freefromeditors

A Twisted Sister Christmas

2009-12-16T07:20:00.002-05:00

A pastor I know posted this on his Facebook. It is a little out there, but it is a version of "O Come All Ye Faithful" that I had never heard before. I've got some tamer and more traditional offerings planned for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Al Gore: An inconvenient spokesman

2009-12-16T06:34:00.003-05:00

The inventor of the Internet and the subject of the book "A Love Story" has stepped into a big pile of global warming doo-doo with his latest exaggeration at the Nopenhagen, 'er Copenhagen, Summit.

Even the dire predicting, global warming supporting scientist quoted by Al Gore in a speech yesterday publicly blanched at the Gore prediction that the polar ice cap will completely disappear in five years.

Please note that Mr. Gore's office admitted that the figures of five years to the end of the polar ice cap were from a talk with the scientist "several years" ago. The "several years ago" comment from Gore's office makes the fact he used the figures even more puzzling.

Hopefully, this conference will end in a whimper of frustration and then we can all get on to the real work of cleaning up our environment and developing alternative energy without the chicken little, sky-is-falling nonesense that has become the global warming community.

There's clearly nothing wrong with developing green technology or in conserving the earth's resources, but we don't need to be scared into it with manipulated science or doomsday scenarios.

Propaganda is no more acceptable from the left than it is from the right.

Inside Out: More Advance news

2009-12-16T06:16:00.003-05:00

The Inside Out blog has a couple new stories on the top management merry-go-round and some new buy out offers.

Warren Buffett chimes in on newspaper travails

2009-12-14T20:15:00.002-05:00

Warren Buffett offers his opinion, which mirrors what many of the peons (me included) were saying ten years ago when the suits were telling us that free or not, we had to give our product away on the Internet.

Didn't make sense then, and makes less sense in hindsight. But what did we know, we were just reporters.

Two former Flint Journal editors, still in the company by the way, dismissed our opinions about giving away the product. Funny, we're gone and they're still there. Go figure.

This year's Red Wing pre-game video

2009-12-14T19:53:00.003-05:00

I really like the new pre-game video that is shown at Joe Louis Arena before every Detroit Red Wings game.

Last year's was pretty good too! We always like to be in our seats in time to watch the videos.

George Carlin on the Environment: Adults only warning

2009-12-14T12:50:00.002-05:00

I'm not embedding this George Carlin video on the blog because it violates my rules about profanity. However, if you can stand a few f-bombs, George sums up my feelings about the current panic over the environment in just seven minutes.

Carlin was one of the great thinkers of our time and while I disagreed sometimes with what he said, I always found it thought provoking.

So click on the link above, but only if you are prepared for the profanity. Hopefully, someone will play this video during coming global warming summits.

Saturday Night Live: How the mighty have fallen

2009-12-13T09:09:00.004-05:00

For the first time in ages I was up late enough to watch Saturday Night Live. We turned it off about half way through. It was horrible. Not just horrible, but embarrassingly horrible.

What has happened to the writers on that show? The only part that was halfway acceptable was the news portion, but the skits were as lame as I could ever imagine.

Maybe it will never regain its level of Belushi, Chase, Farrell, etc., but what I saw last night wouldn't survive most local cable access channels.

Here's a free script idea for SNL: Take any President Obama speech or any Republican or Democrat congressional representative giving a speech or conducting a hearing and simply run the sound track of one of the Peanuts television specials, but only play the noise that adults make when the speak.

"Waaah, waaah, wah, wah, waaaaaaaah, waaaaah." That's what all their hot air is starting to sound like to me.

I tried to listen to President Obama give one of his daily speeches (and he has a clear speech delivery) broadcast everywhere and it suddenly occurred to me that I had completely tuned out the message. The first thing that came to mind was the adults speaking on Peanuts. It was really startling how the rhetoric has become so repetitious that it just puts you to sleep.

Shorten up the speeches Prez, they are too long.

My current Facebook status

2009-12-12T09:08:00.002-05:00

I posted my status today on Facebook and apparently some folks like it. Here's what I wrote:

"James is keeping a food diary at the request of his doctor. A small weight gain from my last checkup prompted the doctor to make me keep a record of what and when I eat anything. I know what he's going to be treating me for at my next visit: Writer's Cramp."

Actually, I find that having to write everything down has actually kept me from eating things that were bad for me. Because I find it very difficult to lie, I'm now passing up snacks that I would have eaten so I don't have to write it down.

I think I've invited the "Writer's Cramp" diet. I feel my first book coming on.

Sarah Palin vs. William Shatner

2009-12-12T08:39:00.002-05:00

This was pretty funny last night. In case you missed it: (You'll have to sit through a short commercial to get to the clip)

Two men kill three people, I get called a vulture

2009-12-11T18:50:00.001-05:00

It's strange when old memories will pop up. This week I happened across a picture of a turkey vulture and it suddenly brought to mind a murder case I covered early in my career at the Oakland Press.

Before Rochester Hills was Rochester Hills it was Avon Township. One evening in July 1984, I monitored police scanner traffic that indicated a homicide had occurred at a home there. As more officers arrived it was apparent that this was pretty awful.

I drove to the scene and while watching the front of the house at one point a detective who I saw go into the house, emerged and vomited over the porch railing. That's when I knew it had to be pretty gory inside the house. It's pretty rare that a seasoned detective becomes nauseous at an accident or murder scene.

Later I learned that two men, high on drugs, booze or both, had been left home to party with a woman, her teenage daughter and a nine-year-old niece. At some point the murder frenzy began and all three females were stabbed to death. The nine-year-old was stabbed 27 times. Overkill in its purest form.

The two men took off after the triple homicide, but the husband, father and uncle of the three victims quickly provided detectives with names of the men he had left at home with his family and they were arrested.

Bill Fischer was a truck driver and Michael Kvam (I never forgot their names and check on their prison status at least once a year to make sure they serve every day of their life sentences) a young man that Fischer befriended. The links on their names will take you to a page with their photos and conviction information.

At their arraignment, a photographer and I staked out the back door of the courthouse so I could shout a question at the two men and the photographer could snap a photo. Members of Fischer and Kvam's family were also looking to see the two men and there was a brief confrontation between we and they.

At one point, a friend or family member of Bill Fischer shouted out to me and the photographer that we were "vultures." The irony of being called "vultures" by the family and friends of two men charged with killing a woman, her daughter and nine-year-old niece was not lost on the photographer or me.

This was the case that convinced a circuit court judge who had been opposed to the death penalty that in at least some cases it should be applied.

Just when you think Congress couldn't do something even dumber than it already has....

2009-12-11T18:32:00.004-05:00

This today from a House subcommittee a plan to force college football into an annual championship playoff.

At least one Democrat had the intelligence to say this whole thing was ridiculous. Congress is so full of itself that we can only hope that they will recess for Christmas and not come back.

As I said on Facebook, it's probably time to retire the bald eagle as the national symbol and replace it with a whiny little baby in diapers or a big open hand waiting for "Obama money."

It's truly sad what is happening right now. Someone should ask these representatives to come home and face the out-of-work voters and find out how important a college playoff is to them.

My favorite quote in the story:

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, said, "We can walk and chew gum at the same time."

Can we take a poll on how the American people feel about that?

Editor & Publisher to shut down

2009-12-10T20:36:00.003-05:00

It may be the ultimate sign of the newspaper times that Editor & Publisher, the publication that tracks and writes about the newspaper business, is itself a reported casualty of the newspaper doomsday.

Thanks to an anonymous poster for providing the link and information for this post.

Reminder: Harold McIntyre's funeral arrangements

2009-12-10T20:22:00.004-05:00

The arrangements can be found in an earlier post. Former FJ photographer Jane Hale gave me permission to post a couple photos she took on Harold's last day at the Flint Journal.

It's cold here and I have the pictures to prove it

2009-12-10T19:56:00.002-05:00

This is mainly for my friends and family who live in warm weather states. Coming home from a school assignment this afternoon I spotted some ice forming on a small lake near the road. Temperatures dropped like a stone today and right now are about 10-degrees outside. These ice formations on dead trees and dead weeds sometimes end up looking kind of cool. (Click on photos for a larger view)

A little updated news from the Oregonian

2009-12-10T08:34:00.002-05:00

In September, the Oregonian, an Advance publication, announced a buyout offer and we know now that 43 people accepted the voluntary buyout.

Word is that another 30 to 40 folks face lay offs to meet the company's staffing goals. That is supposed to happen soon.

This is huge for the northwest region where the Oregonian is a huge news source.

Booth (West) planning big changes Feb. 5?

2009-12-10T08:22:00.004-05:00

Folks at Booth properties on the westside of the State are bracing for February 5th, the date of expected "changes."

With the end of the lifetime job pledge, some folks are expecting the worst.

Already this week training to help the copy desk and design functions to be consolidated with the Grand Rapids Press has been going on. Staff at the Kalamazoo Gazette is less than half of the staff there just five years ago.

Named Michigan's "Newspaper of the Year" just this year, the paper's redesign will make it into a clone of the Grand Rapids Press. Most likely to ease its production.

Cookie cutter papers take less time for a small crew to put together, more like plugging items in and out depending on which area.

The Kalamazoo Gazette, which was named the Michigan News Association's Newspaper of the Year a few weeks/months ago, will take on the design of The Grand Rapids Press.

President Obama lovers will need to strap on a sense of humor for this one

2009-12-10T08:18:00.003-05:00

A friend sent me this overnight. I believe it is photo shopped.

Dad adds a few more household hazard exposures

2009-12-10T08:14:00.002-05:00

We father pointed out in an e-mail to me that I didn't explain all the household hazards that he was raised with.

Here in his own words:

"Finally, I omitted our playing with asbestos as children. It is a mineral that we'd get a hold of somewhere and play with it. The fibers were all loose. Let's see, I was also raised in a house filled with cigarette smokers. There were many times when a pall of smoke lay so think it was difficult to see across a room. Hasn't bothered me yet!"

What he didn't mention was that he is in his 80s. Imagine, lead toys, playing with mercury, general aviation pilot, second hand smoke, asbestos exposure and he's still here.

Newspaper execs: "We're doing better we only lost 20 to 25 percent of our advertising"

2009-12-09T12:23:00.003-05:00

This from Reflections of a Newsosaur.

A dangerous toy from my past forgotten

2009-12-09T07:26:00.003-05:00

My father wrote in this morning to remind me that he purchased a 22-caliber, single shot rifle for my brother and I to shoot back in the 1950s. This obviously was in response to the toy safety item I wrote yesterday.

OK, it was not really a toy as the headline says, but my father taught us the safe way to use a gun and we had many wonderful hours of enjoyment with it.

The use of that rifle was strictly supervised by my father, but often involved "plinking," which was the shooting of green, plastic "army" men, jeeps and tanks in remote areas of a beach or field.

How I forgot that I don't know, but I do remember we never shot "American" army men, they were usually Germans and the occasional Japanese green, plastic army men. This was still a time in the shadow of World War II so I hope that's understandable, even if politically incorrect.

Green plastic men who were decapitated or left limbless by our "plinking" were given a proper disposal.

My father also remembered that he and his brothers often played with lead toys some that ended up in mouths. Dad has lived to a ripe old age and is reasonably sane, so it does not appear he suffered from any lead poisoning.

"Plinking," I believe is the sound of a 22-caliber bullet when it is fired.

Zhu Zhu pet gets reprieve, safe after all

2009-12-08T17:54:00.003-05:00

I was relieved to hear today that the Zhu Zhu pet had gotten a clean bill of health from the government. The Zhu Zhu pet was on its way to a civil lethal injection after a do-gooder group discovered it had trace amounts of a metal that was supposedly going to hurt kids.

(Update: I received a comment to this story that included a website that the poster indicated was a contest for a free Zhu Zhu pet. Before posting that comment - and later rejecting the comment - I went to the website and it seemed a little odd to me so I did not post the comment on the concern that the website might not be safe for computer users. It is only about the fifth time I have had to reject a comment)

But the government (nice to know they have time for this) stepped in and said the Zhu Zhu pet met all government standards and was safe. The do-gooders now admit they used the wrong test.

My wife and I were just talking about how toy safety testing was done when we were kids. Well, actually toy safety testing wasn't done, we just had parents who decided whether we should, or should not have a certain toy.

I begged and pleaded for a b-b gun, but like the famous movie was told I couldn't have it because I could lose an eye. Parents were pretty good back then at deciding what toys were safe and which weren't.

Today, I guess we need the government to decide whether toys are good or bad.

It's a miracle I'm still alive based on what is considered toxic and dangerous today. As a kid my friends and I used to look for old or discarded mercury thermometers to break open so we could play with the mercury.

We used to shine up our dimes with the stuff using our bare hands. We would break up the beads of mercury and then put it all together again. Do that today and they'll clear your neighborhood, call out the fire department and the environmental clean-up company that employs the men in the moon suits and then bill you thousands of dollars for the clean-up.

Not ranting, just noting how things have changed. No one wants children harmed and if we can keep them safe good, but parents, in my opinion, are still the best arbiter of what is dangerous or safe for their children. But I do recognize some parents have slipped through the cracks.

I was kidding with my wife the other day that my father, a frequent visitor here, in today's world might be in big trouble for letting me ride on his lap and steer the car on some back street, without a seat belt.

My brother and I were spanked and although I can't say I liked it at the time, I'm a better man for it today.

Global climate change: Just to put your mind at ease

2009-12-08T07:45:00.006-05:00

Are we heating up or cooling down? Here's a 1974 Time Magazine article that tried to scare us.

Here's my favorite paragraph from that story and the reason why I shut out the noise about the current global warming debate:

"Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years."

That's what many scientists believed just 35 years ago. Pssst! Here's a little secret from me to you, they don't know what is happening. They are just guessing. I'm all for saving energy and recycling, etc., but don't do the scare stuff, it's silly. Remember Y2K? Another media scare that fizzled.

Besides I enjoy driving my gas guzzling Chevrolet Tahoe. When Al Gore gives up his private jet and energy inefficient home, I'll think about down sizing my travel mode.

Inside Out is back with some fresh Booth info, video

2009-12-07T21:41:00.002-05:00

The Inside Out blog is back with some new stuff on editor changes on the Booth management merry-g0-round and a cute video "Copy Editor's lament." Stop over and check it out.

Funeral arrangements posted for Harold McIntyre

2009-12-07T19:17:00.002-05:00

From Swanson Funeral Home

Obituaries
Harold McIntyre
(May 29, 1947 - December 4, 2009)

Guest Book Sign Guest Book Send Private Condolences
Send Flowers

Mr. Harold McIntyre-62, passed away Friday, December 4, 2009 at Brians House. Family and Friends will gather in the sanctuary of Second Friendship M.B.C., 6046 Clio Rd., Mt. Morris, on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 10:00 AM with services starting promptly at 11:00 AM, Pastor Rodney Williams, Officiating. Interment Great Lakes National Cemetery. He may be viewed on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at Swanson Funeral Home from 1-6PM.

Cover the Legislature: $15 an hour

2009-12-07T19:06:00.002-05:00

A lot that is currently wrong with journalism can be found in this posting from Illinois.

Computer skills helpful (no mention of journalism skills, although it would be helpful if you understood the legislative process). Sheeesh. The comments are delicious too.

Thanks to Omar Sofradzija, a Facebook friend, for the link.