Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Why don't they just kill us?
There's a story in the Washington Post today that should be disturbing to anyone over 65. It's just the beginning of what looks to be a building campaign for America to get rid of its Senior Citizens. And, it makes a certain amount of sense. We're a drag on the economy, we don't pay much in taxes and we cost a lot because of entitlement programs such as Medicare.
There is another story, this one in The Guardian, a British publication, which outlines how government is dealing with ageing Flint, Michigan. It's basically bulldozing parts of the city to shrink it.
It just all adds up to an unspoken, unofficial, mindset that leads down the path of destruction of all that is not new and productive---like old houses and old people.
My thought is that rather than just starving us out the government could at least be honest and make euthenasia of its elderly population an attractive proposition. Something on the order of paying a bounty for each elderly person who enters a government Good Bye House, wherin in a comfortable setting granny or gramps is made comfortable, sedated then euthenized and cremated.
Heck, with the right kind of promotion it could be made to seem like a national duty
There is another story, this one in The Guardian, a British publication, which outlines how government is dealing with ageing Flint, Michigan. It's basically bulldozing parts of the city to shrink it.
It just all adds up to an unspoken, unofficial, mindset that leads down the path of destruction of all that is not new and productive---like old houses and old people.
My thought is that rather than just starving us out the government could at least be honest and make euthenasia of its elderly population an attractive proposition. Something on the order of paying a bounty for each elderly person who enters a government Good Bye House, wherin in a comfortable setting granny or gramps is made comfortable, sedated then euthenized and cremated.
Heck, with the right kind of promotion it could be made to seem like a national duty
Friday, June 13, 2008
More Web Censorship....going, going, gone
They're at it again.
On Thursday Verizon Communications said it will stop offering its customers access to a whole slew of Usenet discussion areas. I'm one of those customers. When I signed up Usenet, all of it, was part of the package. Now Verizon has taken away thousands of groups just because New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, claimed that that's where all the child porn was. First question is, obviously, how did he know unless he's been there, and even viewing child porn is an offense, so one might ask why isn't Mr. Cuomo doing 90 and 9 in the crossbar hotel?
And, one might ask, what is Verizon going to do for me? Since I'm now paying for something I'm not getting I wonder if there might just be a little reduction in my bill. If you believe that might happen I have a bridge right her that I'd be glad to sell you.
But all of that is fluff.
The real issue is the ham handed way Verizon did the eliminating and the fact they caved in to the ravings of a New York politician at all.
What Verizon did was block all newsgroups with the prefix of "alt." which stands for alternative. There are thousands of them and by his own admission Cuomo said 88 of them sheltered kiddie porn. So let's argue that such trash is just that, trash, and that no one should ever look at it, be tempted to look at it or even know it's around. Fair enough. But let's look further at the newsgroups Verizon blocked: alt.british.drama is one. That basically knocks out all the Shakespeare buffs. Same with alt.french.drama. So much for Voltaire. Perhaps hardest to take is the censorship of alt.binaries.rock-n-roll.
From the outset of the Internet the people who were in it from the start knew as Gospel that All Information Wants to be Free. That includes bad information as well as the good. It is, by the way, also the creed of the good librarian.
It's a slippery slope folks.
Usenet is a part of the Internet that's been there from the beginning, but it's little known and doesn't have a large and vocal constituency. That's why Cuomo and his ilk will probably get away with this act of censorship. Too bad there isn't a stiff penalty for committing an act of censorship, but that's a whole other blog.
How much do you want to bet that one day when we wake up and find our internet choices to be limited to about those of, say, China we'll find that it happened because politicians and their corporate handmaidens like Verizon just chipped and nibbled away bit by bit until all that was left was what they found to be acceptable.
Somehow or other this strikes me as despicable. If I were French I'd be crying, "to the barricades" which is a nice way of letting the establishment know the people aren't happy, what with their burning torches and glistening pitchforks outside the palace gates.
Arjay
On Thursday Verizon Communications said it will stop offering its customers access to a whole slew of Usenet discussion areas. I'm one of those customers. When I signed up Usenet, all of it, was part of the package. Now Verizon has taken away thousands of groups just because New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, claimed that that's where all the child porn was. First question is, obviously, how did he know unless he's been there, and even viewing child porn is an offense, so one might ask why isn't Mr. Cuomo doing 90 and 9 in the crossbar hotel?
And, one might ask, what is Verizon going to do for me? Since I'm now paying for something I'm not getting I wonder if there might just be a little reduction in my bill. If you believe that might happen I have a bridge right her that I'd be glad to sell you.
But all of that is fluff.
The real issue is the ham handed way Verizon did the eliminating and the fact they caved in to the ravings of a New York politician at all.
What Verizon did was block all newsgroups with the prefix of "alt." which stands for alternative. There are thousands of them and by his own admission Cuomo said 88 of them sheltered kiddie porn. So let's argue that such trash is just that, trash, and that no one should ever look at it, be tempted to look at it or even know it's around. Fair enough. But let's look further at the newsgroups Verizon blocked: alt.british.drama is one. That basically knocks out all the Shakespeare buffs. Same with alt.french.drama. So much for Voltaire. Perhaps hardest to take is the censorship of alt.binaries.rock-n-roll.
From the outset of the Internet the people who were in it from the start knew as Gospel that All Information Wants to be Free. That includes bad information as well as the good. It is, by the way, also the creed of the good librarian.
It's a slippery slope folks.
Usenet is a part of the Internet that's been there from the beginning, but it's little known and doesn't have a large and vocal constituency. That's why Cuomo and his ilk will probably get away with this act of censorship. Too bad there isn't a stiff penalty for committing an act of censorship, but that's a whole other blog.
How much do you want to bet that one day when we wake up and find our internet choices to be limited to about those of, say, China we'll find that it happened because politicians and their corporate handmaidens like Verizon just chipped and nibbled away bit by bit until all that was left was what they found to be acceptable.
Somehow or other this strikes me as despicable. If I were French I'd be crying, "to the barricades" which is a nice way of letting the establishment know the people aren't happy, what with their burning torches and glistening pitchforks outside the palace gates.
Arjay
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A Call to Arms
Who would have ever thought that quiet, mild mannered, Bill Moyers would be the one to toss the torch and ignite a white hot fire under the moribund journalistic world? He didn't, yet, but if you'll just take the next 19 minutes and listen to his speech
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE
to the National Conference for Media Reform I think you'll agree with me that his call to arms to the nation's journalists sounds just a bit like Patrick Henry.
In fact, he stirred this septuagenarian into writing this blog, the first one in a long, long while. It was while listening to what Moyers said that I realized that, given a lifetime as a journalist, if I didn't write something I was a part of the problem we face in this 21st Century.
Moyers gently pointed out that journalists no longer ask the tough questions. They no longer hold the feet of politicians and other government "spokespersons" to the fire; asking follow-up questions, asking for facts not speculation or memorized talking points. And, he lies much of this failing at the feet of a government which has allowed, nay, encouraged, our once free and independent journalistic tradition to become owned and dominated by corporate and conglomerate interests with only one thing in mind -- the bottom line.
Moyers' speech awoke in me something I carried with me as a journalist for every day of my 30 years writing for the public press and that was that I was sitting in that boring meeting or covering that court trial because I represented those thousands of people who couldn't or wouldn't attend in person. And, that I was using my skills to tell them what they needed to know if they/we were to continue to maintain an informed populace. That, by the way, is one of the corner posts upon which our Democracy is founded.
He names big media as being complicit in the Bush Administration's propaganda campaign to seduce America into the Iraq war. Here's the difference: back when journalists had the backing of their employers even a cub reporter wouldn't have hesitated even a microsecond to ask the questions that surely would have revealed that the Emperor had no clothes. That doesn't happen today and, why, you may ask? It's because the employers are now corporations who have many interests, many of them closely bound to government, and everyone knows that to rock the boat leads to not a life jacket, but to a pink slip.
On the one hand I'm glad I no longer work for Reuters or the Tampa Tribune or even the little Pottstown Mercury because I have this inherent dislike of castration. Luckily, I still have the skill to put my thoughts into readable prose and I have this blog and I no longer intend to remain silent.
In some countries you can be put to jail for criticizing the government, even killed. But, hell, I'm 70 years old. Not a whole lot of time left and there's not a whole lot that even a government can do to me that the sometimes dissolute life of a journeyman reporter hasn't.
Keep tuned.
Arjay
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE
to the National Conference for Media Reform I think you'll agree with me that his call to arms to the nation's journalists sounds just a bit like Patrick Henry.
In fact, he stirred this septuagenarian into writing this blog, the first one in a long, long while. It was while listening to what Moyers said that I realized that, given a lifetime as a journalist, if I didn't write something I was a part of the problem we face in this 21st Century.
Moyers gently pointed out that journalists no longer ask the tough questions. They no longer hold the feet of politicians and other government "spokespersons" to the fire; asking follow-up questions, asking for facts not speculation or memorized talking points. And, he lies much of this failing at the feet of a government which has allowed, nay, encouraged, our once free and independent journalistic tradition to become owned and dominated by corporate and conglomerate interests with only one thing in mind -- the bottom line.
Moyers' speech awoke in me something I carried with me as a journalist for every day of my 30 years writing for the public press and that was that I was sitting in that boring meeting or covering that court trial because I represented those thousands of people who couldn't or wouldn't attend in person. And, that I was using my skills to tell them what they needed to know if they/we were to continue to maintain an informed populace. That, by the way, is one of the corner posts upon which our Democracy is founded.
He names big media as being complicit in the Bush Administration's propaganda campaign to seduce America into the Iraq war. Here's the difference: back when journalists had the backing of their employers even a cub reporter wouldn't have hesitated even a microsecond to ask the questions that surely would have revealed that the Emperor had no clothes. That doesn't happen today and, why, you may ask? It's because the employers are now corporations who have many interests, many of them closely bound to government, and everyone knows that to rock the boat leads to not a life jacket, but to a pink slip.
On the one hand I'm glad I no longer work for Reuters or the Tampa Tribune or even the little Pottstown Mercury because I have this inherent dislike of castration. Luckily, I still have the skill to put my thoughts into readable prose and I have this blog and I no longer intend to remain silent.
In some countries you can be put to jail for criticizing the government, even killed. But, hell, I'm 70 years old. Not a whole lot of time left and there's not a whole lot that even a government can do to me that the sometimes dissolute life of a journeyman reporter hasn't.
Keep tuned.
Arjay
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Above the Fray in a Corvair
Here's a question: Can a stock 1964 Corvair be every bit as safe, comfortable, and reliable as 2006 car?
Having just completed a jaunt from the counrty into the wilds of the city traffic in and around an area known as 'New Tampa', replete with monster SUVs, distracted soccer mommies and desperately late Yuppies on cellphones, I began to consider what I had just done and how I had done it in my 1964 Corvair convertible.
With no more pressing business than returning a book to the library, I quickly got into the mindset that I was driving something special in a challenging environment. No way could the designers of the Corvair have anticipated the madness that exists on a big city's highways. But, those designers had provided me with a capable, workable and safe-for-its-time automobile. It would stay that way if I just drove it the same way I drove its sisters 43 years back.
I didn't rush up to stoplights, jamming on the brakes in such a way as to stop within millimeters of the bumper in front. No, brakes applied in plenty of time for a gentle stop with at least a half carlength from the car in front. We stayed pretty much at the speed limit and pretty much in the same (right) lane. Admittedly, I didn't waste time getting off the line at stoplights when all was clear in front, not to show off, but because this is how the car likes to be driven -- with some authority.
When the lady in the giant SUV tried to pull around me in a left-turn media turnoff all she got was a quizzical look and not one inch of space. I knew where my natural line was, so did the Corvair, and we took it. When she again tried the same stunt, this time inside the library parking lot, we followed the same strategy. For some reason she ended up with two wheels over the curb in a fire lane. Miz Corvair and I wondered about this, but it was a fleeting wonderment. We were back on the highway, riding with traffic, keeping to our lane and just makin' time down the road. Despite the fact we were in the 21st century, on a 21st century highway, we conducted ourselves just as we would have had it been 1964 and it felt just right.
It reminded me of the guy who sells ice cream at car shows. He has an off-and-on ignition gas engine that turns the ice cream freezer via a wide leather belt. The engine knows its job and does it well. It doesn't know or care that it's obsolete as a machine -- the task it has is not obsolete, so it just does its job without complaint.. Same with the Corvair. Driven within her limits and with a supreme distain of highway flotsam and jetsam around her she does her job and we're both happy. Isn't that what life is all about?
Arjay
Having just completed a jaunt from the counrty into the wilds of the city traffic in and around an area known as 'New Tampa', replete with monster SUVs, distracted soccer mommies and desperately late Yuppies on cellphones, I began to consider what I had just done and how I had done it in my 1964 Corvair convertible.
With no more pressing business than returning a book to the library, I quickly got into the mindset that I was driving something special in a challenging environment. No way could the designers of the Corvair have anticipated the madness that exists on a big city's highways. But, those designers had provided me with a capable, workable and safe-for-its-time automobile. It would stay that way if I just drove it the same way I drove its sisters 43 years back.
I didn't rush up to stoplights, jamming on the brakes in such a way as to stop within millimeters of the bumper in front. No, brakes applied in plenty of time for a gentle stop with at least a half carlength from the car in front. We stayed pretty much at the speed limit and pretty much in the same (right) lane. Admittedly, I didn't waste time getting off the line at stoplights when all was clear in front, not to show off, but because this is how the car likes to be driven -- with some authority.
When the lady in the giant SUV tried to pull around me in a left-turn media turnoff all she got was a quizzical look and not one inch of space. I knew where my natural line was, so did the Corvair, and we took it. When she again tried the same stunt, this time inside the library parking lot, we followed the same strategy. For some reason she ended up with two wheels over the curb in a fire lane. Miz Corvair and I wondered about this, but it was a fleeting wonderment. We were back on the highway, riding with traffic, keeping to our lane and just makin' time down the road. Despite the fact we were in the 21st century, on a 21st century highway, we conducted ourselves just as we would have had it been 1964 and it felt just right.
It reminded me of the guy who sells ice cream at car shows. He has an off-and-on ignition gas engine that turns the ice cream freezer via a wide leather belt. The engine knows its job and does it well. It doesn't know or care that it's obsolete as a machine -- the task it has is not obsolete, so it just does its job without complaint.. Same with the Corvair. Driven within her limits and with a supreme distain of highway flotsam and jetsam around her she does her job and we're both happy. Isn't that what life is all about?
Arjay
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Maybe More Guns?
Sad as the Virginia Tech shootings were, it comes to mind the answer to such occurrences may be more guns rather than fewer guns.
Think of it this way: If it were, say, in Texas, where carrying guns is common, the Korean shooter may well have been greeted with a few students packing guns themselves instead of classrooms full of cowering victims. One of the quickest ways to stop a mad dog is to shoot him. Same with deranged students.
It would have been a completely different scenario if Cho Seung Hui had begun his rampage, only to have been confronted with a few rounds whizzing past -- or through -- him. Yes, there would have been deaths, but probably a lot less of them. A handgun in the hands of a skilled, and sane, user is a good thing. Same gun, in the hands of a maniac, is a terrifying thing. One can balance the other. If we fear the irrationality of the average college freshman, then put the guns in the hands of wiser heads, the professors.
Of course, hindsight is always 20-20, but one wonders why nobody tackled this guy? I mean, c'mon, a skinny little Korean dressed up like a Boy Scout. Doesn't VT have any guys named McGurk who play football and who love to get physical? Or, has the present atmosphere of Political Correctness reduced the college population to helpless wimps, more worried about their Facebook profiles than staying alive?
Arjay
Think of it this way: If it were, say, in Texas, where carrying guns is common, the Korean shooter may well have been greeted with a few students packing guns themselves instead of classrooms full of cowering victims. One of the quickest ways to stop a mad dog is to shoot him. Same with deranged students.
It would have been a completely different scenario if Cho Seung Hui had begun his rampage, only to have been confronted with a few rounds whizzing past -- or through -- him. Yes, there would have been deaths, but probably a lot less of them. A handgun in the hands of a skilled, and sane, user is a good thing. Same gun, in the hands of a maniac, is a terrifying thing. One can balance the other. If we fear the irrationality of the average college freshman, then put the guns in the hands of wiser heads, the professors.
Of course, hindsight is always 20-20, but one wonders why nobody tackled this guy? I mean, c'mon, a skinny little Korean dressed up like a Boy Scout. Doesn't VT have any guys named McGurk who play football and who love to get physical? Or, has the present atmosphere of Political Correctness reduced the college population to helpless wimps, more worried about their Facebook profiles than staying alive?
Arjay
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Hometown Newspapers
I like hometown newspapers. Sometimes they're maudlin, often full of typos, some hilarious, but they are the spine of the small town. You read them to learn who has died, who has had a baby and who is putting up the best strawberry preserves on the continent.
We seem to have one here in Zephyrhills....it's called, aptly, The Zephyrhills News, and it has been around close to 100 years. It's owner is a quirky guy named Scripps who hails from the famed Scripps-Howard newspaper clan.
Lately, he's had the paper running on the blood sweat and tears of one man,
Gary Hatrick. Gary takes the pictures. Gary writes the stories. Gary writes the editorials, Gary writes the police stories and the feature stories, and he does it for a pittiance, but he does it each and every week, and as a result of a single soul's labors there is a newspaper on Zephyrhills doorsteps every Thursday.
Then, last Friday, Scripps let Hatrick go. I think the word is 'fired.'
Since then there has been but one word from Hatrick. He feels as if a load has been removed from his shoulders, as well he might.
In just 24 hours the newspaper is due on the street. That will be the first clue of whether the paper is still with us. A drive by the office Tuesday revealed no burnings of midnight oil, so whatever is to come about, if anything, it won't be done in haste.
Were this an ordinary town there would be a group of local businessmen scrabbling about trying to see what they could do to keep the paper (and their advertising vehicle) alive. Not in Zephyrhills, or so it seems.
Nothing would please us more than to see a local white knight ride out of the darkness to rescue the old girl, but it takes fistfulls of money to do that.
What's really strange about all this is that small, weekly newspapers seem to be the moneymakers in the present publishing climate. It causes me to wonder why a paper that so neatly seems to fill the bill is teetering on the brink.
If the paper is left to die, more's the pity, and the city will be less well off for the loss of it.
Arjay
We seem to have one here in Zephyrhills....it's called, aptly, The Zephyrhills News, and it has been around close to 100 years. It's owner is a quirky guy named Scripps who hails from the famed Scripps-Howard newspaper clan.
Lately, he's had the paper running on the blood sweat and tears of one man,
Gary Hatrick. Gary takes the pictures. Gary writes the stories. Gary writes the editorials, Gary writes the police stories and the feature stories, and he does it for a pittiance, but he does it each and every week, and as a result of a single soul's labors there is a newspaper on Zephyrhills doorsteps every Thursday.
Then, last Friday, Scripps let Hatrick go. I think the word is 'fired.'
Since then there has been but one word from Hatrick. He feels as if a load has been removed from his shoulders, as well he might.
In just 24 hours the newspaper is due on the street. That will be the first clue of whether the paper is still with us. A drive by the office Tuesday revealed no burnings of midnight oil, so whatever is to come about, if anything, it won't be done in haste.
Were this an ordinary town there would be a group of local businessmen scrabbling about trying to see what they could do to keep the paper (and their advertising vehicle) alive. Not in Zephyrhills, or so it seems.
Nothing would please us more than to see a local white knight ride out of the darkness to rescue the old girl, but it takes fistfulls of money to do that.
What's really strange about all this is that small, weekly newspapers seem to be the moneymakers in the present publishing climate. It causes me to wonder why a paper that so neatly seems to fill the bill is teetering on the brink.
If the paper is left to die, more's the pity, and the city will be less well off for the loss of it.
Arjay
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