Biker in Utah

Biker in Utah

Originally uploaded by Jason Rosenberg

A picture I took from the road. For some reason, I really like this one.

LA Times: Drop the The

The LA Times announced today that they are cutting 250 jobs including 150 newsroom staff. The number of journalists will go from 1200 back in 2001 down to like 700. The Times is saddled in debt and these cuts, were “necessary” to keep the paper going. 

One of the editors was quoted as saying not to long ago, that there is a disproportionate number of LA Times reporters in Washington, DC compared to Orange County.  The LA Times, I guess, feels that it need to compete with the far inferior Orange County Register to stay relevant. Editors want more pictures, more graphics and less text. Just what American journalism needs, less text. But when you cut your staff by 150 writers and your paper by 15 percent, I guess more pictures is what you get. 

All that being said, the bottom line is that the LA Times wants to increase readership and be the paper of record from the Southland but in their new search function asks uses to search for LA and “the OC.”

The OC is a television. OC is the abbreviated name of Orange County. If you want to sound like a local, talk like a local. “The OC” is not local.

NBC to America: Turn off your technology from 8.8.08 until further notice

Mark Cuban has an interesting discussion going on his blog right now about NBCUniversal and its exclusive rights to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. NBC pays billions to be the home of the last five Summer and Winter Olympic Games (concluding with Beijing) and for that, NBC gets to broadcast the video first on one of its six television stations and NBCOlympics.com. After that, other broadcast outlets can show short clips of NBC’s content on their stations, like during their sports reports.

While NBC will have more than 2,200 hours of live sports available online including live blogging, NBC will not show online any event that the network plans to show on television until AFTER it airs on TV. All of this coverage on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, USA, Bravo (?) and NBCOlympics.com will feature some of the most inspired performances by the most talented athletes. However, none of it will be seen on any other website:

According to the AP:

Other TV networks have a limited window in which to show Olympics highlights, but no video of Olympic events is permitted to be shown on any Web site besides NBCOlympics.com.

My questions is how does NBC enforce this? Sure, they’re going to have staffers on YouTube trolling for words like, “Olympics” “Beijing” “2008″ and “U.S. Women’s Volleyball.” But how does that stop information from leaking from Beijing to the internet and mobile phones? What happens when a runner’s mom snaps a picture of her daughter’s race and immediately posts it to her Flickr page? Is NBC going to sue the runner’s phone savvy mom?

What happens when Michael Phelps posts from his blackberry using the Facebook application: “Michael Phelps is: really glad he just smashed ANOTHER record in Beijing.” Will NBC monitor his and everyone of his teammates facebook pages? Will they monitor the wall posts too when a friend from Maryland then posts, “Way to break another record MP!!!”?

Can you imagine the NBC tracking all the athletes twitter pages, personal blogs, MySpace accounts? @KingJames: USA Mens BBall wins again…Yawn: Kobe went up for 37.

Sure NBC and YouTube/Google will be on the lookout for illegal posts of their coverage, but can NBC really stop the flow of information from every single person with a cellphone or laptop who knows the outcome ahead of time? This is the same network that was unable to prevent news from getting out of their own newsroom.

The answer is NBCUniversal can’t do anything to be the first to show America the results from Beijing. It’s up to the viewer to decide if they want to be the last to know. In that case turn off your technology and tune into NBC.

John McCain: Stay Off My Lawn

According to John McCain himself, he doesn’t use a computer. It’s not that he has anything against the computers, he just doesn’t use one. With everything in our world becoming reliant on computers, the internet and mobile communication, how can the leader of the free world be someone who doesn’t can’t use the computer. While he’s no wiz, my grandfather can email. John McCain can’t even do that.

But never fear, according to his campaign, John McCain is “aware of the internet.” Being aware of the internet is sort of like Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens famously said, “The internet is a series of tubes.”

The issue net neutrality is one of the biggest issues of our time for individuals, for business and for innovation. And according to the Pentagon, online attacks grow every day. Being aware of the internet isn’t going to cut it when a friendly nations sets out their techno spies or a rouge nation, terrorist group or 14 year-old hacker crack into the Pentagon’s computers, the CIA’s computers, a financial institution’s records or just our personal computers.

Being “aware” of the internet isn’t enough.

Check out Tracy Russo’s panel at the Personal Democracy Forum with one of McCain’s internet strategists.

Then check out Big Mac saying that he, “hates bloggers.”

McCain and the GOP base are not in harmony

Having worked on many losing campaigns I understand the frustration of “not winning.” And while I’ve never  been on a campaign that lost a primary, I can totally understand how hard it must be to go from doing everything in your power you can do to help elect your candidate to do everything in your power to help elect your opponent. That’s why when the pollsters announced their poll results that x number of Clinton supporters wouldn’t vote for Obama and x number Obama supporters wouldn’t vote for Clinton, I figured that’s just how it goes at the end of a hard fought battle. You root for your team. Even when you’re down your job is to keep you head held high and remember that there’s always a way. Until there isn’t.

Because of this narrative from the primaries that there are somewhere tens-of-thousands of Hillary supporters “out there” who are not only not going to vote for  Obama, but they are going to vote for McCain. The media are looking for these people for quotes and their website to keep this failing narrative going. First, this doesn’t make any sense at all since McCain’s politics are miles away from Hillary’s but second it seems that reporters can find a couple of people out there who supporters Clinton and now are supporting McCain.

However, it now seems like a core GOP constituency, Evangelical Christians aren’t so sure they are going to support McCain. Remember, McCain is the guy who called Jerry Falwell an agent of intolerance only to show up at his Liberty College when he decided that he needed Falwell and his supporters. Many Evangelicals see McCain as a flip-flopper who can’t be trusted. McCain has flip-flopped on just about everything so why wouldn’t religion be one of those things. The conservative church goers see through this.

So maybe now, while Clinton supporters, who are rightfully, taking their time in coming over to team Obama are coming now coming over, maybe the media need to start focusing on the fact that the very constituency that Bush, Rove and Mehlman made the base of the party is not on board with the 2008 Republican presumptive nominee. I those three wish George Allen wasn’t such a bigot.

Check out this video from CNN.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

If you’re looking to escape the summer movies, which have been pretty disappointing so far, you should check out the movie Bigger Stronger Faster*. While it’s not the best documentary you’ll see, Chris Bell’s story about steroids, his life and his family paints and interesting portrait about athletics, male-self image and what it takes to achieve success these areas. Of course, what does it take to get there, steroids. As children, Bell and his brothers Mad Dog and Stinky idolized wrestlers, football players and weightlifters. But as Bell’s doc goes deeper into the life of wrestlers, athletes and body builders, it turns out that many of their heroes were on the juice of some kind.

We all know the story of Canadian runner Ben Johnson getting stripped of his gold medal and title of “World’s Fastest Man” because he was juicing. But what about the American Carl Lewis who was the silver medalist in that race? Turns out that Lewis was notified that he was ineligible to run in Seoul Olympics well before the 1988 games because his blood tested positive for performance enhancement materials found in his blood. But wait, isn’t Seoul the same place he won a silver medal (then Gold after Johnson was stripped of his medal)?  The US Olympic team suggested that Lewis positive test was a result of a tea of some herbs and he should be allowed to run. In an interview with Lewis, he denies the claim that he did anything wrong, but based on classified documents that are unearthed, Bell asks challenges the audience to rethink what they know. 

The film compares steroids to marijuana, at least how the two drugs are viewed in the public’s eye. Remember reefer madness? Bell found an anti-steroid back to school special starring Ben Affleck that is very similar to reefer madness.

After asking the questions, do steroids really hurt people and why can people inject themselves with a form of botulism in botox but not steroids when they are doing the same thing, to look good? What is wrong with Steroids? 

Chris Bell’s views of steroids are indeed provocative and challenges of the status quo are very interesting. The story of Bell’s family falls a little flat and can drag on for sometime, but you will leave the theater with a different thought about steroids than you did when you walked in.

Good-bye Shaq

Shaq O’Neal is paid $20 million annually by the Phoenix Suns for the honor of playing about a dozen games and losing in the first round of the NBA playoffs. The guy had the gall to freestyle “rap” about Kobe and tease him because the Lakers lost the NBA finals.

Well, even though the Suns are still paying $20 million for the rights of a very old man to play on their team, the Mariposa Sheriff’s department in Arizona doesn’t want Shaq even though he works for free.

After hearing about Shaq’s “rap”, the Sheriff’s department hacked Shaq and removed him from his position as special deputy because of his defamatory language to Kobe. How can a man who uses the N-word be expected to uphold the law fairly.

From the AP

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the Phoenix Suns center’s use of a racially derogatory word and other foul language left him no choice. Arpaio made Shaq a special deputy in 2006 and promoted him to colonel of his largely ceremonial posse later that year.

“I want his two badges back,” Arpaio told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Because if any one of my deputies did something like this, they’re fired. I don’t condone this type of racial conduct.”

Here’s my attempt at a rap:

Dear Shaq, your rap was wack and now the Sheriff wants his badges back.

RIP George Carlin

The hilarious comic who challenged the world with his humor has died. George Carlin who has written books and produced great stand-up routines will of course be remembered for the Seven Word You Can Never Say on Television. But Carlin was more than a list of curse words, he was a contrarian to contemporary society and he challenged the what was safe.

Thank you George.

The Life of Harry Truman

I’m watching PBS’s “American Experience” on Harry Truman. What an amazing story. He’s the president who ended WWII, desegregated the Armed Forces, entered the Korean war, created the CIA and created and joining NATO, was the first president to address the NAACP in its 40 year history, had to deal with post-WWII America, a GOP dominated Congress, the McCarthy era and the start of the Cold War. Truman’s rise from being a failed store owner, to an unknown Vice President to President of the United States during some of the most heady times.

Truman was leading America during one of the most important periods in American history and of course during these times a leader will have many enemies. But his biggest critic seemed to be his own Mother-in-law. According to “American Experience” Bess Truman’s mother, could not stand her son-in-law. As a matter of fact, she would only refer to him as “Mr. Truman” and felt even though he was President of the United States, he was still a failed business owner and not good enough for her Bess.

Life on Mars

I have a friend on Mars. Do you? Along with 22,000 plus people, I’m receiving tweets from JPL’s Phoenix Mars Rover. JPL is sending out twitter messages from the Mars rover like: “ Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!! ”

Woah. That means water on Mars. That’s totally worth a 2 year journey throughout the Milky Way. JPL is even answering individual questions about the rover program.

If you’re not on twitter go to twitter.com and sign up, or text “Join” to 40404 and then add MarsPhoenix as one of your friends. Intergalactic tweets and I thought my tweets from India were cool.