Poltergeist:
Are we "haunted" by the ghost of Whitey Bulger'? The Washington Post seems to think so.
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January 29, 2005
Chicken and egg:
Home ownership and crime reduction go hand-in-hand, and so this trend can only be good.
Virtual ice:
Apparently nobody told these guys that the NHL season was cancelled. I guess you can't lock out imaginary players.
Political justice:
Former Boston Bar president Joan Lukey argues on the Globe op-ed page that the wise political choice for Supreme Court Chief would be Kennedy. By wise political choice, she means palatable to Democrats. Unfortunatly, the White House might not share that definition.
Yellow snow:
This is one for the odd news record books.
January 28, 2005
Who you give your thing to:
The Isley Brothers' 1969 It's Your Thing is today's desert island selection. You only have to listen to the rhythm guitar and the riff behind the chorus to appreciate that this is a classic.
And you can't beat those sixties era lyrics:
It's your thing, do what you wanna do.
I can't tell you, who to sock it to.
Ezra Pound would have been proud to have written that.
January 27, 2005
Quality video:
If you remember the poor quality of the first internet video trailers and clips, you'll be amazed at this Quicktime Mpeg 4 preview for Tim Burton's new movie.
Permanence:
Dan Gilmore makes a great case for open, free newspaper archives.
Heads up:
It's snowing this morning, still. And NECN is reporting the possibility of another major storm next Tuesday.
Politics for the masses:
Passive and apathetic no more: Russian leaders are concerned about the potential of public uprisings.
GS:
This looks like the end of civil service, or at least, the start of a long overdue retooling.
Bunkered Baghdad:
John Burns writes a gloomy assessment of the state of security in Baghdad, similar to the one written by William Langewiesche in the Atlantic. These are two guys whose take is usually right on the money.
Just a little bit:
Here's a lesson for those who may want to resist paying the proper respect to the Lt. Gov.
January 26, 2005
Battery pad:
This is a great idea, and although I've been hearing about it for a while, and despite recent reports like this, I'm not hopeful that it will ever be an actual product.
News from around the world:
And now for something completely different.
On film:
Kodak is a good example of a company that, faced with a disaster, found a way to adapt and prosper.
Coming clean:
The Globe finally takes a long hard look at the Metro racial story, recounting all the angles. I have only one small criticism with the last section: Many or most investigative stories involve sources with agendas, but rarely is that noted.
It's nice that the Globe is learning to become even-handed and comprehensive, but not surprising in this case, since it's their own cooperate interests that are being scrutinized.
January 25, 2005
Random shots:
Tonight's sunset behind St. Ann's in Dorchester.
A commuter train passes over Dudley Street near Upham's Corner this evening.
The full moon over Raynor Circle in Roxbury very early this morning.
January 24, 2005
Planned anarchy:
I'd missed this article on shared-space traffic plans. Interesting idea. Would it work around here? Maybe, in some places. But certainly not at Mass Ave and Westland after a Sox game or Symphony. And I wouldn't recommend trying that 'don't look first' crosswalk trick in Kenmore Square, no matter how few signs there were. (link via Hublog)
Change for it's sake:
William Safire has a longetivity stratgey: retire. Today's Times column is his last as the "twice-weekly vituperative right-wing scandalmonger" He's going to work for the Dana Center to write about developments and advances in brain science.
Global politics:
The Globe ombudsman reviews the paper's response to the Metro scandal and declares it appropriate. They played the story down because it was unclear if there was a story.
The slurs were of course disgusting and are rightly condemned. It's less easy to say they were the result of a racist company culture that the Times Co. should have known about. If there were cultural problems at Metro, it was not necessarily obvious.
If that's the standard that the Globe uses to put off investigating racial scandals in powerful places - lack of obviousness - than don't expect many such investigative stories from the paper. And by another measure cited by Chinlund, reader interest, we should expect that the Spotlight Team may have to hang up their hats.
January 23, 2005
Insta-link-lanche
Man, Instapundit has lots of readers. A modest link on a Sunday night is leading to hundreds of additional visits per hour to this site. If you're one of them, thanks for dropping by, and, y'all come again now, y'hear.
Ambient glow:
Check out this great shot of the Christian Science Mother Church at night in the snow (taken by Ol' Mr Boston.) And look at all those orbs!
Down by the sea:
I arrived at Brant Rock at high tide. Along the seawall the wind and snow were blasting the power lines.
I had to drive around the back way to Brant Rock center because the main road was closed due to downed wires.
As the tide was peaking, the ocean broke through the seawall flooding the neighborhood. The streets were flooding behind me as I went, not a good feeling.
In the center of Brant Rock, the water rises in the commercial area.
I only lasted about ten minutes out of the car. It was nasty. I couldn't even get near the seawall due to the flooding and the stinging, wind driven ocean spray. And, I had to get out of the area altogether before I got trapped by the water that was rising in the streets. So I got out of there.
But on the bright side, reminders of the warm weather to come were encouraging.
(Image links now fixed)
White out:
I drove down to Brant Rock in Marshfield to catch the ten o'clock high tide. The driving conditions were horrible, especially on the South Shore.
Visibility ranged from bad to none. For this photo, the visibility was relatively good.
The streets were mostly plowed, but even the plow drivers were being slowed by lack of visibility.
Down by the water, Fieldston's restaurant was almost invisible in the blowing snow.
As was the marina across the street.
This is the view of Marshfield Center with the Congregational Church to the left.
But, as always, police and fire were on the job.
Snowblogging:
Carpundit has more storm photos from around the city.
Selling snow:
Considering past excesses, the local TV stations are surprisingly restrained in their coverage. For instance, none has branded the storm, preferring to push their own coverage teams: "Storm Trak"; "StormForce"; and the "FirstAlert Extreme Team." Shelby Scott would be in her element this morning.
It is really snowing out there. Between what's coming down and what's blowing around, visibility is pretty bad. I can just about see across the street, but not much further.
I'm going to try to get out to the coast for the high tide later this morning for some photos.
Carpundit has some great storm photos from last night and Adam G is tracking storm bloggers at Universal Hub and through the feeds.
January 22, 2005
Mr. Blue Sky:
Have you seen this video? Pretty dumb, but entertaining. It's impressive, the things kids can do these days with a home video camera and PC based editing. And once it's done it's available to millions on the net. These are great times for creative people.
Link ethics:
It drives me nuts when I read web news stories about internet sites that don't link to the sites mentioned.
Some papers are better than others. The BBC links in a sidebar, not in the story itself. the Guardian does it right, putting the links right in the text. Howard Kurtz links. The Times does it sometimes but not always. The Globe only rarely. The Herald never (although sometimes they provide the addresses.)
So what's the deal. Is it a technical issue? I don't know much about automated publishing but I would guess that it's a trivial technical issue.
Instapundit, with links to others, also considers the issue.
People go out:
Which neighborhood drinks more? In New York, survey says, it's the Village and Chelsea. Another finding: "white New Yorkers in the most affluent neighborhoods are twice as likely as those in poor neighborhoods to drink excessively."
Hmmm. I wonder how Boston would sort itself out?
A "theory" of evolution:
A Georgia school district slapped stickers on biology books reminding students that evolution was "a theory, not a fact." Then a judge ruled that the stickers violated the separation of church and state and they were ordered removed. Some cried censorship.
In a Globe op-ed, one of the authors of the textbook involved reminds us that the fact versus theory argument is just wrong. "Theories in science don't become facts -- rather, theories explain facts." Read the whole thing.
Not in my harbor:
Romney is offering Boston Harbor (nice of him) as an alternate location to the Cape wind farm. But what he is offering isn't really an alternative. It's only a few turbines that will produce a "relatively tiny energy output."
Boston Harbor was already considered and rejected as a potential alternative location for the Cape Wind project during the environmental review conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps decided it lacked the space to generate energy comparable with Cape Wind's peak 420 megawatts...
And all of the arguments against wind farms (hazard to navigation, etc) that don't involve aesthetics would be even more of a factor in the harbor. It all still comes down to aesthetics vs cheap, clean energy.
January 21, 2005
Brush with greatness, almost:
True story. I ducked out of my office for a half an hour this afternoon and when I got back they told me some guy named Martin Scorsese stuck his head in.
I wasn't expecting any legendary directors today and there didn't seem to be raw material there for a practical joke, so I dismissed it as just a weird mistake. But I found out later that he was in fact in the building snooping around for ideas for a film he's planning and that he did stop by. Life can be strange.
In dumb despair:
Today's friTunes desert island selection is Richard Thompson's Hard on Me from the album Mock Tudor.
From the drop kick drum lead-in to the squealing guitar solos to the hoarse, plaintive singing, this is powerhouse of a song about an abusive upbringing. Anger, confusion, despair, it has it all. And on top of that, it contains the most effective series of guitar solos, ever.
Blogged down:
I took a couple of days off from making entries and today will be light as well: other responsibilities etc. Meanwhile you should be reading the other local blogs.
(W+(D-d))xTQMxNA:
The most wonderful time of the year? Not. At least not according to a formula devised by a British psychologist who says January is the pits and this coming Monday is the core of the pit.
January 18, 2005
In the house:
Elvis is leading a new British invasion with a 1000th number one UK single. He also broke a record for low sales. Go figure.
Science marches on:
I'm skeptical about this invisible wall device. Sounds like the cold fusion thing to me.
Minty music:
Crisp highs, deep lows and a fresh minty flavor. An MIT student shows how to make an MP3 player from an Altoids box.
Ballistic matches:
People who buy guns in Maryland have to have them ballistically fingerprinted, that is, out of the box, a round is fired from the gun and the impressions left on the shell casing is filed for future matching.
Some say this amounts to gun registration. I don't think so. In any case with only six hits on the 43,000 guns on file, and none of those of any interest, it's hard to argue that the program is helping law enforcement in any way. But that's not to say that the system couldn't be improved so it did work.
Talking while driving:
States are jumping on the bandwagon to ban talking on a cellphone while driving despite hard evidence that it prevents accidents.
Out of pocket:
Don't buy anything on inauguration day to protest Bush? Somehow I don't see this very pointless exercise of a protest catching on.
January 17, 2005
The riches of freedom:
The Everett Mirror reprints the MLK "I have a dream" speech in it's entirety.
Cats marching in a parade:
The staff at the Weekly Dig give their take on the Metro/Times/Globe conglomeration and the fallout for the Herald. The Metro, they point out, with it's average reader a 44 year-old male making under $49K, is not the magnet for young, big spending readers it was touted as.
Could they be suggesting that the Herald could prevail by buying the Dig?
Backspace:
What a smart idea: "Regret The Error," a blog that reports on published retractions and errors from around the country. (via Bob Congdon)
Heavier than air:
Drudge has photos from inside the new double-decker Airbus A380. Very spacious, very luxurious. And very scary for people like me who don't like flying in anything bigger than a Cessna.
Pound for pound:
It seems some in Britian are upset that the iPod Shuffle will sell for £69 -16 Pounds more than the £53 that would be equal to the $99 price-tag in the States. I can't say I feel much sympathy.
January 16, 2005
Mashed:
There's been a flurry of attention paid lately to mashup remixes. Here's a story in the New Yorker, an Oxblog post on the subject and if you want to check it all out for yourself, Boomselection.info is a mashup site that takes it "back to tha old skool."
Ordinary people are doing these mixes on their computers at home and posting them to the net. It's big. It's the future.
Some mixes are lame but others are as good as anything being done by the pros. I don't expect that the industry is going to stand for it much longer. If you'd like to sample, here's a link to a Gwen Stefani remix that stands out. Or try this Beck mash-up. It's described as "soulful yet glitch."
One note:
I haven't been reading Oliver Willis regularly for a while now. When I last did, I found him to be reasonably opinionated, interesting and entertaining. He showed up at Bloggercon a couple of years ago and seemed like a nice guy.
So I was really disappointed to see what his blog has become: a boring, angry series of awkwardly written, reflexive diatribes, with clever titles like "I Hate George W. Bush." Too bad.
Pretenders:
Apparently fake mariachi bands are a big enough problem to warrant coverage by the Washington Post.
Twisted logic:
Why won't this go away? Well because columns like this one by Dan Carpenter just beg for a response. He defends the substance of the original Bush, National Guard, CBS report:
Mary Mapes, the fired producer of the expose, stands by the story. She issued a statement blasting the "corporate and political" act of career-crushing contrition by CBS and pointing out that the investigatory panel, in all its 224-page indictment, never concluded that the infamous documents at the heart of the backlash were indeed false.
I think they pretty much, actually did.
Even if they were, I might ask, does that mean the story is false?
You might, and yes. It does.
Does the viewer subscribe to the "poisoned fruit" doctrine that ends the discussion for journalists and politicians?
It's the fruit of the poisoned tree, not the poisoned fruit. Anyway. Allegations are resolved on evidence, not desire or imagination. If I imagine and allege that Kerry was personally responsible for forging those documents but there is absolutely no evidence for this, does that make the this allegation false? Yes, false would be a very good way to describe it.
Carpenter even invokes logic in an attempt to construct, what ends up being, an illogical and incoherent argument.
January 15, 2005
Weird science:
Two things came up today. First there's the orb thing. Those strange blobs on your digital photos? They aren't psychic energy fields, it's just dust particles on the CCD or in the air.
And then there's the issue of scientific snobbery when it comes to UFO research. Frankly, I applaud scientists who are skeptical of the Area 51 crowd. Only when UFOs land on the White House lawn will l be convinced that they exist.
Witness protection:
The Sunday Times has a Fox Butterfield story on the impact of gang intimidation of witnesses. Boston, Baltimore and the Stop Snitchin' campaign figure prominently. (You know, maybe a local crime reporter could call the guy who sells this stuff and, if it isn't too culturally insensitive, put him on the spot about it. He should be easy to find. Just look on Dorchester Avenue across from the courthouse.)