Friday, July 11, 2003
Pirates Typing with One Hand
This is too funny. An ergonomic keyboard for pirates. (via Dave Barry's Blog.)
Very Important Film Crew
Was over on Bleecker Street this afternoon and ran into a pretty uptight film crew, I think for the remake of "The Goodbye Girl." Not only did they close down several blocks to cars, but they even insisted pedestrians stop for blocks around even though it looked like they were doing nothing more than filming a gal emerging from the building next door to the Robert Kree hair salon.
Far more interesting was the number of stores that keep closing in the Village. Though I guess it's the same all over the city. Things don't really seem to be getting better with the economy yet.
LA Media Rumblings
For you folks with your eye on the LA media market, you'll find it interesting that Freedom Communications (owners of the Orange County Register) has received a lot of interest from potential buyers, according to the Associated Press. There were 26 "preliminary expressions of interest during a first round of bids," AP says.
The sale of the Register (with a 320,000 circulation) could have big implications for the Southern California news market, which is dominated by Tribune Co.'s LA Times. It also owns KTLA and a half of the biggest Spanish-language paper, La Opinion. The closest competitor is Dean Singleton's Media News Group, which has acquired a chain of papers making a ring around Los Angeles. The papers include the LA Daily News, the Long Beach Press Telegram and the San Bernardino County Sun. The Times has a circulation of around 1 million, which is about what Singleton now has when you combine all his LA papers. That's a big deal for ad sales, not to mention the diversity of news voices. So throw in the potential that the long-independent Orange County Register is up for sale, things could start to get very interesting. And if you're still with me -- just as interesting is whether Singleton and Tribune will look to buy more TV stations in the area now that the FCC ownership rules are changing.
Background from the old LAExaminer.com:
FREEDOM: WE'RE FOR SALE
WOULD SALE STIFLE OC REGISTER'S LIBERTARIANISM?
SINGLETON: I'M READY TO BUY LAT OPTION
and
FORMER SB NEWS-PRESSERS START GOLETA WEEKLY for some other big chains with their toes in the water just up the coast a bit.
Big News EVERYDAY!
Earlier this week I was complaining to a reporter friend that it already feels like we're in the slow August news cycle. He put me in my place:
"I think every editor is spoiled by the war ... and all the news of the past few years in feeding their adrenaline. It's even got to the point where we use exclamation points to let readers know it's an important story. It's not enough just to scream at them every day."
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
TSAR's New Anthem for L.A.: Startime
Finally, finally -- the much awaited first song from the new Tsar album. It's called "Startime" and it rocks. You can listen online here.
There's no word yet on when you can buy the CD or if a tour is in the works, but hopefully that all falls into place soon. Great stuff, guys!
Read more from Tony and Matt. Tony even tries to figure out the lyrics.
Zambia
My friend Geraldine Sealey got a Pew fellowship to travel to Zambia earlier this year and report on the crisis of AIDS orphans. Her package is featured today at ABCNews.com.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Five Dead in Bakersfield
Sadly, there's bad breaking news out of my hometown. Five members of a prominent family have been shot to death and the police are looking for "a vice principal at a local elementary school," according to The Bakersfield Californian. (password laexaminer/laexaminer)
Katharine Hepburn's Brownies
Read Katharine Hepburn's brownie recipe and a nice little story about how she passed it along to a fellow New Yorker.
Here's the recipe, since the New York Times link will die in a few days.
KATHARINE HEPBURN'S BROWNIES
½ cup cocoa
1 stick butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
¼ cup flour
1 cup broken-up walnuts or pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Melt butter in saucepan with cocoa and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Mix in eggs, one at a time. Add sugar, flour, nuts, vanilla and salt. Pour into a greased 8x8 square pan. Bake 40 minutes. "Don't overbake!'' They should be gooey. Let cool (an essential step) and cut into bars.
Media Minded Calls it Quits
Media Minded is quitting his blog.
The main reason is that I want to get involved in life again. Blogging, even on a shorter schedule, simply took up too much time in my already busy day for me to do it as well as I would like. My morning blogging constitutional began to feel too much like work, and that's never good.
Media Minded, an anoymous blogger who works on the copydesk for a newspaper somewhere in the United States, has been a thoughtful supplement to Romenesko's Media News. I'm sad to see him go, but entirely understand his sentiments on blogging. I rethink the whole blog thing a few times every week. But don't be alarmed, I'm been rethinking it since I started posting nealry two years ago -- but I'm still here.
A Complete Part of a Genetically Modified Breakfast
While I'm on the topic of companies not fully disclosing to consumers the contents of their products, here's a little item about my favorite breakfast cereal.
After we moved to Brooklyn, my husband and I joined the Park Slope Food Co-Op. In order to get the fabulous deals on their organically grown produce (and much more!) you have to work a four-hour shift every four weeks and put up with a few members who are still hoping communism, or at least a hearty form of socialism, will make a comeback. Most everything in the store has been vetted by a committee to make sure it's free-range enough, or minimally-treated, and that working wages have been paid to the manufacturers' employees and whatnot. But there are still some items in dispute. You should have seen the recent newsletter flap over the sale of foie gras.
Anyhow, there is a genetic foods committee which has been working to try to find out which foods contain genetically modified ingredients so that they can at least label the shelves in the store so shoppers know what they're buying. One of the first items tagged was Cheerios, my standby cereal for the past three decades.
So I fired off an e-mail in September to General Mills, the maker of the morning O's.
Me: Are Cheerios genetically modified?
Them: Thank you for recent inquiry regarding General Mills' position on the use of ingredients that have been modified through biotechnology.
First and foremost, all food must be safe. It is not only the law, but also an issue of ultimate importance to all food manufacturers. Second, the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency have all concluded that food using ingredients from biotechnologically-improved crops is completely safe and no different in any meaningful way from other food. For that reason, the FDA does not require special labeling for it. However, if food has been significantly altered in composition or nutrient content, or if biotechnology introduces allergens into food, special labeling is required. None of our products requires special labeling. Accordingly, we do not test them for the presence of this material.
Because of the growing use of biotechnology by farmers and the way that grain gets commingled in storage and shipment, it's certainly possible that some of our products may contain ingredients that have been improved through biotechnology. We can assure you, though, that every major regulatory agency, as well as independent scientific groups like the American Medical Association, has concluded that these ingredients are safe. For more information, you may wish to visit The Alliance for Better Foods website at www.betterfoods.org.
General Mills also believes in providing consumers with a variety of food options. Toward that end, we do offer organic products that, by definition, do not use ingredients that have been improved through biotechnology. Please look for organic Gold Medal flour and a wide range of products from our Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen brands. To get more information about our organic products, please visit us at www.smallplanetfoods.com.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact us.
So my question is, if they're so certain that genetically modified foods are safe, what's wrong with saying: Yes, they are modified to some extent, but we think that's OK.
Pop-Up Anecdote
Yesterday's New York Times had another story about pop-up ad companies Gator and WhenU and how their software coughs up ads anywhere on the Net. Companies such as the New York Times, Weight Watchers and U-Haul have complained, saying they want full control of who advertises on their sites since readers already assume they're the ones responsible for the ads.
The NYT story notes that Gator claims it has 37 million users and WhenU says it has 30 million users. But it doesn't point out that some of their users (though I'm betting it's close to most) have no idea they've downloaded the ad software.
My dear old dad, who spends more time on the Internet than he cares to admit in public, was so fed up with pop-up ads that he was ready to switch his ISP. He'd call me up, wanting to know how to get rid of Internet Explorer -- since almost all of the ads that popped up said Internet Explorer, followed by the name of the ad, or maybe Gator, he at first thought IE was at fault.
Far from any kind of tech geek myself, I tried my best to help him get rid of all the stuff clogging up his computer and slowing him down. He's now gotten rid of MSN, purchased a new virus protection program, loaded up AdAware and uninstalled a pop-up blocker that added a full line of pseudo-search function keys atop his browser (including a big link to "sportsbook.")
We also spent hours trying to uninstall secret programs, including Gator. Dad of course had no idea what Gator was, or how he got it. I few searches via Google led us to his culprit: a music downloading program called iMesh. Nowhere on the iMesh pages does it tip off readers that as part of its free download, they're also getting Gator spyware. Though to be fair, I didn't click the "download" button to see if they alert users during the actual download process. But I certainly couldn't find it on the site without clicking download.
Though if you poke around Gator's site and go to their press room, their frequently asked questions gives a defense of their actions, such as all ads "are 'permission-based' and require an active consumer action before the software is downloaded and installed."
Want to see if you have it? Do a search on your computer for Gator or GAIN. And look into virus protection and free software such as AdAware to get rid of other secret software cooties.
Dad's a convert to the wisdom of columnist Dr. Bombay. Check out his Essential Stuff page and scroll down to the bottom under "Fight Back" for more on this same topic.
One last thing. While the spyware turned out to be the main problem for my dad, I think Web content providers and ISPs may still be underestimating how angry consumers are about pop-up ads. Though I suspect the pop-up problem has to get a lot worse before people start to take it as seriously as the spam problem.
Earlier:
Evil MSView
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