I love the daily show. I love them because they make me laugh at the media when I might want to break my TV. On an recent episode John Stewart looked at the way the media played the blame game after the Virginia Tech shooting. John Stewart does a good job at pointing out how stupid most of the media event like this. Everyone lines up their favorite target starts attacking. The media is all too happy to give a platform to people who want to blame guns, current lack of gun control, violent media, movies, video games and anything else they are already against. It makes me sick. I want to thank the Daily Show for pointing out how sad the media is.
The most compelling reason to ban plastic bags in my mind is litter. In one story I saw that plastic bags cause a big problem in the sewer system. You always see them blowing around the city. If banning plastic bags address this, it will be a good thing. I am not sure what kind of problem we are adding to get rid of the problem we have right now.
It is not clear to me how San Francisco defines a Grocery store. Being a single male, I do a lot of my shopping at convenience stores, are they going to be covered? I also get a lot of plastic bags from other retailers, will those stores be covered in some future bill? Has anyone done a study to see where the plastic bags are coming from?
There was a quote in the NPR story that made me think of my father.
"As far as I'm concerned I don't care what they bag it in, they could easily bag it in paper," Pat Coleman said. "And I'll recycle the paper. As long as it has handles on it."
For years my father would make the grocery stores put a paper bag in a plastic bag. That was the only way he could carry the bag. I have not see the bill say anything about the bags the stores offer having to have handles.
There is an interesting quote in the Mercury News story:
Craig Noble, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it would be disappointing if grocers rejected the biodegradable plastic bag option since more trees would have to be cut down if paper bag use increases.
The new breed of bags "offers consumers a way out of a false choice, a way out of the paper or plastic dilemma," Noble said.
The best thing about this quote is that the average person has no idea what Craig Noble is talking about. The average person does not know a biodegradable plastic bag from an old plastic bag. It might be bad PR for a store to use biodegradable plastic bags.
I still have the feeling this will blow up in SF's face.
I see things happen in the news and it takes me a few days to write about it. I wonder if the moment is already past by the time I get around to writing about it. It is really hard to know. I know that blogs are at the type of instant communication, but it takes me a while to come up with ideas. If I was not working full time I might be able to sit around and blog all the time.
I think there can be too much instant opinion in this day and age. I need a day or two to think about my arguments. I need time to write those arguments out. I need to time to think about events and what those events mean.
The problem is that the writing can stretch out why past the point where the event I am writing about is in the news. I find myself writing about things after everyone else has moved on. I wonder if anyone cares by the time I get to write about things.
I should not be too worried. I am not sure anyone cares about what I write about anyway. I should just try to say focused and write whenever I can.
Reading this story really got to me. It is hard for me to explain. I know that people die everyday, but this one is getting to me. I did not know James Kim and I never met him. I have only seen him on TV.
With all of that, I feel like I knew him. TiVo started to carry CNet video some months ago. I enjoyed his segments about MP3 players. He seemed genuine, like someone I would like. He always seemed to have a smile on his face.
There is something about the story of how he died that I cannot get out of my mind. I feel sorry for his family for the loss. Maybe it was the hope he was alive. Maybe I would not feel this way they were not looking for him alive.
I just watched Frontline: the lost year in iraq. I have heard many of these things before. What struck me was how bad of an idea trying to remove members of the Baath Party from the government. That might be the worst mistake of the 21th century so far.
What I did not know was that the Bush administration wanted to get out of there so badly at the end of the first year. They had to stay because getting the government going failed so badly. They wanted to get out of there, but they could not get the job done. It makes me wonder what it will take us to get out of Iraq in the end.
I have been thinking about Keith Ellison's campaign for the U.S. Congress. If he wins he would be the first Muslim to win a seat in Congress. He is running in Minnesota as a Democrat. Minnesota has a long history of being progressive. I was looking at where he stands on issues. He is both pro-choice and pro gay rights.
Look, you know, as a Muslim, you're getting visits from law enforcement officials, and you haven't done anything. You've heard about relatives being stopped in the airport. You feel vulnerable at this time. Do you want to be the one to say who should not have rights, if you understand what I mean?
This is a clear pluralist, sepration of church and state message. I wonder how most Muslims feel about these stances. From the little I know about Islam it does not look favorable at homosexuality or abortion. I wonder if this will keep Muslims from voting for him.
For the most part Muslims have a choice of a political party that shares it's social values, but has objectionable civil rights and foreign policy or a political party that has liberal social policy, but has a chance to improve civil rights and foreign policy.
I wonder how individual Muslim Americans make these political choices.
I was thinking about Jack Straw veil comments and a story about a veiled women who has lost of job as a teacher. I was wondering what would happen if one of the women I work with converted to Islam and started to wear a niqab. How would people react to her? Would it get in the way of her doing her job? I wonder what my co-workers would say.
What would happen in your work place? How would you react?
I am not surprised that Air America filed bankruptcy. I will admit that I am not a huge radio fan, but I respect radio. This is not the first time Air America has run into problems. I remember hearing a story about Air America on NPR's On The Media. (I do not remember the specific show)
The problem is that you cannot just stick a talker in front of a microphone and expect it to be good radio. The host or the producer has to understand radio. They have to know how to keep a audience through a brake and how to pace a show. Whenever I listed to Al Franken his shows sounded like he knew nothing about radio.
When I worked in radio I remember that Rush Limbaugh's audience was extremely loyal to the sponsors to the program. When Snapple first launched nationally they advertised on Limbaugh. They could see the effect on their sales. Even as the ratings feel the audience would buy the products that were advertising on the show. I am not sure Air America ever got that loyalty. I wonder if it because their target audience is more cynical about advertising
"It was doomed to fail," Mr. Limbaugh said, according to news wire reports. "They were not a broadcasting concern to begin with. ... They went into business to affect elections."
When I worked for WNZT in Columbia PA I talked to the owner a lot. He did not care about the politics of the shows he ran. He just carried that they made money. He was a very political man, but he knew that business was business. That is the problem with putting politics before business.
I know why school shootings get so much attention. It is because school is supposed to be a safe place. It is almost like going onto an airplane. The student and the parents put their faith in the school to take custody of the student. We are willing to give up some of our control for the good of our student and all students at the school. We have faith that the system will work and school will benefit the students and society.
School is something that almost every American has in common. We all have some sort of experience at school. I might have hated school at times. There were years were I was tormented by other students. I tried to avoid them in the halls as much as I could, but I never thought my tormentor would kill me. I never thought I would kill them either.
I saw an article, 10 Myths about school shooters. Two of the myths really caught my eye.
Myth No. 1. He didn't fit the profile.
In fact, there is no profile. There is no accurate or useful profile of students who engaged in targeted school violence, the researchers found.
The stereotypes of teens in Goth makeup or other types of dress are not useful in preventing attacks. Just as in other areas of security -- workplace violence, airplane hijacking, even presidential assassination -- too many innocent students will fit any profile you can come up with, and too many attackers will not.
The demographic, personality, school history, and social characteristics of the attackers varied substantially, the report said. Attackers were of all races and family situations, with academic achievement ranging from failing to excellent.
Myth No. 10. School violence is rampant.
It may seem so, with media attention focused on a spate of school shootings. In fact, school shootings are extremely rare. Even including the more common violence that is gang-related or dispute-related, only 12 to 20 homicides a year occur in the 100,000 schools in the U.S. In general, school assaults and other violence have dropped by nearly half in the past decade.
I talked about this with some of my friends, but I think I never posted it. The story is from the end of last month. I think it is still worth posting.
I would like to think that I can be objective when it comes to looking at the facts. the older I get the less I think I can. I see the problems with trying to be objective. I really want to be a person who can see the facts of the world and make up my mind after knowing the facts. I am not sure anyone can do that.
In one especially telling experiment, researchers showed 144 observers six television news segments about Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon.
Pro-Arab viewers heard 42 references that painted Israel in a positive light and 26 references that painted Israel unfavorably.
Pro-Israeli viewers, who watched the very same clips, spotted 16 references that painted Israel positively and 57 references that painted Israel negatively.
Both groups were certain they were right and that the other side didn't know what it was talking about.
This would explain how I can watch the same broadcast as someone and not have the same reaction.
