and what’s left of the King of Pop will decay and dissolve.

Kind of like the news media, where the process has already started.

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