From fifty-five words
He met her at the club, lights flashing, music battering.
"So, you heard about my job."
"Yeah."
"But you know, I’ve learned something. With your love, I can go on even without the big bucks."
"I’ve learned something, too."
"Really?"
"Yes. I’m much more shallow than I thought."
And she smiled, sadly, and walked away.
-by C. A. Bridges
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: Charlie Quidnunc - Rip & Read #140 - 2005-08-27
Pamela Anderson looking surprised to see press at her party at the Prive, in South Beach.
Eddie Murphy’s extreme closeup at Pam’s party.
Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins strikes a pose at Kanye West’s party at the Shore Club.
The waitresses from the Kanye West party.
Jessica Alba at the Kanye West party.
All photos courtesy Ricky McGill.
/rizzn
Well, howdy do everyone. I feel like I’ve been in another world the last few days, not so much because covering the VMA stuff is so exciting, but because I’ve basically not slept this entire weekend. OK, that’s not true, I slept about 10 hours since Thursday. I can tell the folks at the office were a little upset I walked in at about 1:30pm, but hey, I gotta do what I gotta do.
Ricky got a good deal of great photos, and we’ll likely be posting them here on the site within the next few days. I made a few really good contacts on the press line (a big howdy to Monica and Dennis if you happen to read this).
I found out something quite interesting this weekend.. being a blogger is the new uber-hip thing! I know no one actually reads this thing, so I feel pretty safe in saying this … if you want access to celebrities at these types of events, all you have to do is tell the PR person you’re a blogger! On Friday evening, I got an all access pass to an event hosted by Carmen Electra for free (Louis XIV played a set). It was about as boring as any other party I’ve ever been to, but the point is I got a $700 pass for free.
Journalistically, of course the highlight of the weekend was Suge getting shot (although had he not been shot, a lot of other good celebs would have shown up – OJ Simpson, Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Piven were rumored to be on their way). I’ve got a pretty good run down of what happenned there in this blog entry, but in my sleep-deprived haze I forgot to mention that the police were launching tear-gas gimmicks into the crowd to get us to back away from Yusef when they were arresting him.
Something about that whole evening seems really fishy, because it took about five minutes of pandemonium before anyone called the police or even the security forces over to the scene. What’s more, the MSM (with the exception of the Herald) aren’t reporting on the arrest of Yusef at all, not to mention that AP, CNN, and a couple other wire services are getting the guest list completely wrong. It’s pretty sad, because there were exactly four ABC Radio correspondents there as well as an actual MTV news crew, and none of them bothered to interview anyone, opting to simply flee the scene. It was me, the house photographer, and Access Hollywood running into the fray, and that’s it!
I guess it shows I have either very weak survival instincts, or very strong journalistic ones.
I’ve got to get some work done today, so I’m done with this entry. Hopefully we’ll get Blip’s core processes moved over to the new server today.
/rizzn
Update (8/30/2005): This should be the last little bit of Suge Knight update (because I think it’s safe to assume at this point that no more real news is going to come out of this thing)… I wouldn’t post it but it’s so damn funny (hat tip to libertyblog):
[H]ere’s the rapper David Banner on the shooting of Suge Knight at a party for the MTV awards:
“I don’t think that what happened was any different than at any other event where you have a lot of people,” said David Banner. “It’s tragic that it happened and that the media magnified this so much.”
Remind me not to be at any event where there are a lot of people when David Banner’s around, be it a Shriner’s convention, airport terminal etc.
Update (8/29/2005): If you’re coming in from an external link (thank’s National Ledger and the scads of Hip Hop mags that linked me), you should check out my generalized VMA wrap up, with more Suge shooting details.
Update (8/29/2005): The man arrested is alleged to be named spoken word artist Malik Yusef. He was part of the Game’s entourage, undoubtably, as there were about 40 people who entered with him.
Given that he’s a spoken word artist, and P. D.. ‘scuse me, Diddy has strong ties to Def Poetry and Bad Boys of Comedy, it gives credence to the whole conspiracy angle of his involvement in perhaps motivating someone to retaliate for Biggie’s Death (Biggie Smalls, of course, a friend of Diddy (then Puff Daddy, I think), who was suspected of being killed by someone hired by Suge – but that’s all rumor, and I would never suggest that Suge had anything to do with it (without taking my personal information off the website first)).
Later on at the Sunset room, Game reportedly crossed paths with Suge and that’s where details become sketchy. Many rumors state that Game and his crew ran into Suge and his entourage and after a few words were exchanged, a member out of Suge’s camp to a swing at Game. They say that after Game dodged a few punches, his crew yanked him away from the situation before it got out of hand. Nobody got hurt but the question remains “Why?” More on this as it unfolds.
The Game was in attendence that night (this photo is from his appearance on the red carpet. As a side note, CNN reported that The Black Eyed Peas, Paris Hilton, and Eddie Murphy were there or had attended the party. That is pure fiction. Paris was a no show to every party this year, the Black Eyed Peas were only staying in that hotel, but were in fact performing down the road at the Mansion, and Eddie Murphy only went to one party, which was at the Prive the night before.
I was working the red carpet line just videoing other people's interviews with people and I happenned to MTV Netherland's interview with Suge (video uploaded). Some time after Suge arrived, there was quite a commotion inside the party tent, and hundreds of people came streaming out. From watching my Def Comedy Jam, I'm well aware that when a herd of African-Americans go running in one direction, danger is surely in the opposite direction. Being an intrepid reporter (and someone who has no fear of losing life nor limb), I ran right into the action.
Suge's sidekick quickly booted me out of the area. Forcefully. In the video, you can see me being shoved out of the way by the way the camera gyrates.
I then snuck around the side of the building to see what I could find, and sure enough, a group of fans had already congregated out there where the ambulance was being pulled up. I arrived just after Suge was put into the ambulance, but in time to buy a couple of pictures off some guys from Brooklyn to sell to our agency (we think we have the exclusive on that). I was lucky not to get roughed up by Suge's cohorts, as they stomped on a couple people's cameras that were taking pictures out the side.
There wasn't much action around the side, so I went back around to the front just in time to see someone from someone's entourage being hauled out in handcuffs (I'm not sure who this person is, but if you can identify him for me please, I'd love to get a name before the MSM). The rest of the night was spent captioning and editing photos and videos, so not much else to report but the specifics that I know:
Suge was shot in the upper thigh, on the outside part. He's in good condition. This all took place at the Shore Club in South Beach. There was a mad dash for the door. The publicists were crying. In fact, a lot of people were crying. Suge's cohorts are jerks.
These are captures from my video. I've already got people who are buying it, so no worries there. It should show up on Access Hollywood or something, I'm told.
(Just so you know, I’ve been up for 36 hours, so if this makes no sense, I’ll go back and correct it later – stay tuned for updates).
/rizzn
I’m off to South Beach now. Apparently the parties are back on again, and we’re going to go cover them for Blip. Expect interviews, pictures, and video of the following people:Carmen Electra, Kanye West, Paris Hilton, Hillary Duff, Haylie Duff, Orlando Jones, Nick Cannon, Jill Marie Jones, Brooke Valentine, Jeremy Piven, Tori Kittles, Joel Madden (from Good Charlotte), Jaime Pressly, Jamie Foxx, Baby Face, DJ AM, Missy Elliot, Jermaine Dupri, Dave Meyers, Janet Jackson, JayZ, Destiny’s Child, Ciara, Alicia Keys, Fat Joe, Blacked Eyed Peas, and (I quote) Many Many More.
Usually about 5% of the list shows up to these things, so we’ll see. Some of these names I have no idea who they are, so I’m going to work on puttin a dossier together for my PDA. If you have tips for me while I’m out, leave a voice mail @ 800.900.2552 x 302, and I’ll pick it up periodically over the next couple days.
I’m also featured on the front page of Angryshirts right now. See? I am a celebrity! I’m helping them sell more shirts just by being me!
We have updated stock on the RantRadio t-shirt. It has been sold out of it for some time and I got tired of all the RR people sending death threats so I printed more. Buy them before they are sold out again!
In the photo to your left you will see Mark from BlipMedia a loyal RantRadio fan and a Angryshirts customer. You might have heard Mark on the "Mark and Darrell Show" on RantRadio. He has also been on the Rant airwaves with Smokey on the show "Off in Right Field".
So there you go. People do remember me. Hopefully I won’t be eternally remembered for the host of idiotic questions I’m going to be throwing at celebrities this weekend, but hey, here’s to hoping.
/rizzn
Oh, Nixter, btw, I’ll be wearing my RR tshirt tonight.
Howdy.
My power’s out at my house, so I’m just sitting around the office waiting for sleep to overtake me. I would sleep at my house, but I can’t see at all to walk the long corridor to my door, nor can I clean off my bed properly in the dark. Call me short-bus, I just found it easier to get back in the car and drive to the office. The hurricane seems to be over, for the most part. I turned the Weather Channel back on my PDA since the WFOR stream has been permanently overloaded since the storm started.
According to the current radar gimmick the last yellow band has passed my area. Yay, happy. These people are busting such nuts over this. They’re making computer graphics of what they think Pompano Beach may look like with three feet of flood water. Freakin’ dorks.
I’ve finished the queuing system, and it’s in Beta. I need all the Blip users to keep a close eye on their RSS streams and let me know if they fail to generate within 15 minutes of creation, as that is the deadline set within the system for RSS/profile file creation. It’s going to reduce the load on the server by 90% at least, which is great, and will be truly amazing once it’s migrated to the new server.
Since I’m such a Jedi Master coder, I’ve decided to take on a Padawan. Kelly has been getting heavy into the art of design, and she’s been taking forays into backend coding. I’ll be there to keep her from straying to the dark side (because uncertainty leads to doubt, which leads to fear, which leads to hate, which leads to Java. *shiver*).
So say hey to Kelly, and congratulate her on her decision to train her mitochlorins to become little microscopic hackers.
/rizzn
Well, hurricane insanity has finally hit SouFla again. For those of you who are in South Florida reading my words, tell me, what is your plan for Katrina this year? Apparently, it’s going to hit Vero Beach this time, but of course from West Palm down to Miami is going to get drenched and blown around to some extent or another.
I for one am glad that it’s happenned, because it gives me yet another chance to lampoon the idiots on your source for 24 hour hurricane coverage, CBS’s WFOR.
I’ll release their super secret live video feed on the mailing list so that everyone around the world can join in. It’ll be great, because you may be in Texas or Illinois or Australia or whatever, but you can close the doors, turn out the lights, board up the windows, and then turn on the 24 hour feed and let the MSM panic seep into your pores. They lay it on thick, I tell you.
I’ve got this clip I saved from last year where this guy is on the beach in the thick of the hurricane with this pocket wind gauge, and he’s panicing because the windspeed got above 38 mph.
Anyways, yeah. Katrina. Scary.
/rizzn
BlipMedia Profile Updates, and HTTP Uploads are temporarily suspended while we perform some necessary shifts in the way we update profiles. The downtime is expected to last no longer than a few hours. All files uploaded and changes made will be saved, but will not be visible to surfers for a few hours.
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: newsreal - rantradio_newsreal__2005-08-24.mp3
Police Raid Outdoor Music Event
by Parker Pinette Monday August 22, 2005 at 04:30 AM
ppinette@gmail.com
Numerous accounts from attendees of an outdoor electronic music event in Utah county indicate excessive force used by Sherrif and SWAT officers. A video has surfaced depicting officers dressed in full military fatigues raiding the main stage of the event. Local news stations side with police in initial reports.
Attendees of the outdoor electronic music event dubbed "Versus II" taking place the evening of Saturday, August 20th in the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah County arrived at the event with confidence that the concert organizers had obtained the proper permits and legal clearance to hold the event. Personal accounts available at the local electronic community websiteutrave.org paint a scene of police brutality and mayhem, many accounts bearing eyewitness to the forceful arrest of young girls.
Reports state that at approximately 11:30pm upwards of 90 officers, many wearing full camouflage gear, gathered from Sherrif and SWAT departments in surrounding areas stormed the previously peaceful gathering dedicated to music and dance. At least 1 helicopter was dispatched, along with large tranport vehicles designated for both officers and detainees. Numerous statements from attendees indicate excessive force being exerted by many officers. Inuries including mild to severe bruises and cuts have been reported by party goers as young as age 17.
The Utah County Sherrif's Office has expressed a long term vendetta against what they call "Rave" parties. Statements from the Sherrif's office as well as eyewitness accounts make it clear that this was a premeditated attack on the promoters and community supporting these events. While the Sherrif's office has stated that many drugs and pieces of paraphernalia were obtained, they fail to note how many of the 60+ citations were for drug violations. Many accounts indicate the majority of citations and arrests were for resisting arrest. The Sherrif's office states that the party was raided on the grounds of failure to obtain a mass gathering permit for an event hosting more than 250 attendees. Reports vary as to the number in attendance, estimation ranging from 250 to 1,400. Controversy exists as to whether a mass gathering permit was actually obtained, however, a Health Department permit was obtained, and hired security and emergency medical service personnel were on site.
Many eyewitness accounts indicate that officers singled out party goers attempting to document the events on camcorders, cameras and camera phones. Victims have claimed that officers knocked cameras out of the hands of the owner, even confiscating some. Luckily, one video has surfaced, and is quickly spreading across the internet, as well as being featured by at least one local news station. The video clearly displays a large number of officers dressed in full camouflage fatigues, some brandishing rifles. In the higher quality version of the video, which includes sound, it is apparent that the use of a taser was employed. While the video is somewhat unclear at times, the viewer can plainly see an officer atop a young girl fully subdued on the ground on her stomach; he swings on her at least twice, as more officers rush forward to manhandle the girl. It is clear that many others were subdued using similar levels of force.
Initial reports from local news stations side with the Sherrif's Office, one anchor calling the event a "drug party" without batting an eye. Reports tend to focus on the drugs and paraphernalia acquired by police, rather than the obvious violation of civil liberties reported by those in attendance and depicted by the amateur video, which has been provided to all major local news agencies.
Surprisingly, the local Fox News affiliate Fox 13 seemed to give the most unbiased report, stating that many attendees had reported excessive force, as well as showing the official media response from the Utah County Sherrif's Office. Clips of the previously mentioned video were also shown.
Other news agencies have gone along with the Sherrif's Office in painting a picture of drugs, guns, and sexual assault running rampant at electronic music events in general, and especially this one. KUTV Channel 2 News blatantly inferred that the hired security was merely in place to prevent the sale of drugs by anyone but the event organizers. All major reports restate the claim made by the Sherrif's department that a 17-year-old girl was found by officers to have overdosed on ecstasy, treated on site, then released to her parents.
Many attendees and members of the electronic music and dance community are organizing lawsuits against the Sherrif's Office. The ACLU has been contacted as well as many organizations dedicated to educating and protecting the electronic music community. Vigilant party goers are compiling evidence, including video and pictures of the event, as well as personal accounts and documentation of injuries inflicted by law enforcement.
On the Turntables Currently: - Doctor_Who_-_Requiem_No.9_Remix
I don’t normally break character like this (by breaking character, I mean putting aside my school-bus sized ego), but I’ve got to ask this question of the masses who are now reading my blog and subscribing to my discussion group (and the few people who subscribe to my RSS feed).
A couple weird things have been happened to me lately. I went to the Marlins/Dodgers game last Friday, and as usual, my streak of going to see professional sports and the team I was there for not losing continued – the Marlins completely whupped up on the Dodgers. Going into the stadium, however, these four really hot chicks tapped me on my shoulder and asked if they could have a photograph with me. Of course, I obliged, but it was a bit of an akward silience afterwards, and so I re-joined my group and sort of filed the experience away.
Then this weekend, I was walking down the beach, as I usually do, towards Lighthouse Point from Pompano, and I was photographed again. Again, by hot chicks, and again, no explanation – they simply ran off after they snapped my photo, paparazzi style.
Just a few minutes ago, I was standing outside the office smoking a cigarette, and there was a lull in the traffic on Atlantic, and this girl in a late 90’s SUV slows down, looks at me and honks the horn, waves, and drives off. I waved back with what I’m sure was a bizarre look of confusion on my face.
My question to the public is, do I closely resemble some longhaired celebrity now? Am I celebrity now? Has my picture been circulating some underground email list? What the heck? And why do the hot chicks have to run or drive away quickly after spotting me?
These are the things I need to know.
That is all for now.
/rizzn
PS: Speaking of hot chicks, check out Charlize Theron in the live-action Aeon Flux trailer.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/aeon_flux/large.html
My take? Utter tripe, and a denegration of the original series, but hey, that’s Hollywood, and if you gotta go out like that, better do it with Charlize! MM mmm.
On the Turntables Currently: newsreal - rantradio_newsreal__2005-08-22.mp3
I put together a forums area for BlipMedia this evening. It’s actually quite ingenius, if I say so myself. It’s based completely off of the Google Groups engine mixed with a little MagpieRSS scripting. A little bit of work, and I can probably turn it into a full fledged product that can be a self-sustaining discussion board product.
It’s really a beta test for the discussion boards I want to add to everyone’s profile pages. If this system works out to everyone’s satisfaction, I’ll implement a more complex version that will work for new the profile page, starting a new topic everytime you podcast. It’ll be loads of fun for the whole family, trust me!
Anyways, go check it out. If it turns out you want something like this for your site, drop me a line, and I’ll put something together for you.
/rizzn
I’ve been posting these junkmails I’ve been getting from Liquid Generation lately because they’ve just been fantastic, bizarre gems of humor (and they don’t seem to post them anywhere on the web). This week is is no exception.
Dear Pro-Chooser,
I am Helga The Help, LiquidGeneration’s most maternal transsexual, and I would like to ask you a hypothetical question:
Would you place the precious and innocent years of your childhood in the hands of a hormonally-blinded, moody and irrational person who has just made the decision to transform herself into an incubator for the next nine months?
How sad that no one asked you, because that’s exactly what happened.
I have always wondered how the entire pro-choice movement started out so twisted from the very beginning. Why was everyone so obsessed with the woman’s right to choose when they should have been obsessing about the right of the parents? The woman is but part of the equation. The part that can’t parallel park. Anyway, what kind of society would call it equality if the partnership that created life is not required to end it?
This whole nonsense of "my body, my temple" has gone far enough. Of all the problems humanity has faced over millennia, fertility has never been one of them. Evolution has long ago selected for humans to cooperate in the rearing of offspring thus enabling them to be born weaker but smarter. Wonderful. If you think that women alone should decide the fate of their newly implanted embryo then the large brain has been wasted on you. It’s contrary to everything evolution stands for but more importantly, it’s contrary to me.
The rules should work like a binary AND operator. The desire to procreate must be unanimous else we’ll continue to fill the world with deranged misfits who have barely the IQ to clean our streets. If either partner returns a NO then just like our binary statement both are NO and the pregnancy should be terminated, forcibly if necessary. Don’t make that stupid face. The world is no stranger to forced abortion and even sterilization. Look at Indira Gandhi, Chairman Mao and The Northern Mariana Island of Saipan. I only wish Canada was on the list, too, but whatever.
Here’s the bottom line: you’re smart enough to understand that insemination is not a license to live. What you need to get through your titanium skull is that to maximize the offspring’s chances in this world, parental consent must be unanimous. We have enough population growth from those who want children that we don’t need reinforcement from those who don’t. And if you disagree, it’s probably because your father would rather have popped your fugly ass instead of hanging 18 years of child support around his neck.
Love,
On the Turntables Currently: MC Frontalot - A Very Unlikely Occurrence
I’m just doing anything I can today to avoid doing real work. Someone needs to kick my butt and make me work. This is the third blog post I’ve done today.
At any rate, I’m going to update the front page in a few minutes of Blip with the news as soon as we hit 1400 users, which should be any minute now. This is a record week – we’ve had over 100 joins this week. The post activity is very active as well, we’re getting more than 15 new podcasts per day, which is good considering most people post one per week. I’m missing a few of our regular posters, like RFC, Gem, and the BeatGoblins. I’m told by everyone though that they’re just taking summer breaks, and continue to podcast, and do so with Blip.
Speaking of people I haven’t heard lately, Clusterflux Anomoly needs to get back to podcasting – they’ve been on hiatus too long – you’ve been put on notice, guys. Get back to podcasting, or I’m sending Guido after you. He does thumbs.
In other Blip news, we bought a new server today. Now begins the arduous process of moving stuff over to the new machine without disturbing the process. I think I’ve more or less decided the new server will be the workhorse of the group. Its a P4 server, it has less ram, but MUCH more hard-drive space. We shouldn’t have to worry about filling up the hard drive for another six months or so (given we don’t completely blow up and get another 6000 users in the next six months – which is entirely possible).
Another interesting factoid – BlipMedia serves up 278 YEARS worth of audio every month. That’s more than three average lifetimes! We’re kickin’ butt over here, folks!
I’m gone. I’m going to do some real work now.
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: frankie big face - crinkle binkle
Hat tip to the Libertarian Party of Broward group list:
Facts to Ponder:
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
* Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health Human Services.
Now think about this:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.000188.
* Statistics courtesy of FBI
So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, "Guns don't kill people, doctors do."
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.
Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!
Out of concern for the public at large, I have withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention.
On the Turntables Currently: newsreal - rantradio_newsreal__2005-08-19.mp3
At Joel’s request, I’ve set up a new email list for regular visitors of the Rizzn blog. Hopefully this will end up keeping us more connected, plus spread the viral word of our impending takeover of this world and all others. Or something.
As a service to the world, I’ll provide a simple step-by-step guide how you can add traffic and involvement to your blog by using Blogger in conjunction with Google Groups-Beta.
First of all, head on over to Google Groups Beta. Set yourself up a mailing list. Choose the appropriate options to configure your mailing list to allow discussion or not. Add yourself to the list, and then minimize the window.
Log into your blogger control panel. You’re going to want to either view or edit your profile so that you can determine what your email address that your blog entries will be sent from. Make changes if need be.
Then pick your favorite blog (read: the one you want to be discussed, dummy!) from your control panel. Go and edit the settings. All the way on the left there should be an option named “EMail”. Click on that bad mammajamma.
Go back to your other window where you have Groups-Beta open in. Look around, somewhere on the page it’ll give you an address of what the mailing list is. It will be something @googlegroups.com (usually the title-of-the-list@googlegroups.com). Control-C that and then switch back to the Blogger window, and Control-V that into the “BlogSend Address”.
Save your Settings. Now go and enter your email address from your Blogger profile into the list of members on Google Groups.
Bickety-Bam: you’re all set up.
If’n you’d like ta join my mailing list, Google even provides the following handy dandy signup code:
 | Subscribe to rizzn.com v8.3 | |
| Browse Archives at groups-beta.google.com | ||
That’s all I got for now. Sign up to the list!
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: - SDR Podcast 2005-08-18
I’m going to send out an email to all the users once it’s fully functional, but I’ve got to turn in tonight – I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing too long to think right anymore.
The upshot is this, though: everyone’s downloads are going to increase substantially now (if they’ve categorized their blogs properly with the directory settings) as there is now a searchable and browseable directory. I spoke a couple days ago of this being the first step towards bringing unbiasing advertisment.
Unfortunately, it looks like my weekend is going to be completely taken up with dealing with the innundation of new users. Unfortunately, my programming didn’t take into account supporting more than 1000 users. I’m working on a queuing system so that profiles will take less than 90 minutes to generate. As we get more and more users, it takes longer and longer to regenerate the profiles. This is unacceptable (not to mention putting incredible strain on this machine’s puny Celeron processor).
So it may take a couple weeks before I get done with the stats engine while I deal with the queuing server, but once that’s done, we’re back on the right track.
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: RantRadio - RantSpeak Episode 013 - Originally Aired May 23, 2004 (-=RantRadio Talk=- Speak Your Mind)
The first big story for Rizznites today is Holy Cowbells! Yesterday’s article about the Christopher Walken Hoax was picked up by a number of bloggers, including the National Review Online, and traffic spiked incredibly! The residual traffic is still well above my average daily traffic. I can only hope I amuse the viewers enough to keep up this trend. <capitalism> While you’re here, folks, buy a cd! </capitalism>
I do take particular satisfaction in having the story right a full 24 hours before the mainstream media had it right, although Paul Brewer has a good point: “I would advise skepticism about Buxbaum's denial. After all, presidential contenders are notoriously coy at this stage of the process.”
One blogger actually picked up (and later disagreed with) my commentary a little later in the post where I said: “most of us bloggers imitiate Mainstream Media most of the time to get past the gatekeepers.”
Au contraire, mi amor! Whenever I've called a government office or any other entity (including the Crawford newspaper that published the endorsement of John Kerry), I always say I'm a blogger. And you know what, I always have been given the same access to press briefings or answers to questions as any other media person, for what it's worth.
I guess I’ve been doing the sneaking into press briefings and restricted areas a little longer than blogging has been chic, because my early experience in independent journalism from a young age (around fourteen or fifteen) taught me that you’ve got to social engineer your way into the places you want to get the story. This still strongly applies to entertainment gigs, in my opinion, although political gigs are pretty open to allowing indymedia in, as they have other ways of keeping the little guy down beside simply denying access (and most of the time, they don’t want process stories).
I’m still working on the big BlipMedia update. I wanted to keep my users abreast of what’s going on with that, so here’s the dirt: I’m doing a three part upgrade, and it’s taking a bit longer than I thought. The first major hurdle is that there are some minor memory leaks in the system I’ve got to track down. I’ve not done a serious code review since I started the system six months ago, so it’s taking a bit to comb through the code and root out all the inefficiencies. Once that’s done, our directory service will become available, which will increase everyone’s podcast popularity by quite a lot. The next step is to finally finish statistics. Statistics are vital to the overall project’s potential, and must be completed, but they cannot be done until the memory leaks have been plugged.
Lastly, I begin work on revenue system. Blip is finally garnering the right amount of attention that we have a regular stream of people wishing to advertise on your podcasts. That’s right, my dear users, people want to hawk their goods and services using your voices as product placement. Last week we began the discussion on what that does to our journalistic integrity, and we’re going to continue that discussion here today. I’ve had a lot of feedback from interested parties on that, so we’ll begin with that.
A lot of it started right here on the blog in the comments section. Elisa Camhort, the lady I cited from the BlogHer convention, chimed in with her personal policy on problogging:
“I have a sponsored blog. The title of the blog indicates it is sponsored, and I run their two ads under a banner that say "Our Exclusive Sponsor." If I mention them in a post I always preface it with a "my sponsor xxx." That's the easy part really.”
But she comes back with the obvious question:
“How about affiliate links when I review a book I just read? Am I really supposed to disclose I could make $.50 if you actually buy a book from the Amazon link (which I was providing anyway before I ever signed up for the affiliate program, just as a convenience?) That seems like overkill.”
Good point. I think it’s a fairly obvious distinction to make between the two types of sponsorship. One should be disclaimed, and the other is probably so obvious that it doesn’t need it. This, however, isn’t really the type of sponsorship I am puzzling over.
Elisa continues:
“What I do know is I rankle at the idea of a "blog ethics committee" or some such. Blogs are just tools for some form of expression. I believe there is already a code of ethics for journalists. Same for PR practitioners. Your ethics should be guided by what you're using the blog for.”
I don't believe there necessarily should be an ethics committee for blogging - that just smacks of the kind of bureacracy that blogs are good at circumventing.
On the other hand, I think the "blogging ethics committee" is the same group of people that serve on the "mainstream media ethics committee" - the same people that called out Dan Rather for Memogate called out Mr. Daily Kos for taking Howard Deans money and being really quiet about it. The blog-o-sphere is a fickle lover, you cross those invisible lines, and you’re dogmeat, regardless of which side you came from. Don’t believe me? Witness this response I recieved from the Yahoo Group “Podcasting Innovations”:
Rizzn Do'Urden, you are scum. Your suggestion is not advertising. You are suggesting that people take bribes to endorse products.
Do you have a personal system of ethics?
If you wish to sell your name to hawk merchandise fine. It definitely shows your character.
Scum.
Of course, I’m well versed in the art of the forum, and I know not to take such bile personally, however, it is indicitive of a feeling in some bloggers and indy journalists (the ones I try to appeal to, honestly). In response to such sentiment, I think Matthew Wayne Selznick had the best response:
As for "paid placement" reviews... get the money up front, and have the product in question agree that you get paid no matter what you write, whether it positively or negatively views the product.
How else can you maintain your independence and integrity? How else can people trust your opinion?
You might find you get many fewer offers from companies to review their products. But the ones who are willing to do it probably have a level of integrity that approaches your own, and that's good.
This is probably the closest thing to a policy I had in mind for this type of endeavor. As a broker for such deals, it would entail me disclaiming myself to potential advertisers in saying that “I cannot promise you a certain kind of review, however, if your product/service/site is good, your product will speak for itself, and they will simply help to spread its good word.” Additionally, as a broker, I can help the client cherry-pick their reviewers by feeling out the blogger/podcaster by feeling them out before hand. “Have you ever had a bad experience with with such and such company?”
As much as I hate to admit it, a broker has a responsibility to both parties, the client and the blogger/podcaster, not just the medium of journalism.
On a larger scale, viewing the Blip community as a whole, I’ve decided to adopt a stance similar to Google on this, as their gimmick of blind keyword bidding seems to be the most fair and least bias-inducing method of advertising. Let me propose this to you, the user base of r.Podcaster, and get your responses on it.
This system would incorporate thirty or sixty second audio spots in the podcast feeds from advertisers hand-picked by BlipMedia. Participation in the advertising program would be completely voluntary and opt-in (this means I’m not going to automatically assume you want ads in your feed, you have to go into the system and turn that option on yourself). Ads will be assigned by keyword and category… meaning the categories your podcast falls into (and designated by you in the options) as well as keywords you define in your ID3 and RSS tags will help determine which advertisers show up in your feed.
From the advertiser’s perspective, the system will work a lot like Google’s AdSense. Advertisers will be responsible for creating their own spots, and they will bid on keywords. They will be charged based on a budget they set for themselves (how many times the ad will run), and how much the particular keywords they are bidding are fetch at the moment.
On the whole, the bulk of the revenue will go back to the individual podcasters, and Blip will keep a portion of the take for providing the service. I think it’s a fair trade on everything, all things considered. It protects the interests of keeping things bias free, as a podcaster has little control over which ads show up in their stream, and with Blip acting as a buffer, we fairly divvy out the rewards of being a content provider.
As always, I’m keenly interested in your thoughts on this. Comment here, or send your mail to me.
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: mc chris - Bad (dd) Runner
I spoke in semi-excited tones yesterday about a celebrity I thought might actually be running for president with a campaign platform that I could get behind. It turns out that it was all untrue – a cruel hoax played on gullible bloggers like myself
I spoke with Mara Buxbaum at ID PR today; Mara is Christopher Walken’s publicist. She said that she’s been innundated with calls all day about Christopher Walken’s ‘bid for public office,’ but she did in fact confirm that the site is a hoax.
“Mr. Walken has no intentions for public office,” said Buxbaum. “Perhaps one of his fans got a little excited seeing him play Secretary Cleary with presidential aspirations in Wedding Crashers.”
Ms. Buxbaum was very quick to return the phone call. If you’re a high-powered Hollywood star in need of publicity, call her. She seems real on the ball.
Now the fun begins – Who is behind this hoax? I’ve only seen Wedding Crashers one time, so I don’t remember if the quotes from the website are from the movie – they could be. There’s a part in the film where Owen Wilson’s character is speaking with Walken’s character about politics. The statements could be extrapolations on that conversation.
Mara asked that I spread the word that this site is a hoax so that the calls might dwindle down about her office. I find it interesting that the story is indeed generating this much interest for Walken. I suppose it is telling how much we bloggers dictate in the news cycles these days, and that the Mainstream Media is learning how to fact-check.
She didn’t mention if the calls were mostly from bloggers or news organisations. I suppose it’s hard to tell from her end, as most of us bloggers imitiate Mainstream Media most of the time to get past the gatekeepers.
So, faithful Rizznites, our search continues for who we might endorse in the 2008 presidential election. Keep your ears to the ground.
/rizzn
I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback (and a few idiotic comments) on my original post about indy-journalism ethics. I’ve got a few more ideas, a few more questions, and a few conclusions. I’m going to compile everything I’ve got tomorrow morning and post about it, and try to solicit another round of comments from you folks. Thanks for the great response, and keep it up!
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: Fiona Apple - Oh Sailor
This is a bit late, but it’s getting some buzz in the indy-media, so I caught wind of it. Christopher Walken has announced he’s running for President of the United States in the 2008. Rizznites, we may have found our man. Maybe.
Long-time Rizzn fans will remember our unsuccessful bid to draft Ric Flair for president in 2004 and of course, our unsuccessful bid to reverse Hulk Hogan’s decision not to run for president in 2000. This time, I think it’s time to choose a candidate that actually wants to run, so I’ll showcase Christopher Walken’s profile for you so far, and hopefully get your input on it.
So far his planks seem to be campaign finance reform, better military funding, and stem cell research.
Campaign Finance Reform:
"I believe that campaign finance is a very tough issue, with good points on both sides; but I feel, as a wealthy American, that I should have no more say than even the least fortunate American citizen. Free speech in politics is about the voices of all those who support you, not who supports you with the biggest voice."
Military Funding:
"I am a huge supporter of the military. I have always thought of them as our guardians, and when our guardians are making less than the poverty line, and children are suffering because their parents decided to join the military, well, I get very upset. I feel that instead of sending billions to the Pentagon's pet projects, it should go to the troops."
Stem Cell Research:
"I'd met Chris Reeve several times before he died, and after having met him it is tough to be against [stem cell research]. I am for human knowledge and expansion of human life. If stem cells are one way to do that, I cannot support legislation to restrict this potentially life-saving research."
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this sort of a libertarian platform? The libertarian party platform has a few things to say about the military. In fact, the libertarian party is one of the few independent parties that isn’t a dyed in the wool dove party. Likewise, the libertarians are staunch supporters of campaign and election reform.
Finally, libertarians are very admittedly split on the morality issues of the day, much like the rest of the country. In their charter, they state on abortion:
Recognizing that abortion is a very sensitive issue and that people, including libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe the government should be kept out of the question. We condemn state-funded and state-mandated abortions. It is particularly harsh to force someone who believes that abortion is murder to pay for another's abortion.
Given the tone and intent of the paragraph, one can only assume that you could interchange the words “stem cell research” for abortion in that paragraph, and it would work for most libertarians.
Do I think Christopher Walken will run on the Libertarian ticket? I’m not sure. Should he? I think so. Howard Stern did so well on the LP’s ticket in his joking bid for the New York gubernatorial race that he had to back out of the race for fear of winning (as he really didn’t want to win, he just wanted to get the LP’s on the ticket the next year, and get some publicity).
The LP’s should do what we can to get Walken on our ticket – if it’s not a hoax.
The technologist has some circumstantial evidence that this might be a hoax. I’ll have a definitive answer for you this Monday, as I’ve put a call in with Mr. Walken’s publicist, and she’ll be able to confirm or deny these rumors.
/rizzn
On the Turntables Currently: MC Frontalot - Indier Than Thou
I was speaking with Brian yesterday afternoon, and he suggested what should have been obvious, that I open up to the public and talk about this with the blog-o-sphere. It all started a couple days ago when we at BlipMedia reeled in a new client interested in pursuing an aggressive marketing plan in launching his new website. Amongst the many resources we at Blip have to offer in the way of marketing new products and services, we have a quite a few very popular and influential podcasters and bloggers that are users at Blip. Suddenly, it occurred to us that there are people in our client base and beyond, who would like to pay our bloggers and podcasters for their positive opinion of their new or existing venture.
This excited us at first. It presents a great opportunity for us to facilitate more interest (figuratively and literally) in independent journalism and it’s with those two words we stop short. We’re talking about independent journalism here. What does a journalist have but his credibility, anyways? If a journalist starts selling his opinion to the highest bidder, doesn’t that run counter to our stated mission?
In case you missed it, we at Blip have a stated mission of fostering independent media, and turning on it’s ear the flawed business model that has sustained Mainstream Media since it’s inception. Very directly, the question becomes: “What are the ethics involved with independent journalism and profit models?” As with most good questions, the answers aren’t very cut and dried, and they become more complex the more you analyze them.
It isn’t coincidence that this topic is coming up in front of the podcasting community of Blip, I would imagine. A lot of bloggers are starting to look at the various business models involved with blogging for dollars, although there is a growing community of those who would wish we’d call it “ProBlogging.”
On the whole, a recent conversation from BlogHer-Con was pretty revealing on the aspects of pro-blogging I have questions about. Elisa Camahort started the session by asking her panel the question we just asked: “Where do you draw the line when you start thinking about money? Are you trading credibility when you put ads on your blog?” After we discard our wishy-washy ‘create-your-own-ethics’ answers, we aren’t left with much. My personal opinion on this is that if you are using a service with a model close to Google’s AdSense or Overture, there isn’t much credibility question.
Let me explain. The genuine flaw in advertising models today comes from conflicts of interest. If your entire television program is underwritten by pharmaceutical interests, how can we trust you to be honest when it comes to revealing the side-effects of popular dieting pill, for instance. Services like AdSense and Overture take that problem out of the mix – you aren’t bound to the advertisers that are on your site or media project, they are just randomly mixed in based on keyword bids and context searches. To dig a little under the surface on this one, yes, I’m aware there are sneaky ways to cheap the system into making more money for you, like blogging about topics who’s keywords are above average on the pay-per-click scale, but in my experience, efforts like that are entirely transparent, as bloggers who engage in that tend to not have much other interesting content.
Back to our original question, though: “Is credibility destroyed when you’re paid for your opinion?” Let’s not forget history here, the Daily Kos is still reeling from it’s run in with lack of disclosure when they took money from the Dean campaign to say positive things about him (to the tune of $12,000). On the other hand, how many people do you know stop listening to their favorite drive-time DJ because he’s doing a 120–second spot for flowers, car insurance, and record stores? Independent journalism comes in just as many forms as mainstream media, and a one-size-fits-all approach can’t be used for paid-placement.
The trouble comes, I think, from the blurred lines of blogging and podcasting. One of the elements of independent media is the personal feel to it – you not only feel more connected to your favorite blogger or streaming radio host, you are more connected to them. You count on their periodic injections of personal opinion or mundane goings-on to keep things interesting for you. It is this feeling that makes paid-placement an attractive marketing tool – the sales pitch can be thrown in under the radar (to mix a few metaphors).
I have a couple proposals for how to deal with this, and I’d like to invite my readers and users in on this discussion so that we can refine them and come to a consensus. If you are going to be paid to write an opinion piece to market something, I think that it goes without saying for those who consider themselves journalists that it should be marked somewhere in the entry itself that this is a paid-opinion piece. A clever blogger or podcaster will be able to work it into the entry seamlessly, instead of having a stamp somewhere denoting it’s status. For those that consider themselves entertainment based, I’m not certain a disclaimer should be required; certainly not for those that are link and review based sites.
Who makes the decision on the genre? It’s hard to imagine that anyone but the author would be qualified to make that judgement call, but on the other hand, who wants to tempt an otherwise credible journalist with a decision like that, and possibly bring controversy down on their head? If the folks over at the Kos were never approached by the Dean campaign, who knows if they would have sold out like that?
Let’s come to a conclusion on this – I encourage you to comment here on the site or to email me privately with your thoughts
/rizzn.
http://www.freemarketnews.com/nview.php?nseq=636
by staff reports
Time will tell whether it is the beginning of a new era for the Libertarian Party, or the death-rattle of a quixotic effort. On Saturday, at its quarterly board meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, the Libertarian National Committee voted to end the party's dues-based membership system, moving to a donation-and-pledging fundraising paradigm, beginning January 1, 2006. The vote was 8-7, with one abstention. In addition, the LNC will phase out the current Uniform Membership Program over the next 6-12 months. This was the "revenue sharing" process by which members paid dues to the national party, with a share of those proceeds passed back each month to that person's state-affiliate party, throughout the membership year.
The vote reversed a previous LNC decision to raise basic member dues from $25 to $50. This move was taken in a secret ballot, passed narrowly and threatened to split the party, even between state affiliates. In response to that decision, Southwest Regional Representative George Squyres of Arizona, presented the "zero-dues" option at the last board meeting, where it was tabled until this one. A subsequent motion by Southeast Regional Alternate and Tennesseean Trevor Southerland, to reduce the $50 back to $25, was withdrawn after Squyres' effort succeeded.
LP critics have held that as long as the party remained focused on this "members in good standing" funding model, it could never rise above the level of minor relevance. The party had stagnated financially around 2001, and nearly faced bankruptcy in 2002 before a major reorganization effort by the sitting LNC in 2003. It has been only holding steady, barely keeping its bills paid, over the last several years. Proponents of this measure hope to foster a new vitality based on a "bottom-up" grassroots approach. If they are successful, the Libertarian Party may find itself growing and strengthening its effect on political affairs, after all. If not, it could spell the beginning of the end for the LP. -ST
“I sat in a Greenwich Village workroom with Bob Luff, the Chief Technology Officer at Nielson, as he pulled out gadget after gadget to show me what he’s up against. Luff seemed to view the modern American home as a digital zoo where the lion is about to lie down with the lamb: radio is going on the Web, TV is going on cellphones, the Web is going on TV and everything, it seems, is moving to video-on-demand (V.O.D.) and (quite possibly) the iPod and the PlayStation Portable. ‘Television and media,” Leff said ‘will change more in the next 3 or 5 years than it’s change din the past 50. ‘”
-Jon Gertner, ‘Our Ratings, Ourselves,’ The NY Times, 4/10/05
"Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?"
-Edgar Bergen
“The Inner Swine anti-terror program goes like this: 1. Survey size of the Universe, 2. Internalize the fact that you are an unimportant speck in the Universe, 3. Ponder what to have for lunch.
“The fact is, if some yob is going to pull the pin on my subway car or bus, well, there you have it. Nothing I can do about it, nothing you can do about it, and nothing the police can do about. An energetic and effective policy on the part of the various intelligence agencies might be able to prevent bombings by discovering plots before they're unleashed, but once the yobs strap on the dynamite and head out to the tube, fuck it, you're toast. Nothing you can do about it.
“You can, however, do something about lunch. Don't waste your energy.”
-Jeff Somers, ‘TIS Annoyingly Random Email,’ The Inner Swine, 7/22/05
Jennings, who announced in April that he had lung cancer, died at his New York home, ABC News President David Westin said late Sunday.
Despite his iconic status of Big Media, I always regarded him as my favorite of all the big-time anchors.
/rizzn
I’ve been cruising blogs today trying to find other servers that have the same synchronicity issues our server is having through the AT&T network, and so I’ve been reading a lot more blogs than usual for a workday.
I found an interesting article from July 24th that’s already made it into the Wikipedia about Helen Thomas from homocon:
Loony-left White House Press Corps fossil Helen Thomas has vowed to "kill herself" if Dick Cheney runs for president in the next election.
Helen "I was a liberal the day I was born, and I will be until the day I die" Thomas famously quoted in 1993, to unanimous conservative derision, "A liberal bias? I don't know what a liberal bias is," yet when questioned regarding her thoughts of Condoleeza Rice, as well as the 2004 Presidential election, she screeched: "I tell you, the woman is a monster, a monster, a monster" and “My God, the man (Bush) is a fascist – a fascist, I tell you.”
Her Wikipedia entry backs up the claim. In other bizarre news, Mel Gibson is apparently doing a film after reading Fingerprints of the Gods, or the even more fantastic Chariots of the Gods, and calling it Apocalypto.
The Passion of The Christ director Mel Gibson is set to helm action packed Apocalypto, which he also wrote, for Walt Disney Pictures, according to Daily Variety.
The project, which will be filmed in an obscure Mayan dialect, is set in an ancient civilization some 3,000 years ago. The title is a Greek term which means "an unveiling" or "new beginning."
Production is set to begin in October for a summer 2006 release. It will star a neophyte cast indigenous to the region of Mexico where Gibson will shoot come fall.
It's likely the film will carry an R rating, unless Gibson tempers the onscreen depiction of violent scenes he wrote in his script.
Gibson will produce along with Icon partner Bruce Davey.
I’m not sure what to think, although I can’t help but imagine this somewhat undermines the Christian integrity of doing Passion in the original Aramaic. It seems a little disengenuous to create this film of titanic proportions to those of Faith, and then turn around and make a film using the same method about a pagan culture.
None the less, it does sound like a great project, and a lot of fun for nerds like me who are fans of dead languages. I’m sure my ex-girlfriend is in pure ecstacy over this crap (my ex spoke three dead languages). Speaking of liberal wingnuts in pure ecstacy…
…[a]ccording to The Hollywood Reporter, Eric Singer is writing Terminus, a political action movie that Basil Iwanyk's Thunder Road is producing for Warner Bros. Pictures. Set 50 years in the future, Terminus follows a burned-out and disillusioned war correspondent covering an insurgency who finds he can no longer stay objective.
"It deals head on with what some call insurgency, what some call guerilla warfare and what some call freedom fighting," Iwanyk said. "Today's scenarios are completely fluid, but by setting it in the future we can extrapolate how that world would look like. It sounds like it'd be ballsy for a studio, and Warners went for it because they believe in Eric and his take."
Not set to be released until 2007, this gem of a picture is sure to get all those same liberal-minded folks up in celebration as The Day After Yesterday Before Tomorrow did. I guess we can thank Michael Moore and Roland Emmerich for proving to the studios that there is a spot in the American movie-going experience for political studio pictures. Thanks, jerks! I can just imagine the summer of 2007 and 2008 are going to be as lousy with liberal political flicks as the last two summers have been with poorly done comic book flicks.
Finally, I recieved a bizarre joke from a young lady named Rachel who works for us at AACS. It’s been a while since I’ve had a joke forwarded to me that I haven’t heard before. Maybe this one will be new to you, too.
Little Zachary was doing very badly in math. His parents had tried everything...tutors, mentors, flash cards, special learning centers. In short, everything they could think of to help his math. Finally, in a last ditch effort, they took Zachary down and enrolled him in the local Catholic school.
After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn't even kiss his mother hello. Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying. Books and papers were spread out all over the room and little Zachary was hard at work. His mother was amazed.
She called him down to dinner To her shock, the minute he was done, he marched back to his room without a word, and in no time, he was back hitting the books as hard as before.
This went on for some time, day after day, while the mother tried to 0understand what made all the difference. Finally, little Zachary brought home his report card. He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books. With great trepidation, his Mom looked at it and to her great surprise, little Zachary got an "A" in math.
She could no longer hold her curiosity. She went to his room and said, "Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?" Little Zachary looked at her and shook his head, no. "Well, then," she replied, "was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms? WHAT WAS IT ALREADY"
Little Zachary looked at her and said, "Well, on the first day of school when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around."
That is all. As you were.
/rizzn
We’re having some bizarre server problems at the moment. For some reason, every 60 seconds, the server times out for 60 seconds. After 60 seconds of downtime, the server reappears in a continuous ping.
Traceroutes to and from the box show nothing out of the ordinary – nothing is pinging abnormally large amounts of milleseconds. Very puzzling.
I’ve been talking to the Planet about it for a couple hours, and they seem to want to blame it on Comcast. I keep showing them how the problem exists somewhere in the Texas part of AT&T’s network, but they keep saying Comcast.
/rizzn
(Scroll down for updates)
Once again, hurricane season is upon us, and it’s a wonderful time for all the sensationalists to come out of the woodwork. Matthew sent me an article from CNN that was cross-posted in From The Wilderness today as well. According to some scientist’s intuition, it would seem, the world is indeed ending due to global warming. That’s right, hold on to your butts, it’s the end folks.
Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton -- the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.
Is this just one freak year? Or is this global warming?
Apparently, all over North America, ocean water temperatures are a few degrees higher than normal. This means the circle of life is disrupted at the microscopic levels, and the effects are cascading. The CNN article is actually fairly balanced, when you consider their track record on trumpeting wacky theories in the past. The essentially use the concept of global warming as a backdrop and bias by editorialization, asking rhetorical questions that only the eco-liberal will understand and “know the answer to.” They never really come out and say that there is a direct connection to the theory of global warming and warmer ocean waters this year.
Nor do they actually go over what could be indicative patterns in the water temperature history. Does it have a history of going up and down? What is the drama of it’s ups and down. Is it following a trend? I mean, these are the same people that put on four hours a day of stock graph analysis, can’t they at least mention something or other about a trend in this supposed herald of all our doom? Me-thinks that would kill the suspense and the horror, and thus make a less sensational news story.
I wouldn’t mention any of this except that there is a glut of Eco-Stories today. Given that it’s hurricane season down here in SouFla, it gives all the local and national outlets an opportunity to talk about how if we don’t die from the lack of zooplankton in the ocean water, we’re going to be destroyed by killar hurricanes! The Miami Herald today proclaimed that Climate Change May [indeed] Be Fueling Storms.
The accumulated power of Atlantic hurricanes has more than doubled in the past 30 years, with a particularly dramatic spike since 1995, and global warming likely is a major cause, according to a study to be published this week.
Though a connection between global warming and hurricane ferocity might seem logical, the report by a reputable climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the first to draw a statistical relationship between the two.
'The large upswing in the last decade is unprecedented and probably reflects the effect of global warming,'' scientist Kerry Emanuel wrote in a study that will appear in the Thursday edition of the journal Nature. Copies of the article were made available Sunday.
Anyone who doesn’t have a habit of reading scholarly papers would tend to be alarmed by this seemingly expert opinion. I, on the other hand, have not only read quite a few ‘scholarly papers’ but have had close personal relationships with the scholarati. Let me say to you that the typical scholarly study writer in tertiary fields of study tend to be as full of bs, bias, and opinion as the next guy, and if you want to put stock in a scholarly ‘study,’ you had better read it for yourself.
I’m not in any way saying these studies are easy to do, but often what happens is they start out with a thesis, and then they cherry pick factoids, graphs, opinions and other nuggets to ‘prove’ their point, instead of investigating a phenomenon and reporting the results of their findings. As a result, these agenda studies (as I like to call them) often contain sources with shaky foundations at best. Many times the researchers haven’t even based their findings on primary sources. During a debate, one time, I was quoted a study citing the fallibility of abstinence based education. The outlandish claim was made that more people who are taught abstinence (as opposed to those who aren’t) catch STDs. I read the study, went through the sources, and as it turns out, the source quoted by the source quoted by the source quoted by the study was an opinion paper (and the number was based on pure speculation), not an actual fact. Since it was several generations deep in studies, it was being passed around as a complete fact.
Naahhhh, it’s to obvious.
/rizzn
Update: I need to start doing this before I post so that I can incorporate this into the actual feature, but I did a technorati search after I posted, just to see what everyone else is saying. I’m just about done laughing now … I just want you all to read these headlines, and see if you get as much of a kick out if it as I do.
People, we are facing extinction.
Global Warming – “For those out there that believe that Global Warming is a myth please come drop by my Bedroom cause I think it might very well be the warmest place on the planet….”
Ode to Key West – “it's finally happened. Global warming is out of control, making hurricanes more... say goodbye to the residents of Key West, who are soon to be destroyed by the vicious hands of global warming…”
My basic core values and beliefs – “GLOBAL WARMING: It's very real, the Republicans have tried to hide it and deny…”
Keep it up fellas. You crack me up.
Sorry about the outage this morning, folks. I forgot to pay my NS bill this morning. It’s the only domain I have hosted on the expensive DNS services known as eNom. I need to switch them to goDaddy, so I don’t have to pay 30 bucks a damn year.
Bill Maher has officially jumped the shark. I watched his “I’m Swiss” HBO special last night. It’s sad, really. Bill used to feign being in touch with his more conservative fan-base at least, but these days, his routine has become filled with entirely anti-Christian rhetoric. I think there were three points in the whole routine when I even cracked a smile. I didn’t laugh the whole time! He would preface every tirade with “I’m not being partisan” and then call the majority of American’s idiots. Maybe I’m strange, but I don’t call that comedy.
It’s really soured me on the idea of Portland, OR, as well. A few of my friends had been talking about how swell a place Portland was, and even had me thinking about a possible move some time in the future. He had a theatre that was half filled with people from Portland (the people very strategically placed so as to make it look like a sold out crowd), all of them cheering wildly at every atheistic/anti-theistic statement Billy-boy made. It was actually sad, in a way.
I mean really … Hollywood wonders why middle America thinks there’s a culture war? Their idea of comedy is to rip on Christians for two straight hours. Am I alone when I implore “WTF?!”
There were about two entertaining bits in the whole special, but they were definately not worth wading through two hours of insults without punchlines.
For entertaining political commentary, look to someone like Lewis Black. He’s intelligent, makes fun of both sides, and his jokes have a payoff! Bill Maher used to do this, too, but he seems to be comfortable just yelling. The Daily Show, for all it’s anti-Republican banter is still entertaining. A spoonful of sugar has always helped the medicine go down. Bill Maher would do good to remember that, instead of pandering to a juvenile form of his liberal base.
/rizzn
Update: I did a technorati search on Bill Maher, and it seems that the conservative bloggers stayed away from this performance, but even the liberals found it unpallatable.
