Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Open Thread - Wednesday

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 4:48 AM
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2 comments:

Unknown said...

This morning NPR is covering the military's shutdown of soldier use of blogs, myspace and so on. No mention, of course, of what I suspect are clearly the reasons for this latest mode of censorship--keeping the troops in an information bubble (and thus more compliant), and keeping any with dissenting thoughts from communicating them with each other on the internet.

No NPR discussion so far of last night's Republican debate. I'm not holding my breath for any mention, let alone serious analysis, of Ron Paul's openly searing indictment of the situation in Iraq. He mentioned permanent bases, blowback, and how we would feel if another country was doing to us what we've been doing to them. Mr. 911 (Ghouliani) tried to shut him down by insisting that Paul take back his claim that we "invited" the 911 attacks, but Paul didn't back down. Great to see someone get these insights out on a mainstream outlet.

5/16/07, 8:55 AM
Porter Melmoth said...

On a much fluffier subject, ATC thought they'd do a little story on the colloquial usage of the term 'czar' for certain public officials in the US. (You should hear how Andrea enunciates the word in question...) Anyway, they note that Nicholas Biddle was the first person to have the term used on him in the 1830s, but they didn't even bother to mention that the inspiration no doubt came from the fact that the tsar of Russia at the time was - Nicholas I. Plus, the fact that he was a particularly harsh ruler (Stalin admired him) might have offered an additional insight regarding the significance of the term's usage today. That is, as a position of relatively absolute power. Nevertheless, someone was hip enough to end this clunky segment with a march by Rimsky-Korsakov. ('Well, czar's a Russian word, isn't it?') Minor points, but it proves we can always rely on NPR for covering all the angles with an approach that may not be perfect, BUT IT'S GOOD ENOUGH.

5/16/07, 6:36 PM

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