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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World War III

(This is only a test…so far)

A major weapons system for World War III got a test this week and the news barely managed to surface in the swirling stew of Michael Jackson, Steve McNair and Michelle Obama’s European trip wardrobe.

Hackers targeted dozens of major U.S. internet sites, both private and government, and managed to shut down or severely slow some of them, including the Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission. Some sites, such as Whitehouse.gov and the Pentagon, were able to shrug off the attack. Targets were reported to include the sites of the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Washington Post, and others.

Because the list of sites that came under attack also includes South Korean sites, officials suspect that the world’s No.1 Naughty Playmate, North Korea, may be the bad guys here. After all, Kim Jong Il and his buddies have exploded nuclear bombs and launched missiles, so maybe this cyber-sideshow is their doing.

Maybe. Except it’s not a sideshow. What happened over the holiday weekend and into this week should be as chilling as a squadron of 1941 Japanese attack planes doing practice runs over Hawaii. And shrugging it off is just as silly as having much of our naval might clustered neatly in the harbor while our planes were lined up wingtip-to-wingtip on the tarmac.

We have made much of how our society is becoming completely integrated into the internet. It’s how many of us get our news, contact each other or the government, pay our taxes and our bills, get paid, do our banking and shopping, run our businesses and do our work. With every passing day, the internet becomes so much a part of how we perceive, manage and enjoy the thing we call The United States that politicians now call for universal broadband as they once called for rural electrification.

That’s why the weekend’s events are a lot more serious than most seem to realize. Although they focused on overwhelming target sites with bogus traffic, not fiddling with their internal data, these attacks demonstrated sophistication and resources with potential for much harm.

Well, yeah, but let’s not get carried away – it’s just the internet, right?

Right. It’s just the internet, which last year filed 58 percent of our tax returns, the IRS says.

So let’s put it this way. If last weekend saw someone try to bomb the interstate highway system, the Post Office, the Federal Reserve, airports, railways, bus stations, telephone exchanges, mass media, banks, newspapers, broadcast stations and other institutions, that would be serious stuff.

And that’s exactly what happened last weekend and early this week. The United States of America was attacked by a power or powers unknown, testing weapons capable of seriously disrupting our social and economic systems.

Our government isn’t saying much. Let’s hope it’s doing more.

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Vast Conspiracy Uncovered!

Media Silence Suspicious,

Government is Mum

Look to your left. Look to your right. Unless you see someone reading this over your shoulder, you are about to become privy to information so undisclosed that even the day before the once-in-a-lifetime Moment, few knew.

And if that Moment has already come to pass and you find yourself still able to read this, you are very fortunate indeed, but no thanks to your government. There was no mention of the Moment on the White House web site. And while the Department of Homeland Security said the threat level overall was “elevated” and even “high” for airlines, not one specific word about the Moment was to be found.

Coincidence?

Hardly.

Conspiracy?

The Obama administration makes a big deal of bipartisan cooperation and working with the media. You didn’t know about the Moment until there was nothing you could do about it. Think that’s just more coincidence? Consider:

n The Republican National Committee website is silent on the Moment, its “news” category showing nothing after July 2. Sure, the zipper issue whether on lips or elsewhere has been big, but not one mention?

n The Democratic National Committee is also silent here. When was the last time you remember Democrats being silent on anything?

n You also didn’t hear about it in The New York Times, or on its website. At least on July 7. True, the Times did say something in 1989, but it hasn’t made a mention since, and who among us will remember that slip 20 years later in what is obviously a long-running silence?

n And you didn’t hear about it from Bill O’Reilly, who often covers things the powers that be wish he wouldn’t. Could this have reached even Bill? A search for the Moment’s unpublished number on his website came up zip.

President Obama was in Russia the day before the Moment. Russia and the rest of Europe won’t feel the Moment’s effects until next month, making those places safe at least for now. Another case of undisclosed location?

In all things of government, you must consider only the facts and not jump to conclusions. A senator tapping his foot in a Minneapolis airport men’s room stall could be just recalling his favorite Lawrence Welk show. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announcing her resignation and going fishing could just mean the sled dogs won’t go hungry.

Or there could be other meanings. Clarity seldom visits public discourse. But we are going to make an exception here about the Moment.

The Moment will occur for you when it is 12:34:56 in the afternoon of July 8, 2009, or, as it would be written in all numbers in the American form, 12:34:56 07/08/09. The last time this particular straight time/date sequence happened was in 1909, although as the Times noted in 1989, an early-morning observation on June 6 produce the sequence 1:23:45/6/7/89.

Europe, being perversely European, handles day/month notation differently, putting the day before the month, so their experience of the Moment won’t happen until August 7, when it will be 12:34:56 07/08/09.

There you have it. You are One of Those Who Know, even though the mainstream media didn’t prepare you.

Aren’t you glad?

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Summertime. . .

And the Living is Sleazy

Summer is the time when all sorts of things that slither, creep and crawl leave their damp rocks for a moment in the sun. Some are insects, some are reptiles and some are books.

The latest book that hopes the summer sunshine will bake the stench from it is “Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story” by C. David Heymann. The publisher is Atria, a Simon & Schuster imprint, and the book’s release date is July 14.

Heymann, who has written four books on the Kennedys, writes in this one that Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy had an affair in the time between President John Kennedy’s November 1963 assassination and Bobby Kennedy’s own murder in June, 1968.

In an Author’s Note on a Simon & Schuster website Heymann writes “Knowing that Robert and Jackie Kennedy became romantically involved following JFK's death -- and for reasons that this volume attempts to reveal -- sheds a whole new light on who they were and what made them tick. It demonstrates, among other things, that they were motivated by many of the same temptations and emotions that drive the rest of us. It helps us gain a fuller comprehension not only of them but also of ourselves.”

Part of that “fuller comprehension” emerged yesterday on msnbc.com, where we learned some of the book’s details, including the allegation that Jackie had a fling with Marlon Brando, who is quoted reviewing her skills.

Still more comprehension came from the New York Post’s story on the book, which reported that someone saw Jackie sunbathing topless with RFK, who touched her breast and put a hand inside her bikini bottom.

Given that this is the beginning of the summer season in news, when not much happens but the media have to fill space anyway, we’ll probably see comprehension on who touched whose what where and when popping up all over the place.

That both Jackie Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy are long dead won’t slow the chatter. Nor will the observation that at least until recent medical advances, each and every one of us reading this stuff is the result of that exact behavior.

Now, full disclosure: I haven’t read the book and don’t plan to read the book. Just not my thing, based on the funny notion that some things are private unless made public by those involved, not those observing.

Still, some of us will put up $26 for the chance to peer into a more famous bedroom window than the one next door and with lots less risk of arrest. Like any author, Heymann probably hopes that number will be large. To repeat what Heymann wrote, “It helps us gain a fuller comprehension not only of them but also of ourselves.”

Yes, it does, but you have to wonder if we’ll like what that fuller comprehension reveals.

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Gov. Go Go’s Going – Where?

Alaska’s Governor Go Go contributed a big firecracker of her own to the nation’s July Fourth weekend celebrations by announcing that she was now Governor Going, soon to become Governor Gone. But gone where?

Sarah Palin told a surprised world Friday that her work as governor of Alaska was done, and that she would resign with about a year and a half to go in her first – and only – term. That prompted speculation and comment all over the political playground:

n Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, already dealing with a flurry of zipper problems on the U.S.S. Elephant, now has to contend with a loose cannon firing bird-brain shot through the gun deck. Maybe an Appalachian Trail hike would clear his head.

n Sarah Palin cleverly shows that the best pro-active defense against a presidential campaign charge of “She can’t even run Alaska!” is to stop running Alaska.

n Sarah Palin’s keen hunting skills have given her an appreciation for being in the crosshairs, as unnamed prosecutors look to add a pair of red high heels to their trophy case – speculation that the FBI at least felt compelled to deny.

n She knows you get elected in the Lower 48, so she’s got to get out of Alaska and into the mainstream media spotlight. Besides, Alaskans and Alaskan media are on to her.

n She’s too much in the mainstream media spotlight and maybe dropping out for a while will give her a chance to kick back and read her second newspaper.

n Having Maureen Dowd say in The New York Times that “Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy” is just part of a clever strategy to solidify Palin’s anti-media base that doesn’t hold too much with all that reading stuff.

n Senator John McCain, whose gift to the nation was lowering Sarah Palin from obscurity to be his presidential running mate, reportedly said "she will continue to play an important leadership role in the Republican Party and our nation." (Of course, he probably thinks he will, too.)

The list could go on and on, which may also be part of the Palin strategy or simply indication that even the media finally got sick of the Michael Jackson story. If you’re interested in Palin, or just wonder how to imitate wonderfully a Beijing third-grader’s first attempted English essay, you can read a transcript of her speech and lots more on the excellent Anchorage Daily News page at http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/.

Here is a speech transcript passage from that source:

“Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

“Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".

If you understand how plodding along would appease those who want you to sit down, or how keeping your head down and continuing to plod would make you a quitter, and what any of that has to do with how dead fish float, then you too could be Governor of Alaska, or maybe even President of the United States.

You betcha!

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