Michael Calderone has a long piece in Politico on how to fix CNN, whose ratings have recently gone from bad to worse. As you’ll see, I told Calderone that if it were up to me, I’d bring back Aaron Brown and undo the decision to let Christiane Amanpour jump to ABC.
The worst idea is the one he leads with: bringing back “Crossfire.” Canceling the wretched shoutfest will be the only positive mark on CNN president Jon Klein’s report card when he finally walks the plank, and when I’m finally through mangling my metaphors.
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I love this. My Reinventing the News class has put together a Google map of their favorite places within a mile of Northeastern. Each student wrote a blog post, took some pictures and then plotted it on a map, with a link.
The result — a “Newcomer’s guide to NU” — is a modest but useful example of how to use mapping as a journalism tool. The idea is to provide multiple points of entry for readers, which encourages them to explore and to come back.
The project was a bit of a high-wire act. I was having a hard time creating the map during the weekend, which may have been due to problems Google was having. Then, when everyone began adding to the map during class on Monday, we had barely controlled chaos, as random addresses began weirdly showing up and disappearing. Yet I think the end result turned out rather well.
Google Maps may not be the most sophisticated mapping tool available, but it’s free and ubiquitous. Understanding how to use it is just one of the skills today’s young journalists need to know.
Because the law hasn’t kept up with technology, you have fewer privacy rights for data you store in the cloud than you do for what’s on your computer’s hard drive. Now the New York Times reports that a coalition of privacy groups and companies is seeking to close that loophole.
Here’s the problem. Let’s say you do e-mail the old-fashioned way, downloading all of your mail to your personal computer and storing it there. If a government investigator wants to take a look, he or she first must obtain a search warrant from a judge.
But if you use Gmail or another cloud-based e-mail system, a prosecutor need only serve a subpoena on the company that hosts your account — no judge necessary.
The Center for Democracy and Technology, a lead player in the effort to reform the law, explains all this and more.
I want to call your attention to two strong Boston Herald pieces on the bullying-related charges filed in connection with the suicide of South Hadley High School student Phoebe Prince.
First, Margery Eagan had a terrific column yesterday on the uncaring adults who might have stepped in and stopped the torture — the teachers, administrators and staff members who looked the other way despite knowing exactly what was going on, according to District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel.
“She told her mother, who told the school,” Eagan wrote. “Yet on the day she died, she was attacked in the library right in front of a teacher. She was attacked again in the hallway and again as she walked home.”
Even more disturbing is a story in today’s paper by Laura Crimaldi and Jessica Van Sack reporting that South Hadley School Committee chairman Edward Boisselle was dismissive of Scheibel’s findings when interviewed. In response to Scheibel’s assertion that the bullying directed toward Phoebe Prince was “common knowledge,” Boisselle reportedly said:
I don’t know how that’s factually based. Did they go interview all 700 kids at the school and found out that more than 300 knew about it? Isn’t that the only way you could tell that they factually knew about it?
I wonder how you go about recalling a school committee member in South Hadley?
And what about school superintendent Gus Sayer? He is — are you ready? — on vacation, and has said nothing since Scheibel announced yesterday that her office was indicting nine suspects. Granted, he’s attending a wedding on the West Coast. But it’s not like he’s being asked to comment on flooding in a school basement.
This story by Sandra Constantine, in the Springfield Republican, at least makes it look like assistant superintendent Christine Sweklo is on the case. But, based on the Herald’s reporting, we appear to be dealing with mind-boggling indifference on the part of Boisselle and a less-than-heroic response from Sayer.
Can’t get enough water? New England Cable News started its all-flooding-all-the-time coverage at 3 p.m., and will continue until 11 p.m. It’s also streaming live online. When looking out your window just isn’t enough.
In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow, whose network recently took out a full-page ad so that she could tell U.S. Sen. Scott Brown that she’s not running for his seat, would actually be the best candidate the Democrats could put up in 2012.
It’s not that Maddow is so wonderful, although she’s pretty good. Rather, it’s that the death of Ted Kennedy exposed the hollowed-out core of a party that dominates state government, but that has failed to develop any new talent in a generation. The one exception: Gov. Deval Patrick. And he’ll be lucky to get re-elected.
Recently I wrote a column for the Guardian criticizing Whole Foods for selling ketchup that contains high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, the synthetic sweetener that has been linked to a catastrophic rise in obesity and Type II diabetes.
Unfortunately, at the time I couldn’t find much in the way of evidence to suggest that HFCS is actually worse for you than plain old sugar. The main problem with HFCS, it seemed, was its ubiquity and low cost, the latter a function of massive federal subsidies for corn. No subsidies, no HFCS. No HFCS, no three-liter bottles of soda.
So I sat up and paid attention yesterday when I came across Elizabeth Cooney’s “Be Well” column in the Boston Globe. Cooney reported that scientists at Princeton University had found that rats fed HFCS gained much more weight than those fed sucrose, packed on abdominal fat (which is considered particularly unhealthy) and had higher levels of fat in their blood. The study was published in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.
A press release put out by Princeton includes more details. Here is a key excerpt:
“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”
The release goes on to say the study raises the strong possibility that HFCS is metabolized by the body differently from sucrose.
Hoebel’s methodology has come under fire, as critics say he and his colleagues were hazy about some key details, including how many calories the HFCS-consuming rats were getting as compared to their sucrose-eating cousins. Hoebel answers those criticisms in the Washington Post.
The Princeton study is not definitive, but it’s certainly suggestive. And it demonstrates that Michelle Obama’s crusade for healthy food could, if successful, have far more to do with keeping health-care costs under control than the bill signed by her husband last week.
We’ve already heard cries from the food industry and its defenders that government has no business regulating trans fats. Soon we’re going to hear it about HFCS as well.
But laboratory-created fake food is not a matter of consumer choice. These are dangerous substances that have been foisted on us by powerful corporations looking to save money. Keeping such substances out of the food supply would seem to be well within the purview of government regulation.
The title: “The Nemesis of America: This Shia Muslim Norman LeBoon Sr.” Among other things, LeBoon says his videos call for “violence” and “jihad,” and for “taking people from this earth” — then follows up by saying that he’s “kidding.”
I’ve got to admit, the charges definitely cast Cantor’s news conference of last week in a different light.
In October 2006, a South African scholar named Adam Habib, a frequent visitor to the United States, was detained at JFK Airport, questioned about his political beliefs and hustled out of the country.
Habib later learned that the Bush administration had decided, on the basis of no apparent evidence, that he had ties to terrorism. More likely his exclusion was based on his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq.
Habib’s ordeal led me to bestow a 2008 Phoenix Muzzle Award upon then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and then-secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff for exploiting the vast, vague powers they had been granted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in order to silence a prominent critic. Among other things, their actions forced Habib — who received his Ph.D. from City University of New York — to cancel an appearance at an academic conference in Boston on Aug. 1 of that year.
Now Habib is once again free to travel to the United States. In January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an order clearing Habib, a sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, and Tariq Ramadan, a professor of St. Antony’s College, part of Oxford University, in response to a legal action brought by the ACLU and several other organizations.
Habib is currently on a 19-day tour of the U.S. that will bring him to Harvard Law School this Wednesday, an appearance being co-sponsored by the ACLU of Massachusetts. In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Habib praises Clinton’s decision, but urges the Obama administration to end his predecessor’s policy of “ideological exclusion.” Chronicle reporter Peter Schmidt writes:
“It is absolutely incumbent on the Obama administration to follow through on these tentative steps” and “withdraw all of the practices of ideological exclusion that emerged during this period,” Mr. Habib said. Noting how President Obama was himself shaped by living abroad as a child, Mr. Habib said, “It would be a failing of his own history, his own awakening, of his own historical roots, for him not to follow through on these tentative steps.”
Unfortunately, as is frequently the case in these situations, Habib’s voice was stifled when we most needed to hear him speak.
University of Johannesburg photo via the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Anchalee Chourattana takes an order at Thaitation.
Brown Sugar‘s announcement that it would close the doors at its Fenway location in early 2009 had the makings of a culinary disaster. Coupled with a fire that wiped out six good-quality, affordably priced restaurants on nearby Peterborough Street, it appeared that what had once been a foodie oasis would instead become a wasteland.
Fortunately, those who appreciated Brown Sugar’s outstanding Thai food did not have to wait long. In February 2009, the restaurant reopened under the name Thaitation. Even better, the menu hardly changed — no surprise, given that the new owner, Ratana Chourattana, had been a cook at Brown Sugar for 13 years, according to this story in the Fenway News.
Drunken noodle (click for larger size)
Why am I telling you this? My Reinventing the News class is putting together a Google map of our favorite places to go and things to do within about a mile of the campus — a “Newcomer’s Guide to NU.” This is my contribution.
Thaitation has the feel of a small neighborhood place and can get a bit cramped. My lunch companion, Susan, and I arrived a bit before noon last Friday and were seated immediately by a window. Be forewarned, though: If you come much later than that, you may find yourself standing in line.
I ordered the drunken noodle with pork ($8.50), flat rice noodles with green beans, pepper, onion and fresh basil, all of which was stir-fried in hot chili. It was fresh and hot, ideal for a cold day on which snow had made its last (let’s hope) ugly appearance of the spring. But it wasn’t nearly as spicy as I’ve had it in the past, either at Brown Sugar or Thaitation. Some might prefer it that way, but I like to break into a good sweat when I’m eating drunken noodle.
I also ordered a Thai ice coffee ($2.95), an odd choice given the weather. But the mixture of coffee and sweetened condensed milk is too good to pass up under any circumstances.
Pad Thai (click for larger size)
Susan played it safe with pad Thai ($8.50), which combined rice noodles with shrimp, chicken, egg, scallion, bean sprouts and ground peanuts. She also had the homemade limeade ($3.50), which, if I’d been paying more attention to the menu, I might have tried myself.
The pad Thai, Susan reports, “didn’t skimp on chicken or shrimp,” had “lots of peanut flavor” and was moist — an important consideration given how quickly pad Thai tends to dry out. She gave the limeade a big thumb’s-up as well.
At this point it’s uncertain whether the Peterborough Street restaurants will ever be back. El Pelón, a well-loved Mexican restaurant, recently reopened in Brighton, a considerable distance away. Mike Mennonno, a local blogger, writes that plans recently filed by the block’s owner call for upscale establishments that probably mean the “locals will be priced out.”
Thaitation, though, stands as a shining example of the way things were in the Fenway. Not to mention a really good place to eat.
Thaitation, located at 129 Jersey St., in the Fenway, is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday from noon to 11 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 10 p.m. Call (617) 585-9909.
Recently I wrote 
