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Twitter Updates for 2008-06-11

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Twitter Updates for 2008-06-10

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Cellphone video of a crowd of men stoning and beating a Syrian teen girl to death.

I really wasn’t sure I should post this, but I almost feel I have no choice. I stumbled across this the other day after reading an article on Memri by Saudi Human and Women’s Rights Activist Wajeha Al-Huwaidar on how a large portion of Middle East population views women. Wajeha said this vid was from Iraq, but after a little more digging I learned it was from Syria. Allegedly the 17-year-old girl was beaten and stoned to death for ‘falling in love” with a young man who did not belong to her particular sect or family/social group. Whatever. This is quite possibly the most brutal thing I have ever seen. Watch it at your own risk. I really have no comment on this vid, draw your own conclusions. I think it’s best that way.

Bohmerland

A few weeks ago, my sweet girlfriend and I stumbled across a web site with a very large collection of drawings of motorcycles from the 20th century. One that caught our eye was the rather odd yet sexy looking Bohmerland. We had no end to our sophomoric laughter over the darling duck of a bike and even pondered pulling up to one of the beach bars frequented by the motorcycle ‘illete in full classic retro-vintage teutonic biker regalia and parking it next to the damn Harley ‘bar-hoppers’ we have come to despise. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the faces of the tattoo laden, testosterone injected idiots on their manly bikes as we tooled up wearing a smoking jacket and silk scarves on our Bohmerland!

Anyway, to make a long story short, The gf unit found a Bohmerland tee-shirt available on the interwebernet and decided to order it for me. Hey, if you can’t have the bike, you can at least have the tee-shirt. My god, I wonder if any of these beautiful and sexy motorcycles are still in one piece and available for sale? As it turns out, the tee-shirt is coming from Taiwan. Figures the Asians are the only ones with enough brains and style to understand the beauty of this splendiferous bike. Unfortunately, the shirt got tied up in customs or something and is being delayed. Below is a cut and paste of the email from the seller explaining the lateness of the shipment. This points out another fascination of mine…. Engrish! My god how I love it so.

I got’s no idea what it means? Other than the fact I will have to wait to don my new sporting Bohmerland moto-cycle tee.

A few more glades pictures.

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-19

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Yes, I changed the site a bit again

Just wasn’t happy with the former theme. This new one is simpler and easier to read and navigate. Still a few minor tweaks to get it completely functioning and the features right. Thanks for your patience.

jf

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-18

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Video news in a world without TV

I’ve abandoned the world of television. It’s been about six months now since I’ve given up the burden of paying for and watching brainless TV. Of course, if there is a TV show or a movie that I absolutely have to or wanna watch, there’s always Netflix or torrents. But the one thing I really pined over and truly felt that I might be missing, although this too may be just something I convinced myself of, is watching TV news. Of course you can always read the news on-line, still there is something easy and dare I say fulfilling about watching television news.

So how do I get my video news fix without TV? Video podcasts. Two of the ‘big’ broadcast networks. ABC and NBC both offer video podcasts of the nightly news. ABC’s feed is hands down the best. ABC produces a separate podcast feed especially for the the web with Charlie Gibson. Gibson is friendly and personable while maintaining an authoritative news presence. The ABC feed is available every day at about 4ish Eastern Time and again updated around 7 or 8. The feed contains elements especially produced for the podcast including a Google segment. Although I subscribe to the NBC feed, I find myself almost never watching it. The newscast is a feed of the recorded nightly news and unfortunately isn’t available until sometime after 10pm ET. So by the time I get around to watching it, it’s usually the next day. The NBC feed is almost an automatic delete the following day. NBC also offers a weekly podcast of “Meet the Press” in its entirety. ABC makes available the Sunday morning roundtable “This Week,” if you can handle the no-talent, ponderous George Snuffleupagus.

CNN offers a couple of interesting feeds. By far my personal favorite is “In Case You Missed It.” This podcast is news stories cut together as a vignette, without a talking head. Kind of a “produced” raw feed. Usually there are one or sometimes two daily feeds of “In Case You Missed It.” The other CNN feed I use is “Now in the News.” These podcasts are usually around 3 minutes, updated every few hours and are produced much like “CNN Headline News.”

On the international front, Sky News offers a couple of different podcasts. After subscribing to a few of them, I’ve paired it down to just one: “Sky News Headlines Update.” Very similar to the “Now in the News” CNN feed, but from a Brit perspective with both international news headlines and news from the UK. Well worth the subscription. By far, My favorite podcast subscriptions for news come from Link TV. Link offers a few news related podcasts including: “Mosaic,” “Mosaic Intelligence Report” and “Global Pulse.” “Mosaic” is an insightful program with news reports from numerous MIddle East broadcasters in a half-hour format. I highly recommend it. “Mosaic Intelligence Report” is Middle East broadcast reports with commentary and dare I say, sometimes unnecessary opinion. The excellent “Global Pulse” reports on news stories from a perspective of numerous international broadcasters. It’s informative and telling to see how different countries and broadcasters report on the same story. “Global Pulse is by far my favorite news podcast.

Here’s my “short list” of recommended video podcast feeds, formatted for iTunes subscriptions, of course:

If you’ve got any other suggestions for video news podcasts that you think are worthwhile, please share em’.

Your next job is…. “Content Censor.”

This morning I surfed over to the usual web sites to gander for the latest openings and job postings. About once a week I do check out the Clear Channel and CBS sites, you never know what might be lurking. But I have learned from experience over the years that once jobs turn up on internal company job sites, they’re usually filled anyway. At least in theory. As unfortunate as it may seem, job postings in broadcasting are often just the first and last stop to fulfill EOE requirements. I hope I’m not letting the cat out of the bag here. It’s not any big secret is it?!

So I find this rather interesting job opening on the Clear Channel site:

Morning Show Content Censor
Job Description: Clear Channel in Washington, D.C. has an immediate full-time opening for a Morning Show Content Censor. As the Morning Show Content Censor, you will be responsible for providing content protection for the “Elliot in the Morning” radio show on DC101. Content protection entails carefully listening and archiving the radio broadcast. Should show content violate FCC indecency or obscenity rules, you will be responsible for activating the content delay and/or preempting the broadcast with external content until you deem content is safe for returning to the broadcast….

Holy Cow! A show content censor! I guess in this day and age, whatever day and age this will be remembered as being, it’s not a ‘half-bad’ idea. But what’s this gig gonna pay? I’m betting that it’s not a six-figure income. If I had to take a half-baked guess, I’d venture to guess it pays closer to minimum wage than it does 30 grand a year. But, who knows? Still, I am intrigued with the idea that an employee making let’s say, 10 or 15 bucks an hour is the last gatekeeper for keeping everything legal with the FCC. I mean, let’s face it, the Feds don’t even have any clear guidelines as to what is or isn’t indecent. Even the most seasoned broadcasters know that the FCC’s current versions of ‘indecent’ is a shell game, an endlessly shifting and moving target. Hell, a law professor at an Ivy League college that specializes in media law would have a hard time trying to figure out when to or not to hit the dump button. Sheit. And smart money would say that the hire they have in mind is undoubtedly a few letters short of a PHD.

And so it goes….

Twitter Updates for 2008-05-11

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The perpetual coffee

The perpetual coffee

Originally uploaded by spootiespoothead