Tag Archives: news

Murdoch Drags the Wall Street Journal Down to His Level

Posted on by
Comment

Such a sad, sad sight to see.

Defending News Corp against criticism of its illegal phone hacking and police bribing activities, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece that included this classic line:

Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?

I am deeply offended by this piece on several levels.

  • Murdoch has built a fortune with yellow journalism. By buying up and controlling so many media outlets, he has brought journalism standards down worldwide. Not convinced? Roger Ebert explains the impact Murdoch had on the Chicago Sun-Times during his ownership.
  • Murdoch has insulted the intelligence of half the American public and conned the other half with his so-called “fair and balanced” news network, Fox News. The network not only promotes tasteless and sensationalist news stories, but it clearly promotes Murdoch’s conservative viewpoint, often with misstatements, half truths, and quotes taken out of context.
  • In the opinion piece from which the above quote was taken, Murdoch seems to suggest that his company’s news gathering techniques are protected under the First Amendment. In other words free speech allows journalists to collect news by whatever means are available to them. The legality of their actions simply doesn’t matter. Of course, Murdoch is also free to define “news” any way he sees fit.

In my opinion, there is no single news organization that has done more harm to America than Fox News. It oozes hate and mistrust, it pits Americans against each other and their elected political leaders. It makes news out of scandal — except this one, of course — and ignores or misrepresents the real issues that Americans need to know about.

Murdoch is responsible for this.

Fortunately, those Americans who haven’t been sucked into the half-truths spewed by FOX News have other sources of information: NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. Well, scratch that last one.

The above-referenced opinion piece is the first example — at least the first I’ve seen — of where the Wall Street Journal is being used as a Murdoch disinformation tool. Not only has the Journal’s business reporting suffered, but it’s now becoming Fox-ified.

In the Journal piece, the unnamed author says this about its competing media outlets:

The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw.

Why shouldn’t it be? News Corp has done more damage to the news industry than any other organization. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m enjoying the schadenfreude, too.

Want another point of view on this Journal opinion piece? Read what Felix Salmon says on Reuters.

On “Air Vortexes”

Posted on by
8

The media stumbles over a basic aerodynamic aspect of helicopter flight.

I was on Twitter Thursday evening when manp, one of my Twitter friends, tweeted:

So, what is this ‘vortex’ condition with ‘higher than expected temperatures’??? @mlanger any idea?

To be honest, I had no clue what he was talking about. But I Googled “vortex condition with higher than expected temperatures” (don’t you love Google?) and saw an article about the helicopter that went down during the Bin Laden assault in Pakistan. Moments later, manp sent me a link to a Bloomberg article titled “Helicopter Carrying SEALs Downed by Vortex, Not Mechanical Flaw or Gunfire.” The first paragraph read as follows:

A United Technologies Corp. (UTX) Black Hawk helicopter carrying U.S. Navy SEALs to Osama Bin Laden’s hideout was downed by an air vortex caused by unexpectedly warm air and the effect of a high wall surrounding the compound, not mechanical failure or gunfire, according to U.S. officials and a lawmaker.

Whoa. What a mishmash of information. You have to read further into the article where the phenomena they’re trying to explain — vortex ring state — is explained at least two more times by people who actually have a clue what it is. But that first paragraph sure is misleading. It makes it seem as if there was come kind of weird warm air vortex in the compound that brought the helicopter down.

Any vortexes, however, were caused by the helicopter itself. My educated guess of what happened, based on this article and knowledge of helicopter aerodynamics, is this:

As the helicopter was descending inside the 18-foot walls — a descent that was likely nearly vertical — it encountered a setting with power — or vortex ring state — condition. This occurs when the helicopter settles into its own downwash. This may have been made worse by the change in the flow of air due to those 18-foot walls — as suggested in the article. It may also have been made worse by the outside air temperature being warm.

This image from the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook helps illustrated what the vortexes are and how they manifest themselves in a hover far above the ground and close to the ground:

Hover Vortexes

As the Rotorcraft Flying Handbook explains:

Vortex ring state describes an aerodynamic condition where a helicopter may be in a vertical descent with up to maximum power applied, and little or no cyclic authority. The term “settling with power” comes from the fact that helicopter keeps settling even though full engine power is applied.

In a normal out-of-ground-effect hover, the helicopter is able to remain stationary by propelling a large mass of air down through the main rotor. Some of the air is recirculated near the tips of the blades, curling up from the bottom of the rotor system and rejoining the air entering the rotor from the top. This phenomenon is common to all airfoils and is known as tip vortices. Tip vortices consume engine power but produce no useful lift. As long as the tip vortices are small, their only effect is a small loss in rotor efficiency. However, when the helicopter begins to descend vertically, it settles into its own downwash, which greatly enlarges the tip vortices. In this vortex ring state, most of the power developed by the engine is wasted in accelerating the air in a doughnut pattern around the rotor.

Vortex Ring StateIn addition, the helicopter may descend at a rate that exceeds the normal downward induced-flow rate of the inner blade sections. As a result, the airflow of the inner blade sections is upward relative to the disc. This produces a secondary vortex ring in addition to the normal tip-vortices. The secondary vortex ring is generated about the point on the blade where the airflow changes from up to down. The result is an unsteady turbulent flow over a large area of the disc. Rotor efficiency is lost even though power is still being supplied from the engine.

There are three ways to recover from settling with power once you’re in it:

  • Cut power – you can’t settle with power if you don’t have power. This is usually not a good option when you’re very close to the ground.
  • Lower the collective – this reduces the blade pitch. This is also not a good idea close to the ground, since it will result in a descent.
  • Get some lateral airspeed – this breaks you out of the vortex ring state so you’re not settling in your own downwash. This is not possible when you’re surrounded by an 18-foot wall.

(They train us to recover from settling with power using a combination of the second two methods, but we always practice at altitude, since you can get a good descent rate going if you’re really into it. Indeed, settling with power is a serious danger during aerial photo missions requiring hovering at high density altitudes or heavy weights.)

So the pilot did the only thing he could: land hard. Fortunately, although his hard landing damaged the helicopter, it didn’t cause injuries to to men on board. They were able to complete their mission and come home safely. And they left a souvenir lawn ornament in Bin Laden’s yard.

I realize that this is a pretty complex topic and it’s probably not reasonable to expect the press to get it right. But I personally believe that all technical content published in the media should be reviewed by an expert — or at least someone knowledgeable — to make sure it’s not misleading or unclear to the layperson who will read it.

manp is a pilot — although not a helicopter pilot — and he couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. I can only imagine how much that opening paragraph confused the average reader.

Bin Laden May Be Dead, But He Won

Posted on by
10

He wanted to change our world for the worse — and he did.

I just finished reading a very accurate essay on the CBC Web site, “The Devil likely died happy” by Neil Macdonald. As my fellow countrymen rejoice in the streets — like Taliban members did when more than 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001 — it takes a Canadian to look at Osama bin Laden’s death with 20-20 vision. I urge you to read his essay, in its entirety. It’s a sobering look at reality.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy bin Laden is dead. To me, he’s the equivalent of Hitler, Stalin, or any other man who used the death of innocents to achieve his personal goals. While some people are claiming we should have captured him and put him on trial, I really don’t care that we didn’t. The news of his death gave the American people a much-needed shot in the arm. And I’m sure that on some level, it’ll bring closure to the the people who lost loved ones on 9/11.

But will it change anything? Will it bring back the pre-9/11 world that so many of us remember and miss?

What do you think?

So, as Mr. Macdonald pointed out with numerous examples in his excellent and thoughtful essay, bin Laden achieved his goals beyond his wildest dreams. He made us paranoid, he increased our hatreds, he divided us as a people. He caused our government to take away liberties and subject us to policies that were in direct conflict with our beloved Constitution. He caused us to start wars on two fronts, wars that burden the American economy and put our young service people at risk every single day.

He changed our way of life.

And isn’t that what he wanted all along?

The quote that hits home from Mr. Macdonald’s piece is this:

But bin Laden didn’t just prod Americans into disregarding their own laws and principles when dealing with their real and supposed enemies; he goaded them into turning on each other.

And so he has. And even in his death, the splits among Americans are drawn and widened. This morning, I read two essays by conservative pundits taking exception with our President’s speech last night, a speech in which they said that he took too much credit for bin Laden’s death. They can’t be satisfied that a national goal has been achieved. Instead, they need to turn it into a political argument over words in a speech announcing a true “Mission Accomplished” to the nation. As if Bush or McCain or anyone else from their side of our country would have done it differently.

One nation, indivisible? I wish.

No, I don’t think bin Laden’s death will change anything.

The TSA will still require us to get half undressed, dump our water bottles, and go without nail clippers when we fly. They’ll still subject us to unreasonable search using potentially dangerous and extremely intrusive X-ray devices or pat-downs.

The political pundits will still find fault with the other side. Conservatives and liberals will still disagree on everything. Media grabbing presidential wannabes will still go on-air spouting lies to sway public opinion.

We’ll still have thousands of troops in the middle east, fighting an enemy they can’t beat, coming home broken — mentally or physically (or both) — or in body bags. Government contractors will still be overpaid to support them while services the American public needs are cut to pay for our wars.

The hate will continue to spew out of the mouths of close-minded people who have nothing better to think about than how someone different from them has no right to be on American soil.

Nothing will change. Bin Laden may be dead, but his legacy continues to live in America.

And I cannot imagine anything sadder than that.

I Am Patriotic

Posted on by
5

Really.

A lot of people think I’m not very patriotic. They think I complain too much about the way the government is handling the war in Iraq (not “mission accomplished,” in case you haven’t noticed), health care, and tax breaks for big corporations and the ultra rich. These people seem to forget that our country was founded by complainers who, feeling that they were being treated unfairly by their King (coincidentally named George), did something about it.

(Of course, most of today’s Americans are too weak to stand up for what’s right. And with a huge number of them believing the lies spun out by cable news networks (think Fox), they’re misled to thinking that their biggest worry should be that someone other than a born again Christian Republican may be sitting in the White House come January 2009. But that’s a topic for another post.)

American FlagIn reality, I’m very patriotic. I love my country — well, at least the country I grew up in, which has the same name as the one I’m a citizen of now. I believe in the “American Way” as it was in the 50s and 60s and 70s. I still think the “American Dream” is possible for people who work hard instead of trying to figure out ways to beat the system. Today’s corruption of American is pretty tough to swallow sometimes.

I believe in contributing to my community to make it better — but not when the leaders of my community are obviously out to make themselves, their friends, and their family members rich or influential at the expense of the people they’re supposed to be serving. I believe in helping my neighbor when help is needed. I also remember that America has always been a melting pot of people and their cultures, different doesn’t mean bad, and everyone has a right to pursue their own happiness, as long as it doesn’t infringe on others’.

I believe in our First Amendment freedoms, especially the freedom of speech and the freedom to practice any religion I like, even if that’s no religion at all. I’m proud to be part of a country whose founding fathers had enough foresight to keep religion out of government, even if I’m ashamed that the Executive Branch and half the Legislative Branch of government have forgotten that part of the Constitution exists.

I’m patriotic, but I’m not blind and I’m not stupid. And I feel sorry for the people who believe the crap they hear on cable news networks and read in viral e-mail messages.

Podcast Stuff

Posted on by
2

Maria Speaks Episode 31: Podcast Stuff.

This episode marks my return to Maria Speaks after a two-month break. It covers my change in podcasting technique, a new video podcast I just created for Flying M Air, and the podcasts I subscribe to.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 31 of Maria Speaks: Podcast Stuff.

I just spent the past three hours redoing the Maria Speaks podcast. I used to publish it with Blogger and FeedBurner. Now, since my personal Web site is blog-based using WordPress, I cut Blogger out of the picture. It took me three hours to create or modify blog entries to embed my thirty existing podcast entries on this site. Well, twenty-nine. One of them covered an eBook I no longer distribute, so it didn’t link to it.

I developed this new method of podcasting — new to me, I should say — to reduce the amount of work required to publish a podcast and keep all podcast information together. I used to use a WordPress plugin called podPress, but I removed all references to it and disabled it today. Keep it simple — that’s what I decided. And the technique I worked out is relatively simple, utilizing an existing WordPress blog and FeedBurner. I wrote about it in an article to be published soon by Informit.com. When it comes out, I’ll link to it on the Aritcles page of my Web site and create a podcast based on its content.

For some reason, my “Maria Speaks” podcast has more subscribers than ever. That makes me wonder, since I haven’t released a podcast episode since September, and that episode was a bit more commercial than I like. This time last year, I was releasing one or two episodes per week. I ran out of steam last December and have been releasing them far less frequently. Still, my subscriber numbers have been climbing steadily. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it did convince me to release more content. The way I see it, when all these new subscribers start getting the new content, they’ll either like it and stick around or not like it and leave.

In the meantime, I started a new video podcast in October for my helicopter charter company, Flying M Air. I have literally thousands of photographs taken throughout the southwest, in places I fly to. I also have photos taken by my husband and by professional photographer and Bigfoot Hunter, Richard Noll.

Rick accompanied me on a test run of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. The deal we struck was that in return for all all-expense paid trip, he’d let me share copyright on all the video and still images he took. While he has the ability to sell these images as stock photos or use them in other projects, I have the ability to use them in marketing material to help sell the excursions and in articles I plan to write for publication about the trip. It was a win-win deal. Richard took lots of pictures from the air, which is something I simply can’t do while I’m flying. He also took video images with something a few clicks better than the little Canon digital video cameras I have. I’m still going through the over 1,000 still images and 3 to 4 hours of video he left on my MacBook Pro’s hard disk before departing back to the Seattle area.

I decided to turn my library of photos into video brochures for Flying M Air’s tours, charters, and excursions. The result is “Come Fly With Us!” (subscribe), which currently has three episodes. Another episode will be released Monday. (That’s one of the good things about my new podcast publishing technique; I can schedule a publication date and time. This makes it possible to record several podcast episodes at once and release them periodically over time.)

Part of the learning experience for creating this new podcast was finding legal music to play while the images were showing. I wasted a lot of time looking. Some sites promoting “royalty-free” music for podcasts required that you buy the songs to use them. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the songs were sold at iTunes prices or even a few bucks, but they were asking for $25 or $39 dollars per song. I use each song on just one video podcast episode and plan to release new titles once a week until I run out of material. That music was simply over my budget.

The much hyped GarageBand.com promised royalty-free, free downloads music. But the vast majority of artists didn’t allow free downloads of their songs. And since I was looking for relatively mellow instrumentals — you know, mood music — I had trouble finding what I wanted there in the first place.

I finally wound up on MagnaTune.com. I heard about it during an interview with the site’s founder, John Buckman, that Miraz had referred me to. MagnaTune predates iTunes by about two weeks. Although it has a limited number of artists on board, it offers very reasonable licensing of its music for podcast use. I’ve been getting tunes for my “Come Fly with Us!” podcasts from MagnaTunes since then and giving credit to the artists at the end of each video. I hope they sell some music.

Speaking of music, if you’ve been listening to Maria Speaks for a while now, you may have noticed that I changed the “theme song” for this podcast. The reason: I had a one-year licensing agreement with FreePlay Music for the old tune, Floater. Last year, when I bought that license, it cost $25/year, which I thought was reasonable. When I went to renew, the price had gone up to $100/year. I guess they decided to cash in when podcasting took off. That’s above my budget for a free podcast that doesn’t even earn any advertising revenue, so I decided to find a new tune. The new tune is is a segment from a nameless bit that I got off a public domain music CD I acquired back in 1996. I spent about an hour yesterday going through the one thousand plus songs on that CD set to pick this one. I’m not sure how much I really like it, but I do need something for my opening and closing credits.

The main topic of this podcast episode was supposed to be a quick discussion of some of the podcasts I listen to regularly. So let me dive into that for a few minutes.

I want to start off by telling you what I don’t listen to. I don’t like podcasts that mix discussion and “Garage Band” music. For example, I used to listen to a podcast about words hosted by two guys who seemed to guess more about word origins than actually research them. They’d pick few words or phrases and do a 40-minute podcast about them. The way they’d stretch out that podcast is by inserting a few Garage Band songs into it. Trouble was, their taste in music was nothing like mine, so I found myself having to fast forward through the music filler to get to the discussion meat. Fast forwarding is not always easy when you’re listening on an iPod and driving in traffic. When I realized that the content I was interested in wasn’t that good to begin with, I dropped the podcast. Ditto for the writing podcast some woman was doing. I wasn’t listening to hear music. I was listening to hear content. If the content was music related, the music would make sense. But it wasn’t and it didn’t.

In general, I don’t listen to music podcasts at all. Finding new music is low on my priority list. So if you you think you might find some tips for new and exciting music podcasts here, you will be disappointed.

What I do like listening to is podcasts that can enlighten me, teach me new things, or make me laugh with intelligent humor. I listen to podcasts primarily when I’m driving or flying, although I do have a i-Fusion speaker thing that makes it easy to listen when I’m working in the kitchen, making dinner or tidying up. So if I can be trapped in a place doing a relatively mindless thing and listen to something that’ll expand my horizons or make me laugh, I’m pretty happy.

That said, here’s a brief summary of some of the podcasts I listen to. You can find links to these podcasts on the transcript for this podcast. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com and click the Podcast link in the navigation bar to find it.

First on the list are a handful National Public Radio (or NPR) podcasts. There are 355 of these podcasts and I’ve tried at least 20 of them. I listen to five of them regularly.

  • NPR: Story of the Day is a daily selection of a story from NPR’s programming. These stories are wide-ranging in topics: business, war, travel, entertainment — you name it.
  • NPR: Business Story of the Day is a daily selection of a business story from NPR’s programming. Stories cover anything business related, from Silicon Valley news bits to global oil production information and lots of stuff in between. It keeps me informed about the business world.
  • NPR: Satire from the Unger Report is a weekly podcast of satire by Brian Unger. It’ll make you laugh — and think.
  • NPR: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is a weekly radio quiz show about the news. It has a panel of three celebrities (no, not the kind in People magazine) and call-in contestants. The questions and answers lean toward the comical, so the show is extremely entertaining.
  • NPR: Sunday Puzzle is a weekly podcast of word games with an NPR host, Will Shortz (of the New York Times), and a telephone contestant.

I’ve tried other NPR podcasts, but eventually lost interest in them. And as I prepared this list, I noticed a bunch of new ones to try out. So I might report on some additional podcasts from NPR in the future.

I also listen to American Public Media (APM) Future Tense. It’s a great podcast with short episodes about technology topics.

I listen to three PBS podcasts:

  • American Experience is a podcast with short episodes about historical topics. Recent episodes included the Gold Rush and New York.
  • NOVA is a podcast of brief stories from the NOVA science television show.
  • NOW is a podcast of rather lengthy stories form the NOW news television show. Sometimes the stories interest me and I listen to them. Other times, the stories don’t interest me and I just delete them.

I also watch a NOVA video podcast, which I find excellent. It combines science information with video and still images in a 2 to 3 minute podcast. I like some episodes so much that I save them as movies on my iPod so I can show them to others.

Speaking of video podcasts, I also subscribe to a number of others:

  • GARY-PAUL TV is a video podcast of weird stuff published by Gary-Paul Prince of Peachpit Press. My favorite episode, which I’ve saved as a movie for future viewing, is “Drinking and Driving Texas Style.”
  • Comedy Central: Stand-Up is a video podcast of stand up comedy segments. I only like about half of these, but the ones I like arae really good, so I keep checking in.
  • National Geographic Video Shorts are short video segments from National Geographic television shows.

I also used to enjoy a video podcast called CockpitCast, which showed video out the front window of various commuter jets as they landed at airports in western U.S. cities, but there hasn’t been a new release in a long time, so I don’t know if the pilots are still doing it.

Another aviation podcast I enjoy is Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase. Betty is a flight attendant who loves to travel. She brings along her tape recorded and gets stories from other flight attendants, pilots, and people at the places she flies to. The stories are great but the audio quality is pretty bad sometimes. Still, I think it’s worth a listen. My favorite story? The one where a passenger who died of natural causes during a flight was not declared dead until after the flight was more than halfway to its destination.

For tech news and info, I’ve been trying two Wired magazine podcasts:

  • Wired Magazine is a podcast of short pieces from Wired magazine columns.
  • Wired News is a podcast of short news stories from Wired magazine.

I also subscribe to Slate magazine‘s Daily podcast, which includes interviews about Slate’s online pieces as well as audio versions of some of Slate’s online pieces. It gives me a chance to “read” Slate without having to visit the site. Of course, I only get a small portion of the thoughtful gems available online. I used to subscribe to Slate’s Explainer podcast, but have given it up because the topics weren’t all that interesting to me. You might like them, though, so check them and out see for yourself.

I subscribe to the WordPress podcast because of my interest in WordPress software. I admit that I’ve downloaded all episodes and have listened to just three of them. I think the podcast is good, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to them.

The same goes for the Podcasting Underground podcast. Good, informative stuff, but I have to be in the mood to listen to information about podcasting.

For politics, I listen to a pair of real left-wingers. Sorry, but I am not a conservative at all, neo or otherwise.

  • Real Time with Bill Maher is an hour-long podcast of Maher’s HBO television series. He does an interview and then discusses one or more current political topics with a panel of three that usually includes one celebrity entertainer and one political figure. His panels always include someone sitting on the right, so both sides are represented. While I don’t agree with everything I hear, I like to hear the various viewpoints on current political topics. New Rules is a much shorter podcast that includes just the New Rules he lists at the end of his show.
  • MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a collection of Olbermann segments from his MSNBC Countdown television show. Olbermann is a Bush basher — do doubt about it — and it amazes me that he says some of the things he says. It’s a real example of the First Amendment in action — if Olbermann said these kinds of things just once in a place like North Korea or Iran or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, he would have been shot dead for treason. But in our country, we’re allowed to voice all kinds of opinions. Olbermann’s aren’t the kind that’ll ever get on Fox News. My favorite bit? The count of times our president said “Stay the course” after Tony Snow told the press he’d only said it eight times. Classic reporting.

I also started listening to Penn Jillette’s weekday radio show on FreeFM, PennRadio. Penn Jillette is the big, fast-talking guy from the magic duo of Penn and Teller. An atheist (his Nevada license plate is the word “ATHEIST”) and libertarian, he definitely has some non-standard views of politics. But he also covers non-political topics. I don’t enjoy all of Penn’s podcast episodes — I probably delete about half of them without listening to more than a few minutes — but I like enough of them to keep my subscription. One of my favorite episodes was his interview of Phyllis Diller (who I didn’t even know was still alive). Ms. Diller had some fascinating stories to tell and I was especially touched by Penn’s patience when her memory failed her more than once during the interview.

And finally, one of the first podcasts I ever subscribed to, podictionary. This daily podcast, with 2 to 5 minute episodes, discusses the origin of a word or phrase. A weekly digest version is also available. Many, many thanks to Charles Hodgson for his dedication to the subject of word history.

Now you know what I’m listening to. What are you listening to? Share your comments and suggestions with me and other listeners by posting your comments on the transcript for this episode. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com, click the Podcasts link in the navigation bar, and scroll down until you find the “Episode 31: Podcast Stuff” entry. Or just use the Search box to search for the number 31. Then use the Comments link at the bottom of the entry to read other people’s comments and add your own.

And as always, thanks for listening. More later.