Are you in a lull waiting for the New Year's Eve celebrations to kick off? Well, here is some fun reading for you.

First via Solomonia we have a non-satirical response from Scott Ott to a newspaper editor. Don't miss it.

Then from Hugh Hewitt we have an interview with Joseph Rago.

That the WSJ would hire someone with so little in the way of critical thinking skills is very troubling. I realize he's very young, but eventually he will be responsible for approving content for some news site somewhere... scary.

I would say there should be a required class in critical thinking given in schools, but who would teach it?

Here's my previous post on the subject.

Happy Reading!

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 10:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Starting with the new year, are new rules for traveling with passports...

A valid U.S. passport will be required starting Jan. 23, if you're traveling between the United States and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.

"The only places now outside of the 50 states where one will not need a passport to fly to are U.S. possessions, like Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands," said Andy Caraber, of Colpitts World Travel.

Caraber said that even newborns will be required to have passports.

I don't remember where the post was, but blog sis Quality Weenie has already run across this when coming back from Canada... before the law was really in effect! She was soundly harassed by our own border guards because she was traveling without her passport.

Oh yes, if you do update or are issued a first time new passport, it will include an RFID chip. (for that matter many European passports have them too)

These are the computer chips that allow you to waive things like a credit card or a "speedpass" at a reader without having to swipe the card. You've probably all seen the commercial with the runner who stops at a convenience store and just taps his credit card on the reader before dashing out to continue the race... that would be an RFID chip allowing him to do this.

If you are worried about possibly exposing your personal information to an identity thief, you can also get one of these to block anyone from reading your passport with "drive-by" readers.

There are supposed to be safeguards on the coding of the chip. Whether or not these are done well is still up in the air. For that matter, I don't know if they have been implemented at all and I'm not inclined at the moment to go searching. I just wanted to point out that the chip is now there and you can get a special cover to protect your passport or... you can take a hammer to the chip itself (which some people have done in pursuit of privacy - that's a bit over the top for me). But this leads to another point.

From July of this year in Computer World there is an article with the pros and cons of having RFID chips in passports. Of those who are downplaying the issue the argument goes...

Other experts downplayed such potential flaws. "The only vaguely legitimate arguments I have heard against E-passports is that they might permit someone two feet away from you to learn that you are American and blow you up, or permit someone two feet away to learn whatever might be stored on the E-passport," said Michael Shamos, a professor who specializes in security issues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

"It's a balancing of risks. The E-passport will be much more difficult to forge and thus ought to reduce the prospect of terrorists getting hold of valid ones," he said.

To which there are several very valid opposing points.

First - considering the length of time we spend waiting in airports, it is certainly possible for any number of people to pass within 2 feet of us while we are there. Think of the hundreds of people you might pass closely while dashing through O'Hare to catch your next flight. An identity thief could have a field day grabbing tons of information from travelers.

Second - since passports may be used when the chip is "broken" his argument about forged passports becomes ridiculous. The only way RFID's can cut down on forgeries is if you make it mandantory for the RFID to be in working order when the passport is used. Otherwise, it's just like forging any other passport. All they have to do is grab someone's passport, break the chip and either reuse it in a forged passport or change out the picture to the person who will now be using it.

Making things more complex seldom makes them safer, it simply provides many more people with jobs and makes everyone else miserable. Such is government.

Happy travels.

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 01:59 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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That would be bloggers and those who read them according to Joseph Rago of the WSJ.

Dear me, how do you respond to someone who calls you a fool and an imbecile? I must necessarily be both because I blog and I read blogs.

Naturally I am chastened by his opinion of me. I had to read on. I want to understand my shortcomings and try to correct them.

Looking closely at the opinion I was struck by the following:

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.

I will direct his attention to bloggers such as Michael Yon and Bill Roggio. It's hard to get more directly involved in "reporting" the story than to embed with our troops in a war zone. There are a number of others who have taken the time and made the effort to do independent reporting on issues, but Mr. Rago apparently hasn't read them, therefore they do not exist.

He is correct in pointing out most bloggers, myself included, do not make any attempt at independent reporting. He does not seem to notice, we do not call ourselves "reporters" either. Bloggers would be quite happy to tell Mr. Rago we are offering our opinion. Last time I checked, this was not a crime, even if you are not being paid by a newspaper when you give said opinion.

It has totally escaped his notice that blogs provide yet another service for interpreting the "complex journalism" presented to us. Namely, bloggers, with expertise in many and varied fields. They are able to weigh in and provide insight into stories being handed out by journalists as "news" giving us necessary details to which we would not otherwise have access.

Anyone remember Rathergate? Within an extremely short period of time, Charles at Little Green Footballs used his expertise in fonts, to discredit the story. In the pre-internet era, this story would have stood without argument. The few people with expertise to call it a fake would have had little or no access to the media to bring it out into the open.

If we extrapolate from his narrative, Mr. Rago does not believe this type of information is necessary, it's not clear if that's because journalists have editors or if it's because journalistic writing is more "complex", complexity naturally outweighs facts.

Conservatives have long taken it as self-evident that the press unfavorably distorts the war, which may be the case; but today that country is a vastation, and the unified field theory of media bias has not been altered one jot.

In case you are wondering what "vastation" means, we have the definition from dictionary.com.

Vastation

\Vas*ta"tion\, n. [L. vastatio, fr. vastare to lay waste, fr. vastus empty, waste.] A laying waste; waste; depopulation; devastation. [Obs.] --Bp. Hall.

Ah, once again we are shown the marvelous complexity of the journalistic mind. I find myself feeling like a commonplace little note scrawler, but I digress.

Vastation is not a word in popular use (which is why I provide you with the definition), it is the root of the word devastation, so even without a dictionary we can come close to its meaning. I must assume he is attempting to sound superior to us poor fools and imbeciles because there is no good reason for using this word. "Iraq is a wasteland" would have been just as easy to write. But, hey, it loses the superior sound, not to mention it's demonstrably untrue.

Perhaps he should read, Iraq's Economy Is Booming in Newsweek. He might have heard about it, if he paid attention to bloggers, because they have been spreading the story.

Oh my, another thing bloggers will do, disseminate information others might not have seen. Is there no end to the interference caused by these pesky fools?

I'm sure there are other things in the piece that could be pulled out and examined more closely, but there is no point. After the blog swarms that have erupted when others have condemned bloggers, I think he'll be vastly disappointed in the response to his opinion piece. He released it a few days before Christmas, most bloggers won't give him the time of day. As for me, I find it an amusing piece. I imagine the old journalists said the same thing about radio and television back in the day. Nothing makes you sound old and dated faster than trying to dismiss new technology.

Mr. Rago is entitled to his opinion on blogs and bloggers. Like everyone else, his opinion is worth the pixels it's printed on. That must be so galling for him.

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 12:58 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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1 I couldn't finish his rant due to nodding off. 'Love your take, though, big time. :-)

Posted by: Sissy Willis at December 20, 2006 01:16 PM (sTYfM)

2 Nice retort!

What an arrogant waste of space. A large portion of the public have and read blogs... and these millions are all fools and imbeciles? Ugh.

Posted by: pam at December 20, 2006 04:25 PM (l6NIn)

3 Well, I'm particularly lucky.

See, I have those journalism bona-fides. I have a degree; it included a year of law & history and a a double major in history itself, where I focussed on 20th Century Military History. I've also worked for several newspapers.

And I'm a blogger.

Oops.

How could I be both?

Do I not understand? Oh, wait, I'm not a "journalist" with a highly recognized paper. Got it.

The mere use of the word "journalist" decries his own arrogant misinterpretation of both the laws and history of journalism. As my old friend and mentor used to say, "The only difference between a journalist and a reporter is the size of his ego. So shut your trap, get out of the way of the story, get back to your job and report. You aren't that important." But what did he know? He was only the editor of the International Edition of the Miami Herald for nearly 20 years.

Posted by: RSM at December 20, 2006 04:38 PM (IyNwh)

4 Teresa: Nice commentary. I guess I only qualify as a fool as I only read and comment on Blogs (not that I couldn't have one. But I don't have that much to say). I prefer to think of blogs in general as being the expession of free speech we were guaranteed in the countries founding. While I may not agree with all blogs, I will defend their existence because they have that right. I hope the McCain-Feingold laws leave us with our political rights to free expression intact and blogging continues to be a viable expression of free speech regardless of politocal blogging or hamster blogging or war blogging or car blogging.
RSM: As you have pointed out, it's about hubris. It's the "don't you know who I am?" mentality that infiltrates those in "high" places who are too self important. But we needn't worry about them. They are self exposing and their exhibitionistic tendencies only continues to highlight the cliche that the Emperor has no clothes.

Posted by: MGA at December 21, 2006 02:36 AM (YcUKP)

5 Great write up!

Posted by: vw bug at December 21, 2006 08:03 AM (ZbLU8)

6 Very well said, T. I wonder which blogs Mr. Rago read in preparing to write his piece. I know a couple dozen bloggers (and there are no doubt thousands more I don't know) who write better than Mr. Rago does and who are as smart, if not smarter than Mr. Rago. And, they do it in their spare time, because they have responsible jobs - even more responsible than, say, writing pompous op-ed pieces.

Posted by: Jim - PRS at December 21, 2006 03:31 PM (a6/Kb)

7 RSM - I'm wishing now that you were out there bringing us some real reporting.

MGA - for someone who doesn't have much to say, you express yourself very well

Glad you all enjoyed it. At first I thought the man was a comedian and when I figured out he was serious, it was even funnier.

Posted by: Teresa at December 21, 2006 04:08 PM (gsbs5)

8 In this paragraph from Rago's rant:

"Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . . ."

All I could think was:

"Funny... I was about to say the same thing about you" :-)

Also, I was quite amused that he derided the value of bloggers writing opinion pieces IN AN OPINION PIECE.

Posted by: Harvey at December 22, 2006 04:07 AM (L7a63)

9 My theroy is that he is jealous because he has never been named as Time's Person of the Year, so he is putting down blogs and bloggers because of his petty jealousy!

Posted by: Quality Weenie at December 22, 2006 06:36 AM (BksWB)

10 Harvey, I was thinking the same thing... but thought my post was long enough so I left it out. LOL.

QW - ROFLMAO I didn't think of that aspect.

Posted by: Teresa at December 22, 2006 10:42 AM (gsbs5)

11 Awesome post, Teresa! I couldn't have said it better myself - in fact, I couldn't have thought it out so well first (as you obviously did).

WRT vastation: Mr. Rago might need an Amazon gift card so he can purchase the likes of "Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English." It's a great book, as is E.B. White's "Elements of Style," Garner, the 11C, and get this - gasp - a THESAURUS! Yes, I own all these 'writerly' reference books, and I'm just some lowly scientist. As a REAL writer, he should consider investing in such useful and educational tools.

Just sayin.'

And Merry Christmas!

Posted by: liv at December 25, 2006 01:51 PM (pREqE)

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Today's WSJ has an editorial (subscription only... sorry) comparing US and EU CO2 emissions since 1990. Here's their chart.

Notice anything peculiar? Yeah, even though the US did not sign the "all important" Kyoto, our CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically since 2000 while the EU's have risen considerably. If you will note, these numbers are courtesy of the United Nations, not an American - anti-global warming group.

The opinion piece that goes along with the graph above is interesting reading, most especially this bit...

The number of firms moving manufacturing work to countries without emissions caps, such as China and India, will only grow.

Once again let us note that two of the most populous countries in the world have NO EMISSIONS CAP! None.

So here's the deal. Quit griping about the US and its failure to totally eliminate CO2 emissions across the country. Because that would be what you're doing. This country has dropped it's emissions at an eye-popping rate. All without the aid of signing onto Kyoto.

Oh, I forgot, this means the greenies will be very afraid their money will be cut. They aren't going to like it and they will start spouting nonsense about the numbers. In their book the US is the root of all "evil" in the world. Since they manage to overlook the huge amounts of polution put out by every other country in the world, I would have to say that their agenda is not to clean up the globe. Their agenda is to attempt to crush the United States. After all isn't that what you do to "evil"?

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 08:29 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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No I haven't forgotten the "book" such as it is. I've been trying to write an ending to a story I started unplanned. It's hard to tie together all the weird happenings and make it sound even half way coherent. I have to have reasons for various strange scenarios I came up with and so I have had to think a lot more about the ending than I did about any of the rest of the story. It's nearly there. I was hoping to finish it over the weekend - but without a clock staring me in the face (so to speak) it's much harder to sit down and write.

And now for something completely different...

May I say that Sunday Night and Monday Night Football both suck pond water. Not because of the teams that are playing, but because of the actual coverage of the game itself. Apparently they believe we are only interested in listening to the windbags talk.

Sunday Night games will have us watching old footage and/or listening to John Madden or one of the sideline babes, blathering on - then they miss the beginning of plays. Once they didn't even show a point after! That's what I call sucky coverage. I am tuning in to watch a game not a bunch of graphics, or high school or college footage of the designated player of the day. If they want to show us that crap they have about 45 minutes before the game starts.

Monday Night has turned into "Interview the Celeb". Who cares! So far Jimmy Kimmel has been the only one who actually watched the game while up there and insisted those guys do their job and call the game! Although I will admit to leaving the room and not even watching Stallone's appearance tonight. And once again - the sideline babe blathers on and on about what some player told her "earlier this week" and half the play is over before they get back to it.

One of these days they'll just show us the announcer dudes up in the booth sitting there talking for 3 hours and we'll get the "highlights" later. Because, hey who needs to watch the game when you have big shot announcers and spiffy graphics. ARG!

Oh, you want something of substance? Go read this apparently it's okay when Senators are the ones using the strong-arm tactics in a politically correct way.

Posted by: Teresa in Sports at 05:29 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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