If you're tired of hearing about port deals and newspaper chain breakups, read what happens when some really classy people get together for a modest celebration:
Between an ugly feud among Blondie members spilling over onstage and a rancorous letter from the absent Sex Pistols, the latest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class did not enter quietly on Monday.
The animosity even made Ozzy Osbourne, inducted with Black Sabbath, seem sedate.
Now that Indiana has legalized fireworks, I suppose we're likely to start seeing stories like this here:
A man died in a mobile home fire Sunday night that apparently was related to fireworks being shot off inside, authorities said.
Nah. We have smart mobile-home residents.
This makes about as much sense as a lot of other things I've seen government do lately:
The measure would require drug dealers to buy a tax identification number from the Kentucky Department of Revenue. The department is barred by law from sharing the information with law enforcement.
Hey, if they shared the information, the drug dealer would get busted. No more taxes!
I hadn't written about the impending Knight Ridder sale because it was so unsettlingly uncertain. What would I say? Better to wait until the sale, collect my thoughts and then share my observations. Well, now the sale has happened, and things are as uncertain as ever, at least for some of us. McClatchy Co. has bought the company but plans to sell off 12 of the newspapers, including The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne.
(Last week, I invited people who have been commenting on Opening Arguments to participate in a little reverse blogging. E-mail me something, I offered, and I'll consider putting it up, then I can comment on your post for a change. Mike Sylvester is the first one to take me up on it. Following is his post.)
You think the way we do the death penalty here is cruel and unusual punishment? Just consider the way they do it in Japan:
The Japanese government says 75 inmates await execution, living under rules set out in a 1908 prison law and tightened by directives in 1963:
A lot of people will have a lot of reactions to this poll asking Americans what institutions they have confidence in. The thing I noticed: The military, No. 1 at 47 percent (of Americans having a "great deal" of confidence in it); The White House, which directs the military, in the middle of the pack at 25 percent; and the press, which has been unrelentingly negative in its coverage of both, in the bottom five at 14 percent.
I take this writer's point that we've let the fear of lawsuits sometimes make it hard for police to do their jobs, which is to protect us. But I think it's dangerous to equate police shootings with police chases. In a shooting, it's highy unlikely that anyone is going to be shot except the person the police are engaged with. In a chase, innocent bystanders can very easily become part of the action.
If trying to save prisoners' lives is considered abuse, I'd say we're ina PR war we can never win:
More than 250 physicians from around the world are condemning the Pentagon's practice of force-feeding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a letter in today's edition of the British medical journal Lancet.
Perhaps to start feeling better about myself, given newspapers' fortunes these days, I need to start gloating over others' misfortunes, such as soda makers':
After generations of increasing sales, the amount of soda sold in the United States dropped slightly last year.
[. . .]
Some of the best-known brands were the hardest hit. Coke Classic sales dropped 2 percent and Pepsi was down 3.2 percent.
I remember a time or two in my checkered past, when I incorrectly calculated the equation "condition of bladder plus driving distance left equals time until bathroom is reached," thought, "Oh, who will know?" and pulled the car over to do what needed to be done. Thank God that, 1) I wasn't carrying drugs and, 2) No police were around. I committed an act "injurious to health, or is indecent, or offensive to the senses'' and got away with it.
God, we are pigs, aren't we?
Contending that women have more options than they do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, men's rights activists are mounting a long shot legal campaign aimed at giving them the chance to opt out of financial responsibility for raising a child.
[. . .]
If you aren't tired of reading blog posts about blogging, here's a long and thoughtful article from the Financial Times, which asks, among other things, whether Orwell and Marx would have been bloggers if they'd had the technology. It's at least as skeptical as the Chicago Tribune editorial we've been talking about for the last few days, but it's a lot more sophisticated and nuanced about what blogging is and might not be.
Caught part of the Pat White show on WOWO driving home yesterday afternoon. They were talking about the Simon Rios case, and a point was brought up that I raised in an editorial this week: Should both Allen County and Delaware County prosecutors seek the death penalty for him, as a hedge against a jury in either jurisdiction deciding it only wanted to go as high as life without parole? An attorney named Rob called in and said this (I paraphrase):
I have two quotes for you, with no added commentary. Draw your own conclusions.
However, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., secured $4 million in federal funds “earmarked for us to be allocated toward that bridge and to make it a real signature piece,” said Sharon Feasel, a redevelopment specialist for the city. Added to the $2 million INDOT will spend on the project, the budget to replace the bridge is about $6 million. -- From a News-Sentinel story about a new Clinton Street bridge
Let's just admit it. On some level, we all believe at least a little bit in the rule of three when it comes to celebrity deaths. Whenever one dies, we wonder who the next two will be. Don Knotts, Darren McGavin and Dennis Weaver were just the latest proof.
Gordon Parks did a little bit of everything; he was one of those talented people who found many outlets for his creativity. Some will remember him for his early efforts as a Life magazine photographer, some for his later movie work, including directing "Shaft" and even composing the music for the sequel.
A Nebraskan wanders into a hockey game and discovers, to her horror, that the fans can be rude. It so unsettles her that it compels her to root for the visiting team, the Indiana Ice. The experience did have an upside; she reached deep inside herself and found this wisdom:
Try to remember that if there were no opposing team, there would be no hockey for you to watch.
I've reached the 1,000th-post milestone on Opening Arguments; not bad for eight months. Since I don't post on weekends, that works out to an average of about six posts a day. Wh
ew!
This editorial from the Chicago Tribune, which we ran on our op-ed page late last week, seems to predict the end of the road for blogs, or at least a mighty rough patch:
