NEW NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC WAR MAPS
You can find some interactive maps of Afghanistan and surrounding areas at National Geographic's Land in Crisis special section. Among the map features are designations of refugee camps, internally displaced people, war-related migration routes and ethnic concentrations.
» WAR FOR SALE
- posted by Amy @ 12/06/2001 10:17:00 AM

 

INVESTING ADVICE FROM THE ONION
Stocks rallied on Wall Street today. And The Onion's only just published their "Smart Stock-Market Investing" guide. Coincidence? I think not. Among their hot tips: "Wait until stocks are just about to soar in value, then buy lots of them. When they've gone as high as they're going to go, sell them all." ... "If at all possible, start out with $80 million. This will reduce both the pressure on you and the risks involved." ... "Invest in your friends' band. They rock."
- posted by Amy @ 12/05/2001 10:18:00 PM

 

ALCOHOL IS THE ANSWER
The New York Times reports that alcohol consumption is up since Sept. 11 - as much as 25 percent at some Manhattan bars.
- posted by Amy @ 12/05/2001 03:01:00 PM

 

HIGH SCHOOL REPORTERS TAKING HEAT
There's a very funny story in the Omaha World-Herald about a high school paper under pressure from school officials who don't like the aggressive style of the Central High Register. From the World-Herald story:

The Register is under scrutiny because school officials are unhappy with the paper's hard-edged approach to coverage and its aggressive reporting staff. Teachers and other critics want more stories about school activities, such as talent shows, and fewer about controversial issues such as methamphetamine use and the death penalty. They're also troubled by the long hours worked by students on the newspaper staff and what they see as an excessive desire to win national awards.

Just think how many cities should be begging to have such problems with their local paper. My high school paper, The Saga, took a little heat from some teachers about the stories and editorials we printed. But we never ran into censorship issues since the principal never bothered to read the paper, let alone speak to any of the students. In college, that all changed, and I spent many hours on the phone draining the resources of the Student Press Law Center and its very wise director, Mark Goodman.
- posted by Amy @ 12/05/2001 11:20:00 AM

 

FAA SPEEDS UP ELEMENT OF AIRPORT REFORM
CNN reports that a new FAA rule taking effect this week will give airports one year to perform background checks on the 1 million employees who work in secured areas. Originally, Congress was giving the airlines two years, but the FAA sped it up because of continuing terrorism threats. From the CNN story:

The FAA said it is "likely" the organization that staged the September 11 terrorist attacks "has sought or will seek to place members in positions at airports to facilitate future attacks, or that it will attempt to co-opt individuals already in such positions."

- posted by Amy @ 12/05/2001 09:27:00 AM

 

HERE IS NEW YORK
The main photo gallery in SoHo devoted to images of Sept. 11 has now put a lot of the pictures up on the Web. The impromptu gallery, at 116 Prince Street, is constantly packed with people and there is usually a line outside the door of people waiting to have a look. All the images are donated - some by professional photographers, but most by average New Yorkers who used their cameras that day. The result is the same horrible story told a thousand different ways. The Web gallery starts with a collection of mug-shot style pictures of firefighters and other rescue workers - which are the same pictures that grab your attention as you first enter the Prince gallery. There are the horrific images you've already seen - but from different angles - as well as some very moving ones in the days after, as people are glued to their newspapers in the park, and grieve at funerals and memorials.
» A DEMOCRACY OF PHOTOGRAPHS
- posted by Amy @ 12/05/2001 08:56:00 AM

 

A CRIB SHEET FOR THE MISSILE TEST
There's something funny about the stories on the latest test of the U.S. missile defense program. Most news organizations have the word "success" in their headlines. Most don't have this view that AP mentions down low: "Critics say the fact that the interceptor before its launch got precise location data from the dummy warhead makes the test unrealistic." And then there was the weather issue: "Bad weather had blocked the test launch on Saturday and Sunday and delayed Monday's launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for nearly an hour." So does that mean we're OK as long as the bad guys don't attack when it's raining?
- posted by Amy @ 12/04/2001 10:06:00 AM

 

THE VIEW FROM HERE
One of the things that tickled me to no end during my first year in New York was the changing colors on top of the Empire State Building. It goes Orange and Black at Halloween, to pastels at Easter, a sprightly green for St. Patrick's Day and loads of other festive combinations. When we moved here to the West Village a little over a year ago, we were treated to a full view of the Empire State Building from our bedroom window. (From the same window we also get the Chrysler Building, the old Pan Am building and the top tiers of the Con Ed building. But you had to stick your head all the way out the window and look due south to see both Twin Towers.) Shortly after we moved in, I realized the lights go off at the Empire State Building at midnight. I know it sounds silly, but I was always a little sad when I saw they'd just turned out for the night. But since Sept. 11, they've been on all night, every night. Time Out reported a few weeks ago that the lights are staying on at the request of the rescue workers, who can see the Empire State Building from the WTC site. The three tiers of lights have been in blue, white and red every night. I was a bit worried when I read last week that the lights were going to change to red and green for Christmas starting this past weekend. There was no mention if the all-nights schedule would cease. Last night I stayed up late reading to see what happened after midnight. The lights stayed on. And they were still on when I woke up this morning.
- posted by Amy @ 12/03/2001 10:02:00 PM

 

FIGHT TERRORISM; WASH YOUR HANDS
It doesn't quite have the same ring as "Loose lips sink ships," but anyone who handles their own mail would be wise to listen to their mother's advice: wash your hands. For the past month, I've tried to be diligent about washing my hands immediately after sorting through my mail. I friend of mine in New Jersey even went so far to buy a plastic tub for her mailman to use as a temporary mail box. She's been soaking everything in bleach before removing it from the bin to dry and enter her house. And now she looks pretty smart. This from AP on the latest anthrax theory: "Tens of thousands of letters mailed around the country could have picked up trace amounts of anthrax while passing through a contaminated Trenton, N.J., postal facility, the nation's top anthrax investigator said Monday."
- posted by Amy @ 12/03/2001 09:13:00 PM

 

FILLING IN SOME OF THE BLANKS ABOUT PRAGUE
I got a nice e-mail from JoAnn Yerem, the Viewpoints editor at the LA Daily News. She has filled in some of the gaps in my fuzzy memory about the Prague Thanksgiving 10 years ago. She assures me that her own journal writing was as useless as mine, and has given me the OK to reprint here what she had to say about that night.

"I just read your remembrances of 1991's Thanksgiving. It really was an amazing day. Tom and I made the pumpkin pie. My mother sent me my grandmother's family recipe for pumpkin pie, which started with "3 cans of Libby's..." Yeah, Libby's in Prague! It took us forever to find pumpkins and make it from scratch. The actual making of the pies took all day. I think we made 8 of them and then had to get them to the potluck. It was a great, great holiday. The only Thanksgiving I have not spent at my parents' house in my life. But it was one of the best ever. I miss Jo Bloom."
- posted by Amy @ 12/03/2001 08:53:00 PM

 

GUARDIAN DISMISSES U.S. WAR COVERAGE
There is a story in London's Guardian newspaper today about the flag-waving still going on at many American media organizations. The story, by Roy Greenslade, is dripping with snobbery. He manages to dismiss the seriousness of all U.S. media outlets after reading 12 issues of the Los Angeles Times. Rather than dip to his level - which I admit was my first, second and third inclination - I'll just say I disagree with part of his assessment. Granted, you can find exceptional journalism from the Economist and the BBC. Then there's the Independent, the Guardian and the Financial Times, which has a very nice search engine. But the Guardian story exists in a blissful vacuum inhabited only by Fleet Street and the LA Times. There is no mention of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker or even that thing called CNN.

However distasteful his framing may be, he does have a legitimate point about the patriotic turn American reporters have taken since the September attacks. "It is as if the (F)irst (A)mendment has been put on ice while America is at war, the very moment when it is most necessary to use it," Greenslade writes. That may be true up to a point, Mr. Greenslade.

Equally troubling is a recent Pew study found that 53 percent of Americans prefer their news censored for them during a war.
- posted by Amy @ 12/03/2001 08:22:00 PM

 

GUARDIAN: BOUNTY ON JOURNALISTS' HEADS
The Guardian is reporting that Mullah Mohammed Omar has promised a bounty of $50,000 to any Afghan who shoots a Western journalist.
- posted by Amy @ 12/02/2001 11:04:00 PM

 

WEB SITE REMOVES BIRTH RECORDS
If you're Californian or Texan by birth, you no longer have to worry about your vitals hanging out. A quick round of public pressure persuaded RootsWeb.com to take down all of our birth records. In the case of Texans (such as my mom) the site had posted both parents' full names, in addition to the birth data California was providing. "After receiving hundreds of calls and complaints from across the nation, the company decided Friday to remove the entire California birth record database, with about 24.6 million names, along with a second database of Texas births with more than 15 million records," the Merc said.
- posted by Amy @ 12/02/2001 10:33:00 PM