Please see our posts over at SwanBlog version 2.0. I promise it won't be like New Coke.
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Labels: New Coke, New SwanBlog
This blog covers politics, military, movies, popular culture, and more.
To contact me, my domain is "visi-dot-com." Email is lawdog@{my domain}
Labels: New Coke, New SwanBlog
My all-time favorite is "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe" as performed by the Byrds, written by Jackie DeShannon. It's on the Byrds' first album, "Mr. Tambourine Man." Just a great song. I think the Byrds were paying her back for her support of the group while they were getting off the ground, so to speak, but it's one of the highlights of an album that is really full of highlights. Lemme know what you think. Adding the Bo Diddley beat to the song was inspired.
Labels: Bo Diddley Beat, open thread
Labels: Bo Diddley Beat, war on terror
Labels: inventions
Labels: First Amendment
Labels: First Amendment
Newsom's executive order bars city departments, agencies and contractors from using city funds to serve water in plastic bottles and in larger dispensers when tap water is available.
"In San Francisco, for the price of one 1 gallon (3.8 litres) of bottled water, local residents can purchase 1,000 gallons (38,000 litres) of tap water," according to the mayor's order.
Labels: San Francisco, stem cells
Now the issue is how to expand inventories of frozen cord blood so that enough units will be available for all who need treatment. Congress can do much to help, by following through on funding goals it set in establishing just such an effort earlier this decade.
That follow-through is important because umbilical-cord blood has several advantages over bone-marrow transplants. The match doesn't have to be as precise -- and the recent research found fewer cases of "graft-vs.-host disease" complications in the children in the umbilical-cord group. It also should be easier to persuade people to be donors, since the process involves simply having new mothers donate their newborn's umbilical cord to a cord-blood bank.
The study involved several hundred children 16 years old or younger for whom other treatments hadn't worked. Some received cells from cord blood, while others received bone-marrow transplants. Since the results were equally effective and bone-marrow waiting lists for good matches can be long, the prospects for patients look brighter indeed.
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Labels: Star Tribune, stem cells
Labels: race relations
Safety isn't the only problem. Wa Chora Yang also worried that his children weren't making sufficient progress speaking English at the Minneapolis schools. "They just put all the Hmong there in one class," he says. "They just speak Hmong all the time. They don't speak English."
Despite the sanguine views expressed by the incoming Hmong students, evidence is mixed as to the effectiveness of the Choice Is Yours program. A 2006 analysis by the Minnesota Department of Education found that kids enrolled in the program did better on standardized tests than their peers in the Minneapolis schools. But a follow-up study, released in January of this year, showed markedly different findings. It determined that, on average, students enrolled in the program fared 15 percent worse in reading comprehension gains and 17 percent worse in math skills increases than their counterparts enrolled in grades three through seven.
Labels: achievement gap, education, logical fallacy, race relations
Labels: Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart
Labels: race relations
Labels: open thread
Labels: First Amendment, logical fallacy
In the enforcement phase, the students perceived racial bias, noting that four of them are black and the other is Hispanic. At other schools, there have been complaints that imposing commencement decorum amounts to forcing nonwhites to abide by stuffy white conventions.
There is no infallible way to define and detect "disruptive behavior," but the school did its best by stationing four observers around the auditorium, and all four wrote down the same five names during the ceremony. Are the educators racist? When I called one of the kids who were punished, Nadia Trent, she said that during her student days, she had never encountered racial bias from school officials.
In any event, bad behavior is not a product of skin color. Well-to-do white schools have their share of people who feel entitled to do whatever they want regardless of how it affects others. Back in 1999, an outdoor venue in suburban Chicago banned a local high school from holding commencement exercises there after students and parents threw marshmallows, trampled flowers, ignored no-smoking signs and insulted employees. This is a high school that is less than 1 percent black.
Labels: graduation, race relations
Labels: Movies
Labels: Sopranos
To the braintrust at the Strib:
Previously, I've dwelled at length on the erosion of conservative readership for the Strib. Now, let's take a look at what is going to happen to your liberal base. As more of your experienced news staffers take the buyout, you are going to lose a lot more than you could possibly gain from, for example, a laptop full of advertsing data.
A Dane Smith is irreplaceable. He is lterally a walking encylopedia of Minnesota political history. But not only is he gone from the Daily Blab, he is reemerging in another format -- I believe it is Joel Kramer's organization -- and thus will be lending his expertise to a competitor for the very audience you have so assiduously cultivated lo these many years as the great, in depth source of all things Minnesota . But that stuff -- the essence, the minutia, the judgment -- ain't in your clip files. It's in Dane Smith's head.
Doug Grow. Jeremy Iggers. Jim Boyd. I may not agree with them-- or even like them very much-- but they have proven appeal to your customer base, and invariably they will draw some of that base away from you as they connect with competing organizations. What do I mean by competing organizations? The Citizens' League. The League of Women Floaters. MPR, Greenpeace. There are a zillion of those damn liberal beats, and that's where these people are going to wind up, converting a lifetime accumulation of local political, business, personal knowledge, sources and contacts into newsletters, blogs, websites, media formats and the like that will bring their Strib readers along with them.
Who needs you?
The people that will produce your new Bloomington friendly version are nowhere near possessing the same knowledge, experience or talent as the people you are losing. And frankly, as you are about to find out, the people in Bloomington, don't really give a damn what you have to say about them. It is a truism of the newspaper business that your most valuable assets go down the elevator every night when the paper is put to bed. Now they are going to be going down someone else's elevator, and they aren't going to forget who kicked them out the door.
Goodbye, consevative readers.
Goodbye, liberal readers.
Goodbye.
Dan Cohen
Labels: Dan Cohen, Doug Grow, media criticism
A combination of producers of any product joined together to control its production, sale, and price, so as to obtain a monopoly and restrict competition in any particular industry or commodity. Such exist primarily in Europe, being restricted in United States by antitrust laws. Also, an association by agreement of companies or sections of companies having common interests, designed to prevent extreme or unfair competition and allocate markets, and to promote the interchange of knowledge resulting from scientific and technical research, exchange of patent rights, and standardization of products.
Labels: media criticism
Labels: links, Memorial Day
Peter said... Um, did you interview anyone who was _opposed_ to the legislation?
May 22, 2007 6:55 PM
Anonymous said... The ads against this bill were outrageous anti-lawyer ads. Regardless of whatever merits the law change may or may not have had, the ads themselves were objectively deceptive. The premise was to demonize P.I. lawyers rather than to deal with the actual substance of what was really in the proposal. I doubt you'd find a single lawyer who would speak in favor of these ads.
May 22, 2007 9:49 PM
Peter said... Wow.
I will assume that "anonymous" (comment above) is not a journalist. Hopefully he/she is not a lawyer, either.
Are there any lawyers among the legislators who voted against it? Are there any lawyers/lobbyists for the insurance industry?
There is certainly no shortage of people who would speak against the proposed bill. I also suspect that there are people who would defend the ad.
I recall an ad by a PI firm where the viewer is put in the perspective of a mangled car wreck and a mean insurance company employee is asking the viewer to sign a document, offering to pry his/her hand free from the wreckage ("Which one do you write with?").
And then there are the lovely teacher's union "mediocrity" ads from this last election season.Two (three) wrongs don't make a right, but let's not play the victim card too much, here.
May 23, 2007 7:48
AM
Labels: good faith, media criticism, trial lawyers
Labels: media criticism, Paulose controversy
When police asked Sessing where all the money had come from, he told them he had done work for his brother, that his father-in-law got him a side job doing construction and that his wife "was making all kinds of money with the company she worked for," Jensen said.
Police later took a more hardball approach, telling Sessing they would be questioning his relatives and executing search warrants.
"He says, 'OK, this is too much. They're not involved at all,' " Jensen said. " 'It's all me.' I think part of the embarrassment of getting his entire family involved in his problem was probably the key."
Hubbell accused the Starr's office of trying to pressure him. [Me: Imagine that.]
"Obviously, it's apparent to me that they think by indicting my wife and my friends that I will lie about the president and the first lady," an emotional Hubell said. "I will not do so. And my wife would not want me to do so.
"I want you to know that the Office of Independent Counsel can indict my dog, they can indict my cat, but I'm not going to lie about the president," Hubbell said. "I'm not going to lie about the first lady or anyone else. My wife and I are innocent of the charges that have been brought today."
Labels: law enforcement, media criticism
Labels: Alberto Gonzales, media criticism
Labels: open thread
Lurking: Let’s eliminate the thought police
.... Police officers should be mandated to have yearly psychological exams along with their already required yearly physicals. Police officers should also be mandated to have muscular, robust, cultural sensitivity training. If we direct our energy toward creating policies and best practices with teeth, we can truly start to whittle away at some of the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. On the other hand, it is completely wrongheaded to take away tools that good police officers need in order to execute their jobs.
Labels: lurking, political correctness, race relations, sensitivity training
Police find man with 16-inch knife lurking at Roseville daycare center
BY SHANNON PRATHER
Pioneer Press
TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated:05/15/2007 01:49:40 PM CDT
A Roseville man found lurking at a church daycare center with a 16-inch knife tucked in his trench coat pocket now faces criminal charges.
Prosecutors charged Richard Christopher Petterson, 34, with one felony count of possessing a dangerous weapon on school property.
Petterson showed up at Lake Ridge Child Care at the Prince of Peace Church in Roseville around 6:30 a.m. Thursday, according to a Ramsey County criminal complaint. Petterson approached day care occupants while children were present. Petterson, dressed in a long trench coat and mumbling, appeared intoxicated, the complaint states.
Staff, fearing for the children's safety, called police. A Roseville officer found Petterson walking near the daycare. The officer ordered Petterson to stop but the suspect kept walking. The officer pulled his gun and ordered Petterson to the ground.
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Labels: political correctness, race relations, sensitivity training
Well, sometimes BNW has a pretty good idea what will offend. For example, it's had productions with such titles as "Ripped Off the Cross! The Last Crusade of Bill B'Jesus."
Not surprisingly, some Christians weren't amused. But Christians, and other groups pilloried by BNW, represent power. Mental disability equals powerlessness.
Caleb McEwen, BNW's artistic director, said he can't be too concerned about offending.
"We have the right to be wrong'
"People have the right to be offended and we have the right to be wrong," McEwen said. "If we can't use the word 'retard,' does that mean we should not use idiot, moron, or crazy, either? Eventually, we can't say anything."
McEwen pointed out that the word "celebretard" is never used in the script.
But that, according to Sherry Gray, is part of the problem.
Gray, a St. Paul woman who is guardian for her sister, who has intellectual disabilities, is the person who put a national spotlight on the title. She saw an ad for the production and posted her thoughts -- "This is wrong" -- on an international website for people who have family members with disabilities. Not surprisingly, most of the website users share her despair.
"It's the use in the title, with no context, that bothers me," Gray said. "I'd like to see them change the title. But if they can't do that, I hope this can at least be a teachable moment."
Labels: political correctness, Star Tribune