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June 29, 2006
Something Different
Podcasts are emerging as a brand new element in free-speech media. These home-based internet radio stations are completely uncensored, commercial free, and range in content from politics to the sharing of recipes. All that's needed to listen to them, generally, is an internet browser that supports them (which most do), and the address to find the podcast. You don't even need to be around when it airs to listen to it. The file will save on your computer until you're ready, then you can listen in leisure or put it on your iPod and listen to it during your commute.
Little known is that Chico has it's own pair of podcaster's. Essentially this pair of internet radio pioneers has put Chico on the world map for this new and exciting medium and has attracted listeners in the US, Canada, and Australia. Aaron and Marla are the hosts of Paperbag Radio, a once weekly podcast that has an extreemly open structure for topics and style. They are funny, dynamic, and allow their personalities to play off eachother in a way that just works.
The address for Paperbag Radio is www.paperbagradio.com. Just follow the link on the page to start downloading. This is not for the kids, though. Some of the language is explicit, and some of the topics are for adult ears only. But if you're an open minded adult with a sense of humor you'll find the show a riot.
Posted by at 11:08 AM
June 21, 2006
On A Mistake
After considering some of the comments I got for "On Propaganda" I decided to remove the post. Not because I don't still think the message is pertinent but because it violates my own rule of not posting anything dripping profanity. My apologies if I offened anyone. Hope I made you all think though.
Posted by at 09:12 PM | Comments (1)
On Falling Stars
I
For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important . They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining st! ar we sh ould all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at M! orton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of th! e soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
Posted by at 10:40 AM | Comments (4)
June 20, 2006
On A Tough Place
The President has been accused, on this blog and other places, of sacrificing peoples personal liberties for national security. This may be true depending on the perspective of the viewer but lets flip this around and look at it a bit.
At its absolute maximum, ultimate personal freedom has a name. It's called Anarchy. This is where all people are free to do whatever they want whenver they want. For instance, if someone decides that they want to rape your wife, they can do that. On the other hand if you want to strangle that person and then set them on fire, you could do that too. People only work if they want to, and in the end the society fails because there is no order.
At the other extreme is a situation similar to what Hitler imposed on the Jews just preceding WWII. All freedoms were removed, every move monitored and recorded, and the government had complete control. The advantage to this is that there was constant survelance of the populace and it was nearly impossible for anyone to get away with anything.
America lives somewhere between these, in constant flux. When all is peaceful and well we live more towards having many freedoms. During war times we live more towards survelance. This is necessary to protect the populace from those who would do them harm. This is especially important when the people who would do the populace harm do their best to blend in until they strike out, at which point they take credit and mock us for our lack of security.
Being in charge of this flux is hard on any leader. On one had when they attempt to take away freedoms for the sake of security they are compared to Hitler and accused of trying to become a despot. On the other hand, if something terrible happens (eg 9/11) they are the goat who didn't do enough to secure our borders, our infrastructure, and our populace.
It's easy to be an armchair quarterback calling the shots when the blame doesn't fall to you if something goes wrong. It's especially easy to do so in hindsight when things have resolved. It's very difficult, very stressful, and very demanding to be the one who has to make decisions that will turn out to be unpopular whatever way you cut it. I don't envy President Bush for his job, or any other decent leader for that matter. I wish them all luck and wisdom.
Posted by at 12:53 PM | Comments (10)
June 13, 2006
On a Dire Situation
A couple of years back 60 minutes did a piece on the lack of security at oil refineries and chemical storage facilities around the country. Their reporters literally walked through the front gate, greeted several workers, and then taped a sign that said "Bomb" to storage tanks filled with gasoline, diesel, acids, crude oil, and explosive gasses. This was done to hammer home a point that there were many potential terrorist targets with little to no security throughout the country and that just anyone could walk up to them and pose a threat
Closer to home, while driving by the gasoline storage facility South of town on the Midway I noticed that not one, not two, but three gates facing the street were open, unmanned, and unsecured. While I didn't try it I would be willing to bet that I could have parked my car, walked through the gate, and right up to one of the massive storage units un-noticed. This is a major security threat to our fair town. What would stop a person from driving a car loaded with explosives into one of those tanks? What would stop a person from planting an explosive charge? What would stop them from causing massive amounts of damage, property loss, loss of life, and causing panic around the area?
The huge gasoline storage facility South of town is completely unsecured and a prime target for a terrorist attack. There are three gates wide open and its only a few yards from the gate to the storage tanks. It wouldn't take much to walk through the gate and detonate one of these tanks. This is inexcusable. These gates need to be closed and locked, all persons in and out need to produce credentials certifying their need to be in there, and guards need to be posted. It's been almost 5 years since 9/11. Why hasn't this happened yet?
Posted by at 07:03 PM | Comments (6)
June 12, 2006
On A Victory for Logic
In a double shot of common sense two separate judges sided with logic and overturned a bogus law and a bogus lawsuit.
A San Francisco judge overturned a law banning firearm sales within the city/county of San Francisco after voters approved the measure by 58%. The judge said that the city had no authority ban sales since the state allowed it.
The idea behind the legislation banning the sale was that it woulde put a halt to the high number of fire-arm related deaths in the city. This has been proven time and time again not to work. Let me put it this way. If a gun sat in a room, loaded, but nobody touched it, it would be virtually impossible for this gun to kill or injur anyone unless HUMAN interaction was involved. Anti-gun activists love to point towards Canada, quoting their gun laws and low rate of gun-related crime. Friends of mine in Canada and from Canada laugh at this, stating that its not the lack of guns, its the difference in mind-set between Americans and Canadians. They state that as many Canadians own guns as Americans, but they don't use them against each other. When faced with this Canadian Gun Law argument from the anti-gunners I always like to point towards Washington DC and it's super-strict gun laws and amazingly high gun crime rate. It would seem logical that gun legislation is not the answer to gun crime, perhaps a different approach should be taken. People killed and hurt eachother before guns, and still do it today. Taking away the guns wont change that. There needs to be a change in mind set.
The other bit of judicial logic came at the expense of Michael Newdow. This is they guy who's been so hell-bent on taking "God" out of society. He states that "In God We Trust" violates his first amendment protections because he is an athiest. He goes further to want to take "Under God" out of the Pledge of Allegence, for similar reasons. The judge stated that the words are not a coercian but rather a national slogan and violated no rights. This is another great victory for logic and common sense. This guy has tried ever argument he can think of to get "God" out of society and create a heathen America. First he argued for the separation of Church and State without success, then came up with this First Amendment BS. Both have failed. His saying that "God" violates his First Amendment right to Freedom of thought is like saying that irritating commercials on TV or billboards violate my rights. My solution, just ignore them. He should try it too.
Posted by at 04:35 PM | Comments (2)
June 09, 2006
Spammy Spam Spam
Hey frequent readers/posters,
A lot of us Nor-Cal bloggers are getting a great deal of spam posts sent from a spambot on a daily basis. I'm talking to the tune of about 60 a day. This makes filtering your valued posts from the spam a challenging, frustrating ordeal. If you post something and you don't see it up within 48 hours, please send another post and let us know that we missed you. The IT team at the Chico ER is looking into this problem and hopefully will have filters installed soon to keep the spam out. Also, Jack and I are looking into tracking down the originator of this spam and bringing federal charges up, since spamming is illegal and frowned on by the FCC. Bear with us for a while.
-Jordan
PS: In the mean time expect a few less posts from me, as most of my internet time is now spent filtering through spam rather than writing blogs. Sorry.
Posted by at 09:15 AM | Comments (1)
June 08, 2006
On al-Zarqawi
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US airstrike late yesterday, for those who didn't already know. All I can say, is good riddance.
While I doubt that this will be a real "turning point" in the war on Terror I can't help but think that it will make a difference. While some extreemists are celebrating his "joyous martyrdom" others have to be wondering if the US can capture Saddam Hussein, kill his sons, and kill Zarqawi, what could we have in store for them. This may be a stretch, who knows what goes on inside those guys heads. Minimally, however, the terrorists have lost a leader with an exceptionally high intelligence, an exceptional strategists, and someone who runs a brilliant propaganda campaign, and that can only be a good thing for the rest of the free world.
I think this goes to prove that with some resolve we (the joint campaign against terror) can rid the world of some of these murderers. The mothers of Nicholas Burg and Eugene Armstrong can know that their sons have been avenged. The world can know that we're not just spinning our wheels in this campaign, but working towards progress. Congratulations and much thanks to our troops in Iraq.
Posted by at 08:21 AM | Comments (1)
June 07, 2006
On Myspace
It seems everyone I know has a Myspace website now. Don't know what that is? Where have you been?
Myspace is a free website (it pays for itself by being littered with ads for various things) that offers its subscribers a bit of webspace. They can post pictures, slide shows, videos, and little blurbs about themselves. They can look up friends, leave bulliten posts, and communicate with people they would have never had contact with previously under the assumption that "a friend of my friend must be my friend"
Overall the idea is pretty inventive though not totally original. There have been a number of sites that have offered the same thing in the past, I think Friendster was the most recent before Myspace, but they never caught on the way Myspace has. For one thing Myspace has some serious media backing and has provided its services to nearly every big name band and TV program on the globe as well as a any number of smaller venues needing to be discovered.
With all this comes a bit of a price though. Teenagers are able to sign up for an account (Myspace requires that a box be checked if you're under 18 verifying that you have your parents permission, like that's ever honest) and talk to any random people. The vast majority of contacts are simply the same group that the teen would talk to at school, church, or whatever, but there are some online pervs out there who use the forum to prey on teenagers (particularly girls). Sacramento Metro PD uses Myspace to track down sexual preditors in the area as well as gang members. One of Sacramento's finest found a picture of a 15 year old highschool students standing in a room filled with automatic weapons on Myspace, and through some creative investigation hunted the kid down and arrested him. Through his Myspace page this officer was able to track down a number of other gang members, many with warrants.
That being said Myspace is fun. To offset the bad parents simply need to be involved with their kids lives. The same way as parents need to know who their kids are hanging out with, talking to on the phone, and emailing they need to know who their Myspace contacts are. For parents it's not hard to do, simply make their own account, go to their kid's page, and then look at the profiles they list as friends. Anyone they don't know should be questioned. Sounds simple, though interactive parenting has fallen out vogue lately in favor of offloading the responsibility onto other parties such as teachers and the government. But that's for another blog.
Posted by at 09:13 AM | Comments (1)
June 06, 2006
On Chico
For anyone wondering how great a city we live in take this for an example. While working at Enloe I have been privilaged to know two very talented, very dedicated nurses who have come to Chico as travelers, one from Missouri, one from Utah. Both have enjoyed Chico so much that they have given up traveling to make Chico their permanent home. They've been around the country and like it here best. Congratulations, Chico.
Posted by at 09:45 AM