Military Mammals

I saw these pictures recently of training dolphins for underwater mine detection. Not sure if this is from the first or second Iraq war. The Day of the Dolphin is here.

An article from the BBC on Russian use of dolphins here

MSNBC Article on dolphins' use after Katrina

An article in The Observer

Trader Joe's to Brooklyn

Their coming next year! A 5 minute walk away. Another reason to stay in Brooklyn!
And bloggers are going nuts!

Hollywood Squares

Q. Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
A. Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.

Peter Marshall: What should you do if you're going 55 miles per hour and your tires suddenly blow out?
Paul Lynde: Honk if you believe in Jesus.

Q. In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say "I Love You"?
A. Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty.

Q. Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during the first year?
A. Charley Weaver: Of course not, I'm too busy growing strawberries.

Q. Back in the old days, when Great Grandpa put horseradish on his head, what was he trying to do?
A. George Gobel: Get it in his mouth.

Q. Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are they?
A. Charley Weaver: His feet.

Peter Marshall: According to Tony Randall, "Every woman I've been intimate with in my life has been..." What?
Paul Lynde: Bitterly disappointed.

Morning Light

Friend Phil gave me some old lamp pieces last night to help me in my light building endeavors. And while testing my new point and shoot camera, the Fuji A820, I thought some of the crystal looked nice in the morning sun.

Fatigue

It's remarkable that if this story was told in the States, the reporter or the fact it was written would be vehemently attacked by the right. But as with so many things today, the real news of Iraq comes from outside our borders.
Excerpts:
"Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up."

"You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust."

" 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.
They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. "

" Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers"

The Observer

Be Kind, Rewind

The trailer is out and it looks GOOD!

Be Kind, Rewind

Get This Party Started

I love this song..... Probably the grooviest seventy year old out there. Covering Pink's Get This Party Started is DSB. Dame Shirley Bassey!


What's interesting is the live footage of the Glastonbury Festival. The famous music weekend is mostly rock bands. How will a seventy year old diva be welcomed? She seems apprehensive at first but the roar of the audience gets her going full tilt. And when singing Pink's saucy lyrics, the crowd goes wild. The band and the conductor are having a gas, as well.

Here is the live version she rocked Glastonbury Festival.

The Christmas Mark and Spencers advert that started this new rush of acclaim.

How does a pop icon slog through the mud of a rainy concert? In a pair of $6000 diamante encrusted wellies, of course!

More Fox Studies

I think there are so many studies of Fox News viewers because America has never had a blatantly biased news outlet before. In most of the world, you read the newspaper with a point of view. The gamut runs from the communist Il Manifesto in Rome to the conservative La Parisien in France. American journalists, however, always prided themselves on objectivity. Think Walter Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley. Until now.....

From Think Progress's post on the survey:

"Fully 63% of Americans who count Fox as their main news source say news stories are often inaccurate — a view held by fewer than half of those who cite CNN (46%) or network news (41%) as their main source.

Similarly, Fox viewers are far more likely to say the press is too critical of America (52% vs. 36% of CNN viewers and 29% of network news viewers). And the Fox News Channel audience gives starkly lower ratings to network news programs and national newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post…

For example, fully 71% of Fox News Republicans hold an unfavorable opinion of major national newspapers, compared with 52% of Republicans who use other sources, and 33% of those who are not Republicans."

Read the full report here.

Thousand Islands pt.4

Dave's family arrived sunday afternoon for the night. Peter and Ryan immediately dove into the shallow end of the bay. Bravely defeating all water lillies and demonstrating back flips and foward flips and sideways flips. In the setting sun, these two kids achieved a poeticism that they themselves were probably unaware of.

Thousand Islands pt.3

As we approached the dock with aching arms, we could see that Ryan already was trying his luck. The passing by of tankers and jetskiis did not deter him from his goal of catching a whopper. It was Mom however who reeled in the big one with Ryan being gallant enough to remove the hook and pose with it.

Thousand Islands pt.2

Ryan woke up with his customary energy and we decided to go fishing at on a dock belonging to one of Mom's friends. Nancy and I set out by Kayak while Ryan and Mom drove. In retrospect a better mode of transport. After scraping through the shallows of "Lover's Lane", we faced a 50 minute paddle against the river. Ugh..... our arms were thankful for a rest when we finally got to Mariyln's beach. but we did pass by one incredible island house built out of rock. The boat house was extraordinary but also seemed like it should tumble over at any minute.

Fox News Study

A year-long study by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)[9] reported that Americans who relied on the Fox News Channel for their coverage of the Iraq war were the most likely to believe misinformation about the war, whatever their political affiliation may be. Those mistaken facts, the study found, increased viewers' support for the war.

The study found that, in general, people who watched Fox News were, more than for other sources, convinced of several untrue propositions which were actively promoted by the Bush administration and the cheerleading media led by Fox, in rallying support for the invasion of Iraq:

(percentages are of all poll respondents, not just Fox watchers)

Fifty-seven percent believed the falsity that Iraq gave substantial support to Al-Qaida, or was directly involved in the September 11 attacks (48% after invasion).
Sixty-nine percent believed the falsity that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.
Twenty-two percent believed the falsity that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. (Twenty-one percent believed that chem/bio weapons had actually been used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq during 2003)
In the composite analysis of the PIPA study, 80 percent of Fox News watchers had one of more of these misperceptions, in contrast to 71 percent for CBS and 27 percent who tuned to NPR/PBS.

As the Washington Post reported[10], "The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were 'the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions.' Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three."

As Alternet reported, "For each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far. Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between."[11]

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's "State of the News Media 2005" concluded that Fox was "the most one-sided of all major news outlets." On Iraq, 25 percent of 2,000 stories analyzed were negative and 20 percent were positive. "Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, while CNN and MSNBC were evenhanded." Also, "with the exception of Republicans who prefer Fox News," Americans don't seek out news sources that reinforce their beliefs.[12]

Thousand Islands

The prop plane I flew into Ogdensburg had to skirt around some thunder clouds. But down below near the water, the sun shone bright and presented Mom and I with perfect kayaking weather. We saw a few tankers out in the river. And two eagles on shore. Very impressive.
The zebra mussels clean the river to the extent that you can see down twenty or thirty feet.

Suchart Returns

Suchart Chawangkul recently held two concerts in charity for the Phya Thai Palace. Below is what one national newspaper wrote about the star's return.........

"When Suchart Chawangkul disappeared from the music scene in the early 80s, no one really expected him to return. But that is exactly what he is doing 20 years on, with two concerts dubbed “The One & Only Suchart Chawangkul”.

Given his considerable fame as a crooner and the number of best-selling albums he released during his career, Broadcasting Network (Thailand) Limited are betting their bottom dollar that fans will turn up at the Thailand Cultural Centre tonight and tomorrow night well in time for the shows

“He was the only top male pop singer of that time and that earned him a loyal following. I believe that his fans, who are obviously more mature now, have been hoping that their favourite artist would come back one day,” Pachai says confidently."