We just spent 11 days in Hawaii, in part hanging at the Maui Four Seasons and in part visiting an old friend on the nearby - but still incredibly remote - island of Lanai. It was spectacular. If you ever can go, do. Hawaii is everything it is supposed to be, even with some of the tourist-trap aspect. Of course, it ain't even remotely cheap (even if we did get free rooms at the Four Seasons thanks to my wife's job), but worth it.
But then we had to come back. And we were repaid for our sloth - 11 inches of snow on the ground in Philadelphia. Most discouraging. But at least I have a bitchin' tan.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Grandmother was right...
Looks to me like what Kurt Cass really needed was $100-worth of Slimfast shakes. And perhaps a brain transplant.
Sing Ho for the life of a freelancer
Tom Ferrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who is a great columnist, has an interesting piece this morning about journalistic ethics. But in it, he casts aspersions on the freelancers who litter the journalistic landscape. This I could not let stand.
Dumbass of the year award
We have a winner . Ha, Ha. What a funny prank this was. Next time, let's just stab each other with sharpened sticks. Or perhaps douse our friends in gasoline and light a match for a jolly good laugh. Guess this old joke applies now to practical jokes on your friends.
Incidentally, the Times Dispatch article linked above was written by an old friend of mine, the best journalistic storyteller I have ever met. If you're passing through Roanoke, Va., look him up and try to trick him into buying you a beer. Tell him I sent you.
Incidentally, the Times Dispatch article linked above was written by an old friend of mine, the best journalistic storyteller I have ever met. If you're passing through Roanoke, Va., look him up and try to trick him into buying you a beer. Tell him I sent you.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Most interesting Dispatches from Iraq
I just stumbled across this, Dispatches from Iraq, a project by the Columbia Journalism Review - an excellent insider journal for reporters and editors. I've seen a bunch of Iraq-related blogs and found most of them rather tedious or poorly written. But this is fascinating, in part because this guy is an excellent and engaging writer, and in part because it sheds light on the process of covering the Iraq war. He's got a lovely, jaded - but not snarky or overly opinioned - view that reminds me somewhat of the bemused worldview in MASH. I'm going to keep an eye on it.
This is what I was talking about
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Plagiarize, Plagiarize, Plagiarize
I find this an interesting analysis, and sadly, I think he’s right: There probably is plagiarism is just about every newsroom in America. I would venture to go even farther and say there is widespread fabrication as well. It’s not the big stuff – making up stories out of whole cloth and so forth. That would get you caught in a hurry. Or at least fairly quickly (as Jayson Blair found out). It’s more likely the little stuff – quotes that don’t quite add up, sources that don’t quite exist, facts that may or may not be quite so factual.
I doubt there is a journalist out there who hasn’t sat staring hopelessly at the screen, trying to compose some two bit story about the annual “Apple Blossom Parade” or some such Metro Desk horror and thought to himself “would anyone really notice if I just made up some happy quote? (“I love this parade, I come every year – I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” said Bill Smith, 37, a janitor who brought his two kids two hours early to get a good seat.)
And in answer to the inevitable question: Yes, I have thought exactly this. And no, I have never done it. Though I really, really wanted to. Covering an Apple Blossom Parade or any other similar happy event is really, truly the lowest pit of journalistic hell. Believe me.
Part of the problem with journalistic plagiarism, as opposed to, say, academic plagiarism, is that the line is a little grey. I know that sounds odd, but it makes sense once you understand how a story gets created. The reporter’s main work goes into the top part of the story – what happened yesterday, what people are saying about it and so forth. But every story has to have a backbone of history and context. Somewhere high up in the story will be what’s called the “nutgraf,” which explains why the story is important (“This is the first time a state has passed such a law,” “He is the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court” that kind of thing). Then lower down, accounting for perhaps as much as half the story, will be this history – a detailed account of how we got here.
On a complex on-going story, a reporter or editor might look back at past stories for that background. Sometimes, an older story may have the perfect, elegant nutgraf, or a really concise summary of the events. And so you pick those up and put them in your story. That would not pass muster in an academic context, but in journalism that’s generally considered a perfectly acceptable thing to do, provided the old story is from your newspaper (better yet, if you are the reporter who wrote the old story). It’s just a question of time and efficiency – you don’t have the time or space to come up with a new and elegant way to redescribe the background of the story every day.
But this is a bit of a slippery slope. Some people forget that it isn’t acceptable to lift this stuff from other publications. And there is widespread disagreement about whether it is acceptable to lift this sort of material from wire services without credit (I think you can use it, but you should certainly credit the wire service somewhere, if only with a “The Associated Press contributed to this report” kind of thing).
All this is not to excuse journalistic plagiarism – it’s just to show that it is a much fuzzier line than someone outside the business might think.
There is an old joke in journalism, by the way, words to live by as you write a story: Make it sing, make it dance, make it up.
I doubt there is a journalist out there who hasn’t sat staring hopelessly at the screen, trying to compose some two bit story about the annual “Apple Blossom Parade” or some such Metro Desk horror and thought to himself “would anyone really notice if I just made up some happy quote? (“I love this parade, I come every year – I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” said Bill Smith, 37, a janitor who brought his two kids two hours early to get a good seat.)
And in answer to the inevitable question: Yes, I have thought exactly this. And no, I have never done it. Though I really, really wanted to. Covering an Apple Blossom Parade or any other similar happy event is really, truly the lowest pit of journalistic hell. Believe me.
Part of the problem with journalistic plagiarism, as opposed to, say, academic plagiarism, is that the line is a little grey. I know that sounds odd, but it makes sense once you understand how a story gets created. The reporter’s main work goes into the top part of the story – what happened yesterday, what people are saying about it and so forth. But every story has to have a backbone of history and context. Somewhere high up in the story will be what’s called the “nutgraf,” which explains why the story is important (“This is the first time a state has passed such a law,” “He is the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court” that kind of thing). Then lower down, accounting for perhaps as much as half the story, will be this history – a detailed account of how we got here.
On a complex on-going story, a reporter or editor might look back at past stories for that background. Sometimes, an older story may have the perfect, elegant nutgraf, or a really concise summary of the events. And so you pick those up and put them in your story. That would not pass muster in an academic context, but in journalism that’s generally considered a perfectly acceptable thing to do, provided the old story is from your newspaper (better yet, if you are the reporter who wrote the old story). It’s just a question of time and efficiency – you don’t have the time or space to come up with a new and elegant way to redescribe the background of the story every day.
But this is a bit of a slippery slope. Some people forget that it isn’t acceptable to lift this stuff from other publications. And there is widespread disagreement about whether it is acceptable to lift this sort of material from wire services without credit (I think you can use it, but you should certainly credit the wire service somewhere, if only with a “The Associated Press contributed to this report” kind of thing).
All this is not to excuse journalistic plagiarism – it’s just to show that it is a much fuzzier line than someone outside the business might think.
There is an old joke in journalism, by the way, words to live by as you write a story: Make it sing, make it dance, make it up.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Thank God...
At least Southern California remains safe for Krispy Kreme. My old friends in Los Angeles almost suffered the same horrid fate that we here in Philadelphia suffered.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
You get what you pay for
The New Year's Party with the kids wasn't all it was cracked up to be. See, the problem lay in the $4.99 cake from Superfresh.
Oh, sure, it looks cute. But in reality, is was vile. I am not sure what flavor the icing was supposed to be, but it was not good. So my New Year's resolution is this: No more cakes from Superfresh, particularly of the $4.99 variety.
Of course, the kids liked it, but what do they know? They're two and six and they see nothing suspicious in Daddy beginning the New Year's Eve party at 6:45 p.m. (plenty of time for a handy 7:30 bedtime).
Oh, sure, it looks cute. But in reality, is was vile. I am not sure what flavor the icing was supposed to be, but it was not good. So my New Year's resolution is this: No more cakes from Superfresh, particularly of the $4.99 variety.
Of course, the kids liked it, but what do they know? They're two and six and they see nothing suspicious in Daddy beginning the New Year's Eve party at 6:45 p.m. (plenty of time for a handy 7:30 bedtime).
Saturday, December 31, 2005
I want my Krispy Kreme back.
My wife invariably works on New Year's Eve and this year she is in fact working all day - from 7 a.m. till whenever the last drunken customer staggers home. So this leaves me with a particularly long stretch of time to fill with the boys (two - ages six and two-almost-three). We're planning a party - the world's smallest New Year's cake ($4.99 at Superfresh. I coulda made it myself, but I am too lazy) and ice cream.
But I wanted to start the day right - a bath and a trip to the "Doughnut store," or what adults would know as the only Krispy Kreme outlet in eastern Pennsylvania. The boys love it, and so do I, even though it is miles and miles from our house and is in an unspeakably crappy section of North Philly. We'd go perhaps once a month.
So, after a refreshing bath this morning (the boys, that is - I don't fit into the tub), we hauled our butts up to Cottman Avenue to discover something horrifying - the Doughnut Store is Closed. Not just closed, but out-of-business, up-for-lease, gone-for-ever kind of closed.
Now, according to the Krispy Kreme website, the nearest Krispy Kreme outlet is a mere 55 miles from my house, in a place called Brick, N.J., followed by one in Baltimore, just 81 convenient miles from home.
In the scale of things, this is not a major problem, of course, but it is sad. I grew up in the South, where Krispy Kreme was a way of life - none of these gleaming white and green, well-scrubbed outlets that you see in the mall. No - Krispy Kreme in the Good Old Days was a grimy, slightly creepy coffee shop, often open 24 hours, found along seedy industrial roads in places like Alexandria, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee. The coffee was good, the doughnuts were greasy and delicious, the green vinyl seats were cracked and stained, and the old guys drinking coffee at all hours of the night were extremely disreputable-looking. Taking my sons there, even to one of the new hygienic outlets, was a throwback to my youth.
Perhaps the doughnut gods will look favorably upon us and bring us a new Krispy Kreme outlet. Or perhaps allow us to move to a town with Krispy Kreme. In the meantime, no doughnuts for me - I just can't enjoy anything but Krispy Kreme. Yes, I know - they are heavy, oily and sweet. But that's what I like about them - that's the whole point. I can't stand the dry Dunkin' Donut variety. And I have tried making doughnuts myself, but they are really kind of a pain in the butt.
Happy New Year to me. Sigh.
But I wanted to start the day right - a bath and a trip to the "Doughnut store," or what adults would know as the only Krispy Kreme outlet in eastern Pennsylvania. The boys love it, and so do I, even though it is miles and miles from our house and is in an unspeakably crappy section of North Philly. We'd go perhaps once a month.
So, after a refreshing bath this morning (the boys, that is - I don't fit into the tub), we hauled our butts up to Cottman Avenue to discover something horrifying - the Doughnut Store is Closed. Not just closed, but out-of-business, up-for-lease, gone-for-ever kind of closed.
Now, according to the Krispy Kreme website, the nearest Krispy Kreme outlet is a mere 55 miles from my house, in a place called Brick, N.J., followed by one in Baltimore, just 81 convenient miles from home.
In the scale of things, this is not a major problem, of course, but it is sad. I grew up in the South, where Krispy Kreme was a way of life - none of these gleaming white and green, well-scrubbed outlets that you see in the mall. No - Krispy Kreme in the Good Old Days was a grimy, slightly creepy coffee shop, often open 24 hours, found along seedy industrial roads in places like Alexandria, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee. The coffee was good, the doughnuts were greasy and delicious, the green vinyl seats were cracked and stained, and the old guys drinking coffee at all hours of the night were extremely disreputable-looking. Taking my sons there, even to one of the new hygienic outlets, was a throwback to my youth.
Perhaps the doughnut gods will look favorably upon us and bring us a new Krispy Kreme outlet. Or perhaps allow us to move to a town with Krispy Kreme. In the meantime, no doughnuts for me - I just can't enjoy anything but Krispy Kreme. Yes, I know - they are heavy, oily and sweet. But that's what I like about them - that's the whole point. I can't stand the dry Dunkin' Donut variety. And I have tried making doughnuts myself, but they are really kind of a pain in the butt.
Happy New Year to me. Sigh.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
My own humble contribution...
From Time.com, my wee dispatch on the Intelligent Design dispute. I hear one of my colleagues is working on a companion analysis piece, which isn't up at this moment, but should be interesting.
The more I read it, the more amazed I am
The deeper I get into the Intelligent Design case, the more astounded I am by what a complete, slam-dunk victory this is for evolution. The judge didn't just rule against intelligent design, he killed it, buried it and did a little dance on its grave. It's clear that the intelligent design people didn't simply fail to impress the judge, they actually managed to make him angry. Try this on for unusually tough judicial talk (a few select excerpts):
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” Jones wrote.
“Both defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption that is utterly false,” he wrote. “Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiff’s scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.”
“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy,” Jones wrote.
Jones said the Dover case was the result of “the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.”
He derided the school board’s decision “breathtaking inanity” and said the resulting “legal maelstrom” was an “utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
ouch.
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” Jones wrote.
“Both defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption that is utterly false,” he wrote. “Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiff’s scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.”
“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy,” Jones wrote.
Jones said the Dover case was the result of “the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.”
He derided the school board’s decision “breathtaking inanity” and said the resulting “legal maelstrom” was an “utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
ouch.
Judge smites intelligent design
The Federal Judge in Harrisburg has just ruled that the Dover school board was wrong when it required teachers to tell students about "intelligent design." The decision is a major victory for critics, but an astonishing defeat for intelligent design backers. The judge eviscerated them and their ideas.
Monday, December 19, 2005
I am trying to decide which I find more alarming
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The Horror. The Horror.
A couple of years ago, my wife's aunt gave us an odd little Christamas device known as a gumdrop tree. It is a stainless steel tree with small, artfully placed spikes on it. Onto these spikes, you stick gumdrops, creating an amusing and colorful (and edible) Christmas decoration.
Undecorated, it looks like this:
When it is festively decorated, it looks like this:
But today at the grocery store, the boys and I hit on what we thought was a terribly clever idea - we would buy gummy bears and decorate the gumdrop tree with the bears as a hilarious prank on mommy.
We got home and broke out the bears. There was, however, an unanticipated problem. The material in gummy bears is so tough and rubbery that you have to completely pierce the little bear to get it on the spike. After a couple of bears had been mounted in this way, I realized the effect was entirely too creepy and we abandoned the project. Judge for yourself.
I decided to go with Spice Drops.
Undecorated, it looks like this:
When it is festively decorated, it looks like this:
But today at the grocery store, the boys and I hit on what we thought was a terribly clever idea - we would buy gummy bears and decorate the gumdrop tree with the bears as a hilarious prank on mommy.
We got home and broke out the bears. There was, however, an unanticipated problem. The material in gummy bears is so tough and rubbery that you have to completely pierce the little bear to get it on the spike. After a couple of bears had been mounted in this way, I realized the effect was entirely too creepy and we abandoned the project. Judge for yourself.
I decided to go with Spice Drops.
A question worth asking
One reader writes on "A Really Sad End Pt. II:"
"you are right it is senseless and disturbing. there is a lesson in all this for the rest of us but i cant figure it out yet. any ideas?"
Which is a question deserving an answer. Or, lacking an answer, at least some thought.
I can't quite get my head around it. The flippant, easy answer, of course, is the lesson is to be careful who you help. The serious answer is that there seems to be a segment of society that has so little to look forward to, so little hope, and such narrowed perspectives that it seems perfectly reasonable to kill someone over a single lost paycheck (that he had nothing to do with anyway). What to do about it? God knows. If I had the answer I'd be running for office. Which I am not.
"you are right it is senseless and disturbing. there is a lesson in all this for the rest of us but i cant figure it out yet. any ideas?"
Which is a question deserving an answer. Or, lacking an answer, at least some thought.
I can't quite get my head around it. The flippant, easy answer, of course, is the lesson is to be careful who you help. The serious answer is that there seems to be a segment of society that has so little to look forward to, so little hope, and such narrowed perspectives that it seems perfectly reasonable to kill someone over a single lost paycheck (that he had nothing to do with anyway). What to do about it? God knows. If I had the answer I'd be running for office. Which I am not.
More Playmates acting up
Just days after news that Anna Nicole was being sued for being, well, Anna Nicole, comes news that some of her Playmate sisters are arrested for being, well, just like Anna Nicole, but perhaps more hostile.
Friday, December 09, 2005
A really sad end Pt. II
The saga of Terrell Pough took a really weird turn this month. Cops have charged two young men with killing him, apparently over some kind of dispute over a paycheck. Turns out, if cops are right, that Terrell worked hard to get his friend Antoine a job at his fast food restaurant. The restaurant closed and the owners stiffed both of them. Even though Terrell had done many favors for Antoine, it looks like Antoine thought Terrell could have done more to help him get his last paycheck. So he and a buddy ambushed him and killed him. If there ever was a senseless killing, this one is it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
