Month: June 2010

Dan Steinberg searches for the linguistic origin of "my bad."

A reader writes:

For your West Seattle reader, the place to go for city and state coverage is PubliCola, a well-funded site run by two ex-Stranger reporters, Josh Feit and Erica C. Barnett. They report the heck out of City Hall and Olympia.  In fact, Josh was the first online reporter to get state house accreditation a couple of years ago.

Another writes:

There are a bevy of local blogs for Seattle neighborhoods started by the "Geeky Swedes," who started the My Ballard blog for my neighborhood, Ballard (historically a Scandinavian area). They have an agreement with the Seattle Times to share stories and information. The lede is that the only remaining mainstream newspaper in Seattle (now that the Post-Intelligencer has shuttered its printers) has in large part given up reporting local news and ceded that role to the blogger community.

As for the best state level blog for Washington, it's horsesass.org. It's excellent AND has had a similar competition as VFYW for the last couple years: Bird’s Eye View Contest.

Another:

Regarding the decline of local news, check out The Capitol Fax Blog, which provides the best coverage of the Illinois statehouse. (And, as the world knows, our state government is a sodden mess.) There’s a subscription service for breaking news that generates revenue, and it’s a must-have for politicians, lobbyists, and community organizations. It’s a slightly different revenue model for new media, but it seems to work. Also, the commentators are possibly the most hilarious people in the entire country.

Massie is pleased:

This was, on the face of it, a good budget. Four out of every five pounds in savings come from spending restraint, not tax rises and this seems to strike the right balance. "We have had to pay the bills of past irresponsibility" said the Chancellor as he opened and closed his speech with a reminder that it's the record of the last government that makes this extra budget necessary in the first place.

The much more lightly taxed American economy could do with more revenue (Britain already has a VAT and as serious tax on gas). John Cassidy, on the other hand, performs Krugman's routine for the British audience.

Molde, Norway, 7.10 am

Saletan examines the ban on gay men donating blood:

"Men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence … 60 times higher than the general population," the [FDA}] observes. "Even taking into account that 75% of HIV infected men who have sex with men already know they are HIV positive and would be unlikely to donate blood," that leaves a population of MSM blood-donor applicants whose HIV prevalence is "over 15 fold higher than the general population."

So a 15-fold difference is good enough to warrant group exclusion. How about a nine-fold difference? According to the Centers for Disease Control, HIV prevalence is eight to nine times higher among blacks than among whites, and HIV incidence (the rate of new infections in a given year) is seven times higher. For black women, HIV prevalence is 18 times higher than for white women.

“I believe we are at the end of what church historians will, in the future, call the Billy Graham era… I believe we are also nearing the end of the ‘Religious Right’ representing Evangelicalism… My prayer is that over the next 10 years, there will be a Love Reformation and the Gospel will retake the Bible-believing church," – the tweets of Ted Haggard.

The latest from the red Prada slippers brigade:

No, this is not a parody, apparently. This is a parody:

A reader writes:

I have long advocated that executions be televised. Networks would not do it, but public access channels should. Some people think this particularly gruesome of me. I suspect those are the same people who though the Utah attorney general’s remarks were shameless or callous. We could debate about whether the death penalty is ethical or not. But what seems clear to me is that the people should know what is being done in their name. Executions used to routinely be public several decades ago, and the people knew exactly what was being done in their name.

If the people of Utah could see the executions, and they were horrified, they would demand change, and executions would stop. If the people of Utah are not horrified by the executions, then the attorney general’s comments are a small matter. In any event, his comments take the state a step further in making sure the people know what is being done in their name, and hence should be perceived as a positive thing.

Another writes:

Were other witnesses allowed to text from the execution chamber?

(I suspect not; I'm sure everyone had their phones confiscated so no pictures or messages could be sent.) Is the state the only entity allowed to communicate from there? Could a condemned prisoner's family or supporters, unconvinced of his/her guilt, be allowed to tweet a counter-narrative? Now that it's been opened up to communication devices, is the Utah execution room considered a "public forum" where the government allows communications but cannot censor its content?

Perhaps one of your readers who's an expert on constitutional law could evaluate whether the AG – in what to my mind looks like a cheap ploy to look both tough and devout – has opened a Pandora's box for death penalty advocates.

You know who.