Is it just me?

Or is this a bit messed up?

Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars

Does it actually need to be said that there should be adult spaces and kid spaces? Adult behaviors and kid behaviors? I sympathize with the stir-crazy guy, but that's life. You wanted a kid (I hope), you deal with the consequences. I have no problem bringing a kid out to a more adult-oriented space, but a bar is not my idea of the right spot.

If I think there's something wrong with the mindset of people, it's the inability to draw lines of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. I don't honestly think children should be exposed to alcohol at a young age (beyond ritual alcohol like communion wine), and not as part of the social experience. I also think grownups have a right to spaces that don't involve kids.

Sometimes I just don't understand the world.

I sense

a forthcoming protected group:

Study Reveals the Angriest Americans

Al Sharpton will soon begin protesting on behalf of Angry-Americans. It's only right they get their own minority group.

Something occurred to me

while reading this post:

Columbia University Graduate School of The Internet

Now, the post itself I think is very much on target about the need to train journalists properly for the brave new world of the internets. And while I suspect I know Mr. Rosenblum's political leanings, I don't know them for certain and they're tangential to my issue.

He says:

The school was founded by a rogue businessman, Joseph Pulitzer. He was the Rupert Murdoch of his day. He tried to expurgate his many sins by building the school. Instead, he compounded them. He succeeded in creating a factory for ‘good employees’, but he infantalized an entire industry.

The graduates of the school long to be good employees - to work for The New York Times or The Washington Post or NBC News or CNN...

The report on the Future of American Journalism was written by two lifetime employees. Leonard Downie Jr., spent a lifetime at The Washington Post, as an employee. He rose to be Executive Editor but he still got that weekly paycheck. Michael Schudson is a lifetime academic. He also has spent his life getting that printed paycheck every week.

Nice guys though they are, they are hardly the right people to ask to figure out the future of journalism. What they have been bred to do for a lifetime is to figure out where the next paycheck is going to come from. And that is what they came up with in their report. Pretty much devoid of any other ideas, they came up with ‘ask the goverment or some foundations to write more checks’.

I don't have an argument with his primary point, but I am wondering about this disdain for people collecting paychecks. This is not the first time I'm seeing this around - there was an episode of Miami Ink a while back with a young woman (flat out gorgeous, by the way) getting a tattoo of a robot to symbolize her father's "enslavement to corporate America". She was determined to avoid ever working a "real job." There are other examples.

What's bothering me is this idea that there's something wrong with going to a "regular job" and collecting a paycheck. Perhaps the world does need Joseph Pulitzers and Bill Paleys, but we can't all be at that level. None of the big time movers would ever have gotten anywhere without the paycheck collecting shmoes working for them. That's not exactly what journalism (or any field, except maybe Hollywood) needs - everybody's a CEO, nobody does the grunt work?

This bothers me more coming from liberals (as I suspect Mr. Rosenblum is) only because they pride themselves on their support for the working people of this nation. But sneering at people who collect paychecks is not terribly supportive. Would I like to be a chief instead of an Indian (scusi - Native American non-leadership voluntary tribal participant)? Sure, but I don't have the ideas and I don't really want to work that hard. I've chosen to prioritize family and personal life over the commitment to work that being a chief requires.

This is not just liberals, by the way, though I think it's more common there. It's a curse of the elite and the hyper-driven to think there's failure in the ordinary. Not necessarily a bad thing - great advances in every aspect of life require the kinds of people who won't settle for the ordinary. But it's awfully arrogant to sit back and write off the paycheck takers as failures. A lot of us do things that allow the hyper types to do what they do in comfort, safety, and freedom.

A Shocker

French tourists seen as world's worst: survey

But, but, how? Are not the French the preeminent example of all that is right with the world? Are they not more cultured than the rest of us plebes? What happened to the Ugly American being the big problem?

I like the Expedia guy's explanation:

"The French don't go abroad very much. We're lucky enough to have a country which is magnificent in terms of its landscape and culture," he said, adding that 90 per cent of French people did their traveling at home.

Anotherwords, why would we want to visit you silly English Kannnigits when we have such a beautiful country here to sneer at?

Why I love National Review

The Toga Makes a Comeback!

What other major news outlet today includes someone referring to Cato the Younger as a pretentious git?

Just when I think I'm done

look what the AP provides as fodder:

NJ girl, 14, arrested after posting nude pics

Why is it some people feel the need to prosecute anything they can't manage intelligently? What's missing here is not legal action, but parenting. What's also missing is a sense of shame and propriety among people.

A society that sexualizes everything cannot, should not be surprised when children (and 14 year olds are children in my book) copy what they see. Musicians, politicians, celebrities, whatever - all sell sex. They sell it to young and old, but older people should be able to handle the messages and not get screwed up.

As long as this continues, children will observe, imbibe, and copy what these losers do. This is not something to prosecute - it's something to correct, and that's a parent's job.

I am up to my eyebrows

in a major, major webcast presentation and the testing is not going well. Fortunately in the comments to my last post Valerie (who has a very nice blog, by the by) provided an important reality check.

Seems a classmate of hers from years back unfortunately passed away at a very young age. As it turns out, her classmate's brother was a gentleman named Michael McHugh. A random thing, except it happens to be that Michael was murdered on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center. And of all things, the 2,996 Project assigned Michael to me as a subject to blog about more than two years ago.

I had, of course, completely forgotten I had even done it.

I went back and reread my tribute to Michael Edward McHugh, Jr. As it turns out, not that long ago several people who actually knew Mr. McHugh had commented on the post. They seemed to appreciate my attempt at honoring a man I'd never heard of.

The internets is a funny place where random events connect total strangers. Occasionally something pops up to remind you that the daily grind of our lives can be pretty trivial when compared to other people's reality. So take a moment on a random November day to remember Mike McHugh, his recently passed brother John McHugh, and wish the family some consolation. It helps to put things in their proper perspective.

I admit to wondering

now that the 700 Billion has been approved (including the $50 extra large to the Moldavian-American Borscht Friendship Alliance and Field Hockey Team for their efforts to create a creamier consistency to sour cream), what happens next? See, the Dow is down today almost 4% AFTER we've pledged all this money to no one in particular worth mentioning. Henry Paulson said we'd save the economy, but I think he might have been the tiniest bit mistaken.

Look, believe it or not, I'm not panicking. I take a long-term approach to investing, and I'm surprising myself by how calm I am about it. But I have to ask the folks who clearly seem to be panicking - what now? You swore the economy would die without something; you insisted this bill was the only thing that can save us. And now we're still tanking, at least on the surface.

I have no answers, but it's not my job to provide them. Let's all remember one thing - it is actually possible for us to make things worse without half trying.

Why, specifically

I don't care for a certain type of liberal, particularly in the celebrity arena. I can't find a link anywhere, so treat everything in this post as "alleged."

As I saw it the other day, and Rush Limbaugh mentioned a few minutes ago, actress/commedienne Sandra Bernhard reportedly warned VP candidate Sarah Palin not to come to New York, or Ms. Bernhard would have "several of her big black brothers gang-rape" Ms. Palin.

Leaving aside Ms. Bernhard's reputation as an in your face, on the edge humorist, there are many reasons why any self-respecting person should be grossly offended by such a statement. Let me suggest a few:

• It suggests Ms. Palin should be raped
• It suggests Ms. Bernhard would like to see that happen, and would aid it happening
• It suggests that black people would be doing the raping

The issues:

• Women, especially liberal women, have for a very long time decried rape as top on the list of worst crimes men can commit
• Any woman who would recommend such an idea should, by most lights, be shredded by the usual suspects in the feminist movement
• The connotation of black men raping white women is one of the oldest and most racially charged canards in the book
  

Now, I don't need to point out that had this come from a conservative comedian this would be all over the place. I accept that this is the media universe we live in, and such statements by a liberal never see the light of day. Probably not a bad thing - normal people shouldn't be forced to read about this sort of stupidity over their morning coffee.

But this is why I hate these celebrities - the logic behind such a pronouncement (if there is any) is beyond twisted, it's repugnant. Hate Sarah Palin, knock yourself out. Campaign to have her defeated. Vote against her. Attack her policies as mean, unfair to poor people, whatever. But this sort of thing is not funny, clever, intelligent, or remotely mature. As long as this sort of thing is acceptable to liberals in public or private, I will consider it both morally and intellectually bankrupt as a political philosophy.

Oh Beloved Europe

I heard this story about the Spanish basketball team the other day (though this is more commentary than reporting, and identified as such, happily):



Gasol, Calderon question fuss over photo



What it brought to mind immediately is not the particular childishness of the Spaniards here - most of the rest of us stopped doing this in Kindergarten. It made me think of the liberals who go on & on about how we need to be more like Europe, how the Europeans are more in touch with their feelings, how they're nicer, more sophisticated, etc.



A dirty little secret about Europe these people never acknowledge is the incredibly casual racism that you bump into over there. I've been to England three times (and no, this makes me neither particularly experienced nor a jet setter), and each time I've run into people making the most disparaging comments about other races without a second's thought. The most interesting case came from a taxi driver of clearly foreign extraction (South Asia as I remember) ripping into members of another ethnic group as being dirty, classless, etc.



I'm not all that surprised, frankly, at the behavior of this basketball team. The ancient tribalisms and the powerful nationalism of European countries hasn't really died out - it's available anywhere you choose to listen carefully enough. I don't much care - I still vote by the "Sticks & stones will break my bones" theory, and I think all the hypersensitive types (yes, I mean you Sharpton & Jackson) need to relax a little. But I am disturbed by the constant drivel coming out of the left that all we need to do is be more like the Europeans and the world will magically be a happy place.



Europe is a beautiful place that has many wonderful people and culture, but let's not miss the crap that comes along with it.

Archives in the News

Nothing ever dies in this modern media world, as Wally World found out:



Candid Camera: Trove of Videos Vexes Wal-Mart



It's a marvelous tale of handshake deals, unintended uses, unintended consequences, and the ability of Americans to turn lemons into lemonade.



I imagine the exec who killed the arrangement with this video company is no longer a "new Walmart Exec" but an "ex-Walmart Exec." This highlights a real problem in all organizations regarding institutional memory and the dangers of losing it or missing the value in it. Chances are the exec looked at costs and said "we can get this cheaper." Not a ridiculous idea, but it REALLY would've been worth investigating the parameters of the deal, not to mention saving the tapes for posterity, archival use, etc. Lessons to learn, folks.



Thanks to an archive buddy for passing this one along.

Caught this little gem

over at CNN:



Warmer temperatures tied to wildfires, scientists say



Apparently it's again tied to global warming. What's conspicuously absent, however, is any discussion of our forestry and land-management policies. This stood out to me a bit:

Those plants grow back quickly after a fire, and several species of wildflowers only grow in areas that have burned, Rocca said.

Swetnam said smaller, surface fires are good for forests because they destroy shrubs and other brush without hurting trees.

What I sense is missing is a discussion of how the controlled burns of past eras have been banned, thanks largely to the environmental movement. I can't claim to know a ton about it, but I've heard folks talk about it on the radio.



So I'd only ask this - is it possible that the environmental horror we're now supposedly doomed to suffer has been caused in part by enviromentalism? I imagine there are some who are crying over the destruction of so many trees. Yet the same types have argued that we can't manage things properly because of the trees. So now we've lost the trees, billions of dollars, people's entire existences, and actual lives.



Yep, smart policy there.

Every time

you think you've seen it all, here comes more silliness:



Glamorous politician wants law to allow 7-year itch



Leaving aside that I don't find a fifty year old, twice divorced libertine to be glamorous, these are the kinds of crazy things that come out of people's mouths when they're interested in attention more than substance. I don't know if she's serious about marriages only legally lasting seven years. I don't much care if she is. Clearly, though, there are a lot of nutballs in the world, and unfortunately too many of them get elected.



I don't suppose we could institute a seven-year lifespan on politicians, could we?

How's this

for a personal recommendation?



Sean Penn praised by Venezuela's Chavez



One can only assume that Ahmedinajad and Osama himself are also writing letters on Mr. Penn's behalf to all the colleges he's applying to.



Remember, folks - who you idolize and associate with says a lot about who you are.

Now, I like

Harry Potter as much as the next Muggle. I just finished rereading the first six books in anticipation of the last book in the series (though I have to wait until probably early next week for our British edition to show up). But this is a bit much:



U.S. college students seek the magic of Quidditch



I guess there are stupider ways for college students to entertain themselves, but is this really why these folks are spending upwards of $30 grand a year? I like geeks well enough, but can't they just go out and play an actual sport?



I can only imagine it's a short time before the "Co-ed, Naked Quidditch" t-shirts and sweats start appearing on campus.

A Paean

to irrelevance:



Fast amateurs give ad makers hits and headaches



If you read the story through, several things become apparent. First, several companies including Pepsi, are allowing their consumers to produce their advertising for them. Hence, the expensive advertising firms they're paying bajillions to are getting suckers customers to do their work for them. Meaning someone, somewhere, is going to realize that it's pointless to spend those bajillions when they can have those same suckers customers volunteer to do it.



Another thing I noticed is that, as usual, the corporate types just don't get it. There's talk of mad scrambles to buy up media & technology companies to handle this kind of marketing. But anything done in a scramble is usually a bad idea - you haven't thought through the consequences of the mergers, or the needs, or how you're going to make it work. An ounce of strategic planning is worth a pound of edgy new media.



Finally, did these yokels really get to go all the way to Cannes to sit through dopey seminars? How the heck did they explain this one to the bean counters and get away with it? "Uh, yeah, Frank, I'm going to a conference on New Media and advertising - I'm gonna need a speedo and a wine budget for this trip. Plus a suntan lotion allowance." I am definitely going to the wrong conferences.



One dopey Reuters article does not necessarily a trend make. Regular ad firms will continue to swindle willing corporations out of millions to write and produce ads that make you want to put a sledgehammer through the TV (yes, I am talking to you, the 1800 Sleepy's folks and the creator of every car commercial ever filmed). But I think there's something happening here, and I think the ad folks should start thinking about this phenomenon in a methodical, intelligent way if they want to still mean anything to anyone but themselves.



Or they'll just keep churning out crap - what do I know?

I don't imagine

it occurred to anyone threatening this lawsuit to actually keep an eye on what their children were eating:



Kellogg to raise nutrition of kids' food



I'm glad that the company decided to improve the nutritional quality of the food they sell. But this is just example #45,681,298 of the continued lack of a)parenting and b)personal responsibility afflicting the world these days.



My kids get treat cereals. Only on the weekends, and only if they let us sleep in. A few bowls of Froot Loops once or twice a week will not make your kids fat. Especially if you take care of their nutrition the rest of the week. A bowl or two a day will make your kids fat. Solution? Don't let your kids eat too many sugar cereals or snacks.



Again, I'm delighted to see the company work towards making its products healthier. But threatening a lawsuit is the sort of crap that weaselly, mealy mouthed busybodies pull long before they ever bother approaching these companies with a reasoned request.



'Cause it's for the kids, you know.

I understand

that race remains a touchy issue for a lot of people. And as a rule I have no real interest in discussing comparative suffering and its ramifications. But I have to ask this question - who on earth appointed the various hucksters that claim to speak for the entire black community? And why do these shysters continue to defend the indefensible?



I ask because of the following: Group announces support for Jefferson



When the William Jeffersons and Marion Barrys of the world are compared without irony to Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver (I am grateful at least that they stopped short of Martin Luther King comparisons), you have to assume that the moral stance of these defenders is awfully skewed. I'm frankly disappointed that any man of the cloth would step up and defend a man caught red handed. Innocent until proven guilty, to be sure, but this is hardly a Republican plot.



Can I also ask that people stop using the term "justice" when they mean "we want our guy to go free regardless of his guilt"? Justice has become a buzzword for the disaffected when they don't get what they want. Stage a protest or a news conference, scream "no justice, no peace", and wait for the news buzzards to lap it up like the trained dogs they are. Justice as it used to mean would suggest that guilty men pay for their crimes, and the innocent are cleared.



Let me also note my two favorite lines in the story. First, from the Feds:

Asked to comment on allegations aired at the news conference, Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, said "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response."

and this one from a "supporter" of Jefferson's:

he said his confidence in Jefferson was strained by some of the evidence, in particular an allegation the FBI found $90,000 in bribe money in the congressman's freezer.



"That's hard to explain," he said.

You got that right.

Irony

Thy name is Queen Rania:



She asks "What are you doing to empower women in your community?"



A wonderful question coming from a faith where women are routinely abused, neglected, etc. As a counterbalance, may I suggest this post from Breath of the Beast?



Look, you're a cute chick and all, but spare me the lecture, OK honey? When the women in your part of the world can go out in the street by themselves and not get beaten or raped, we can talk about what the rest of us are doing for women.

A blog

I think worth looking at - Breath of the Beast. Tough reading sometimes, but important reading is often difficult to face.

Hat tip to the Corner.