American Madness

If you haven’t yet heard (though I am not sure how you could have missed it), Iran released pictures of a missile test they just conducted. The image they released was plastered all over newspapers world wide and showed 4 missiles taking flight simultaneously. The picture came from Agence France-Presse who said that they got the picture from Sepah News, they happen to be the media wing (or maybe propaganda wing) of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. There is something a bit menacing about the image of four missiles heading skyward in a successful test… That is until you study the picture a bit more.

It turns out that the missile, 3rd from the left was Photoshopped in. the dust cloud under the missile comes from the right hand side, the missile it self is identical to the one on the left hand side (the NY Times had a little fun with Photoshop themselves highlighting this). Now the question being raised is: Who is responsible for this? (more…)

Should we bring back the asylums of yesteryear?

Is the promise of modern medication exceeding its actual effectiveness?

These are questions that come to mind having read yesterday’s Freakonomics Quorum post by Stephen Dubner.

The column, How Much Progress Have Psychology and Psychiatry Really Made? is definitely worth reading in its entirety.

There is one section I would like to discuss and that has to do with a woman whose son was bipolar and who committed suicide when he stopped taking his medications. The writer says:

“Four years ago I lost a beloved son to suicide due to bipolar disorder. As devastating as this is, I do believe that the treatment he received increased his quality of life and chances for survival. His doctors and therapists were compassionate and concerned, working very hard to assess and adjust his treatments, and I came to respect the complexity of his condition and what they were trying to do on his behalf.

Is it possible he was in some ways a guinea pig in terms of the various medications he took? Perhaps, but I believe they were our only hope of giving him a chance in light of the seriousness of his condition and his previous suicide attempt. When he did complete suicide, we discovered that he had stopped taking his medications, so I don’t blame the medications, but the lack of them.”

Now as horrible as it may seem, I feel compelled to take issue with this lady. The problem which caused her son’s suicide was the fact that he stopped taking his medication. We have recently had a spate of mass murders in America committed by psychiatrically disturbed individuals who were mainstreamed in society because they were on medication. The problem that resulted in the killings has often been that the patient stopped taking the medication. (more…)

The Pulitzer Prize Award winners were just announced and you can see the full list of winners over at their website, or below the jump. Notice that there was no award given this year for Editorial Writing. Also notice Bob Dylan got a Special Citation “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

Reading through the Pulitzer requirements it is interesting to read up on what the award for Editorial Writing is all about:

11. For distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in what the writer conceives to be the right direction, in print or in print and online.

You would think in a year so ripe with topics that some one would stand out in the field. Maybe next year AM will have to toss its hat into the ring.

Here are a selection of quotes from some Pulitzer winners.

And a Reuters story by Andrees Latif about how he snapped his prize winning photo.

And The Winners are: (more…)

While Josh, Adam and Eric debate Spitzer and how/if he has/will impact Hillary’s campaign, I remain focused on things far more interesting.

A little over 100 years ago The Ladies Home Journal published an article titled: What May Happen In The Next Hundred Years. Reading through the article is kind of like watching an old sci-fi movie, flying cars, food in pill form and lots of pneumatics tubes all over the place. And I’ve got to ask, what’s up with pneumatic tubes, apparently the seemed to be the future of technology 100 years ago and in the 60s/70s. Now the only place you see them is at some supermarkets.

Anyway, some of these predictions are eerily spot on:

-Wireless telephone… circuits will span the world -Check

-Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspaper an hour later. -Check

-There will be air-ships -Check

- Americans… will live 50 years instead of 35 as at present -We’ll be generous and give them the check for thinking forward (even if under by 27.5 years, the average American lives 77.5 years)

And of course there are some predictions that are way off, but you can’t get them all right. Think about it, as forward thinking, and probably insane, as John Watkins Jr. sounded he did nail a couple of things pretty well. Take that to mind when you consider how 100 years from now will seem.

By now you may have heard that small explosive went off in front of the Army recruiting center in Time Square during the very-early morning hours. Reading through the New York Times coverage of the event left me with a few questions about who the folks were that they interviewed to get some choice reaction statements to the explosion:

“I felt the building shaking, and then a second after, I heard the explosion,” said Mercy Sepulveda, who was visiting on business from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and was staying on the 10th floor of the hotel. “It sounded like a gas tank exploding. And that was it. Ten minutes later I heard the police…”

Admittedly, I don’t spend much time down in Ft. Lauderdale, I can’t really deal with the humidity, but I do have to ask, do they have a large amount of gas tank explosions down there? Enough that Mercy would be familiar with the sound?

Next up we have Maggie from DC:

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Some consider Charles Bukowski one of the greatest American authors of the the 20th century. In his 30 some odd years of writing he produced somewhere in the range of 100 books, including stories and poetry.

An article from LA Weekly discusses part of the legacy Bukowski left behind: Mostly his writing was about being down and out in and around LA. He also did a great deal of his writing in a little “bungalow” in LA. That same bungalow complex is not up for sale and will probably end up being torn down if not for the efforts of Richard Schave and Lauren Everett. They are working on getting the location recognized as a landmark, the home of Charles Bukowski, maybe even turned into a writers colony in the heart of Hollywood. The current owners have different ideas. They want to see the place purchased and torn down, they figure it is the perfect spot for new condos or a nice fast food restaurant.

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One of my favorite parts of this years Financial Follies: a tour of the Bloomberg, Inc. newsroom. Actually, most of the video is pretty hokey, but I do like the part towards the end when they say the modernist helix-like string of lights is a representation of Mike Bloomberg’s DNA.

The Follies are put on annually in November by the New York Financial Writers’ Association. This year, I was tasked with writing a lot of the songs for the live numbers, but (unfortunately) had no hand in the video production, which turned out to be a great addition to the show. That honor went to Myron Kandel, a founder of CNN, and to funnyman Peter Phelan, in association with various news organizations, such as Bloomberg.

Watch this. The Washington Post and 60 Minutes reveal that 30 years of FBI science in “bullet lead analysis” was junk all along. And that when the FBI found out, the bureau did nothing to let convicted felons know that they might have cause for appeal. Because of the story, now they will. One man has already been freed from an unjust imprisonment.

This is journalism at its best.

New York City is lousy with rich people. OK, we get it. But New York City is also lousy with blind journalists.

I realize that rich people make interesting copy, as evidenced by this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine section, which does an extremely lightweight job of analyzing their impact on the city. But what rich people also do is to drive up the cost of living for everyone by paying more than anyone else can for housing, restaurants, goods and services.

So when are we going to start seeing a supposedly social-minded newspaper like the Times put together a compelling magazine article not on the rich, but on their victims? How about, instead of showcasing rich lawyers and party planners, we talk to some people who live in Stuy Town and will lose their cheap housing when a private equity firm completes turning what was a type of social cooperative into high end housing?

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All I can say is, don’t shoot the messenger:

But how can any responsible journalist not be disgusted by the Wall Street Journal’s apology today?

Senator Carl Levin’s office called yesterday to say we gave him far too much credit, or blame as we had it, for his role in the misbegotten 1993 law that limited the tax deductibility of executive salaries to $1 million. His long-time aide on the issue, Elise Bean, says the Senator wasn’t a promoter of the idea, and we’ll take her word for it. It seems we confused his general agitation at the time against large executive pay packages for support for the salary limit.

Ms. Bean couldn’t recall if Mr. Levin had nonetheless voted for the limit, saying it had popped up in a conference report sometime during that year and she wasn’t sure which one. In any event, our bad.

“In any event, our bad.” Is this a high school newspaper? The “misbegoten law” they refer to was, I believe, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. It took about 2 minutes to figure that out. I’ll admit, it took another 5 minutes of searching, but I discovered that — wouldn’t ya know? — people keep records of senate votes. Actually, the U.S. Senate web site keeps track of these things. And if one takes a minute, one can find that Carl Levin did vote in favor of the measure.

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