Reporters Don’t Always Work for the Devil

Good freaking job, Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Ford Fessenden, of the New York Times. Seriously. Their article today on Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is eye-opening and detailed. Some unbelievable reporting.

For anyone who has vaguely heard that the U.S. government ships off detainees to places like Syria for torture—read:

“WASHINGTON, March 29 - Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 as he changed planes in New York and transported him to Syria where, he says, he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable.

“Now federal aviation records examined by The New York Times appear to corroborate Mr. Arar's account of his flight, during which, he says, he sat chained on the leather seats of a luxury executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests.”

Oh, and to all the Canadians, I’m sure you felt all the good will come your way:

“After 10 months in a cell he compared to a grave, and 2 more months in a less confined space, Syrian officials freed Mr. Arar in October 2003, saying they had been unable to find any connection to Al Qaeda. The Syrian ambassador to the United States called the release "a gesture of good will toward Canada."”


To Arar’s lawyer:
As I recently heard someone say on a reality TV show, “Crap-ay diem.” Crap-ay yourselves all the way to the Supreme Court with this one.

Again

TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 1629Z 28 MAR 2005

WARNING... THIS EARTHQUAKE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO GENERATE A WIDELY DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI IN THE OCEAN OR SEAS NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE. AUTHORITIES IN THOSE REGIONS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS POSSIBILITY AND TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION. THIS ACTION SHOULD INCLUDE EVACUATION OF COASTS WITHIN A THOUSAND KILOMETERS OF THE EPICENTER AND CLOSE MONITORING TO DETERMINE THE NEED FOR EVACUATION FURTHER AWAY.


But CNN has this in its report:

“Thailand issued a warning that the quake could bring a tsunami to its southern provinces.

“The warning, which was carried on national television, cautioned people in the six provinces to be careful and vigilant, but did not order evacuations.”


Are these coasts more than 1,000 km away? Need to check.
Are they evacuating Indonesian islands?

Really, How Is that Pot, Bobby?

Newsday’s been smoking something today, cause apparently they think they are the Daily News or the Post:

Feds whack weed ring

Is the very un-Newsday headline they are running with the story, that has a lead one has to wonder about:

“An organized crime operation that's produced high-quality marijuana since 1997 at a 100-acre upstate farm, a Bayside house and a Brooklyn warehouse that had hydroponic troughs illuminated by $800,000 in stolen electricity has been shut down, federal officials said yesterday.”


High-quality, eh? Glad you checked that out, Robert E. Kessler. Nice one.

Frustrata

RE: Columbia’s new Master of Arts Journalism program.

Dear Mr. Lemann,

I see this statement in the New York Times today about you finding students in this new Master’s program “better jobs at higher salaries.” Here’s what it says:

“To assuage concerns about tuition costs, Mr. Lemann promised that financial aid would be available for most students and said the school would also help them find better jobs at higher salaries.”

First, I’d like to say that I’m impressed by the promise of financial aid availability; to my recollection, it wasn’t exactly so available when I was there. Not to mention the $700 we all had to give the school to “hold” our positions in the upcoming class. It was called “an administrative fee,” and it did not go toward our tuition.

Anyway.

I mostly wanted to ask how you plan to help students “find better jobs at higher salaries”? Because as I recall, any help I received toward finding a job consisted of applying on my own to some of the job listings on the school’s website, and little help beyond that.

As for you helping find these higher salaries, how do you propose to do this? Will you be negotiating with our future employers to raise the pay for the industry?

Mr. Lemann, I sincerely hope you do what you say here. Otherwise, this is a whole lot of, well, spin. And I know the J-school would never teach that. Right?

Sincerely,

Former Student and Irritated Graduate (one and the same)

Addendum in My Pants

Oh. And my editor’s 3-year-old son just told me, out of the blue, “My grandma’s going to take me to Disneyland when I wear underwear.”

If only we’d all get a trip when we did that.

Briefs From the Land of the Weird and Our Kitchen

Seth Stevenson offers these beauties in his diary from the Michael Jackson trial:

“It's the left side that hurts," Michael whispers to his bodyguard. Michael is pointing at the right side of his abdomen. "The right side?" asks the bodyguard. "The right side, the right side," whispers Michael.

[then]

Let me explain just how strung out and godawful Michael looks:
One evening, several years ago, I swallowed two Vicodin in the midst of getting deeply drunk. Then I woke up in my bathtub. I'd passed out while trying to pee, and my fall had snapped the soapdish clean off the shower wall. After staggering to my feet, I caught a wobbly glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror.

I looked better than Michael looks this morning.


In other happenings, there was only one leftover fortune from the maniacs with the Chinese food today:

“A golden egg of opportunity falls into your lap this month.”
I’d like to claim that, cause my goose hasn’t been laying anything good lately. But I’ll share.

Naked Tron

A guy I work with was talking about how last night he watched some Discovery Channel show about sex. It was all techy, and, he says, the computer animation looked like naked Tron. That just about did it for me. I’m sure it’s the best thing I’ll hear all day. Beyond the words, give yourself a minute to picture it: perfectly warped nostalgia.

Otherwise, I’d like to mention here that an unusual number of you have been coming to my blog by searching for “crambone” on the web. Why the sudden interest? Not that I’m not pleased. (See: Cr-Cr-Cr-Crambone.)

Someone also came here searching for “pot brownies.” I don’t recall writing about those, but I’m guessing you were seeking a recipe? You won’t find that here. And besides, if you need to seek an actual recipe, maybe you need to eat fewer of those things.

Morning Distraction

Y’all know that I don’t post spam-type e-mails I get, but a colleague sent this around today, and I post it here as a source of amusement. See how little we actually control in our lives?


How smart is Your Right Foot?

1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction, and there's nothing you can do about it.


THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. [Repetition and emphasis MINE.]

Drunk at Work, If You Will

There’s a satisfying article in the NYT today about life’s irritating irritations. E.g. the author, Ian Urbina, cites the instance of people who order “small, medium, or large” instead of the moronic “tall, grande, or venti” at Starbucks. As much as I attempt to avoid said retail coffee units, I will never, ever say Tall, Grande, or Venti, motherf****ers, if I do go in there. Anyway, “venti” means “twenty,” you freaks.

Here’s a great example from the story:

Wesley A. Williams spent more than a year exacting his revenge against junk mailers. When signing up for a no-junk-mail list failed to stem the flow, he resorted to writing at the top of each unwanted item: “Not at this address. Return to sender.” But the mail kept coming because the envelopes had "or current resident" on them, obligating mail carriers to deliver it, he said.

Next, he began stuffing the mail back into the “business reply” envelope and sending it back so that the mailer would have to pay the postage. “That wasn't exacting a heavy enough cost from them for bothering me,” said Mr. Williams, 35, a middle school science teacher who lives in Melrose, N.Y., near Albany.

After checking with a postal clerk about the legality of stepping up his efforts, he began cutting up magazines, heavy bond paper, and small strips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply envelopes that came with the junk packages.

“You wouldn't believe how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh,” said Mr. Williams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of arriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service, Gerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams's actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.

[Sheet metal. Ha. Haha.]

[Then there’s this interesting historical bit:]

Work slowdowns are methods commonly used by labor unions to apply pressure without actually striking. During the Solidarity movement in Poland, people expressed their disapproval of the government-run news media by taking a walk with their hats on backward at exactly 6 p.m. when the state news program started. When the government noticed the trend, it issued curfews, but people then put their televisions in their windows facing outward so that only the police walking the streets would see the broadcasts.

“You have to remember, in Poland during those years showing up drunk at work was seen as a patriotic act because people hated the bosses so much,” Professor Scott said.

Locked Away, In a Can

Abandoned in Death, as in Life
At the Oregon State Hospital, 3,489 urns hold the unclaimed ashes of mental patients who died there from the late 180's to the mid-1970's. [Caption and photo courtesy New York Times.]

Even the Dead Have to Wait for Editing

Can we also discuss that I work in a job where it makes sense to have an IM exchange with a colleague like this?

From two minutes ago:

writer: deadguy in pending
mcbickle: awesome


Onward and exhaustward…

What Are the Chances I Don’t Poke My Own Eyes Out Today?

Newsday did a scrappy but interesting little comparison today—how bowling two back-to-back perfect bowling games stacks up against these other things. (I don’t know where they got these numbers from, or why they think it’s okay to spell every other word wrong (fixed here). Somebody needs to hire a copy editor over there. But I’m just venting.)

(And oh yeah, 1 in 2 stay married for a lifetime? Where’d they get these numbers from? 1952?)


1 in 2 Staying married for a lifetime

1 in 10 Applying and getting into Harvard or Yale

1 in 90 Having twins

1 in 130 Being audited by the IRS

1 in 250 Giving birth to a genius

1 in 3,000 Being struck by lightning in your lifetime

1 in 10,700 Pitching a perfect Major League game

1 in 33,000 Hitting a hole-in-one in golf

1 in 56,364 Bowling back-to-back perfect games

1 in 649,740 Being dealt a royal flush in poker

1 in 80.1 million Matching all six Powerball numbers

1 in 182 trillion Having a meteor land on your house

From One Man in Baghdad

From One Man in Baghdad, who we have not heard from in a long time (at least on this blog). (OMIB, I don’t know if you’re reading, but the description below seems worthy of sharing):

“big big car bombs rumbling somewhere tonight. they have a special sound, distant lingering thunder without the cracking. and you think about the poor souls who have just bought it...”

Yes, It Can Always Get Worse

If you haven’t guessed by now, the Bushits have appointed the world’s biggest neocon as their new U.N. rep.

Fred Kaplan at Slate.com calls it like it is: "There could be no clearer sign that the contempt for the international organization, which was such a prominent feature of Bush's first term, will extend into his second term with still greater force and eloquence," he writes. Later in the same story, Bush to U.N.: Drop Dead, Kaplan pulls up a quote Bolton made 10 years ago, while on a panel of the World Federalist Association:

“There is no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. Secretariat Building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.”

Now, I had it on good authority (psst: longtime U.N. reporter) that Negroponte was no great brain (and as for his politics, you don’t need my good authority), but Bolton is on the order of Alberto Gonzales, or worse. What kind of message is the administration sending to the world by appointing a man to the U.N. who wished the damn thing didn’t even exist?

And there's another freakin blizzard today. Crikey.

Ask, Tell

The country’s most patently ridiculous “policy” is now apparently up for review in Congress.

From a press release (Mar. 2) by the Human Rights Campaign:

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign praised today’s bipartisan introduction of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on gay, lesbian and bisexual troops, and allow them to serve openly in the military.

“Americans don’t care whether the person who catches Bin Laden is gay or straight; they just want him caught,” said HRC Vice President of Policy David M. Smith. “This bill would allow highly trained and patriotic troops to continue serving while freeing up resources that could be spent on things like adequate armor but that are currently being spent on enforcing an unfair policy.”

According to a recent government report, the policy has cost nearly $200 million for the replacement and training of personnel who had to be recruited when gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers were ousted from the military. The study by the Government Accounting Office also showed that nearly 800 specialists with critical skills have been fired, including 322 linguists, 54 of whom specialized in Arabic.

[Yes, firing 54 of what? 55? linguists who specialize in Arabic because they are gay makes total sense.]

At Least We Know We Don't Know

From the National Security Archive: New National Security Classification Decisions in Millions

Woe is Meat

[Warning: Possibility of Dismay-Inducement in This Entry]

Poor, poor Bubba:

"The Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium plans to keep the shell of the 22-pound lobster, named Bubba, and use its remains to educate school children, said Rachel Capp, a zoo spokeswoman."

Peeing Like You Wanna

The New York Times has an article on neuterizing (word? Not a word? I like it. masc., fem., neuter) bathrooms today. As someone who went to a university with co-ed bathrooms, I have much to say on this subject. (And, oddly enough, happened to have expounded upon it to my colleagues last night for unrelated reasons.)

The downsides were these:

1. Men (okay, college boys) like to have pissing contests at the urinal. They would stand as far away as they could to see who could still “make it in.”

2. Men (college boys) get off on the idea of women peeing in a stall, so much so that they can’t prevent themselves from sticking their feet under the door just to let you know how funny it is that you are in there and they are so close. This makes it hard to continue, in my experience.

3.Men (college boys) are really loud in the bathroom. Then again, they all knew each other.

Anyway, this article is about making sure that “transgender people (an umbrella term that can include transsexuals, cross-dressers and those with a fluid, androgynous identity who do not consider themselves completely male or female) can use bathrooms without fear of harassment.”

So that’s a seemingly different story.

The one other thing I will say is that upon leaving college, I found it difficult for years to not walk into the men’s room without thinking about it, prompting many confusing situations. I still find it odd that the man who comes to clean our bathrooms at work will wait until every woman is out, even if they are just washing their hands.

Why do we care who pees in front of who? But I know this gets to the heart of why we care about gender, so I’m going to stop here.

Mourning in the Morning

I should never read the news while trying to get ready for work.

In case you haven’t heard, Bubba, the 22-pound lobster rescued from a Pittsburgh fish market, died today in transport to a museum. And not just any museum, but the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. Bubba stopped off at a Pittsburgh zoo on his way to his home at Ripley’s, and this is where he expired.

This makes me sad.

Bubba was caught off the Massachusetts coast, and was thought to be 100 years old. Some people put him more at 50. Regardless, this guy lived about a century in the bottom of the ocean, only to die rather immediately in captivity. He lived for about a week at the fish market before succumbing at the zoo. Poor Bubba.

“They're very finicky,” said a zoo spokeswoman. “It could have been a change in the water. You have no idea.”

I’m willing to bet Bubba died of dismay.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/03/03/leviathan.lobster.ap/index.html

A Low-Budget Read

I’m not usually a fan of Slate’s “ad report card,” but this one is just funny. It’s for Overstock.com. Here’s how the writer describes it:

The spot: It's a world of white—white floors, white walls, white furnishings … and a stunning, middle-aged babe dressed all in white. She's smiling at us. "It's all about the O," she purrs. Whoa! That's hot! After six or seven costume changes, she explains what the O really stands for: Overstock.com, a Web site that sells liquidated merchandise.

But what I really love is this guy's blog entry about the ad. He asks: “Overstock.com girl: bad actress or satan?”

Highlights from the Slate article:

3) It's all about the music. This simply can't be the theme song for a retail store. Where's the up-tempo power-pop? The jangling Stratocasters? The pounding beat? This piece sounds more like an elegy for a long-departed lover.

I suppose there is something wistful about a liquidation sale, but does the music need to reflect that? It's weird. So weird, in fact, that it's captivating. I hear this gentle serenade and my eyes are pulled screenward. Kudos, jingle composer.

4) It's all about the cheesy white background.
Ring ring. The 1980s called. They want their radically monochrome interiors back.

Onward and Inward

Here is a fascinating survey by Poynter on “work-life balance” for journalists.
And here are some of the key answers by reporters:

Always work more than 40 hours a week: 65.1 percent of respondents
Did not take all the vacation they had coming in the past year: 46.2 percent
Organizations cut staff in the past two years: 67.2 percent
Staff shortages negatively affect their work-life balance "consistently" or "frequently": 50.9 percent
Have seriously considered leaving journalism: 47.2 percent

And here is a heartening/disheartening statement from it:

“It appears the journalists and media leaders represented in our survey may see themselves as upholding the quality of a profession they care about, but the weight of that commitment is wearing on too many of them.”

I was often told by profs in journalism school that I should consider partnering with an ER doctor because they are the only types who could understand the stress. Hahaha. (Another fascinating piece of advice on how to support ourselves monetarily as our careers moved forward was that we should either write a book that gets made into a movie—which this male prof had done quite successfully—or marry rich.)

For those of you who do not work in this industry, enjoy your day. For those of you who do…um…enjoy this survey.

[Later, I read this, about dealing with doing emotional interviews.]

From a woman named Mary Pitman, a former nurse who works as a freelance writer in Georgia:

“My 24 years as a nurse has been absolutely invaluable in these situations. Working in the ER is similar to journalism. You have contact with people during the worst time of their life. A husband with no history of heart disease drops dead. A husband and wife are killed in a car wreck. We are left with the survivors.

”I've learned to distance myself from the situation and still be sensitive. I can't do my job if I get wrapped up in the emotions. It's the same line I have to walk in journalism. I have to remain objective and yet acknowledge that the people in front of me are in pain. I just can't let it become my pain.

”I really believe every journalist who is faced with these types of interviews should familiarize themselves with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's "Death and Dying." She explains the five stages of dying/grief. It's given me a great understanding of what's behind the emotions of the people I interview.”