life it ain’t real funky, ‘less it’s got that pop…
At the risk of sounding prudish, let me ask if I’m the first person to notice that the New York Times Web site is now running advertisements for erotica. So, I’m reading the big Rush Limbaugh profile at Pitfire Pizza and what do I see…
If you click through to Eden’s site you find listings for such enticing titles as Anal Massage For Lovers and Blow Him Away. Is this a new thing, or just something I’m picking up for the first time?
Loading ...Today my employer announced that we’re now publishing our newspaper on Amazon’s portable wireless reading device, the Kindle. I don’t have one, but if you do, and you want the LA Times on there, you can subscribe here. Big deal? Not big deal? Let me know.
Loading ...Evidence is mounting that my blog is considered too hot for a variety of Web filter programs. Another screenshot — this time submitted by a friend at an anonymous American newspaper — is displayed below.
Today our A1 features Rich Connell’s look at the effectiveness of all those automated red light cameras positioned around Los Angeles. Here’s the nut:
In Los Angeles, officials estimate that 80% of red light camera tickets go not to those running through intersections but to drivers making rolling right turns, a Times review has found.
…
One of the most powerful selling points for photo enforcement systems, which now monitor 175 intersections in Los Angeles County and hundreds more across the United States, has been the promise of reducing collisions caused by drivers barreling through red lights.
But it is the right-turn infraction — a frequently misunderstood and less pressing safety concern — that drives tickets and revenue in the nation’s second-biggest city and at least half a dozen others across the county.
Our web package includes some hot tape put together by Rich, an awesome interactive explainer by Raoul Ranoa, the now perfunctory Google Map, and my own little goofy idea: portable downloads for TomTom and Garmin GPS devices (check out the roadblock halfway down the main story).
Loading the points into your device will not only map them on your dashboard monitor — but you can also easily program your system to give you an audio warning as you approach upcoming lights. And in that same soothing computer voice that already tells you when to turn.
I’m not sure how interested readers will be in this sort of product, but it seemed like a fun experiment. And since Rich had put in a great effort collecting the data from LA’s many fragmented municipalities, it seemed like we had to look for some extra yard to go for.
The technical part is pretty easy. Both manufacturers have handy developer guides that — once the data is prepared — only take a couple hours to suss out. Here’s TomTom. Here’s Garmin.
Any thoughts on other newspapery data projects that might work for GPS? The most dangerous intersections? The location of famous landmarks around town?
So I’m browsing through Christopher Hitchens’ latest screed over at Slate tonight, and what do I bump into but an advertisment for the New York Times. Seems a bit funny, seeing as Slate is owned by the Washington Post Company. I’ve always thought of them as competitors with the NYT.
But maybe I’m wrong. What do you think? Seems a little weird to me.
Loading ...Box Office Mojo’s weekend numbers are registering Ben Stein’s creationist documentary Expelled above George Clooney’s screwball comedy Leatherheads (3.1 million vs. 3.0 million), despite Expelled showing on 37 percent as many screens. Granted, it’s Expelled’s opening week versus Leatherhead’s third, but it still seems like an eye-popper. It looks Stein is headed for territory previously inhabited only by Mr. Michael Moore, though there’s some skepticism about how big of a success it should be measured. (hat tip: Chris Mooney)
Loading ...UPDATE: The peanut gallery over at Mooney’s blog posed the question about whether the geographic distribution of Expelled showings might offer something of interest.
I didn’t have the time to do anything too sophisticated (no geocoding to lat/long or ZIP code level analysis), but I did have time to pull the latest listings from Expelled’s theater locator and run the following charts over at Many Eyes. (FWIW, I only found 1050 theaters in the Expelled search, but Box Office Mojo says it showed on 1052).
This first one is a map that totals up the number of showings by state.
And then a scatterplot that rates the number of showings in each state against its population. They’re 2006 resident population numbers I pulled from Census.
You can see where the line would probably show up if you ran the numbers on the scatter. What I immediately look for are any states well above or below the pack. It looks like New York has a pretty low number of showings per capita, as do a number of other “blue” states, but so does Pennsylvania, home to the recent Dover controversy over Intelligent Design. On the other end, it looks like North Carolina and Georgia were pretty highly saturated, relatively.
See anything?
The media circus found its latest entertainment Friday when word of Barack Obama’s allegedly controversial remarks shot across the blogosphere. Unlike previous presidential titillations, this one was set off by The Huffington Post. That alone seems somewhat remarkable, considering how the lefty HuffPost openly apes the practices of the usual outlet for this sort of news: the more rightly Drudge Report.
But, in keeping with the spirit of Dave Berry Barry, may he rest in peace, let’s not take this opportunity to reflect upon what the means for the state of the news media, or even the campaign of one Barack Obama. No, let’s use it to consider which related news headline contains the best potential band name.
Loading ...Sources:
The news out of the political circus yesterday was that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, had been booed during a speech honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination.
As Steve Benen and others have recorded, McCain has followed a serpentine path on the issue. And I’m not sure I can clearly reconcile their accounts of the candidate’s past actions with his current position.
MLK holiday angst is hardly a new story in American politics (Remember Public Enemy’s “By The Time I Get To Arizona”). What caught my imagination this weekend for the first time was the possibility that we might be one day playing out an identical drama, but in a different color.
Less than a week before the anniversary of King’s death, another notable date passed. March 31 is the birthday of union organizer and Hispanic-American hero Cesar Chavez. With Hispanic participation in the Democratic party vaulting, Sen. Barack Obama took the opportunity to make a point of supporting a national holiday, which dovetails with a fledgling resolution in the House of Representatives offering to make the same idea law. Meanwhile, an array of prominent union organizers have signed on to the lobbying effort.
If the Democratic leadership ever brings the measure to a vote, I wonder if a ‘Nay’ might one day come back to haunt a future presidential candidate, just as McCain’s 1983 vote haunted him yesterday. Voting against Chavez Day might not be so politically beneficial four or five election cycles from now if you’re running for president in an America where Hispanics are a larger, more affluent and more political active segment of the population.
While it was a new thought for me — living only blocks from Los Angeles’ Cesar Chavez Boulevard may be having an effect — the concept of Hispanic demographics as destiny certainly occured to Chavez himself. In the course of kicking around the web this afternoon, I found the following passage from a 1984 Chavez speech that offers a strong prediction. You can read and listen to it here.
I am told these days farm workers should be discouraged and pessimistic. The Republicans control the governor’s office and the White House. There is a conservative trend in the nation. Yet, we are filled with hope and encouragement. We have looked into the future and the future is ours. History and inevitability are on our side. The farm workers and their children and the Hispanics and their children are the future in California, and corporate growers are the past. Those politicians who ally themselves with the corporate growers and against farm workers and the Hispanics are in for a big surprise. They want to make their careers in politics; they want to hold power 20 and 30 years from now. But 20 and 30 years from now, in Modesto, in Salinas, in Fresno, in Bakersfield, in the Imperial Valley and in many of the great cities of California, those communities will be dominated by farm workers and not by growers, by the children and grandchildren of farm workers and not by the children and grandchildren of growers.
…
Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards, which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians will do the right thing for our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade, but it will come someday. And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament: “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed, and that fulfillment shall enrich us all. Thank you very much.
It’s a little eerie how closely it mirrors MLK’s famous last speech in Memphis, but with a stronger nod to the virtues of bare-knucked, union-style politics than King’s offer of divine revelation. What do you think of the comparison?
Considering all the hoopla, I can’t be the only one wondering what the hell is actually in a passport file.
According to the State Department’s official blog (yes, the State Department has an official blog), here’s what they keep:
Generally, after the State Department issues a passport, all personal documents are returned to the applicant – the only document kept in the Department’s passport file is the passport application. Passport files do not contain travel information, such as visa and entry stamps, from previous passports. Almost all passport files contain only a passport application form as completed by the applicant.
And, according to Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, here’s what the paper trail looks like.
When you send in your passport application, it might go to a State Department office around the country, it might go to a clerk of the court, it might go to a library or a post office. That information is — your application is assembled with others and transmitted via registered mail, via Federal Express — all of it is traceable — to one of our facilities, a facility such as the one that we work with the Department of the Treasury on in Newark, Delaware . And the information then is — the envelopes are opened, the checks are removed so that they can be deposited to the Treasury’s account, and then they are processed for onward transmission to one of the State Department’s facilities that actually print out the passport books in your name (Source).
If you review the passport application form, you’re not going to find much more than what’s printed on your driver’s license. At first blush, that hardly seems like the sort of thing that contains much to get excited about.
But, being good paranoids, we should be sure to note the weasel words in the State Department’s blog post. They are “generally” and “almost all,” which I can only take to mean that while most passport files may only contain the application form, some files contain other documents. What documents those are, it doesn’t say.
On this particularly alarmist segment of The Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the host and his guests seem to think there’s the potential for quite a lot more to be in there. (In a memorable bit of hype, Keith speculates that the file might be of “Watergatian” proportions). On the other hand, the reporting of Time’s Brian Bennett seems more in line with the State Department’s blog.
But hell if I know.
The good news is that we live in a free country, governed by laws, one of the best of which is the Freedom of Information Act (a.k.a FOIA). And, thereby, we all have the right to review government documents pertaining to ourselves.
So, getting to the bottom of this should only be a matter of paperwork and collective effort. Below is a form letter I’ve prepared using the State Department’s FOIA handbook as a guide. I’ve already filled in my own information and will, later today, mail it off as a formal request.
You should feel free to do the same. Just don’t expect a rapid response. The State Department annual report says the median response time on a typical request last year was 212 days. (Though, if you’re willing to pay a little more money, the State Department’s manual suggests you might get your documents quicker if you bypass FOIA law and make your document request with the Passport Services office.)
If you want to share what you get back, drop a comment when the time comes. I’ll be sure to do the same.
[Today's Date]
[Your Name]
[Your Street Address]
[Your City, State and Zipcode]Office of Information Programs and Services
A/ISS/IPS
Department of State, SA-2
Washington, DC 20522-8001
Re: Freedom of Information Act RequestDear Sir or Madame:
I am writing to request the release of personal records under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
I, [Your Name], born [Your Place of Birth] on [Your Date of Birth], request the release of any and all documents contained in my passport file. I believe the Department of State is likely to have maintained such records since I am a current passport holder who has traveled abroad.
I further request that the results of your search be forwarded to my current address, detailed above. If the expense required to perform this search is estimated to exceed $25 dollars, I expect notification from your office and the option to reformulate the request as stipulated in your agency’s official policy. If any information is withheld, I request to be notified of the amount of information withheld, the basis for its withholding and my options for appeal, as is my right.
I [declare, certify, verify, of state] under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United
States of America, that the foregoing is true and correct.
If you have any questions or concerns, I can be reached by telephone at [Your Phone Number].
Sincerely,
[Your Signature]
If you’re going to play along, you don’t have to send the exact same letter, but you should be sure to include that line about verifying your own identity under penalty of perjury. Otherwise you’ll either have to have the letter notarized or the government won’t take you on your word that this is a personal request. At least that’s what the manual says.
Pop quiz.
Name the controversial black pastor, once allied with a charismatic young presidential candidate, who called America the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” before decrying how, in a “madness” fed by the “immense profits of overseas investment,” the country “poisoned the international atmosphere” by falling “victim to … deadly Western arrogance” and propping up a foreign government that is “singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support?” He’s also noted concern about America worshipping “the God of Hate” at “the alter of retaliation.”
Maybe you’re thinking of Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor whose provocative sermons have recently caused problems for his highest profile congregant, presidential contender Barack Obama.
Well, that’s wrong. The answer is Martin Luther King Jr., who said all of those things in an April 1967 speech in Riverside, California. You can read and listen to it here.
Now you can start drawing distinctions between King’s form of dissent and the more highly publicized snippets of Wright’s technique. And that’s fine. I could make a list myself. But my point here is that King wasn’t always the meek and mild voice he’s often portrayed to be today. Though I think the way forward pointed to by King, and echoed again last week by Obama, is still well captured by the voice of Langston Hughes, who, grievanced as he was, envisioned the possibility of a more perfect union to come:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath– America will be!