Will This Do Any Good?

You all remember: "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions."

As a soldier in the war on drugs, these types of Public Service Announcements usually come up wanting.

Peg Shea, a former drug treatment specialist who signed on as the project's executive director in late September, said she started out a skeptic, considering most antidrug commercials "dorky." "Then I saw these ads, and heard them," she said. "I saw the quality and the impact."

Check out these from the Montana Meth Project and tell me what you think. There are some for print, radio, and tv.

Maybe you'll agree with Peg, maybe with Wendy.

"The ads are dead on, that's exactly the way it is," said Wendy Kongstvedt, 17, a student at Helena High School. "But it's just another thing adults are telling us not to do."

So, naturally, who'll listen?

For the full article from the New York Times, go here.
(Use as your member ID "thscommedia". Use as your password "mrmac").

Trouble in Iraq -- Part III: Bombing at the Mosque

Thurday, February 23. From this morning's Times.

The Askariya Shrine was sacred to the Shiite Muslims of Iraq. A majority of Muslims in Iraq, the Shiites were restricted in their worship by the minority Sunni sect for much of the 20th century.

Shiite militia members flooded the streets of Baghdad, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at Sunni mosques while Iraqi Army soldiers who had been called out to stop the violence stood helpless nearby. By the day's end, mobs had struck or destroyed 27 Sunni mosques in the capital, killing three imams and kidnapping a fourth, Interior Ministry officials said. In all, at least 15 people were killed in related violence across the country.

There are fears that this will flame into a civil war.

Iraq's major political and religious leaders issued urgent appeals for restraint, and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called for a three-day mourning period in a televised address. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, released an unusually strong statement in which he said, "If the government's security forces cannot provide the necessary protection, the believers will do it."

The Bush administration, through the ambassador to Iraq, warned just a few days ago that U.S. money would not go to support a sectarian government.

Most Iraqi leaders attributed the attack to terrorists bent on exploiting sectarian rifts, but some also blamed the United States for failing to prevent it. Even the leader of Iraq's main Shiite political alliance said he thought Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, bore some responsibility. The Shiite leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said Mr. Khalilzad's veiled threat on Monday to withdraw American support if Iraqis could not form a nonsectarian government helped provoke the bombing. "This declaration gave a green light for these groups to do their operation, so he is responsible for a part of that," Mr. Hakim said at a news conference.

It's looking more and more like a quagmire.

The Times article goes on to give a little background of the Askariya Shrine.

The shrine is one of four major Shiite shrines in Iraq, and the site has special meaning because 2 of the 12 imams revered by mainstream Shiites are buried there: Ali al-Hadi, who died in A.D. 868 and his son, the 11th imam, Hassan al-Askari. Also, according to legend, the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, known as the "Hidden Imam," was at the site of the shrine before he disappeared.

These figures resonate with Iraqi Shiites, whose traditions have long been shaped by violence with the rival Sunni sect. At an earlier time of rising tensions, the 10th imam was forced from his home in Medina by the powerful Sunni caliph in Baghdad and was sent to live in Samarra, where he could be kept under closer supervision. Both he and his son were believed to have been poisoned by the caliphate.

Fearing such persecution, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who was just a child when he became the 12th imam, was hidden away in a cave, where he held forth through intermediaries for about 70 years. Then he is said to have gone into what Shiites call occultation, a kind of suspended state from which it is believed he will return before the Judgment Day to bring justice during a time of chaos.

Well, if it's a time of chaos he's waiting for. . .

Consider the Source -- Pravda

"Pravda" is Russian for truth. It is also the offical Russian Press Agency. I'm not sure what its status is vis-a-vis the government (you'd have to ask Ms. Regan), but when I was growing up during the Cold War it was famous for its anti-American propaganda.

I'm working on putting together an entry on Jill Carroll, the abducted reporter from the Christian Science Monitor, and I came across this -- which I just had to pass along.

Trouble in Iraq -- Part II

Well, you didn't have to be Nostradamus to see this one coming.

Well, yesterday I was trying to explain some of the "sectarian violence" in Iraq. Today. lo and behold, sectarian violence in Iraq.

Blast at Iraqi Shiite Shrine Spawns Reprisals Against Sunnis

(From Associated Press)

SAMARRA, Iraq -- A large explosion heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shiite shrines today, spawning mass protests and triggering reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets this week and threatened to stoke sectarian tensions.

Shiite leaders called for calm, but militants attacked Sunni mosques and a gunfight broke out between Shiite militiamen and guards at the offices of a Sunni political party in Basra. About 500 soldiers were sent to Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad to prevent clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, Army Capt. Jassim al-Wahash said.

A leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, said 29 Sunni mosques had been attacked nationwide. He urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation "before it spins out of control."

So, what does this mean?

Well, you know it can't be good, so it's a question of how bad will it get. Right now people are appealing for calm.

The country's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sent instructions to his followers forbidding attacks on Sunni mosques, especially the major ones in Baghdad. He called for seven days of mourning, his aides said.

The Sunni Endowment, a government organization that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines, condemned the blast and said it was sending a delegation to Samarra to investigate.

(To review, the Shiites. although a majority in Iraq, were cut out of power for most of the 20th century by the Sunni minority. The bombed mosque was sacred to the Shiites, and so was probably bombed by Sunnis -- or possibly insurgents for whom chaos in Iraq is a good thing. (Although I believe the bombers were reported to be wearing uniforms of Iraqi Security forces. ( Of course, anyone can get uniforms.)))

For an anlysis of the situation, try this. It's from the PBS evening news show Newshour (whihc gets my seal of approval. If you can only watch one nightly news show, this is the one to watch.

You can read the article, or listen to it via Real Audio. Host Gwen Ifill talks with Ed Wong, a reporter for the New York Times. Here are some highlights:

• EDWARD WONG: The sectarian attacks have been going on for quite sometime now in Iraq. Basically for at least a year or more we've had a low level of civil war here, even though many people don't want to call it a civil war. But everyone on the ground here undoubtedly thinks there is one. So far, we're not - as far as we can tell - we're not heading towards a large-scale civil war anytime in the coming days.

Whew! (I think.) So there won't be a civil war breaking out. There already is one going one. (But it's a small one.)

• EDWARD WONG: Well, Muqtada's officials, his high-ranking officials in his organization came out in a press conference and basically also called for restraint, just like many of the other Shiite leaders did, including Ayatollah Sistani, but in Sadr City what you saw was just some members of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia driving around with Kalashnikovs, driving around in cars, and there were - was a lot of anger there.

A lot of it was directed at Americans; it was directed at both Sunnis and at terrorists or insurgents, but a lot of them were also blaming the Americans for what had happened and oftentimes you do hear this rhetoric, you do hear this talk at a lot of bomb sites.

And Muqtada's people have been especially anti-American and he's never backed down from that stand. So you do have a lot of angry young men out there with guns who are angry at not only Sunni Arabs but also at Americans and at other occupying powers here.

So we're getting the blame, when we didn't even have anything to do with it?

Yep.

A Threat to Higher Education

I know how much you all have come to enjoy standardized testing over the years. The CMTs, the CAPT. the SATs. You were probably getting a little sad to have to leave all that behind. Well, take heart! If Margaret Spellings, George Bush's Secretary of Education, has her way, you'll have tests like that at college, too.

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality.

Charles Miller, a business executive who is the commission's chairman, wrote in a memorandum recently to the 18 other members that he saw a developing consensus over the need for more accountability in higher education.

As is often the case with spectacularly bad ideas, there's some underlying sense to it.

"What is clearly lacking is a nationwide system for comparative performance purposes, using standard formats," Mr. Miller wrote, adding that student learning was a main component that should be measured.

Right now we're relying on US News and World Report, or the Princeton Review to tell us how good colleges are. How do you really know if the college you're going to give your $45,000 a year to is worth it, or if the program you'll be majoring in is worth it?

In an interview, Mr. Miller said he was not envisioning a higher education version of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires standardizing testing in public schools and penalizes schools whose students do not improve. "There is no way you can mandate a single set of tests, to have a federalist higher education system," he said.

But he said public reporting of collegiate learning as measured through testing "would be greatly beneficial to the students, parents, taxpayers and employers" and that he would like to create a national database that includes measures of learning.

The problem is that what you are going to college for is too diverse to be handily measured. And really, test like this are tests for the school, not for the students. How well did we educate you? How good are the schools (not the students)? For a local community, and a local school system, I can (grudgingly) admit some rationale for testing.

But not at college. Do you want to spend your money to take courses so that your university can get a good grade? And there are plenty of other ways to gauge how good a school is.

“I can’t think of any reason that a student would want or need to take that kind of test,” said sophomore Julia Brown, a professional writing major [at Carnegie Mellon University]. “How do you test a humanities major versus a computer science major? There’s no way to really standardize that.”

“Colleges have reputations anyway. Why do we need another way to measure that?” asked Karen Doersch, a first-year cognitive science major. “A private institution should be independent from the government.”

Adminstrators agree.

Educators are wary. "To subject colleges to uniform standards is to trivialize what goes on in higher education," said Leon Botstein, president of Bard College. "Excellence comes in many unusual ways. You cannot apply the rules of high-stakes testing in high schools to universities."

[Carnegie Mellon] University’s administration agrees. When asked what local reactions might be like if the tests were to be administered, William Elliott, Carnegie Mellon’s vice president for enrollment, answered: “Not pleased.”

Email Changing Higher Education

An interesting article this morning in the New York Times; reprinted here in the International Herald Tribune (no registration and hopefully it will remain available more than a week).

Email is making college professors more accessible to students. You would think that would be a good think, but the professors don't always agree.

At universities and other schools nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages - from 10 a week to 10 after every class - that are too informal or downright inappropriate.

One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e- mail message asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade, and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking too much at a wild weekend party.

"The tone that they would take in e- mail was pretty astounding," said Michael Kessler, an assistant dean and a lecturer in theology at Georgetown University. " 'I need to know this and you need to tell me right now,' with a familiarity that can sometimes border on imperative."

While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor's time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.

Well, at $45,000 a year, isn't the student a consumer? Yes, and professors -- particularly new professors hoping to achieve tenure -- are aware of the need to cater to student peference.

The stakes are different for professors today than they were even a decade ago, said Patricia Ewick, chairwoman of the sociology department at Clark University in Massachusetts. "Students are constantly asked to fill out evaluations of individual faculty." Students also frequently post their own evaluations on Web sites like rateyourprofessor.com and describe their impressions of their professors on blogs.

Last fall, undergraduate students at Syracuse University set up a group in Facebook.com, an online network for students, and dedicated it to maligning one particular instructor. The students were reprimanded.

And there is undoubtedly a useful purpose in use of these new technologies.

Every professor interviewed emphasized that instant feedback could be invaluable. A question about a lecture or discussion "is for me an indication of a blind spot, that the student didn't get it," said Austin D. Sarat, a professor of political science at Amherst College.

College students say that e-mail makes it easier to ask questions and helps them to learn. "If the only way I could communicate with my professors was by going to their office or calling them, there would be some sort of ranking or prioritization taking place," said Cory Merrill, 19, a sophomore at Amherst. "Is this question worth going over to the office?"

But student e-mail can go too far, said Robert B. Ahdieh, an associate professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta. He paraphrased some of the comments he had received: "I think you're covering the material too fast, or I don't think we're using the reading as much as we could in class, or I think it would be helpful if you would summarize what we've covered at the end of class in case we missed anything."

Hey, Professor. You don't have to do everything they say, but is it so bad to listen? (A little heads-up for you seniors. Not all professors are brilliant. Some are not very bright at all. Try to find the good ones.)

But how much is too much?

Kathleen Jenkins, a sociology professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, said she had even received e-mail requests from students who missed class and wanted copies of her teaching notes.

Ewick said 10 students in one class had e-mailed her drafts of their papers days before they were due, seeking comments. "It's all different levels of presumption," she said. "One is that I'll be able to drop everything and read 250 pages two days before I'm going to get 50 of these."

Well, like with everything else new that comes along, once you figure out what the game is going to be, then you need to establish some rules.

A few professors said they had rules for e-mail and told their students how quickly they would respond, how messages should be drafted and what types of messages they would answer.

Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor's response to an e-mail message.

"One of the rules that I teach my students is, the less powerful person always has to write back," Professor Worley said.

Comments, anyone?

Trouble in Iraq

Ryan Osgood told us last week about "sectarian violence" in Iraq. But a large percentage of the class weren't really sure who the sects were (in fact, a lot of the class still thinks we were saying something about "sex", but they couldn't quite catch what), or what they were be violent about.

So let's try putting together a little primer.

Comparing Sunni and Shiite (Shia) Muslims

(This first bit of information comes from a site call Everything2.com. This seems to have been submitted by an amateur, so I can't vouch 100% for the information. But it's boiled it down better than a lot of other places I looked).

"The Sunnis and the Shiites are the two main groups of Muslims. They have many things in common, but here we focus on the differences. Bias warning: I lean towards the Sunnis, but I'll try to be objective as I can.

• Both agree on the primary source, the Qur'an.

• Shiites believe that Ali, the cousin of Muhammad should have taken over leadership of the Muslim community. (Aside: The name Shiites comes from this fact. "Shia" in arabic means "faction" or group. Shiites refers to the faction of people supporting Ali). Sunnis feel that what happened historically was acceptable [the line of succession was passed down another way]. This is probably the key difference, everything follows from this.

• Shiites believe that to lead the Muslims you have to be from Muhammad's family. Sunnis believe that anyone having the qualities of the leader, regardless of lineage, has the right to lead.

• Shiites believe in twelve religious leaders called imams will rule, and that the last of these is currently sleeping in a cave. Sunnis have no such belief, and feel that these imams are imbued with powers that only God has, which is not acceptable for Sunnis.

• Shiites have slightly different laws. For example, Shiites are allowed to have temporary marriages (marriage for a fixed time), Sunnis are not -- marriages have to be made with the intention of permanence.

• Shiites have slightly different ritual practices. For example, the Shiites pray with their arms by their sides, Sunnis pray with their arms folded at the sternum."

As regards Iraq, the Sunnis have fewer numbers of adherents, but they dominated politcal power during the 20th century, and the Shiites had to restrict their public worship and ceremonies. With the deposing of Sadam Hussein, the Shiites gained a freedom that they had not had in years.

The Sunnis, who went from being in control to being a minority, are worried about what this means for their future. For years the Shiites could not celebrate the holiday Ashura. Since the fall of Sadaam, they have been able to. Unforunately, their celebratrions have been plagued by violence.

Ryan's stories told of sectarian killings. An article in today's New York Times follows up on that. A major problem is that these killings were performed not by some gang or insurgent group, but by a group operating out of a government agency, the Interior ministry.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 20 — The American ambassador to Iraq issued an unusually strong warning on Monday about the need for Iraq's political factions to come together, hinting for the first time that the United States would not be willing to support crucial public institutions plagued by sectarian agendas.

"The United States is investing billions of dollars" in Iraq's police and army, said the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. "We are not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian."

Mr. Khalilzad spoke at a news conference on a day of fresh violence across Iraq. It was the bloodiest day in almost two months.

He was addressing allegations that Shiite death squads operate within the Interior Ministry.

Such reports have grown in recent months, with accounts of hundreds of Sunni men being rounded up by men in police uniforms and found dead days or weeks later.

In order for our Iraqi adventure to be a success at the end of the day, the US is hoping for a non-religious, non-sectarian democracy to be established, leading the way for democratic reform in the rest of the Middle East. What we don't want is a descent into a decades long civil war.

American officials have long argued that new cabinet ministers should place the interests of their country over those of their sects. But by linking American financing to a fair, nonpartisan army and police force, even if not intended as a direct threat, Mr. Khalilzad pressed the American position more forcefully and publicly than before.

American officials are working to draw Sunni Arabs into the new government in an effort to build a stable society and begin bringing American troops home. Allaying Sunni concerns over overtly biased ministries is seen as an essential part of that effort.

The attacks on Monday, however, raised fresh fears of renewed violence.

Give the Bush adminstration credit. They're trying to get this straightened out. The question is: Will they be able to succeed?

Good Losers -- Part II

Well, if you were watching the Ice Dancing last night (and who wasn't!), you may have thought you were tuned into the demolition derby. In a type of ice skating where hardly anyone ever falls, five of the best pairs in the world fell.

Good news, though. All the falls opened the door for an American pair to gain a silver medal -- the first for Americans in Ice Dancing in 30 years.

(What's the deal with those medals, though? "I Won Second Place in the Winter Olympics and All I Got Was a Lousy CD"?)

One of the things about the Olympics is that we Americans tend to look at everything in terms of winners and losers. And being a loser can even consist of not winning as much as you ought to -- for instance, the U.S. Women's hockey team which only won a bronze.

So here's an inspiring story about an ice dancer who didn't even win a stinkin' bronze. In fact, Jamie Silverstein and Ryan O'Meara finished 18th.

At one time, she and her partner, Justin Pekarek, were touted as the United States' best ice dancers in decades. They were Fred and Ginger on skates, seamlessly gliding across the ice as they waltzed, cha-cha-ed and rumba-ed their way to success, winning the gold medal at the 1999 world junior championships.

A year and a half later, Silverstein crumbled, unable to cope with her eating disorder, anorexia. She blamed her sport, in which women wear skintight outfits that show every flaw and the pressure to live up to expectations can be suffocating.

It's a pretty typical story.

Silverstein, from Pittsburgh, had paired with Pekarek when she was 11. Several years later, the weight began to peel off her 5-foot-3 frame. Her face became more angular. Her shoulder blades looked bony. Her weight loss was hard to hide in her costumes.

She pretended to be fine, but on the inside, Silverstein said, she was drowning. She said she felt the need to be the best, to make people happy, including her mother, Robin, who had gone through a divorce and had focused her energies on her daughter's career.

It was not unfolding as the romantic life Silverstein had imagined from watching made-for-TV movies. She said she felt invisible.

"I thought someone would say, 'She's more important than any of this skating stuff,' and would rescue me," Silverstein said. "I just wanted someone to pluck me away and, for a long time, that was so sad."

She handled that pain by restricting her food intake. Pekarek and their coach, Igor Shpilband, would try to feed her. Pekarek took her to a sports psychologist, but even that did not help.

"Everyone in the skating world knew she had a problem, but they didn't know the severity of it, or the ties to the depression or mental anguish," said Pekarek, now a skating coach and college student in Massachusetts. "She was lost because everyone had planned her future for her and she had no control over it."

She stopped skating, enrolled at Cornell University, and there finally confronted her problem head on.

At Cornell, Silverstein still battled anorexia and bulimia. After seeing a counselor and a nutritionist, she said, she soon realized that skating did not cause her problem. She learned ways to take care of herself.

But for Silverstein, who studies art therapy at Cornell, it still is difficult, particularly when she sees other ice dancers.

"It just takes having the courage to be as I am in this environment and not get caught up in comparisons," she said Friday, as a paper-thin skater walked by wearing an outfit that looked like two strategically placed dinner napkins.

Then Silverstein sighed.

"It was really hard for me for a long time, and it still is," she said. "On a day-to-day basis, I don't feel beautiful, but skating has always made me feel beautiful.

"It's just that now I've learned you can be beautiful without being perfect."

There are a lot of different ways to define hero. Jamie Silverstein can become a role model to lots of little girls, even if 18th in the world was the best she could muster. The Olympic Games can be a "bully pulpit", as we've seen in times past.

Good Losers at the Olympics -- Part I

Did you see this?

BARDONECCHIA, Italy, Feb. 17 — About 100 yards from the finish line, Lindsey Jacobellis hung in the air. She had only one jump remaining. Her closest competitor was about 50 yards behind. Lucky Lindsey, as she used to be called, got in the way of her own victory ride. Like a basketball player going for a reverse dunk or a football player high-stepping toward the end zone, Jacobellis stylishly grabbed the back of her board in midair. She coolly angled it to the right. The move is called a Method. It may have to be renamed the Jacobellis.

Bad idea. She falls, and by the time she had gotten up and slid past the finish line, Tanja Frieden of Switzerland had crossed the line and won the gold. The worst finish since Jean Van de Velde at the British Open.

What was she thinking?!?!

Asked to explain why she would choose to perform a needlessly risky aerial maneuver in such a crucial situation, Jacobellis, from Stratton, Vt., said: "I just was trying to grab my board on the jump so I could stabilize myself. You're not trying to create style there. You're trying to create stability." She softened her case somewhat during a teleconference two hours later, acknowledging that she was possibly trying to have some fun and may not have made the best choice. Jacobellis refused to paint herself as a showboat, but it was impossible to argue with the pictures on the big screen.

But do you know what? If Lindsey Jacobellis would have won the gold, who would have been talking about it? Who would have remembered? As it is, she's become a Winter Olympics Immortal.

Here's an editorial that appeared in the New York Times this morning:

You Go, Lindsey

The sports world was buzzing yesterday about Lindsey Jacobellis's Olympic moment. The young American snowboarder seemed to have clinched the gold medal in the snowboardcross when she tried to get fancy on her next-to-last jump, crash-landed and scrambled miserably to her feet as Tanja Frieden of Switzerland blew by her to win the gold. Besides a silver, Ms. Jacobellis won an instantaneous reputation as a showboater who "got what she deserved," in the words of one sports commentator.

As she explained later, the flamboyant spirit of snowboarding had chosen a bad time to express itself. "I was having fun," she said. "Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh, well, it happens."

To the uninitiated, snowboardcross looks like a combination of roller derby and surfing. It's hard to imagine anybody regarding the outcome as a matter of life or death. Perhaps that's why its athletes, like the other snowboarders at the games, seem to be stealing the show with their cheerful good humor. Meanwhile, the potential champions in sports like figure skating grimly go about their business, trying to pretend that it's all for the love of the sport, that the whole world isn't watching, that a king's ransom in endorsements doesn't hang in the balance.

At times, the atmosphere gets downright gloomy. When the American figure skater Johnny Weir missed the bus to the rink, he got upset and skated badly, and finished without a medal. "I didn't feel my aura," he said. "Inside I was black." Meanwhile, the Russian skater Yevgeni Plushenko accepted his gold medal with a stone-faced stare, "looking completely unamused," as The Times's Juliet Macur reported. "I tell the truth, this is my dream, yeah, and I am so happy," Mr. Plushenko said unconvincingly. "Believe me, I am so happy."

Meanwhile, Ms. Jacobellis had an amazing race, built a huge lead, got exuberant and went splat. What did she think these were — Games?

A Lingering Doubt. . .

about the Dick Cheney shooting incident. (I know, I know!)

But remember, a lot of times "it isn't the crime, it's the cover up." Cheney would have been a lot better off if he would have fessed up right away, and to the national or White House press corps, rather than to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, (which, by most accounts, has done an excellent and professional job of handling the story).

This morning I'm reading the Boston Globe for my daily Red Sox fix, and there's an article, on the Sports page, about the Shooting. Well, actually, it's about Mike Timlin, a reliever for the Sox and an avid hunter, and his take on the incident. Now Mike Timlin is a Republican and a devout Christian who wears a camouflage t-shirt under his uniform top in support of the military. In his locker you'll find this: S0 you wouldn't think that he would be critical of Dick Cheney. And he wasn't. But he did mention something that I found to be interesting:

Timlin said he has never shot anyone, or been shot himself.

''Not that close, anyway," he said. ''I've had some pellets rain on me. It scares you. But by that time, the guys who have shot were 30, 40 yards away when it comes down on you, by that point it's just like a little sprinkle of rocks.

"A little sprinkle of rocks." How far away was Whittington when Dick Cheney shot him in the face?
a) two feet
b) ten yards
c) thirty yards
d) one hundred yards

The answer so far has been c) thirty yards. And yet Whittington seems to have been hit by something more than "a lttle sprinkle or rcoks". So perhaps the correct answer is b? Or even a? (Well, okay, that may be pushing it a bit far.)

But if "thirty yards" is inaccurate, what are we to think about "one beer at lunch"? Again, I don't think there's any fire here, certainly no cause for Cheney to resign or be impeached, but there certainly is a little smoke. All of which, I think, could have been avoided by a timely press conference last Saturday night.

The New York Times today, in the "Outdoors" column in the sports section, features an article by Charles Fergus, the book review editor for Shooting Sportsman magazine.

Here's some of what he has to say.

I have hunted upland birds for almost four decades, often as one in a group — not for quail, but for grouse, woodcock and pheasants. The protocol is the same: When a bird is shot, the party does not hunt onward until someone — a human or a dog — recovers the bird, and all members are present and accounted for.

Cheney and his gunning partner Pamela Pitzer Willeford should have remained stationary while Whittington searched for his quail, rather than forging ahead and trying to bag other birds.

Armstrong suggested that Whittington was at fault for not calling out to his friends and letting them know he was back. Clearly he should have done that. But it remains the responsibility of every shooter to know the whereabouts of all members of the group. If you do not know where your companions are, you do not shoot. It's as simple as that.

Cheney broke another important safety rule on the Armstrong Ranch. He failed to make sure that no one was behind his intended target. We have been told that the sun was in his eyes, and that Whittington was standing in a gully or perhaps a dried-up pond. Neither is an excuse for being careless.

Now Jon Stewart made fun of the fact that Cheney got out of a truck to go shoot those pen-fed quail. How about that?

Others have raised questions concerning the ethics of riding around a ranch in a truck and getting out to shoot birds, as Cheney and his hunting partners were doing. In the South, there is a tradition of riding to quail coveys that have been found and pinned by pointing dogs. Hunters ride up on horseback or in a wagon — or more recently in a jeep or pickup truck. A traditionalist may not choose to motor to the coveys, but it is not considered unethical to do so.

"A Ringtone to Make You Irresistable!"

Naturally, when you see something like this in your email, you recognize it for what it is.

"Can my ring tones make you sexy?" read one ad posted last month on the Hollywood gossip blog Egotastic.com, depicting a red-haired doctor in a white lab coat. "Experience the ring tone secret I discovered in Denmark that's too hot for mainstream science," the ad promised, directing visitors to a Web site, pherotones.com. There, users could download special cellphone ring tones that, when played, were supposed to attract the opposite sex.

Turns out there's no such thing. It's an example of what's known either as "buzz marketing" or "viral marketing".

But rather than the revolutionary product that Pherotones promised, the ads were the beginning of a buzz marketing campaign under the guise of a fake product (Pherotones) and a fake doctor (Dr. Myra Vanderhood) with a fake Web site (Pherotones.com), all for a real client with less than $250,000 to spend.

The real client is Oasys Mobile, a little-known cellphone content provider that sells games, cellphone wallpaper and ring tones that can be downloaded. Oasys, based in Raleigh, N.C., enlisted the advertising firm McKinney & Silver, in Durham, N.C., to introduce its brand inexpensively — with a nontraditional campaign that it hoped would grab the attention of its desired 18-to-24-year-old demographic.

You have a new product. You don't have a lot of money for an ad campaign. Certainly nowhere near as much as your chief competitors have? So what do you do? Why, create a little buzz. Get people talking. Then, get them to do your marketing for you. Share the video with your friends. They share it with their friends. It's a regular virus!

But the overall campaign is garnering interest: after placing ads on blogs like Gawker and Defamer, Pherotones.com is now averaging 10,000 page views a day. Last week on Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs, Pherotones.com was in the top 10 percent of the most popular blogs worldwide. It has also attracted attention on insider blogs like AdRants, a Web site that closely tracks the advertising industry.

Just one problem.

The campaign has also revived a question that is routinely asked in the advertising industry: is it acceptable to use advertising to trick consumers?

Sure!!!

One recent study has indicated that the buying public is willing to be fooled. A study by Northeastern University released last month found that even when participants who pitch products in word-of-mouth campaigns identify their commercial affiliations, it usually does not affect consumers' willingness to pass the marketing message on.

Today we begin to see if this campaign works.

Now Oasys will be able to test the campaign's effect on sales: starting today, the Pherotones Web site is revealing its client by directing visitors to Oasysmobile.com.

Raising the ire of people who initially believed in the power of Pherotones is simply a negative consequence of the whole effort, said Mr. Ban of Oasys Mobile.

"You run the risk in any campaign like this that you might offend somebody," he said. "But even if you offend somebody, it seems to spread the gospel of the campaign."

You People are Freaking Me Out!

Well, unfortunately the Snowball was canceled last Saturday -- yes, due to snow. No, the irony is not lost on me. But perhaps it's just as well. Now, I've never been to one of thedances here (I live about 40 minutes away, and when I get home on a Friday night, I stay home). But I certainly hope that nothing goes on here in Tolland like what's been happening in Wethersfield.

What's been happening? Believe me, you'd rather not know. But, on the chance that some of the parents that came in for Open House are checking out the blog -- Welcome! -- here's what.

Teenagers bumping and grinding on the dance floor. Girls straddling their male partners at high school-sanctioned dances.

Students call it "freaking." School administrators call it degrading and lewd, and they want it to stop.

"It's simulating sex on the dance floor," said Wethersfield High School Principal Thomas Moore.

Oh, come on. How bad could it be?

Administrators have been trying to clean up the dirty dancing after teachers and chaperones saw girls bent down while their male partners humped them at a school dance in January.

Oh.

So, who's to blame?

Anne Riccio, a parent and a member of the parent teacher student association, said the teenagers are emulating behavior they see on MTV and in movies.

Is there nothing that can be done to stop this lewd behavior?

Moore hasn't canceled any school dances - although he did deny a request for an unscheduled dance later this year. Instead, he organized the "freeze freak project."

The project involves student council members whose mission is to educate students that freaking is degrading to women, and to talk to them about acceptable forms of dancing.

Now, the fact that this form of dancing -- "freaking" -- is degrading to women may come as news to young men should come as no surprise to us. But you would think that young women would know this without have to have any consciousness raising. Not so, in an age where women are encouraged to "find their inner slut." (I told you last blog entry that there were times when I could come across as conservative.)

Where will it end? Do you have to ask?

Moore isn't giving up. He's continuing his intervention with the help of administrators and parents.

He hopes students will get the message in time for the junior prom in April.

But that's a blog for another day.

Will the Liberal Media Take One Step Forward?

Not so fast there, Sunday Morning Talk Shows.

What? I thought that the media was biased in favor of the liberals? Well, not the Sunday morning political talk shows (Meet the Press, Face the Nation, etc.), at least not according to a group called Media Matters.

Now, wait a minute, Mr Mac. I remember that you told us about Media Matters -- I think it was in the "mediawatch" section of "Choosing Your AMS", and you said that they didn't like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. Doesn't that make them liberals?

Well, it makes them people with good sense, but you may be right. Overall, Media Matters seems to be more in tune with liberals that with conservatives.

Then what good is this study?

I don't know. I haven't read it myself yet, I only read the reports about the report. But they say that since 1997 there have been signifcantly more conservative voices than progressive voices on the air on Sunday Morning. But read the stidy, and decide for yourself how good their methodology is. They've tried to back their impressions up with statistics.

NBC was not happy with the conclusions of the report. Why only go back as far as 1997, they wonder. If you go back to the first Clinton term, they say, things will even out. There are more Republicans on the air now, NBC says, because Republicans are running things in Washington. Media Matters printed NBC's response, and then their own response to the response.

Over at CBS News' blog "Public Eye" (that'd be a good one to bookmark and check back in on from time to time), Vaughn Ververs notes that sometimes it's hard to tell exactly where people stand. One example he uses is David Brooks (we had him in class the other day -- the OP-ED piece about the popularity of hard-driving Coach movies). You call Brooks a conservative, Ververs says, yet he was in favor of gay marriage -- not a conservative viewpoint. So what is he? (He's a conservative. Sometimes I'll espouse a viewpoint that sounds strangely conservative, but overall there's no doubt where I stand). But Ververs is right. You do the best you can, but sometimes it's hard to boil down people and opinions to numbers.

Cheney Speaks!

Okay, short of finding out that the Veep was drunk as a skunk, or sleeping with Harry Whittington's wife, I think I've heard enough of this story. Cheney has been embarrassed: let's move on to more meaningful stories.

But before we do, check out this site: CROOKS & LIARS and bookmark it for the future. You'll find lots of recent clips from the news channels, the Daily Show, etc. As you can see if you go here , right now it's all Cheney all the time.

Well, this afternoon, Cheney finally talked to the media. Well, not to the media exactly, but to Brit Hume of the Fox News Network. Well, it was to him or Rush Limbaugh, you'd guess. Both are very friendly forums for the Vice President, the Administration, and Republicans in general. (That's where I would go, too, if I were Cheney. A sympathetic ear, no hard questions).

As you can also see, Crooks & Liars is not a fan of the Vice President. But you can judge for yourself as C & L will link you to the video of Cheney's appearance, or else to the transcript in the Washington Post.

Further on down the page, you'll see that CNN was not so impressed with Cheney giving an exclusive to one of their chief rivals.

Meanwhile, it comes out that Cheney drank at least one beer at lunch (he tells Brit Hume). They went shooting at three. There's soem question as to how this information was handled by MSNBC.

And further down C & L, we find Lawrence O'Donnell, whose article on "Was Cheney Drunk?" from the Huffington Post we looked at in class today. Here he is on MSNBC's Scarborough Country (Joe Scarborough is a former congressman, from California, I believe. Put him a little to the right of center).

Oh, wait -- here's a late breaking story! This could be what we're looking for! I'm not sure if soembody had a cellphone, or it was from the Secret Service, but there's apparently a videotape of the shooting! Check it out!

Corruption in Connecticut -- Part II

John Rowland was released

from prison at 5:20 this morning. He will be under house arrest for the next four months (wearing an electronic ankle bracelet), and he still owes the State 300 hours of community service, but he's done wth the "hard time."

The Hartford Courant features a front page story today on the release. The story is sympathetic toward Rowland, as Jon Lender seems to have talked to Rowland friends (Rev. Will Marotti, his pastor and "spiritual advisor"' Dean Pagani, his former chief of staff; and local radio fossil Brad Davis, a close personal friend of the Rowlands).

Six years ago, then-Gov. John G. Rowland shipped hundreds of Connecticut inmates to a prison in Virginia with no apparent qualms about the hardships to the inmates' families. Now, set for release at the end of a 10-month prison stretch far from home, Rowland has rethought the issue.

"He told me, `When we sent the prisoners out of state I didn't really think of the hardship it placed on their families for visitation, and getting to see them, and now I am really looking at it from this perspective and realizing how difficult that was for people,'" said the Rev. Will Marotti, Rowland's pastor at a Meriden evangelical church.

Marotti, who has regularly made the 780-mile round trip to visit Rowland at the Loretto, Pa., federal prison camp, related that conversation as an example of the kind of reflection he said the convicted ex-governor has had time for while serving a sentence scheduled to end Sunday.

"I think that's a huge revelation," Marotti said.

I don't think that it's too much to ask for a politican to be aware of the impact of his decisions on the lives of the people being effected, but let's not worry about that here. Lender doesn't. It's a sign of Rowland's spiritual growth. (The AP story on his release indicates that

Rowland said he found grace in prison.

"I am going to try to be a better person and show my family and friends and the people of Connecticut how truly sorry I am for letting them down," he said.)

The old John Rowland would have suggested that such a "jailhouse conversion" was merely a ploy on behalf of an inmate to win early release. But the former governor is a new man.

But perhaps most provocative is the story that Rowland underwent a jailhouse conversion - that he "found religion."

Some associates, familiar with the many letters he has written to friends, talk of what one described as "an incredible amount of spirituality." In line with that, Marotti said he is "impressed with the degree of spirituality that I saw developing in him."

What a puff piece! But then Lender offers some balance.

But others don't see a difference. "I haven't noticed any more references to religion in his letters than the references he made when he was governor," said Dean Pagani, who served Rowland in office as press secretary, speechwriter and chief of staff.

What's next for the former Governor? That's the question. He might write a book

tentatively titled Fall Into Grace, but Marotti said, "I think it's in the conceptual stage."

There's still that 300 hours of community service.

Rowland already has been in touch with the Rev. Cornell Lewis, Hartford community activist and leader of the Men of Color Initiative, about performing community service with his group - which patrols crime-infested housing, delivers food to the needy and organizes cleanup details such as leaf-raking.

"There was a conversation about it ... by letter" about 30 days ago, Lewis said, and "he declared an interest in it. ... We'd have to find out what fits his schedule if he decides to do this and where he best fits in." But Lewis said Rowland always showed up with a sincere interest in the community, and added: "There's enough respect for him in the community" to ensure that he would fit in well."

Or perhaps he'll take a stab at motivational speaking. (Nice work if you can get it. Big money for little work.) He does a family to support (well, two, as a matter of fact).

Now that he has served a prison term on a corruption charge, corporations might be afraid to hire him, associates say. "He might have to go to Washington," one said. "Up here, if he's going to get hired by Company X, the question will be, `Is this payback'" for some favor? "It also doesn't help that the Washington lobbying scandal has blown up now."

No. Unfortunately, not a good time for a disgraced politician to be looking for a job on K Street. But don't underestimate Rowland, says old friend Dean Pagani.

"You should not underestimate the number of friends and contacts he has, especially from his days in Washington," said Pagani, his former chief of staff. "And many of those contacts are much more sympathetic to his plight than the people of Connecticut, the media, and others."

And not just friends in government. He made a lot of friends in jail, too.

"The sense that I had right away was that these men really admired him, respected him, liked him," Davis said.

One former staff member who regularly exchanged letters with Rowland said the former governor has spent time writing a book and corresponding with a large number people. Rowland, who went by the nickname "Guv" in prison, received so much mail that the other inmates grew tired of passing back letters to him at mail call and designated a special chair in front of the group they dubbed "The Guv's Chair," according to the friend.

"I know for a fact that the men there are going to miss him terribly," [Brad Davis] said.

And why not?

Davis said Rowland took it upon himself to start a job training program for the inmates, teaching them things such as interview skills and how to dress. He later began a program to help inmates suffering from drug and alcohol problems, Davis said.

Now that he's home, he's writing poetry, taking long walks on the beach with his lovely wife Patty, and teaching blind children to skate.

"He never complained to me about anybody ever giving him any flack. Everybody was just wonderful to him," Corey said. "It doesn't matter where he goes. He's a likable guy."

Now that I've read these articles from the Hartford Courant, I think it ought to be pretty obvious: The only crime here was putting this man in prison in the first place!

Rowland pleaded guilty on Dec. 23, 2004, to one count of conspiracy to steal honest services, a combination of mail and tax fraud. The plea stemmed from Rowland's acceptance of more than $100,000 in vacations and chartered trips to Las Vegas from a state contractor and a charter jet company that received a state tax break.

Okay, well -- that, too.

It's Alive! It's Alive!

We were just tlaking today in class about supercomputers and what you could do with them. It was a little leftover from the State of the Union speech. I mentioned Total Information Awarness, a government program that was proposed, but never adopted because of public protest and misgiving. Well, guess who's back?

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. . .

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."

The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.

Now it may be true that, ever since I read 1984 and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in the same year, I've become a little paranoid about government and computers. I don't use a CVS card or a Big Y card -- not because I'm a terrorist but because I don't want somebody (and who knows exactly who that might be) knowing what I'm buying.

ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection and pattern analysis."

But Mr. Sand, the DHS official, emphasizes that privacy protection would be built-in. "Before a system leaves the department there's been a privacy review.... That's our focus."

Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE.

"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy."

Others are less sure.

"It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its utility - and with provable privacy protection," says Latanya Sweeney, founder of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building privacy into ADVISE. "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology."

Trouble Brewing for Cheney?

Could be. I heard this on WTIC on the way back to school for Open House tonight (and welcome to any parents who might be logging on to the blog).

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief assistant, was indicted last fall in the Valerie Plame case. (Valerie Plame, or Valerie Wilson, is married to Joseph Wilson, a nuclear weapons inspector who authored an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times casting doubt on George W. Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to acquire "yellowcake uranium" to make nuclear weapons. Somebody in the White House -- it looks like Scooter -- leaked to a columnist the fact the Mrs. Wilson was a CIA operative who got her husband the inspection job. This was a way of undercutting Mr. WIlson's public credibility. Unfortunately for Mr. Libby, it's also against the law, and he's been indicted (by Patrick Fitzgerald). [By the way -- consider the source -- I have a feeling that this weblog is not by the real Patrick Fitzgerald. (It does have some interesting stuff, though).]

It looked like Libby's defense was to say that he'd need all sorts of White House records to defend himself -- records that the White House will refuse to give out, on the grounds of executive privilege. If Fitzgerald tried to subpoena the records, the case would likely go to the Supreme Court, who has already ruled in Bush's favor regarding Cheney's secret oil task force -- and this was before Roberts and Alito joined the Court.

Now comes word, though, that Scooter, in testimony before the Grand Jury, has implicated his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Read the whole article, if you're interested. (I'm not familiar with the National Journal, but it certainly looks reputable. If you go to the site, you'll see James Carville in an ad on the side of the page. Carville helped Bill Clinton get elected, so you would guess that this is a more Democrat-oriented site, if anything.) If Cheney is implicated in breaking the law, could this mean resignation or impeachment. Don't get your hopes up, liberal swine. Chances are it's another defense strategy. I don't think Scooter would betray his Master.

Another top Bush aide, the man who got him elected, is Karl Rove. Rove may be involved in this whole thing, too. But after a few months of lieing low, Rove has begun to go back on the offensive . This indicates to observers that Rove may be feeling that the pressure of indictment by Fitzgerald has lessened.

Help for the AMS

Dear Mr Mac --

I seem to be having a lot of trouble finding anything for my AMS. (Well, I really haven't started looking yet, but that's only because i don't where to begin. Help!!!

Signed,

Bea Wildered

Dear Bea --

Don't despair! You've come to the right place.

First of all, go back the the AMS page on this blog. Check for any links that might be in your particular area.

If that doesn't help, go Google. Type your area, or words associated with your area into Google. See what comes up.


Next, try Google News. Type in your area or words associated with your area, and see what comes up. These will be stories that have appeared recently in newspapers (all over the world)!

Be sure not to list Google or GoogleNews as your source: give the actual site that was linked to.

If you don't like Google, there's always Yahoo! and Yahoo!News.


Besides the big search engines, there are a few other News Aggregators. (I said "aggregator", not "alligator"!)

Topix. net is a good one. Type in your area or words associated with your area, and see what comes up. (Oh, my goodness! Look what I found when I went there!)

Here's another one I just stumbled across recently: WN Networks. I don't know anything about who they are or who supports them, but the sources certainly look legitimate.

Then's there are the usual suspects: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News.

If you want to go overseas, try the BBC, or Canoe, a Canadian aggregator.

As you start finding good sources, bookmark them for ruture reference.

Hope that helps!

Mr. Mac

Corruption in Connecticut

This is from last Friday's Courant. (Well, we have more important stuff -- like Super Bowl commercials to worry about.) Another politican going to jail. ('Bout time.)

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- Former state Sen. Ernest Newton, the self-proclaimed champion of the poor in this wealthy state, was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison for corruption at the expense of his needy constituents.

U.S. District Court Judge Alan Nevas, a former lawmaker, said he was offended and wanted to send a strong message after a wave of corruption in Connecticut that sent former Gov. John G. Rowland and other officials to prison.

Prosecutors said Newton solicited bribes from nonprofit agencies trying to help his constituents. They also accused Newton in court papers of accepting numerous other bribes and taking campaign cash for favors to a reputed mobster, though he was not charged with those crimes.

"We're talking about a long, pervasive, extensive pattern of corrupt conduct," said prosecutor James Finnerty. "He sold his office as a state senator. It was Newton Inc., open for business 24-7."

At least he seems repentent.

"I apologize to this court, to the federal government, to my family, to my community and to members of the legislature," Newton said. "Not only have I let you down but I've let myself down."

And he's pledging to become a new man.

"I made a decision today that I'm gonna start helping people that helped me," Newton said in one conversation. "I wasted a lot of time on helping people that don't give a (expletive) about me, only what they can get from me. All the people I done helped I should be way ahead of the (expletive) game and so that's how I'm looking at life today. I want to be around winners. I don't want to be around (expletive) losers."

Time will tell.

Perhaps, like Peter Kurimay of West Hartford, you're wondering. . .

So let me get this straight:

Former state Sen. Ernest Newton gets five years in prison and former Gov. John G. Rowland gets one? Hmm.

Wait. I know what you're thinking. Newton is a black man, and Rowland is white. Well, Newton intimated the same thing in the past, but is not saying that now.

"This is not about black and white," Newton replied. "It's about wrong and right, and I was wrong."

He's talking the talk. Time for him to walk the (perp)walk, now.

Future's Cold. . .

It sure is. This is the fifth homicide in Hartford this year. That puts us on a course for about fifty for the year. The story in the Hartford Courant, by Elizabeth Hamilton, is touching and well-written. Despite the cutbacks being inflicted upon the Courant by its parent, the Tribune Co., some individuals continue to do their best.

There's good news in Hartford, too, though.

Located smack downtown, in the shadow of a rising 36-story, luxury apartment building, Catherine's Place is something new and different in Hartford's menu of temporary housing for the poor, the downtrodden, the down-on-their-luck.

The stone and brick building, owned by St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church, provides a refuge for single, homeless women with substance abuse problems.

But don't call it a homeless shelter. Catherine's Place is more homey than most shelters, and, thanks to paid staff and church volunteers, is able to give its temporary residents more attention than traditional emergency housing.

Is there a need? Seems like.

That success is noteworthy in a city that lacks enough places for homeless women to sleep. As of September 2004, there were 225 beds in the city for homeless men, and only about 100 for homeless women, said Mary McAtee, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness.

But shelter is only a stopgap measure.

"People who are doing the work really understand that an emergency shelter by itself is not the real answer to homelessness," McAtee said. "We want them to get into permanent housing." Catherine's Place, she said, is "a perfect example of a changed approach. ... I think they're unique in Hartford."

"We're eradicating homelessness, we're not just sheltering," said Louann D'Angelo, Mercy's director of development.

How do you get homeless people into permanent housing?

Residents must be clean of drugs and alcohol. They must beat their addictions, find work, and get into permanent housing, all within that three-month deadline.

Said D'Angelo in a recent interview, "If you think this is just a place to lay your head ..."

"You don't stay very long," finished Trudi White, project manager for the church.

Belinda knows the routine well.

"Every day, they wake you up, you get up, you make breakfast, you clean, you make sure things are tidy. ... You're not here to lounge around. You're told that every day," she said during an interview with a group of residents one recent Friday night.

"We are pushed every day to seek housing and seek employment. It's like a two-way street."

"They help us look into jobs," added Zayda Castro, 51, who became homeless when she left her boyfriend because she was trying to get clean and he was still using heroin. As recently as last summer, she was sleeping in cars.

Well, that's all very nice. But who's paying for all this? It's a joint effort. Some of it is supported by government programs.

Although Catherine's Place is officially called a "recovery house," it does not treat women on site for their drug problems. Rather, it coordinates each woman's recovery by sending her to off-site programs. In turn, it receives reimbursements from the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services for the off-site treatment through a federal grant. Catherine's Place received up to $57,540 in the last two months, said Michael Michaud, an agency regional manager.

There's also a "faith-based" component to it.

In November 2004, the Rev. James Hynes, pastor of St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church, was attending an event at the church's Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry with Sister Pat McKeon, Mercy's executive director. He showed her the dorm-like floor, which used to house parishioners on retreats and, before that, was a convent.

Although Mercy has worked with churches in the past, Hynes' offer was a first.

"I never had a church approach me and say, `We have space for you to use,'" McKeon said.

Catherine's House may be just a drop in the bucket, but it proves that something can be done, and that problems are not insurmountable. Maybe the future's not that cold after all.

Short History of the Super Bowl -- Part II

Advertising

Almost as big as the game itself, (some would say bigger) are the Super Bowl Commercials. As you can see by looking at the chart below, the game itself took of in 1968, with the upset of the Baltimore Colts by the New York Jets. Joe Willie Namath's "guarantee" of victory certainly garnered a lot of publicity and viewers eager to see Broadway Joe fall on his face; the upset victory made this a real championship game as opposed to an exhibition between a major and a minor league.

Year Network Rating Share
1967 CBS 22.6 43
1967 NBC 18.5 36
1968 CBS 36.8 68
1969 NBC 36.0 71
1970 CBS 39.4 69
1971 NBC 39.9 75
1972 CBS 44.2 74
1973 NBC 42.7 72
1974 CBS 41.6 73
1975 NBC 42.4 72
1976 CBS 42.3 78
1977 NBC 44.4 73
1978 CBS 47.2 67
1979 NBC 47.1 74
1980 CBS 46.3 67
1981 NBC 44.4 63
1982 CBS 49.1 73
1983 NBC 48.6 69
1984 CBS 46.4 71
1985 ABC 46.4 63
1986 NBC 48.3 70
1987 CBS 45.8 66
1988 ABC 41.9 62
1989 NBC 43.5 68
1990 CBS 39.0 63
1991 ABC 41.8 63
1992 CBS 40.3 61
1993 NBC 45.1 66
1994 NBC 45.4 66
1995 ABC 41.3 63
1996 NBC 46.1 72
1997 FOX 43.3 65
1998 NBC 44.5 67
1999 FOX 40.2 61
2000 ABC 43.2 62
2001 CBS 40.4 61
2002 FOX 40.4 61
2003 ABC 40.7 61
2004 CBS 41.3 63
2005 FOX 41.1 62

Everything changed on January 22, 1984 -- with a single advertisement. Made for Apple computers, the commercial was only shown once. And once was enough. It was unlike any other advertisement ever seen -- almost like a mini-movie. You didn't know what it was for, till then end.

Since then, more time and money has been poured into both the commercials and the nretwork airtime. If you're an advertiser you have two things that make the money worthwhile -- a huge audience, and an audience that will actually be paying attention.

Last year, Fox drew the highest rating in its history as a network with an estimated 86.1 million viewers - down a bit from the 89.8 million pairs of eyeballs CBS pulled in 2004. By contrast, that is more than double what Fox drew for the NFC Championship last Sunday and better than triple the average for the highest-rated primetime program "CSI."

(Go to the bathroom during the game, but be back in time for the commercials. In recent years commercials have striven to be funny (and often crass and misogynistic at the same time -- remember the Bud Light farting horse?).

Hopefully things will be a bit different this year.

As the event has evolved from a male-dominated sports program to a family affair - and following howls of outrage over alleged indecencies ranging from Janet Jackson’s exposed breast to a dot.com ad making fun of it - so has the scrutiny over what kind of commercial messages are appropriate.

"This has been a very top-of-mind subject for us," said Mark Monteiro, executive creative director of DDB Los Angeles, an Omnicom Group company. He declined to discuss the content of the Super Bowl commercial his firm did this year for Ameriquest Mortgage Co., but said: "The Super Bowl audience has changed over the last few years from a guys’ beer-drinking event. Somewhere along the line, it truly turned into family entertainment, family viewing."

Unlike virtually all other sports programming, in the Super Bowl, "it seems there really is 50 percent women and kids in the room," which has had a significant impact on the content of the ads, Monteiro said.

And this year, he noted, the game will be on ABC rather than Fox, a part of News Corp. ABC, owned by Walt Disney Co., "considered the toughest censor of all the networks we deal with."

But who loses out if networks and advertisers require "good taste" and "family friendly" ads? Well, Joe Six-pack, I suppose, but not Mrs. Sixpack or the little Sixpacks. And probably not even the advertisers.

Deliberately pushing the envelope can be its own reward in terms of getting extra attention.

Las Vegas always makes a fuss that it can’t promote the city during the game because of the NFL’s ban on any gambling-related commercials. Last year, GoDaddy.com, an Internet service company, parodied the Jackson brouhaha in a risqué ad, and Fox pulled it after one of two scheduled showings during the game. an triple the average for the highest-rated primetime program "CSI."

This year, it has submitted, and resubmitted, another ad that it says ABC keeps rejecting.

In a written statement, GoDaddy.com founder Bob Parsons said: "It would be disappointing if the Super Bowl, which has long been known as the world’s stage for the most innovative and cutting-edge advertisements, lost its relevance for adventurous companies ..."

Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost, which covers the advertising and industry, said submitting ads that get rejected has generated barrels of free ink for GoDaddy, which will reap the benefits of Super Bowl hype - even if its spot never makes it onto the air.

"Remember," he said, "when they get into a pissing match with ABC about buying an ad, they are also getting guys like us to write about it."

By the way, the Godaddy spot will be on the air. We'll see just how family-friendly they got.

Speaking of Mrs. Sixpack, the advertisers do know she's watching.

ESPN Research, in fact, shows last year’s Super Bowl audience was 56% male and 44% female, 40% of whom had kids 18 and under in the house. Judging from the broader category span in this year’s game, which includes everything from antibacterial soaps and Aleve to nuts and life insurance, “media people are starting to see that [the Super Bowl] is a media vehicle that transcends just men,” said Ed Erhardt, president-ad sales and customer marketing for ESPN and ABC Sports.

So you'll see at least one commercial today that will be a little different from the rest.

Unilever, for one, is using it as a platform to run its Dove “Real Beauty” spots and Anheuser-Busch is on record as saying it plans to take female beer drinkers into account while it’s selecting big-game spots this year.

Unilever chose to run its “Real Beauty” campaign on the Bowl not just because of that mass audience, but also because it reasoned the spot would stand out in testosterone-filled commercial pods. Philippe Harousseau, North American marketing director for Dove, the push for women’s self-esteem is “not what most people will be expecting on Super Bowl Sunday.”

But you've got to be careful these days, because you never know who you might offend. Coca~Cola has apparently torqued off the Trucking Industry.

“Every year somebody in Madison Avenue gets lazy and does the old scary truck cliche. This year it was Coca-Cola,” said Mike Russell, VP-public affairs for the American Trucking Association. He cited a blaring air horn, a rearview mirror filled with a Peterbilt grill, a larger truck tailgating and forcing a smaller truck -- adorned with rival Red Bull -- off the main road and a driver yelling "Yahoo!” as the truck drives by.

“It’s taking every negative stereotype about the trucking industry and using it to sell a product,” continued Mr. Russell. “It totally ignores the trucking industry and the 3 million drivers who do their job safely every day. It’s the same as putting billboards on the sides of our truck and saying ‘Coke makes you ill. Drink Pepsi.’”

But not everybody will be tuned in at 6:25 (or tuned in from eleven a.m. or noontime, or whenever the pre-game shows began). So what do you suppose they will be doing?

• Hallmark Channel, for instance, will offer viewers a marathon of "Little House on the Prairie," the classic frontier family drama starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. It will air from noon Sunday through 3 a.m. Monday.
• Tony Shalhoub shines as an obsessive-compulsive detective in "Monk," the hit comedy-drama regularly airing Fridays on USA. But Sunday from 4 through 11 p.m., USA presents a viewers' choice of seven favorite episodes. They include "Mr. Monk Takes his Medicine," "Goes to Vegas" and "Bumps His Head." Please wash your hands thoroughly beforehand.
• Animal Planet is airing "Puppy Bowl II," which resembles one of those old home football games with the vibrating metal field and players going every which way. It airs at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
• Down-home cooking queen Paula Deen is cooking up a "Supper" Bowl marathon on Food Network from 2 to 8 p.m. Along with episodes of her series "Paula's Home Cooking," the course includes encores of her specials "All-Star Kitchen Makeover" and "Paula Goes Hollywood," plus a special edition of "Behind the Bash" with its host, Giada De Laurentiis, covering Deen's movie-premiere party. (Last year, Deen added "film actress" to her resume, performing alongside Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom in the feature "Elizabethtown.".
• From noon to 9 p.m., VH1 is airing nine episodes of the UPN hit, "America's Next Top Model," with supermodel Tyra Banks guiding the transformation of everyday young women into what might potentially be -- well, the title says it.
• Catch a marathon of personal makeovers as TLC airs five hours of "What Not to Wear" from 7 p.m. to midnight, with a style SWAT team that includes fashion experts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, hair specialist Nick Arrojo and makeup artist Carmindy.
• Starting at noon, Court TV airs eight hour-long editions of "The Investigators," its documentary series of true stories about law enforcement and the justice system. Then, from 8 p.m. through 4 a.m. Monday, episodes of "Forensic Files" show how legal experts assemble pieces of a crime puzzle to nab the perpetrator.
• In something more akin to a sprint, Fox News Channel will repeat three hours of "The O'Reilly Factor" from 8 to 11 p.m. From his fabled "No-Spin Zone," host Bill O'Reilly tackles topics including the Enron trial, the NSA wiretapping controversy and U.S. border patrol policies.
• Host James Lipton huddles with Liza Minnelli for a two-hour exploration of the legendary singer-actress on Bravo's "Inside the Actors Studio," airing 9 to 11 p.m. A star whose career has spanned decades and delivered her awards including Oscars, Emmys and Grammys, Minnelli has most recently appeared as a series regular on the comedy series "Arrested Development."
• And speaking of comedy, Fox is repeating three favorite episodes of "The Simpsons" (a "Treehouse of Horror" installment, a Christmas episode and a visit from villainous Sideshow Bob), followed by three episodes of "Family Guy" (Lois gets arrested; she becomes a model; Peter gets stranded on a desert isle). They air from 7 to 10 p.m.

For myself, if the game gets boring, I'll switch back over to what I'm watching right now: the Caribbean World Series on the YES network (Domincan Republic 3, Puerto Rico O, after five.)