h/t Mike K.
CWB: Informa Study
Staged Photos At Reuters (Again)?
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, here are Les Dissonances performing the Allegro from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K.525, also known as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (or as we call it here in the SDA LNR studios: A Little Late Nite Music), at the Fontainbleau Theater (2005, 5:47, and the flirt at 3:00 is delightful too).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Fresh Scent Raid®
“Do not remain in treated area.”
There’s something about a combination insecticide/room deodorizer that makes me grateful.
Propane Explosions in Toronto
Liveblogged at Aggregator, including lots of video. I’ve been completely out of the loop today, so my apologies in getting to this one so belatedly.
Still photos
Joan Tintor, in the comments – “Since every one else is offering their theories, here’s mine: someone is going to blame Mike Harris.”
Olympic Schedule
Surfing around this afternoon (I’ve been sick most of the day), I found his page on the official Beijing Olympics site, listing the events scheduled with links to reports, results, etc. Nice clean design, and easy to navigate for those of you interested in the games.
Frankly, My Dear
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Saturday night contemporary music show, here are the Doobie Brothers performing Long Train Running from their 1973 album The Captain and Me (3:25).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
From Kosovo To South Ossetia
I say that even though I was deeply torn on the question of backing Kosovo independence at the time, calling it “a classic case of the logical dictates of Realpolitik clashing with our moral positioning and building soft power equity.” What’s done is done at this point: Kosovo is independent. Indeed, the very essence of Pandora’s box is that, once opened, it can’t be closed again.
But Russia warned us then that “it will set a dangerous precedent for secessionist movements across the former Soviet Union, including Chechnya and Georgia.”
More from Richard Fernandez and Tigerhawk.
(Related links welcome in the comments.)
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
You know they cringed just having to write about this at the CBC;
The company developing oilsands in Saskatchewan’s northwest says it’s found four times more oil than it had estimated a year ago.
Oilsands Quest says it’s located as much as 6.5 billion barrels on property it’s exploring along the northern Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Most of the property is on the Saskatchewan side of the border.
(Previous – A friendly reminder for Stephane Dion.)
On a related note;
Red-hot Saskatchewan will grow at a 4.2 per cent clip, while Manitoba’s economy will expand by 3.6 per cent in 2008, the Conference Board estimated. Their results are being driven by high oil and gas prices and soaring demand for those provinces’ grain crops.
“Attention this year has shifted away from Alberta to Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as high prices for nearly all of their natural resources will make them the two fastest-growing economies in Canada,” said Glen Hodgson, the Conference Board of Canada’s chief economist.
I know I’ve said this before, but let me do so again – Thank you, Ed Stelmach!
Citius, Altius, Hiphopius.
I also like the fact that they make a bold statement – not only am I a world class athlete who can kick your ass, but I’m also comfortable with my sexuality – and if this doesn’t work out I can always start a career as a hip hop artist or might just be the next big kung fu star.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
“Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino,” Lili Haydn wrote in the Huffington Post. “Couples all over America are making love again and shouting ‘Yes we can’ as they climax.”
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Friday night old-time radio crime-detective show, here is the Tina Diaz and the Utopia Ballroom episode of Crime and Peter Chambers (1954, 23:00, MP3).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Now, If Edwards Was A Republican With A Love Child In An Airport Washroom
Bumped.
Update – Edwards confesses, mainstream media credibility takes another beating at the hands of the National Enquirer.
I repeat – this isn’t an extinction. It’s suicide.
That would be different…
So there you have it. Despite the pictures, the child support and the birth certificate with a blank by the father’s name, the story does not meet the newspaper’s standards.
And they wonder why newspaper stocks are falling?
Related – some threats are more newsworthy than others…
“I can only speculate as to why the media would remove the threat against Bush in these accounts. Is it because it is harder to portray Obama as the victim when he isn’t the only one threatened, or just harder to sell the meme that the offender is probably a murderous racist when he threatens a white president as well?”
The Jewel Of Medina
“By choosing Albert Speer”
… the son of Hitler’s favorite architect and the designer of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to design the master plan for the Beijing Games, China’s government has itself alluded to the radical politicization of aesthetics that was a hallmark of 20th-century totalitarianism.
Like those regimes, whether fascist or communist, China’s leaders have sought to transform public space and sporting events into visible proof of their fitness and mandate to rule.
Speer’s commission was to lay out a master plan for the access to the Olympic complex in Beijing. His design centered on the construction of an imposing avenue to connect the Forbidden City and the National Stadium in which the opening ceremony will take place. His father’s plan for “Germania,” the name Adolf Hitler selected for the Berlin that he planned to construct after World War II, also relied on such a mighty central axis.
Via Mick Hartley.
In The Pockets Of Big Oil
Westboro Baptist Church
I say we lock them in a room with PETA, a chainsaw, and a bucket of KFC.
But then, I’ve always leaned towards practical solutions.
Update – perhaps there’s a place for PETA in this issue after all. It’s not often we witness a Dawg subjected to a beating like this. (Well, ok. It does happen pretty often.)
Tough Times For Cloud Dwellers
Vincent Laforet is a freelance photographer based in New York;
As some of you may know, I left my staff job at The New York Times a little over two years ago. At the time many people were shocked. One colleague actually called me “stupid.” I saw some of the writing on the wall back then – I saw all of these different forces converging down on the mainstream media and thought it was time for me to diversify. If found a way to continue to work with the newspaper and its staff that I love by going on contract with them, and that in turn allowed me to do some commercial work, to work with companies such as Apple and Canon in helping them develop new software and cool toys, and work on a number of other projects. What it allowed me to do was to DIVERSIFY – which I think is key to survival in this market.
At the time people thought I was reckless for leaving such a coveted staff job. The NYT job was a union job – with incredible benefits, a staff car, and company gear and it was often described as a “guaranteed job for life.” Unless you committed a felony, or broke an important ethical rule, “they can’t fire you,” I was repeatedly told.
A few weeks ago I was at The Times to judge the Sports Shooter Student Portfolio of the Year and when I came out there was a strange feel around the newsroom. That day was the day that The New York Times was having it’s first layoffs in the newspaper’s history, that’s right until then, there had never been a single layoff at The New York Times. People were being called in the editors’ offices and being told they were being let go – this after not enough people had opted to take a series of buyouts. This was fundamental change in what we were taught to believe in – what ever happened to that “job for life.” Well that dream, that comfortable “cloud” and the idea of a staff job, is becoming a distant memory these days – no one is immune – not even The NY Times.
(h/t to Sean McCormick)