Jumping Over the Lazy Dog

In another story about the no-holds-barred cage match between journalists and bloggers, Samantha Israel writes that she only has been corrected once by a reader.

Let's go for two.

Israel writes:

More than arrogant, some old-time reporters think bloggers are plain old lazy. Former CBS news correspondent Eric Engberg made himself clear in his "Blogging as typing, not journalism" article on CBSNews.com last November. "Given their lack of expertise, standards and, yes, humility," he wrote, "the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on." The dog certainly bit back when it revealed that Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who averages more than 350,000 visitors a day to his Daily Kos political blog, was paid US$12,000 to promote Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination.

The mainstream press didn't reveal that deal. Zuniga disclosed it to his readers in June 2003:

I spent this weekend in Burlington, VT, where we officially accepted work on behalf of presidential candidate Howard Dean. Dean joins a Senate candidate in our still small but hopefully growing roster of clients.

He also put a prominent disclaimer on the home page of his site, "I do some technical work for Howard Dean," linking the word disclaimer to a full description of the financial relationship. You can see this yourself in the Internet Archive's June 2003 copy of the Daily Kos home page.

I'm not aware of a single mainstream media web site that displays its conflicts of interest as prominently and permanently as Zuniga did.

The only thing journalists revealed about this deal was an inability to do even cursory fact checking, misleading people into thinking that a fully disclosed financial relationship was shady Armstrong Williams-style payola.

In an article where she offers a derisive "sor-ry" to the only reader to correct her, Israel continues this trend. The fact that this slanderous falsehood lives on in the mainstream media, even turning up in a high-minded academic review of journalism, demonstrates one reason that readers might turn to bloggers for information.

Journalism · Politics · 2005/04/13 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Schiavo's Parents Visit Jacksonville

A Catholic themed weblogger here in Jacksonville, Jeffrey Miller, attended the funeral mass held today in his parish for Terri Schiavo by her parents:

The president of the Justice Coalition, Ted Hires, spoke after Bob Schindler. He gave a passionate speech about what happened to Terri and talked about how the Schindler's were going to be working in the future to "prevent anybody else from being starved to death." He mentioned that those who participated in the death of Terri will one day meet justice. This was the first time I have ever heard a number of Catholics shout out "amen."

Though I respect the strength of their convictions, I can't agree with people who would prevent doctors from ever removing feeding tubes, especially for patients who have expressed a desire not to be kept alive in a hopeless condition.

Read about the subject of palliative care, and you'll find that tube removal is both humane and commonplace, especially for people suffering from end-stage dementia:

Studies she and others have done show that for those with end-stage dementia -- the eventual fate of millions of Americans with Alzheimer's disease -- feeding tubes do not extend life, do not prevent pneumonia, and actually can inflict pain and discomfort.

Politics · Jacksonville · 2005/04/12 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Dell Recalls Hazardous Notebook Power Adapters

I received a boxed letter from Dell today advising that the power adapter for my Inspiron notebook computer was being recalled as a fire and electrical hazard.

The recall covers a large range of Dell Latitude and Inspiron models and one Precision notebook sold from September 1998 through February 2002:

Potentially affected adapters were sold with the following models of Dell notebook computers:

1. Latitude CP, CPi, CPiA, CPtC, CPiR, CPxH, CPtV, CS, CSx, CPxJ, CPtS, C500, C510, C600, C610, C800, C805, C810, V700, C-Dock, C-Port

2. Inspiron 2500, 2600, 3500, 3700, 3800, 4000, 4100, 4150, 5000, 5000E, 7500, 7550, 8000, 8100, Advanced Port Replicator, Docking Station

3. Precision M40

   The adapters were also sold separately, including in response to service calls.

These adapters were manufactured by Delta Electronics of Thailand and have the model numbers 04983D, 07832D, or 09364U.

It took a couple of minutes on Dell's recall site to verify that my adapter was affected and order a free replacement. In the meantime, users are advised to unplug the adapter from the wall while not in use.

I imagine that leaving the laptop plugged in as I fall asleep listening to Texas Rangers games is probably a bad idea too.

Several of these adapters are being auctioned on EBay, which makes me wonder if the auction site does anything to actively spot and remove sales of recalled products.

2005/04/12 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Avoiding Movable Type's Comment Date Bug

I was reminded today of a nettlesome Movable Type template bug with how comment dates are displayed by the MTCommentDate tag.

As noted by Michael Hanscom, if you place an MTCommentDate tag inside an MTCommentEntry container, it displays the date and time the entry was published, not the comment's date and time.

A workaround is to place the tag outside the container, even if you have to use two MTCommentEntry containers for the same comment.

Here's template code to display the 10 most recently posted comments with proper timestamps:

Incidentally, in Six Apart documentation and most books on the subject, template tags like MTCommentDate include dollar signs in their names, as in <$MTCommentDate$>.

In writing Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition, I decided to never put dollar signs around tags. They're unnecessary -- you can refer to all tags without them -- and they don't work with container tags, so it's a confusing aspect of template creation.

Movable Type · 2005/04/12 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Laura Lemay, the legendary Teach Yourself uberauthor who cowrote several of my Java books, solved a 20-year-old mystery by turning to the last place anyone would expect to find information:

"I'm looking for a book," I explained to the librarian. "Published probably in the 70's, about a psychological experiment done on teenagers. They are imprisoned in a maze and have to dance in order to get food pellets. It was a really dark book. There were escher-like stairs on the cover."

The one-minute response time was much slower than Google and returned only one result, but it was accurate.

Publishing · 2005/04/11 · Comment · Link

Mason Glaves believes that Sun has killed the Java Media Framework without telling anyone:

If you've got a six-month project, and you only need one small addition, or one small bug-fix to JMF to complete it on time, it's fairly easy to assume that by the time the release date comes around, you'll have the next release of JMF and will be ready to go.

The next release is not coming. From the chatter on the list it has become more and more obvious that Sun has quietly abandoned JMF, but isn't willing to let the general population know about it.

If true, it wouldn't be the first time that Sun has put little resources towards one of its Java multimedia projects. For several years, Florian Bomers was the only programmer working on JavaSound.

Bomers left in August 2004 and is coding for his own small company, which releases several programs as "postcardware." He's also a contributor to an open source implementation of JavaSound called Tritonus.

Java · 2005/04/11 · Comment · Link

Democratic Podcast: GOP Knows No Limits

The Democratic response to the presidential radio address was delivered Saturday by Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid, who compared Republican talk of ending the filibuster to FDR's infamous court-packing plan.

Reid, a soft-spoken moderate from a Western state that may be a swing state in 2008, is building a reputation as a tough opponent to Bush's Social Security privatization plan.

The transcript of his remarks:

I'm Harry Reid from Nevada, the Democratic Leader in the United States Senate.

This weekend, spring has made it to Washington DC. From the window in my office in the Capitol, I can see down the Mall, past the Washington Monument and to the Lincoln Memorial. It's a long way from my hometown of Searchlight, Nev., and it's quite a view. The famous cherry blossoms are in full bloom and the city is crowded with visitors -- especially young people, here with their families or with their schools.

As the kids line up at the National Archives to see the original copies of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they'll learn about checks and balances and freedom of speech. And when they're done, I wish they would come down the street to the Capitol and teach some of what they've learned to the Congressional leaders of the Republican Party.

You see, in the past weeks, we've seen Republicans in Congress abuse their power in too many ways. We have a Republican leader threatening judges who protect our rights and corrupting our government by running roughshod over the ethics committee to protect himself.

Republicans are trying to increase their power even if it means ignoring rules that go back to America's beginnings. They seem to think that they know better than our Founding Fathers. Somehow, I doubt that's true.

In their latest move, President Bush and the Republican leadership are trying to ram through radical choices for judges who will serve a lifetime on the bench. They are trying to eliminate a 200-year-old American rule that says that every member of the Senate has the right to rise to say their piece and speak on behalf of the people that sent them here.

This isn't about some arcane procedure of the Senate. It is about protecting liberty and our limited government.

This isn't about politics. In the past, two Democratic presidents tried to take control of the judicial branch and Americans of all political stripes rightly spoke up to defeat those efforts.

It isn't even about judges. The fact is that this president has a better record of having his judicial nominees approved than any president in the past 25 years. Only 10 of 214 nominations have been turned down -- and those 10 had views that were totally out-of-touch with the mainstream values Americans share.

When it comes down to it, stripping away these important checks and balances is about the arrogance of those in power who want to rewrite the rules so that they can get their way.

It would mean that the United States Senate becomes merely a rubber stamp for the president.

It would mean that one political party -- be it Republicans today or Democrats tomorrow -- gets to have all the say over our nation's highest courts.

It would remove the checks on the president's power -- meaning that one man, sitting in the White House, could personally hand out lifetime jobs to judges whose rulings on our basic rights can last forever.

That's not how America works.

Here in America, the people rule -- and all the people have a voice.

Here in America, our judges should be independent -- not puppets dancing to the pull of one person in power or one political party's agenda.

We cannot sit by and allow the corruption of America's values in America's Congress. The Republicans who run Washington should start using their power for the good of all Americans, not abusing it for their own benefit.

Our Constitution tells us that the courts should be free from political pressure and that our rights are protected by checks and balances.

Our children know that you can't change the rules just to get your way. I think it's time that Washington Republicans remembered those truths.

This is Sen. Harry Reid. Thank you for listening.

Here's an interesting footnote for fans of the weekly presidential radio address and response, which were inspired by FDR's fireside chats: His 1937 address advocating the court plan can be heard online.

Politics · Podcasts · 2005/04/09 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

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