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Pardon our progress, but at long last, the Locust Fork News and Journal redesign is up. This Moveable Type blog is no longer being updated. Bloggers and search engines should change their links ASAP. The new links are:
The Locust Fork News
http://www.locustfork.net/
The Locust Fork Journal
http://blog.locustfork.net/
We are still working on some things and figuring out how to manage this new interface, but right away you will notice some changes - and we trust improvements - to the site.
For starters, the news page is now the main domain site page at LocustFork.Net. After almost three years of experimentation, it is now obvious that this page is the most popular page on the site, in part since it combines a fast and tasteful news layout with the blog interface like no one else on the Web.
You will need to update your favorites, bookmarks or your homepage link in your Web browser if you use the Locust Fork World News as your start page. We will continue updating the locustfork.net/news page briefly to allow everyone to get changed over, but at some point in the next few days, that page will no longer be updated.
As for the Locust Fork Journal, we have finally abandoned the Moveable Type software that was the hottest and best thing going three years ago, and moved into Word Press, we think the best blog software on the market right now. This will be good news to anyone who has had problems making comments in the past. We hope the comment section is now way easier to use and we look forward to reading and responding to your comments.
We still reserve the right to delete anonymous and/or offensive comments and ban commenters who abuse this site to push a personal or political agenda. We are far more interested in constructive dialogue than flame throwing. As entertaining as that might seem to some folks, it's not our cup of tea.
We are also about to be THE FIRST independent news and blog Website in Alabama and perhaps the American South to be sponsored on a full-time, year-around basis by local advertisers. While we have been a profitable news company from the outset and pioneered both the format of news sites and the funding mechanism behind it, these changes we are announcing today will help us continue this pioneering Web Press venture into the coming months and years. And it will help provide the resources to do ground breaking investigative journalism as well as entertaining literary news features with high quality digital photography.
If you have thoughts or comments on the redesign, give our new comment section a try...
For spammers and commenters, no more spam will be allowed on this site either under trackbacks or comments. Comments should be added to the new blog. This one is being disabled.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is now accepting nominees via e-mail until Jan. 1 for the 2008 Electronic Pioneer Awards, established to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology.
This is your opportunity to nominate a deserving individual or group to receive a Pioneer Award for 2008.
The International Pioneer Awards nominations are open both to individuals and organizations from any country. Nominations are reviewed by a panel of judges chosen for their knowledge of the technical, legal, and social issues associated with information technology.
How to Nominate Someone for a 2008 Pioneer Award:
You may send as many nominations as you wish, but please use one email per nomination. Please submit your entries via email to pioneer@eff.org. We will accept nominations until January 1, 2008.
Provide this information in the e-mail:
1. The name of the nominee,
2. The phone number or email address or website by which the nominee can be reached, and, most importantly,
3. Why you feel the nominee deserves the award.
Nominee Criteria:
There are no specific categories for the EFF Pioneer Awards, but the following guidelines apply.
1. The nominees must have contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications.
2. To be valid, all nominations must contain your reason, however brief, for nominating the individual or organization and a means of contacting the nominee. In addition, while anonymous nominations will be accepted, ideally we'd like to contact the nominating parties in case we need further information.
3. The contribution may be technical, social, economic, or cultural.
4. Nominations may be of individuals, systems, or organizations in the private or public sectors.
5. Nominations are open to all (other than current members of EFF's staff and operating board or this year's award judges), and you may nominate more than one recipient. You may also nominate yourself or your organization.
6. Persons or representatives of organizations receiving an EFF Pioneer Award will be invited to attend the ceremony in San Francisco at EFF's expense.
More on the EFF Pioneer Awards
We've always figured there was some strange sex addiction problems going on all over Montgomery, having spent some time there, but we had no idea it was this bad.
Since Alabama's illustrious dumbass and right-wing nutjob Attorney General Troy King seems to hate sex toys so much, you've gotta figure he probably abuses them more than anyone else in the state capital city.
As you may or may not know, he has been fighting to continue the ban on sex toy shops in the state under a law passed by a guilty state legislature a number of years ago in a moment of clearly unconstitutional election moralizing from the not so conservative or ready for prime time players down on Goat Hill.
So Loretta Nall, who you may remember as the Libertarian Party candidate for governor in 2006 who before that had been an outspoken advocate for the legalization of marijuana, at least medically, is now havin' some fun with a "Sex Toys for Troy King drive."
She sent King a blow up pig (as in our name for cops in the '60s) instead of a blow up sex doll, and is encouraging others to send him more sex toys in jest.
This ain't no family newspaper, but even some of this seems over the top for Alabama. Looks like great fun to us!
Check out all the hilarity over at Loretta Nall's blog. You may or may not be glad you did...
Charter Communications suffered a statewide Internet outage in Alabama Thursday night.
And since the company's customer service is so inadequate, it took hours to get in touch with them, only to find out they had no idea why their servers were down.
Since it is obvious the corporate cable giant is not using its billions of dollars in profit to invest in backup systems and equipment maintenance, we have no choice but to go shopping once again for a new Internet Service Provider.
I would write a story about the Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas, but my hands are freezing filing from the back deck of the Bottletree Cafe on Birmingham's Southside on a free WiFi connection.
The band sounds pretty good, though, so I think I'll order another Smithwick's Irish Ale and say to hell with it tonight.
More to come, once the dang old dot dot Net comes back up...
 | | Photo by Michael Braunstein | | Ground Zero: After leaving Washington D.C. on Monday, I made my way to New York. The World Trade Center site in Manhatten is a construction zone and the subject of controversy, but the Freedom Tower will go up in it's place. Wikipedia: World Trade Center |
SILVER SPRING, Md., Sept. 14 (LFJ) - The rain is dripping from the trees again in the DC metro area, but the camping weather looks like gold for the next few days.
We spent Thursday night in the dark at Lake Anna State Park, which used to be known as "Gold Hill" because gold was discovered in the area around Louisa, Virginia in 1829. It reached its peak in the 1880s, and somehow, this close to the nation's capital, no one seems to have heard of the new gold, the Internet - or at least not free high speed wireless (Wi-Fi) for travelers.
They do know something about nuclear power there, however, which might explain the look of some of their kids in the Food Lion.
Even along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington there seems to be a Net black-out in all the coffee shops. And some customers, when asked, nod at the omnipresent Capitol Police as the reason. They won't say anything about it out loud. They just say it's not working for some reason, and cast a sideways glance at the black Suburbans on every corner.
Excuse me for saying so, but wouldn't it seem to make sense that if the prying eyes of the nation's security apparatus were truly concerned about "terrorism" around the White House and the Capitol, wouldn't they want to use all that power under the Patriot Act to read the e-mails of bad guys instead of preventing them from sending their evil messages?
But that's Bush's Washington for you. Nothing makes sense.
Or, just maybe, they are worried about the 10,000 protestors expected to descend on The White House on Saturday for an anti-war march and rally, to culminate in a "die-in" in front of the Capitol in the early afternoon.
Week of Antiwar Events To Start With a 'Die-In'
We'll be there to get some color and photos and check in on Cindy Sheehan. And maybe we'll see Jill Simpson and her lawyer from Montgomery there too.
The word is that the North Alabama lawyer's interview went well before the House Judiciary Committee staff today in the Siegelman investigation, although the word was mum outside the committee conference room as the Washington bureau gang of the Alabama press hung out in the hallway outside the door.
Judiciary Panel Takes Sworn Testimony From Simpson in Siegelman Case
The Newhouse press even got chairs in the hall, while us members of the periodical press and the Web press had to stand and dodge the cops checking up on us, wondering why in the world anyone would be standing around in the hallways of Congress. I guess they just like to keep the tourists moving along.
And, I guess the take over of Congress by the Democrats in 2006 has not yet taken a firm grip on the pecking order, at least where press priorities are concerned. Maybe they just don't realize where the real gold lies - if they want to change the future.
Now here's a useful Website being done by what some might call the Mainstream or Traditional media, although you can't call them the corporate media.
The PolitiFact.Com "truth-o-meter" is a project of the St. Petersburg Times, a not for profit newspaper tied to the Poynter Institute, in conjunction with Congressional Quarterly.
In the months ahead, they say, the news staffs of both organizations will examine major claims by presidential candidates and rule on their veracity.
"Our Truth-O-Meter will help voters sort fact from fiction in the campaign," they say. "This is a working database and over time it will grow more valuable."
Today, they check how much credit does Giuliani deserve for fighting crime. The NYC crime stats look great from his tenure as mayor, but they looked great in a lot of cities.
PolitiFact.Com
We just added the link to the blog under Politics, Polls and Money...
by Glynn Wilson
A few newspaper reporters used to have courage. Now they are afraid of bloggers. Or just maybe, they are afraid of their Republican publishers.
There is a wild debate still going on out there on the role of bloggers and journalism and politics. And the bad information gets just as much play as the good.
In the interest of playing an education role using blogging software, and yes journalism, here are today's must read links.
Blogs: All the noise that fits
The journalism that bloggers actually do
Skube vs. Marshall and the LA Times’ editorial kabuki
After you read those stories and know what we are talking about, here's my informed editorial comment on the subject.
The journalism professor who wrote the first column, Michael Skube, is a rube who did no homework, but lectures us all on how bad bloggers are at journalism. Woops!
Jay Rosen of NYU responds, but does not mention the two most important journalist bloggers who publish stories important to this area of the world: Scott Horton at Harpers.org and yours truly, who not only conduct journalism AND use blogging software to publish on the Web, but make money at it too.
Even before I woke up this morning and read this claptrap, I was thinking about some of the problems of the news business around here. And I remembered something an editor from the Birmingham News said a long time ago at an appearance at a junior college here in a symposium on journalism.
I can't remember the editor's name. It was about 1981. And I'm sure he's no longer with the News and most likely dead.
But when I asked him a question as a young aspiring reporter something about freedom of the press and the central role of a newspaper in a democratic society, he didn't hesitate. He said in effect that freedom of the press is reserved for those who own one, a printing press that is. And he said the central role of a newspaper in society was to make a profit for the publisher.
That was a not so funny answer at the time. And it certainly didn't correspond to what is written in every journalism and communications history textbook ever published (I know because I've read most of them, and taught out of a great number of them).
Journalism historians and college professors always glorify the press in America for being the defender of freedom and the watchdog of government. Although they often skirt the fact that the times when the press actually played that role in our history can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
So-called objective journalism really is - and always has been - about the money.
That Birmingham News editor also said the role of a newspaper was to inform, not to educate, as if there was a significant difference between the two. In fact, according to journalism historians, in the early days of the mass circulation daily newspapers the late 19th and early 20th centuires, publishers were interested in using their newspapers to educate the public to help them become more informed citizens to participate in democracy. And some of them were especially interested in promoting a knowledge of science.
Our Pulitzer Prize-winning op/ed contributor above spends a considerable amount of time bashing bloggers for working for free, while using as examples journalist bloggers who make a considerable amount of money doing it.
I suspect I made more money last month blogging than any single newspaper reporter made working for a corporate newspaper in Alabama, but I can't even get the good folks at Alabama Public Television to realize that I am not a nutjob blogger that is somehow separate from any other journalism being conducted in this state. Just because it is not printed on paper with ink does not necessarily make it less than journalism.
Now there are a lot of bloggers who do not claim to be journalists. And some of them are highly partisan, to be sure.
But what's wrong with that? Maybe they can energize our political system and draw more people into the process. And just maybe, they can help educate people and contribute to a change in our obviously stagnant political system that continues to elect rubes like George W. Bush and Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions.
I don't say that about our president or our senator because I am a left-wing blogger. I say it because there is a considerable amount of evidence that it is true.
Isn't that what we expect journalists to do? Tell the truth? Does it really matter if the truth is printed on paper or read on TV – or published on a Web site?
This particular Website, for the benefit of those who may be new readers here, is being read by almost as many people as a number of the newspaper Websites in this state, including the Anniston Star, the Decatur Daily, the Tuscaloosa News and the Montgomery Advertiser. We get about 80 percent more traffic than my favorite newspaper columnist in this state, Tommy Stevenson at the Tuscaloosa News.
When he first started his blog over there, I met him at Egan's pub in Tuscaloosa to talk about blogging. The last time I talked to him about his blog, he said he was getting a couple of thousand hits a day, while we were already getting more than 10,000 hits a day. After the recent series on the Jill Simpson affidavit and all the interest in the jail sentence of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, we topped 20,000.
True, they are not all in Alabama or even from Alabama. In fact, most of them probably are not. That's the beauty of it, you see. To reach a global audience.
But as the circulation continues to slide in the corporate, chain newspaper business, they will continue to bash blogging – even while engaging in it themselves.
Now, who are you going to trust? Newspaper reporters – who rely primarily on press releases from corporations and lobbyists for a majority of their news – or a blogger, who has the freedom to say what he really thinks?
We report. You decide. Isn't that what journalists are fond of saying? What's the difference here?
Bloggers making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the CIA will likely get them processed for free under new rules that broaden the definition of who is part of the "news media," according to the Editor and Publisher trade publication.
Professional journalists have long been able to request free processing of their FOIA requests of the intelligence agency. As a general rule, they don't have to pay fees for searching and retrieving files, although they may be charged for duplication costs.
Earlier this year, the CIA proposed a sliding fee scale that would likely have required at least some bloggers to pay for FOIA processing. But in an announcement in the Federal Register last week, the agency said it decided in the face of both negative and positive criticism simply to redefine "news media."
"Since there was no support to proceed with the proposed rule as originally drafted, rather than implementing the sweeping changes set forth in the proposed rule, we have a more modest change by simply adopting the definition of 'news media' contained in the March 27, 1987, Office of Management and Budget FOIA Guidelines," Edmund Cohen, chief of Information Management Services for the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in the Federal Register.
This is the definition of the "news media" the CIA is adopting for FOIA purposes:
"Representative of the News Media refers to any person actively gathering news for an entity that is organized and operated to publish or broadcast news to the public. The term 'news' means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news media entities include television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large, and publishers of periodicals (but only in those instances when they can qualify as disseminators of 'news') who make their products available for purchase or subscription by the general public. These examples are not intended to be all-inclusive. Moreover, as traditional methods of news delivery evolve (e.g., electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media would be included in this category. In the case of 'freelance' journalists, they may be regarded as working for a news organization if they can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that organization, even though not actually employed by it."
Makes one want to start filing FOIA requests on a number of topics, doesn't it?
Hey Y'all,
I know it may sound strange to some that there is a such thing as a political left in Alabama, but there's a fairly new blog you should check out called Left in Alabama. It lays claim to the task of "connecting progressive voices in Alabama."
And they are now blogging about who might run to unseat that little right-wing scoundrel Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate.
Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks is on the list, as is state Senator Vivian Figures, although she seems to be in no hurry to make a decision.
Supposedly Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham is off the list, since he would have to give up his House seat to run, although what the heck? Can he beat Sessions?
What about Joe Turnham, the party chair, or why not draft Charles Barkley? Maybe he could be convinced to go to the U.S. Senate BEFORE running for governor in 2014.
It might just take celebrity power to beat corrupt money these days, which is why we've already bet the Yuenglings on a Thompson v. Gore race for president in 2008. Not many people have taken that bet yet, btw, so it's still open : )
And see, even our evil Repub state Attorney General Troy King had to deny he was for Thompson today in Mountain Brook - at a successful fund raiser for Thompson.
Thompson Draws Crowd in Alabama
He is committed to McCain, but everybody who is anybody knows McCain is dead in this race - and that Karl Rove and the Bush family are already lining up behind Tompson. It won't take King long to follow...
It may take Al Gore's celebrity power to trump the other candidate from Tennessee in '08. I know, I hate to see an all Tennessee race too - considering what I learned about that state's politics while living in Knoxville for four years.
But that's what it still looks like from Locust Forkland, where the river runs cold and true, the great blue herons dance like elvis and the people like to shoot the breeze (and they are usually right).
We've been asked more than once in recent days to prognosticate about the future of newspapers, books and other "dead tree" technology, so we try to keep up with the latest developments.
We ran across this interview with Bob Stein, the director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, by David Cohn of NewsAssignment.Net.
To summarize, the Institute for the Future of the Book experiments in new forms of intellectual discourse as it shifts from the printed page to the networked book. The Institute works on several concurrent projects and blogs about them on the Institute’s web site, Cohn writes. Work done by the Institute centers on enlarging the boundaries of books so that they can better include conversations.
"In what ways can books include margin notes by multiple readers of the book?" he asks.
Since he works in a public library, he asked Stein about what future libraries are going to look like.
Stein said that while it’s difficult to predict what libraries are going to look like, chances are good that physical libraries will take on more of a social function - that they’ll become more of a meeting place. Librarians will always be people who “know the terrain” and help guide community members through the terrain.
Read the full interview here: The Future of the Book.
We've heard enough about Imus
and Anna Nicole Smith,
and wonder why the news shifts
from war to pater-ni-ty...
We could write about it, yes
but maybe not, it's best...
Better to sit on the porch,
and listen to the birds sing,
listen to the birds...
Cause I'm a - procrastination man,
procrastination man...
I'll be procrastinatin' all night long...
That's the first verse in a new song I'm workin' on, in case you were wondering why the journaling slowed down a bit. Just a temporary shift of mediums.
As you can see from the calendar below, there are some interesting events worth covering this week and next.
We'll be back on the blog trail pretty soon. We hear there's a fallout going on on the Gulf Coast, as in migratory warblers landing on their way north from the Yucatan. So there may be photo ops coming up soon during the last part of April and early May.
You'll have to wait for the blues jam news to hear more about the Procrastination Man and other songs in the works, including Ain't No Man Up In The Sky, The Bush Years, Manhattan Blues and No Love For Katrina.
Sigh, back to the porch for the sunset...
March came in like a lion today with a tornado watch across the entire state. Let's hope it goes out like a lamb.
Forecasters issued a tornado watch across Alabama on Thursday and said the highest potential for severe weather and tornadoes would begin as early as noon in west Alabama and last as late as 8 p.m. in east Alabama. They warned the storms could continue into Friday morning and have the potential to produce one-inch sized hail.
We may have to shut down the computers and unplug the cable modem this afternoon to prevent lightening from striking our blogging equipment, so watch for updates as the weather allows.
Here's the wire story on school closings: Alabama Schools Close Early Due to Severe Weather Threat
According to the Weather Underground, the low tonight around here will be at least 21 degrees Fahrenheit. Considering we are near Pinson Valley, one of the coldest spots in the state, it will most likely make it into the teens - not a good thing for the birds on the night before the Great Backyard BirdCount is to start.
If I didn't know better, I would think we were in a period of global cooling, not global warming. But the modeling data on global warming, which has been denied by corporate Republicans for years, has shown that global warming will actually mean a general cooling trend for the Southeast, in part due to excessive sulfates in the air, according to the Center for Educational Technologies and other sources.
Meanwhile, in my continuting beef with computer programmers on what makes for a well designed Web page, I spent most of the day today using this html/xhtml/css code Validator, which checks Websites according to the changing standards of design.
If you have a Website, go there and type in your Web address (url) and see how you rate. See if you get as mad as I did.
The problem is, it is still apparent to me that computer programmers who are writing all this code are not going to school for design or consulting people who know about design and how readers tend to view information.
For one great source to begin understanding this, go to the Poynter Institute's Eyetrack III link and check it out.
Meanwhile back on the House floor, the debate on the resolution to oppose Bush's Iraq troop surge continues. No word on whether the vote will take place on Friday, since a holiday recess is scheduled for this weekend. Monday Feb. 19 is President's Day.
Out here in progressive, liberalland, maybe we should come up with a special event for Monday called "Bash President Bush Day."
Oh, wait. Every day around here is Bash Bush Day : )
Nevermind...
Comment at will. Every day is open thread day here at The Fork, unlike a lot of other blogs, which only allow open threads on any general topic on a periodic basis.
We are sorry if some of you have trouble making comments in the Moveable Type software interface. Larry Owen over at HackOfAllTrades.Com is working on a a better bare bones blog type content management system. Unfortunately, it ain't ready yet.
So to heck with it. It's Yuengling Time...
Here's a question for you. Is there a such thing as a better Internet Service Provider? Is one corporate company any better than the other these days?
I've been thinking Charter was better, based on my experience with their customer service and signal strength with the 5 meg high speed Internet service. But today marked the third time in three weeks I've been down for hours at a time for a day or two.
At least Charter puts a notice on thier phone message when they have an outage. Can you say that for the "new" BellSouth AT&T? Comcast? Cox? Verizon?
Speak up! And watch for updates when the life stream flows strong again...
Never fear, y'all. There's a big story and a column in the works.
For a hint, pick up E.O. Wison's new book, Creation: An Appeal To Save Life on Earth. Picked it up at the library today. Now going through it with a pencil.
Just waiting on the Baptist preacher to get back to me with his response to my questions for the story. Already interviewed James Spann and Wilson by e-mail.
And, well, you saw all the global warming stories last week. If you missed them, many are still up on the news page under the Telescope.
Also, we've been busy finishing up the Erwin76.Net Website, in case you are interested...
This is a sad day in the history of the World Wide Web. I guess it is inevitable that we reach this day, roughly 10 years since the Web became accessible to the average user on a personal computer.
Just as the PR hacks have now for the most part taken over the corporate press in America, now the programmer hacks have taken over the Web - over programming everything to the point where average users with older computers, operating systems and browsers - and dog forbid, even dialup connections - will not be able to take advantage of the benefits of a FREE free press online.
Do you really expect the average computer user out there to buy a new computer and upgrade the damn browser every year just because the people with money in New York and Washington and LA and Seattle seem to?
I thought the new standard in programming was to make things "backwards compatible?"
The new blog ad interface is obviously not backwards compatible. I have real work to do today - that is journalism and photojournalism - and do not have time to completely reprogram the new blog ad strip and remake the house ads for The Locust Fork News and Journal and The Southerner Journal.
I don't know whether to be just sad or really pissed off. Maybe the goddamn programmers can figure it out.
I've got a country and a world to save from the radical Republican fascists. When y'all want to join the revolution and help me do it, please get in touch.
--
Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher
The Locust World News
The Locust Fork Journal
The Southerner Journal
The LocustFork.Net site is now moved, finally and successfully, to Homewood, Alabama - and out of the most corrupt town I've ever lived in, including New Orleans. Knoxville, Tennessee, home of the orange-clad Volunteers.
Hit the site and see how it works for you. There may be a glitch or two yet to work out in the morning, and if too many people hit it at once, it may be a tad slower than the old server. There may be a picture or two that needs to be re-uploaded, but other than that, the change went fast and smooth - except for that part when Xxpanion.Net put their Smoky Mt. Mall in place of our domain name. A form of domain name identity theft? Surely unethical. Should be illegal, if it's not already. We'll see.
Guess I'll have to write a new policy about not allowing unscrupulous network administrators - mere programmers - to rip us off in the future.
All in all, the site should work better and smoother overall - and hopefully no more spam and hacking problems from Karl Rove's buddies...or Victor Ashe's.
Matter of fact, considering the lead story today, Rove is now headed for court for sure, along with his VeepHead friend Dick Cheney (see below)...
So, we're now housed proudly in Homewood, Alabama, with all new wiring, thanks to HackOfAllTrades.Com.
Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher
Locust Fork Publishing
We are now back online as of about 12:58 p.m. Wednesday after our high speed Internet service at Charter.Net and our blog cgi bin server were sabotaged Friday night, not long after we led the news with this story (which was online on Friday before making the papers on Saturday) - now in the news since Monday as Bush and Cheney both went on the campaign trail to bash the press for telling the public what a lot of us have already known for some time.
Financial Searches Raises Privacy Fears
For most Americans, the confidentiality of their bank accounts and other financial holdings is a right to be cherished. The idea that government agents might be secretly scrutinizing the records of individuals arouses discomfort in people who view their wealth, income and other financial information as nobody's business but their own. So questions of privacy arose yesterday after revelations that the Bush administration has been tracking clues about terrorists by searching the records of a Belgium-based banking consortium that handles millions of financial transactions daily across national borders.
An investigation is underway to find out how our service was sabotaged and by whom. Check back and hit refresh for updates.
by Glynn Wilson
It is so hot today I wish I was a wood duck and could just dunk my head in the cool water and eat a raw fish.
Alas, I am just a mere mortal human being and will just have to make do by cranking up the air conditioning and eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits with local honey and a couple of slices of cantaloupe. That's summer in Alabama for you.
Sometimes it is just a chore to wake up in the morning and crank up the computer to see some of the wild and crazy comments some people like to spew in e-mail.
There is much beauty in the world, as the movie line goes. But there is also widespread ignorance.
As a journalist and now a blogger (hey, I didn't invent the medium, just figured out one way to use it), it seems to be my fate to battle the ignorance. It is not necessarily a kick to do it sometimes. But it is the only way I can figure out how to try changing the world and the country back into something we can all live with.
So sorry to my long-time readers in Washington, New York, New Orleans and Portland, Oregon. This is another one of those days when it becomes necessary to educate some Alabama dumbasses.
The lesson for today is about e-mail privacy.
First of all, there is no such thing as e-mail privacy. I remember being mad as hell when I found that out for myself. I wish there were such a thing, but it disappeared about six years ago.
The day I learned that lesson for myself it was late May, 2000, and I had picked up my last paycheck from teaching at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. There was a printed notice included with the check that declared once and for all that all e-mails with the suffix "utk.edu" would henceforth be considered a "public record."
You see, the Tennessee Legislature had actually passed a law making all e-mail of state institutions a public record, in part in response to a sex scandal involving a certain member of the UT football team who was being sued for sexual harassment by a trainer. The president of the university was also ensconced in a sex scandal of his own.
The football player went on to play in the NFL after settling the suit. The president, well, he didn't fare so well. He resigned in disgrace and was never heard from again.
E-mail messages played a role in both of those cases, and e-mail messages that the parties thought were private, like snail mail, ended up in the full glare of the courts and the press. It was a bad precedent and I wish it had never happened. But it did.
The second time I learned that lesson I was teaching at Loyola University New Orleans. Without going into all the details, let's just say a certain e-mail message to a select group of faculty members designed to try and stem the tide in a campus media crisis was not kept confidential and passed around all over campus. The result was not pretty, but it proved once again that there is no such thing as a "private" or "confidential" e-mail.
The third time I learned that lesson I was covering the trial of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy for the New York Times. An e-mail message complaining about the Bush Justice Department strayed into the wrong hands, and a certain editor overreacted, thinking the e-mail was a blog post for all the world to see.
Don't take my word for it. Check out this blog discussion about it in a post that involves the prominent blogger Atrios and another incident at the New York Times.
Live it, learn it, love it: You have no expectation of privacy in e-mail. None. Ever. Presume that you do have an expectation of privacy, and you are going to be sorely disappointed (and, as Mr. Schwenk has discovered, possibly humiliated).
Reminder: There is No Such Thing as Private E-Mail
The next part of this message has to do with the Bush administration. As has been reported in the mainstream press and the blogosphere, the Bush NSA is collecting all the private e-mails, phone calls and Web browsing patterns of every American in the overly broad effort to stop "terrorism." This is especially true of any group with a leftist affiliation and opposes Bush's policies, including peace groups and environmental groups.
You can read all about it in our archive on Domestic Surveillance.
The final lesson is from the textbooks used in journalism schools. When you are talking to a journalist, EVERYTHING is on the record unless explicitly taken "off the record" BEFORE the conversation takes place.
And that, my friends, includes e-mail and it includes comments on listservs.
Perhaps if there were a few more liberal Democrats in Congress and the White House we could change these rules, although I doubt it.
Sorry to end with a cliche. But the fact is, the cat is out of the bag. There is no presumption of privacy in e-mail.
Oh, and another blog policy note. Just like any editor at any newspaper who handles the letter to the editor columns, we reserve the right to edit comments for grammar, style, context, relevance, taste and anything else we can think of. As the saying goes, freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. We own this one.
You can change the rules when God makes you King. Until then, get over it.
Blog on. It's time for breakfast. I can smell the biscuits cooking now . . .
Editor and publisher Glynn Wilson's column will be delayed a bit this week, since the LocustFork.Net News and Blog staff is heading up to the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center for a last chance hike and photo op before the summer heat sets in. We will have a weekly column by Sunday night or Monday and more to say about the Alabama primary elections taking place on Tuesday. There is much at stake...
Editor's Note: We apologize to readers if you experience any difficulty today in viewing our Web site or Weblog. We are in the process of moving the site from a computer server in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Homewood, Alabama.
Wtih any luck, the process will go seamlessly and you will not experience any diffulty accessing the site. But then you never know in Webland. The site could be down for a short period of time. Please bear with us if you have a problem and check back a little bit later. Thanks.
So you are OK with the ideals of democracy floating down the drain like the slime in your plumbing? Hey, we could lay down and die and give up too. But we won't...Remember the slogan "die trying?"
You have nothing to say. You are afraid to protest. You live vicariously. And even as Rome burns, you cannot get out of your chair to try and put out the fire, even the part that is burning right over your head?
Talk about pathetic...
As a reader e-mailed this morning, but just couldn't figure out how to post a comment - even without having to submit a name and e-mail address:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
The Problem With Liberals
Both the House and Senate commerce committees are promoting new rules governing the manner by which most Americans receive the Web. What Americans don't realilze, and the media is not covering, should be protested as vigoursly as President George W. Bush and his policies.
If these changes are approved - and they appear to be on the fast track - the Web will change before your eyes to favor the large corporations and screw the average user.
For a more complete explanation, read the Baltimore Sun column, written by Michael Socolow, an assistant professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine.
The kicker?
"By the time the telecoms start changing what you see on your screen, it will be too late to complain."
SPAMMERS: We are not interested in playing poker online, buying cheap drugs online, or Internet porn...You will not get a single hit from spamming this site, because your links are being deleted as fast as they appear.
SEARCH ENGINES: We do not allow spam to remain on this site for poker, drugs, porn or anything else. If your spiders find the word fuck, it is because I said something like "fuck George W. Bush" in a blog column.
Why do these assholes have to screw up the online experience for everybody? Would someone please catch the spammers and put them in jail and take away their computers?
Maybe that would be a good job for "Brownie" now that he is no longer with FEMA. Make him chase the spammers for the rest of his life.
On second thought, bad idea. It would just give Bush another reason to congratulate him on a "great job," even though he was doing nothing...
GW
NOW HEAR THIS!
We are going to try an experiment and allow open comments from anyone. We may have to shut it down again if we are overloaded with spam. But as of a few minutes ago, you do not have to provide even a name or e-mail address to post a comment.
It would help if you had some knowledge of how to use a Web browser and a computer. We've received a number of e-mails of late from folks who seem to have trouble with the Type Key sign in. After a bit of experimentation, we believe it was because users had their Cookies turned off in their browser "preferences."
We understand why people do not want to accept cookies, with the worries about bugs, spies and identity thieves and all. But we learned a long time ago that you can quickly "allow" cookies briefly to get to sites that require them. Sites you are choosing to go to.
Accept just the cookie that lets you in there, and then turn them back off. Once you have that cookie, such as the Newhouse-Advent-Birmingham News-al.com cookie, you can read the articles in the newspaper online for free - at least for seven days until they roll into the paid archives. The News, the Huntsville Times and Mobile "Press" Register (owned by the same company) require a birth date, gender and zip code.
It's just a bit of marketing data so they can make money by selling advertising on the site. It takes money to produce journalism. We suspect that's what they are trying to do over there, if they don't always come through...
So, now you can comment away on this site - as anonymously as in any AOL chat room. Does anybody actually do that any more? Chat on AOL? It's so 1994.
Be advised, we aren't enamored of anonymity. Journalism ethics requires that we put our names on our work and stand by it. But with the Bush NSA domestic spying program out there, we understand why some people are afraid. We just can't live in fear. Bring 'em on....
Also be advised that we still reserve the right to edit for grammar, style and delete offensive comments. That does not necessarily mean profanity. Hell, we let one slip every now and then. Anybody who is offended by that should just get off the computer and go watch "Little House on the Prairie" anyway.
We have also turned on the Trackback function to make it easy for other bloggers to link to us. That will result in some blog spam, but we'll deal with deleting it on a weekly basis.
On another blog education note, see the Time link after Posted by ... ? That's also what we in blogland call a "permalink," or permanent link - in case you want to e-mail a specific post to someone on your e-mail list.
We would rather you send a link rather than the full text of a post. That's one reason we do not provide an "e-mail this article" function. There's no reason to provide a print option. This site is entirely printable as it is. Just hit the Print icon or word "print" in your Web browser window.
So go ahead. Hit the "comments" link. Find the empty white box and type away...
While people say national television is the most trusted news source, ahead of newspapers and public radio, the Internet is gaining ground, especially among the young, according to a major worldwide survey of trust in the media.
Read the full Reuters story here.
'It may just be the Farenheit 9/11 of rock'
 | | Neil Young: 'Peace' |
Neil Young wants to keep on rockin' the free world.
His new record, Living With War, which should be released on the Internet next week, makes very clear that if the Bush regime is allowed to continue, there may not be a free world to rock for much longer.
At 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 21, 2006, Reprise Records’ Dan Rose ushered a small cadre of reviewers and bloggers into a Reprise's Burbank headquarters for an exclusive listen to Young’s new CD.
"This album rocks," Guest Blogger Jim Cirile said. "It's post '80s electric Neil Young at his grunge best, and of the 10 cuts on Living With War, the first eight are mostly uptempo rockers.
"In fact, this may be the 60-year-old Young’s most crossover-worthy album yet, since many of the songs should appeal to fans of bands as diverse as Green Day and Pearl Jam and will likely be embraced on campuses across America.
"But there's one other tiny thing that makes this record stand out: it is one motherfucker of a protest album. In fact, Living With War may just be the Fahrenheit 9/11 of rock…"
For the full review check it out at BradBlog.Com.
After accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from big telecom firms, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is sponsoring a bill to hand over the Internet to these same companies. And he's not alone, according to Robert W. McChesney of FreePress.Net.
"Congress is about to sell out the Internet by letting big phone and cable companies set up toll booths along the information superhighway," he says.
Companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are spending tens of millions in Washington to kill "network neutrality" - a principle that keeps the Internet open to all.
A bill moving quickly through Congress would let these companies become Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow - and which won't load at all - based on who pays them more. The rest of us will be detoured to the "slow lane," clicking furiously and waiting for our favorite sites to download.
Our elected representatives are trading favors for campaign donations from phone and cable companies. They're being wooed by people like AT&T's CEO, who says "the Internet can't be free" and wants to decide what you do, where you go and what you watch online.
The best ideas never come from those with the deepest pockets. If the phone and cable companies get their way, the free and open Internet could soon be fenced in by large corporations. If Congress turns the Internet over to giants like AT&T, everyone who uses the Internet will suffer:
* Google users - Another search engine could pay AT&T to guarantee that it opens faster than Google on your computer.
* iPod listeners - Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that paid for the privilege.
* Work-at-home parents - Connecting to your office could take longer if you don't purchase your carrier's preferred applications. Sending family photos and videos could slow to a crawl.
* Retirees - Web pages you always use for online banking, access to health care information, planning a trip or communicating with friends and family could fall victim to Verizon's pay-for-speed schemes.
* Bloggers - Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips - silencing citizen journalists and amplifying the mainstream media.
* Online activists - Political organizing could be slowed by the handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay a fee to join the "fast lane."
* Small businesses - When AT&T favors their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, and Internet phone calls.
* Innovators with the "next big idea" - Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web.
"We can't let Congress ruin the free and open Internet," McChesney says. "We must act now or lose the Internet as we know it."
Don't let Congress ruin the Internet. Tell Congress to save Net Neutrality now. Where does your representative stand? Act now to save the Internet. To learn how, visit SaveTheInternet.Com.
You know the blogs have made it big when the big old print press not only writes about a blogger, but puts them on page one.
Maryscott O'Connor of Sherman Oaks, California, made the front page of the Washington Post today for her mad, ranting blogging against President George W. Bush and company.
"She smokes a cigarette," the Post reporter writes as she contemplates her next blog post. "Should it be about Bush, whom she considers 'malevolent,' a 'sociopath' and 'the Antichrist'?
"She smokes another cigarette.
"Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as 'Satan,' or about Karl Rove, 'the devil'? Should it be about the 'evil' Republican Party, or the 'weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving' Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says 'I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned'?
Her blog is called "My Left Wing: A Godless Liberal Translation" and you can find it online at: MyLeftWing.Com
Here's the Washington Post story:
Liberal Blogger Finds an Outlet and a Community
Hey, I'm just as mad at Bush. I'm even building a memorial urinal in my basement and plan to make piss art out of his face on photo paper. The wall is built. Now we are just looking for the right urinal. We'll keep you posted and run photos when it's done.
Some folks in New York don't like the idea, but hey, they are threatening to pay us big bucks to blog for them anyway. Just wait. We'll make the front page of the New York Times yet...
Oh, and one more thing. O'Connor's readers are not afraid of Bush's NSA spying program and they are computer savvy enough to figure out how to post their comments on a blog - not just in an e-mail reply.
But I guess California people are just more with it than people in the South, and less afraid of their own shadows...
The weather casters have been predicting severe weather all day long. So far nothing.
But it may finally show up soon, so we may shut down the computer and the modem before the first tornadoes of the season hit.
They say 10 people died in Tennessee and they had baseball-sized hail.
Tornadoes Sweep Through Tennessee, Kill 10
We say that's 10 less orange wearing UT volunteers on a given fall Saturday - unless they were registered Democrats. Then it's a real tragedy.
As for the latest anonymous e-mail from some Columbia University journalism student who thinks he knows something about blogging or journalism, let's just say you wouldn't necessarily want to be driving the car from the airport when I show up for a speaking engagement at your august institution.
But if your boss wants to pay real money for some cutting edge blog journalism, tell Fellow Traveler to get in touch. Things may not be as crazy as they seem.
Locust Fork is sort of like Lake Woebegone. It is a fictional place to get by in the American South during the Bush years - nothing more, nothing less.
There's always the opportunity to do something different and new - with a certain budget of course. You can't fry bacon on the fire if you have no bacon, if you catch my drift. Then again you probably don't eat bacon, only tofu.
The birds are happy though. We had a pair of white-throated sparrows through here today. Unfortunately, the squirrels chased them off before we had a chance to boot up the Nikon.
Really, no shit, give me a call. You have no idea what you are missing, not to mention depriving the world of. One of the reasons I sometimes link to past work is to show how the press can make a difference in a democracy - if only they had the balls to stand up to guys like Bush.
Sorry for the distraction to our regular readers for what I am about to say, although the truth is, even they may find this amusing.
To Mr. or Ms. anonymous in New York, Washington, London, or wherever the fuck you are, I will be on the golf course today and I suggest you call my cell phone number and talk to me. The number is listed on just about every page on this Web site, so I'm sure, since you are so damn smart, that you can find it...
If I do not hear from you in person and if you do not identify yourself immediately, I am going to find out who you are and track you down and stomp your ass and probably sue you too ... you Ivy League pissant(s).
I suspect in a real, major journalism situation, you couldn't carry my water (read you pathetic waterboy, in case you've never played any real sport, like football).
Now, I'm heading to the links. I expect to hear from you.
You may not approve of how I choose to spend my time surviving "The Bush Years," but that is just tough shit. If you really have a need for someone with all my many talents, as I said before, "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"
Otherwise, leave me the hell alone...or you will pay the consequences.
My anonymous e-mail friends in New York were back in my inbox tonight. There are some things I could explain to them if they would get in touch with me in a transparent forum. Otherwise, anonymous e-mail is for cowards.
Even the metacolo Anonymizing Remailer Administrator says that anonymous e-mail is "a free service that allows individuals including crime victims, domestic violence victims, persons in recovery, and others, such as those living under oppressive regimes, to communicate confidentially in a manner that ensures their privacy under even the most adverse conditions."
Now I realize that the Bush administration is an oppressive regime, as is the management at the Bill Keller New York Times. But this is ridiculous.
A blog is a new form of "New Journalism" and as far as I'm concerned, it is my printing press and I can do with it what I want. If the New York Times wants to hire me full time and give me a column on the editorial page, the entire LocustFork.Net and Southerner.Net sites can be deleted in a matter of seconds - the push of a button.
Short of that, I am just passing on the news I keep up with to a growing audience of people who are looking for independent voices and takes on the news - not just top down from New York and Washington slants on the news. It seems to be attracting an audience, in spite of the fact that I do not have the New York Times national desk news budget or the famous New York Times copy desk looking over my shoulder.
Sometimes I take on full-blown national news stories - when time, will and resources allow. At other times, I write columns. Like all news organizations, I include international, national and sometimes local news items, most of the time linking to the reporting of other news organizations such as the Associates Press and Reuters. And yes, I do run press releases - not from the corporate giants of the world but from non-profit consumer groups I happen to keep up with because of my long time journalistic and academic interests in issues such as science and the environment.
Have you read a local newspaper lately? Have you checked how much of the local newspaper is staff written as opposed to wire copy and cheap, syndicated columns?
After all, as I've said now at least 100 times, I'm just trying to wake up everyday with my dignity intact and try to do a little something to save the world, and/or to savor life. Like Big and Rich sing, "I'm just trying to have some fun."
As I think Grover Cleveland was quoted recently as saying either on NPR or C-SPAN: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
Oh, and if you can't find something on this site or your computer, don't blame me. Blame Bill Gates...or Google...or Moveable Type.
Notice the blog part of this site has an "Alphabetical Archives " by subject and is automatically archived by date. For all the Hurricane Katrina Aftermath coverage, just find that down the left hand side of this page. Here's the link:
Hurricane Katrina Aftermath: Rebuilding New Orleans
All of my "columns" are saved as Under The Microscope or Connecting the Dots, links I provide on the top left side of this page, duh...
As for my renewed interest in nature photography, especially birds, we are working with new equipment and getting better every day...and I do have training, at the "U-ni-ver-si-tee of Ally-bami journalism" as one of you called it. Sorry it's not the English department at Y-A-L-EE!
Have you heard about the tragedy of the blogs? Just a year ago, bloggers were the talk of the planet - or at least the planet where journalists live, according to William Powers of the National Journal.
In a world of way-too-much media, no one medium or outlet is ever going to get a firm grip on our attention, no matter how much mindless buzz is lavished on it. You couldn't open a newspaper or surf the tube without running into a trend story about this new breed of online writer.
Bloggers had taken down Trent Lott and Dan Rather. Merriam-Webster named "blog" the "No. 1 word of the year" for 2004, while ABC News crowned bloggers the "people of the year." In the media's telling, bloggers were the Gutenbergs of our time, and the Beatles.
That is, until a few weeks ago, when they started looking more like Bode Miller - overhyped and underperforming. In a new Gallup Poll, only 9 percent of U.S. Internet users said they frequently read blogs. Worse, blogs are flatlining. "It seems the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative last year," Gallup said.
Meanwhile, New York magazine reports that blogging is no longer an everyman's paradise. The suits - corporate and PR types-- are muscling into the blogosphere, and there are now A-list bloggers, envious B-listers, and countless unread C-listers. In a piece called "Twilight of the Blogs," Slate's Daniel Gross suggested that, even as a business, blogging may be in a kind of bubble.
The Chicago Tribune pounced on the blog bust in an editorial dripping with old-media schadenfreude: "You're forgiven if you cling to the conventional wisdom that blogging, like half-pipe snowboarding, enjoys an unrelievedly rich future. Forgiven, but maybe behind the curve."
The Tribune was giddy because blogs find themselves in the place where newspapers have been for some time: not half as popular as they'd like to be. Unfortunately for both papers and blogs, this was inevitable. In a world of way-too-much media, no one medium or outlet is ever going to get a firm grip on our attention, no matter how much mindless buzz is lavished on it.
Just as it makes perfect sense that people are fleeing newspapers - there so many other options - it also makes sense that they aren't exactly flocking to blogs. There are millions of blogs now. Who has time for that? The blog explosion of the last few years has made it much harder for any new blog to draw an audience and succeed. It's just math.
In my browser's Favorites list, I have a folder called "Good Blogs." It has fewer than two dozen links, to blogs I truly enjoy and visit often. I keep the list short on purpose. I meet new blogs all the time, through word of mouth and serendipity, and we have some nice moments together. But I don't usually crave a second date. Life is too short.
Evidently, others feel the same way. So blogs are not about to conquer the world.
But does that mean they have failed, as the new headlines suggest? Hardly.
In fact, I think the end of hype-fueled blog mania might be the best thing that could happen to blogs, because it had created such absurd expectations.
Media serve three major functions: 1) convenience (organization of news and information in user-friendly formats); 2) truth-telling (digging up important stories and holding powerful people accountable); and 3) pleasure (the sheer fun of reading, listening, or watching).
Newspapers thrived for as long as they did because they were good at all three. And they've declined as they've lost their competitive edge in these same areas, especially convenience and pleasure.
Though blogs are young, they've already proven adept at all three functions. Many are convenient harvesters and organizers. Some are fearless truth-tellers. And the best are a total pleasure to follow. If they're doing all this now, imagine what they'll be like in 10 years.
The other thing blogs have going for them is that most bloggers are not in it for money - they do it for love. The mainstream outlets would now have us believe that this is a bit pathetic. Just look at those dreadful audience numbers, the scanty profits. I say 20 million or so bloggers know otherwise. Once they were up, and now they're down. It's the classic arc of an establishment-media fad. It's weird that so many bloggers bought into it, given their feelings about the establishment. Never mind: They'll be back .
Those Busted Blogs
Just as media critics often confuse themselves and their audience by lumping all "the media" together into one monolithic category, this is now true of the blogs. The average individual diary blogger will never take over the job of the press or even make money at blogging.
But we maintain there is still a lot of potential for a group of journalist-bloggers to challenge the dominance of the corporate press by taking on issues in a fresh and courageous fashion. Readers are not looking for more columns about people's cats. You can find enough of that fluff in newspaper community feature columnists.
But Web sites like this one at LocustFork.Net, which combines easy and fast access to breaking news and features with original news, art and commentary, can draw an audience and make money.
If the mainstream corporate press continues to bash the new technology to their own detriment, while sticking with their 20 percent profit business model by producing less original news, the blogs will continue to gain readers as they decline.
You would think the last thing anyone would want to do right now would be to further inflame the radical religious idiots who are rioting because a newspaper ran a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a lit stick of dynamite on his head.
But of course the cartoon itself is meant to be like a stick of dynamite, only without the fuse. It was designed to perhaps get Muslims to think about the image they now have around the world because some of them seem to follow crazies like Osama bin Laden.
Any respectable religious/political protest that has any chance of success should be non-violent, as we learned from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Somewhere in the Kuran and the Bible I believe there is something about violence begetting violence.
But the conservative T-shirt maker MetroSpy could not resist making up a new shirt using the controversial cartoon, which first ran in and Egyptian newspaper then in a Danish paper, then in Europe and the United States.
Islamic tradition forbids a graphic depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, experts say, although it has been reported widely that even in the Muslim world you can buy posters and other images of him all over the place.
Nate Thomas, product manager for MetroSpy, said they decided to sell the shirts to make a statement and not let the "terrorists" win.
"We cannot encourage this uncivilized behavior by caving in to their wishes," he said.
On their website, http://www.shopmetrospy.com/, MetroSpy denounces the tactics of Islamic extremists and encourages its customers to stand up against terrorism.
“We wanted a simple way to exercise our freedom of speech and to stand up to the terrorists," Thomas said. The T-shirt has become their best selling item of the year, he said, with more than 120 orders the first day it became available.
Critics of the Mohammed t-shirts say this is a perfect example of why Americans are hated around the world. Finding humor in the desecration of another's religious symbol, even if you disagree, is just plain wrong, they say.
We say it's not the smartest thing we've ever seen anyone do in the name of fighting terrorism, since it seems destined to cause more of it. We suspect it's all about the money. The question is, why didn't we think of it first?
On the other hand, somehow in all of this we should start to get the picture that mixing religion and politics is not such a good idea. It leads to war, which leads to destroyed countries, economies and death - not to mention heartburn.
Can't we just all get along, for Christ's sake? Or should we say for Mohammed's sake?
To heck with that, how about for our sake?
We noticed Peter Gabriel sang John Lennon's song "Imagine" as part of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games opening ceremony. Imagine indeed: No heaven. No hell. No war. No greed. No hunger. Just all the people living life in peace. Imagine that.
The whole world is mesmerized by this big campaign against Denmark because of a few cartoons containing images of Mohamed. But what most people do not know is that an Egyptian newspaper Al Fagr published the Danish cartoons from Jyllands-Posten back in October 2005, according to the Freedom For Egyptians blog.
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Why after five months the feelings of the Egyptians and Muslims are suddenly inflamed? The Egyptian paper critcized the bad taste of the cartoons but it did not incite hatred protests, so what is happening now?
It is important to reveal that the timing of this outrage is irrelevant. It would have been better that this holy war against Denmark be launched during the holy month of Ramadan as many Muslims believe that Jihad during Ramadan would have been more worthy.
This irrelevant outrage timing is but a sign that this violent response to the cartoons is politically-motivated by Muslim extremists in Europe and the so-called secular governments of the Middle East. I want also to mention that despite the fact that all editors who tried to reprint the cartoons in the Middle East nowadays were arrested, the Egyptian editors went unharmed.
Not a single squeak of outrage was present. Al Fagr isn't a small newspaper either: it has respectable circulation in Egypt, since it's helmed by known Journalist Adel Hamoudah.
More info and the scanned newspaper is available at the Egyptian Sand Monkey blog.
All we have to say is, see what kind of mess we make by mixing religion and politics? Can we please stop the jihad?
 | | Stormie Janzen |
An aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions agreed Friday to shut down her Web diary, which included a provocative photo of her bare midriff in unzipped jeans, after the office heard about it, according to an Alabama newspaper.
"The Montgomery Advertiser on Thursday received an e-mail about Janzen's blog on MySpace.com, a popular site that allows users to post details about their lives and to connect with friends. By Friday afternoon," the paper reported, "the photo was taken down and entry to parts of Janzen's site were restricted to 'blog owner friends only.'
Janzen, 34, who describes herself as "single, straight and a Scorpio," did not appear to use the blog to comment on congressional business.
She entered observations on dating, hanging out with girlfriends, and one of her biggest turn-ons - men in button-fly jeans.
But the photo of Janzen's midriff in open jeans, with her hands curved on her lap and the waistband of her underwear showing, attracted a lot of attention and comments from visitors.
Janzen said on the site she graduated from the University of South Alabama in Mobile in 1994.
She is a scheduler, arranging meetings between the senator and constituents, and was paid $64,139 between Oct. 1, 2004, and Sept. 30, 2005, according to the secretary of the Senate.
According to the Advertiser, Janzen would not speak to a reporter, but the blog indicated she was logged onto the site Friday morning during Senate business hours.
Michael Brumas, a spokesman for Sessions, R-Mobile, would not comment on whether Janzen was using an office computer or blogging on government time. The Senate conduct handbook states office computers should be for official business, but there are exceptions for personal use.
Brumas said Sessions' chief of staff, Rick Dearborn, was aware of the blog and was addressing the matter.
"My understanding is she will close it down," he said.
Full Montgomery Advertiser story
You think she wants to be famous? Doesn't everybody these days? Present company excluded, of course.
"Thanks largely to the advent of the Internet blogs," according to Jon Friedman's column in MarketWatch, "snarky" commentaries are sweeping the craft of journalism.
"If something is funny, edgy, topical and opinionated - without resorting merely to being caustic or sophomoric - it could probably be called snarky," he writes.
But he is wrong. Snarky journalism has been around for awhile, in New York magazines like Details, in free alternative weekly newspapers even in Birmingham, Alabama, and even Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times could be called snarky, as well as a certain columnist for the Birmingham News, who will remain Gooberish.
A snarky style was not invented by Internet bloggers, although some engage in the practice, like Wonkette - listed under Celebrity Blogs to the right - who even recently got a book deal for being a snarky, urban babe in Washington, D.C. Of course she also moves in New York circles, an advantage not shared by us poor, Southern writers.
For the record, while The Locust Fork is certainly cutting edge and sometimes funny, it is certainly not "snarky" and never will be. You can't challenge a president's secret and illegal program of spying on Americans in a snarky tone. Nor can you be taken seriously by taking a snarky tone in challenging the religious idiocy of a certain would-be dicktater who wants to be governor.
Young, hip, Ivy League, want-a-be journalists in urban centers invented snarky journalism to be considered hip by the young readers who do not read "family" newspapers. It has morphed onto blogs on the Web because that is now the printing press of choice for the RSS-IPod generation.
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