Republican Debate at the Reagan Library

Last night I watched the Republican Debate from the Reagan Library on CNN.

Disgusting.

While there were four candidates, CNN obviously thought two didn't really matter much and decided to give Arizona Sen. John McCain and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a 1 hour 30 minute outlet to bicker with each other.

Meanwhile, our country falls deeper into recession. But I digress.

I counted while watching and Texas Rep. Ron Paul had no more than 4 opportunities to speak during the entire thing. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to Paul's right had maybe two more opportunities.

However, even though Paul definitely had the least time to speak, he still managed to come out looking better than both the smirk riddled jerks to his left. 

Here are the highlights from Ron Paul's side last night:

Hopefully enough American voters saw this last night to realize the top two candidates in this race are full of themselves and not very many good ideas.

David Shribman speaks at Gorgas Library

Executive Editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discussed the bright future of "the papers"

In our on-demand world, as technology continues to advance and the internet continues to grow, more and more people are getting the news from cell phones and computers, while less and less are getting it from an actual newspaper.

In fact, many think the newspaper business is dying.

Just don’t tell David Shribman.

The executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette spoke Tuesday night at Gorgas

Library on, according to Shribman, the bright future of newspapers.

He began, however, with the past.

“When I started in this business we set our type with hot metal and wrote our stories with typewriters,” Shribman said.

Shribman noted how much things have changed since those days, telling the audience about his granddaughter who calls the typewriter Shribman has kept after all of these years “grandpa’s old printing machine.”

Now, with the luxury of computers and e-mail, many reporters don’t even need to step foot into a newsroom to get their stories to an editor.

But Shribman said the internet will never drive newspapers into extinction, noting the Post-Gazette’s Web site only garners four per cent of the paper’s total profit.

This isn’t to say no one visits the site. In fact there are quite a few Pittsburghers who get their news from the online edition of the paper. According to Post-Gazette.com, every month 2.8 million users generate 40 million page views.

However, some things never change. The business still makes those who practice it very busy people and Shribman said he has a lot of responsibility to worry about. But Shribman said good editors are supposed to worry.

“And I must be a damn good editor because I worry a hell of a lot,” he said.

Shribman said newspapers are and always will be around because those who rule our nation, its people, need information to continue making proper decisions. Newspapers go out and get that information for them.

But in giving the people this information, many see newspapers and the media in general, as a group of skeptics overly critical of the government. Schribman disagreed.

“We’re not skeptical because we don’t believe in the founding principle of our country,” he said. “We’re skeptical because we believe in them utterly.”

However, Shribman said finding information is not all newspapers do.

“The role we play in this society is not only as hunter-gatherers,” he said. “We’re cultivators…We’re cultivators of an endangered way of life that deserves to survive.”

As the talk progressed, Shribman said the newspaper business is in the middle of a crisis of confidence.

He called for a reforming of what the business does and for those in it to remember the other industries which went through the same kind of period and have survived.

Shribman said he encourages his staff to embrace the future.

“We have to be open to the future and open to its challenges,” he said. “We’re not in the newspaper business, we’re in the news business.”

Another Shift in the Making?

I found it very odd when the "hot topic" in the Republican debates shifted from Iraq to the economy after Ron Paul had consistently owned the other candidates on the war topic. 

Yes, the economy is a huge topic, but we cannot just sweep Iraq under the rug. The best way to handle the two would be to realize what Dr. Paul has realized.

When the moderators of the debates have chosen to let him talk, Paul has consistently spoken on the economy and the obvious recession (that many over at FOX News continue to ignore) we are currently in. That is because he feels Iraq and the economy are inseparable. Our recession is a direct effect of the awful decisions we have made in invading another country. As the dollar continues to go down, the price of OIL continues to rise with our continued involvement in the Middle East since they control these prices.

Anyway, Dr. Paul released a new economic stimulus plan and it is good stuff. According to RonPaul2008.com, the plan is based on four points:

  

"The four areas that the plan covers are:

1. Tax Reform: Reduce the tax burden and eliminate taxes that punish investment and savings, including job-killing corporate taxes.

2. Spending Reform: Eliminate wasteful spending. Reduce overseas commitments. Freeze all non-defense, non-entitlement spending at current levels.

3. Monetary Policy Reform: Expand openness with the Federal Reserve and require the Fed to televise its meetings. Return value to our money.

4. Regulatory Reform: Repeal Sarbanes/Oxley regulations that push companies to seek capital outside of US markets. Stop restricting community banks from fostering local economic growth."

All of this makes me wonder if the "hot topic" will shift once again as Dr. Paul owns his opponents once again on this issue.

You can check out the whole plan here.

CNN Coverage of King Day

For me, one of the neat facets of the King holiday every year, is the attention it receives from the media. Each year, I usually end up learning something new about Dr. King and the message he died fighting for.

Maybe it was just me, but this year, I didn't see very much coverage of the holiday, at least on the TV end of things. 

However, CNN did have good coverage of the day including a great piece by one of their reporters Soledad O'Brien that aired a few times. The piece was just done well from every aspect, the writing, the shooting, everything.I tried to find a YouTube video for that but was unsuccessful. I would check to see if it is coming on again as it was very, very good.

In addition, many of their regular programming that day were themed around the holiday.

Here is a video made possible by a really cool feature CNN has called the i-Report which regular watchers to upload their videos of important events to the CNN website which CNN then airs for a unique point of view. 

i-Report on Parade

And how can we forget about, the Democratic debate that aired on CNN that night? Before Obama and Clinton went for each other's throats that night, they and Edwards spoke that day about Dr. King. Here is footage from the CNN site.

Democrats on King

Off the television, CNN put together a very cool section of their website in honor of Dr. King. It is called the Road to Equality.

There you can find many stories on the holiday as well as iReport videos from viewers.

There is also another portion of the site dedicated to the King papers here.

All in all I have to say that CNN takes the award in covering the holiday. Not only with the stories they ran on TV, but their website holds some very good and very well organized information for anyone wishing to learn more about Dr. King.

Macworld 08... Thinner Air

Hi-ya. 

Being the unabashed Apple fanboy that I am, I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the announcements from Apple CEO Steve Jobs's keynote at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco this past Tuesday.In the keynote he made four announcements, so for the sake of organization, we'll use that format to discuss them.

1.Time Capsule

In short, a very, very cool idea. Steve explained it best during the keynote as a less annoying companion for Time Machine than your wired external hard drive. It utilizes Apple's awesome Airport Extreme 802.11 N wireless technology to wirelessly back up your system and comes in the impressive 500 GB version and the you'll probably-never-need-this-much-space 1 terabyte version at $299 and $499 respectively. On top of that, it's also a full Airport base station. Those are pretty great prices for very big hard drives and when you factor in the wireless feature, you can't help but say hats off to Steve and the guys at Apple for this one. I personally don't use the Time Machine feature because I don't have a real reason to do so, but this is certainly the way to go in my book if that appeals to you.

2.iPhone and iPod Touch Software Updates

For iPhone owners, this isn't a very big deal. You all get a free software upgrade of the already 

awesome features that came with your Jesus Phone. The Maps application now uses the phone's GPS capabilities to pinpoint your exact location to make finding your way to places easier. A new feature is the web clips capability that is similar to the one that was introduced with Leopard's version of the Safari browser. It allows the user to essentially create their own widgets out of sections of their favorite web pages and, on the iPhone, post these widgets to their home screen. Speaking of home screens, the latest update allows users to customize their home screen and flip through up to 9 different ones.

It's iPod Touch owners, like me, that have reason to be excited about the update. That is, if you can justify the $19.99 price mark Apple has placed on it. The update adds the Mail, Maps, Weather, Notes and Stocks applications to the iPod along with the new customizable home screen feature and Web clips. Personally, I have been waiting for this update for a while mainly for the Mail application because it by far my favorite native Mac application. Maps is a cool application as well, I just don't know how much I can say for its overall worth in terms of use because you will need to have the Wi-Fi connections in order to use it. Of course, that goes for all of the iPod touch's internet features, but any maps program would be better suited if it could be used anywhere on the go.

The Weather app will also be cool but is also limited by the need for a Wi-Fi connection. I will never use the Stocks app. But I am excited about the Notepad app. I've wanted that for a while as well. The customizable home 

screen feature should have come standard in my opinion, but I will use it.

3. iTunes Movie Rentals and AppleTV "Take 2"

I think this is a huge step in the rental industry, albeit a late one. When Apple first released their AppleTV a year ago, it was done very sloppily with very little hard drive space and almost zero push for the product. After nearly falling flat on its face the AppleTV is back with an all new software update bearing the name "Take 2," allowing users to stream content directly from the internet AND rent movies in standard definition and HD. Of course you can also rent movies for use on your computer or iPod too, but this move is one step closer to the end of movie rental chains and the dreaded late fee.

When renting through iTunes you download a movie from apple and once it has completed at least 30% of the download you can choose to begin watching. If you choose to wait, you have 30 days to begin watching, but once you hit play you must finish within 24 hours. Also, within that 24 hours, you can watch it as many times as you want. Once your 24 hours are up, the file disappears from your computer automatically. I'm not sure how that works on the iPod front, but I'm guessing that the next time you sync it, it takes it off.

Like I said, I am very much for this and at $2.99 for SD and $3.99 for HD, the prices beat or match that of the big rental chains, and hey, you don't have to drive to get them or wait to they come in the mail. Thanks, Apple.

4. MacBook Air

Weighing in at only three pounds and measuring in at 0.76 inches at its thickest point and 0.16 inches at its thinnest, this 13-inch laptop dropped jaws when Jobs slyly pulled it out of its manilla envelope. This little guy surrounded Mr. Jobs's keynote with a considerable bit of buzz. The rumors were flying for months in advance about what Apple's new ultra-portable laptop would thrill us with and much of those rumors turned out to be true. 

There was one rumor however that didn't turn out true, and it was the one that we all held most dearly. Early on, it was said that Apple would attempt to price the Air competitively with Dell at around $750. So when Steve broke the news that this piece of art would put us in the hole a cool $1799 at the base price, our hearts broke. 

Another big rumor that did come true was that about the solid state hard drive not unlike those that power the iPhone, iPod touch and iPod Nano. Basically these are very tiny hard drives with NO moving parts, making them extremely more durable and perfect for on-the-go use, not to mention the boot time with a solid state drive is next to nothing because they are lightning quick. However, some of us neglected to think about how new the technology is and how much something like this costs. At its base price, Air holds a regular 80 GB hard drive, but the consumer can opt for the $999 upgrade to the 64 GB solid state hard drive. All in all, if you want the the solid state version of the Air, you're looking at spending about $3,000. Wow is right.

On top of all this is the sheer fact that this is not a very practical laptop. I paid about $1700 for my nearly maxed out MacBook, which boasts a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 120 GB hard drive. Without the solid state hard drive, the Air would be a downgrade that would COST me $1300 bucks.

But it isn't all bad for the Air. Since there is no included optical drive with the Air, the guys at Apple brainstormed and came up with two great ideas. The first is the ability to use the optical drive of another computer on the same network be it PC OR Mac. All you do is install the software on the other computer you want to use and its drive is now yours. This is mainly for software downloads and installations and I don't know if it would work for watching movies or not. The second option is the super slim SuperDrive that allows you to both view and burn DVDs and CDs. Best of all it's only $99. Wow. However, for those hoping to score a cheap burner for their existing system, it ONLY works with the Air.

Overall, the Air is really for rich Apple supporters who want an oversized PDA when they're on the go to do their work on. But don't dismiss the Air yet. As with all successful Apple products ( iPod, OS X, AppleTV, etc.), it will need time to reach its full potential. Until the price drops and more realistic reasons to buy the thing surface, marvel at the sheer beauty of its design and the mere fact that it actually exists and REALLY is that thin.

In my book, MacWorld went pretty well this year. Three hits for Apple, and only one slight miss. I'm going to end up definitely using two of the announcements and in regards to the Air, its probably a good thing it ended up being so expensive in that it saved me from buying another computer 6 months after buying the Mac I'm on now. 

Basically, yeah, the Air is expensive, but get over it.

Hugh Davis Farm Journals, UA Digital Collections

During class Monday, we had the pleasure of meeting the fine individuals who who manage and add to the UA Libraries Digital collections. Essentially what these people do is take many, many pictures of old artifacts, including portraits, old UA yearbooks, and in this case, farm journals from 1849, and scan them into an online database for research purposes.

Hugh Davis kept journals of his exploits on the form to keep a record for future reference. Below is an image scan of one of the pages from his 1849-1854 journal.

You may not be able to read the writing, but this entry is a "Sick List" showing when members of the Davis family got sick, what they had and how many days of work they missed. It seems the measles were rampant at the time.

The director of the Digital Collections said these journals would serve as a good look into  the weather patterns of the South when scientists studying Global Warming need to research a date preceding the forming of the National Weather Service. Interesting stuff.

A New Age?

Welcome JN 325!

In the past, this blog has been a creative outlet for me. There are a lot of poems and prose on here dating all the way back to my senior year in high school. However, I thought it might be interesting to go ahead and revamp things on this page a little with the content that I will be posting for JN 325 at UA. Hopefully my visits to this page to post 325 content will force me to begin re-posting the material this blog housed originally. I must say I have missed the discussions this blog used to generate.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wayne