PSoTD

For the second year in row, Nickelodeon will celebrate its "Let's Just Play Worldwide Day of Play" by going off the air for three hours (noon-3 pm ET/PT) on Saturday, Oct. 1, to encourage kids to spend the afternoon being active. "Let's Just Play" is Nickelodeon's pro- social commitment to encourage kids to participate in active, healthy, and playful lifestyles through daily on-air messages and activities.

Does Nickelodeon have an exercise show for kids? That would seem to be a step towards that commitment.

It'll be going on for a while. Take a look at the list, and pick the one that pleasantly surprises you or that you'd most easily toss off the list.

I, for one, am glad to see Crash Test Dummies on the list, it was a fluke but God Shuffled His Feet is a great album.

Interesting concept:

Philip Meyer, who holds the Knight journalism chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said at the Nevada Press Association's annual meeting that, despite the inevitable flops in a trial-and-error process, papers have "to invent new stuff."

Meyer also said the newspaper industry should work to improve reporter competency in various areas, and to improve moral standards and weed out "pseudo-journalism" in the industry, possibly through an independent committee review process.

He went so far as to suggest journalism set up a certification procedure that would identify journalists as "experts" in certain fields - and hold them accountable should they fail readers.

Keep talking, we're listening.

Good night, Don Adams. Whether you were Maxwell Smart, Tennessee Tuxedo, or Mr. Gadget, you were an entertaining actor and voice for kids and adults alike.

Rest in peace.

CHINA: Freedom of speech 'like X-rated films'

Outspoken Taiwanese legislator, author and talk-show host Li Ao delivered an appeal for free speech at Peking University yesterday and called on students to embrace the Chinese Communist Party.

Quoting Mao Zedong and former premier Zhou Enlai , he said different voices should be heard. He compared freedom of speech to the legalisation of pornography, saying the number of sex crimes had dropped in northern Europe when pornographic movies were legalised.

"Freedom of speech is just like X-rated videos. If you let people speak, talk and criticise, and let them touch the tiger's behind, it will be OK," Mr Li said.

That is either a euphamism that is lost in a comparison to x-rated videos, or there's some really strange videos available in China.

Not a surprise. Maybe the way it will always be.

As Thomas Hardy wrote, "My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading."

Apparently the nation's editors agree - which is one of the nation's big problems.

Some other bloggers covering the lack of coverage: Don't Floss with Tinsel, No One Has to Die Tomorrow, Public Christian... On the Left Tip has a photoblog from yesterday.

Ed, Ed, Ed...

You can't have this on your web site.

THIS SITE IS UNDER RENOVATION
PLEASE CHECK BACK SOON.

Real stars don't have that. Ditch it.

Won't be released until October 24, but already Number 1 at Amazon UK thanks to preorders.

More details at Kate Bush News about the upcoming album release.

US broadcaster NBC has announced that its drama show Law & Order brand will celebrate its 600th combined episode next month.

There are four franchises- Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: Trial By Jury. This achievement commemorates over 15 years of criminal justice programming that draws its inspiration from the real-world cases topping the headlines.

You know, I used to watch Law and Order. The original. But NBC has oversaturated the marketplace with their programming. I can't watch it anymore. At all - if I see it on a television, I will walk away.

What a horrible trend to start... CBS is well on its way to doing the same with CSI.

I'm one that is hoping that the Law and Order franchise doesn't make it to 700 total episodes. There has to be some alternative programming options that America can appreciate. Dick Wolf has become the Quinn Martin of his day - but instead of coming up with detectives that work similar storylines but differ physically in appearance, he just works similar storylines but with differing components of the criminal law process. Americans grew weary of Quinn Martin in the 1970s. It's time for American to move on from Dick Wolf.

Besides, Sam Waterston needs to do something else - he's too talented to be stuck on that show much longer. Of course, he may be stuck with the McCoy typecasting now.

I would ask the following people:

John Roberts
Don Omar
Britney Spears
Paris Hilton
Hilary Duff
Jessica Simpson
Mariah Carey
Jennifer Lopez
Kanye West
Andy Milonakis
Kelly Monaco
Angelina Jolie
Bill Gates
Arnold Palmer
Jon Lovitz
Pat Robertson
Carol Burnett
Pete Sampras
Chauncey Billups
Mary Tyler Moore

and just about anybody else wealthy and in the public eye, the following question:

What are you doing, personally, to prepare for the possibility of avian influenza pandemic?

The answers are important, but right now, the public question is more important.

Hey Ed, I know you're reading this...

I have two words of advice on what Hollywood career path NOT TO TAKE when you reach the point of leaving The Daily Show:

Herbert Anderson

Maybe you're wondering who I'm talking about. Does this face jolt your memory?

No?

Remember Dennis the Menace show? He had a sitcom father. That's who Herbert Anderson is, or was. He also had a long career in show business...

but still, you don't need no sitcom job where you play the father. Really. Unless, of course, you play Rob Corddry's father. In fact, a remake of The Courtship of Eddie's Father, where Corddry plays Eddie and you get the Bill Bixby role. But then, mix it a bit, and you also sometimes get very angry, YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M ANGRY, turn green, attack! Attack your Uncle, that freak with the antenna sticking out of his head, played by Bob Wiltfong, get him now, before he makes some sort of magic happen... Wiltfong, is that a Martian name anyway?

Samantha Bee, well, she could be Mrs. Livingston, reprising the Miyoshi Umeki role. Make Bee wear kimonos. She'll hate you but respect you. This could be a seriously freaky show. In fact, you should get started on writing it right away. Start with a shot of you and Corddry playing on the beach, you with a guitar, singing...

"People let me tell you 'about my best friend, he's a warm hearted person who loves me to the end now, people let me tell you 'bout my best friend, he's a one-boy cuddly joy, my up, my down, my pride and joy. People let me tell you bout him he's so much fun, whether we're talking man to man or whether we're talking son to son cause he's my best friend..."

Get on it, man. This is big.

Remember THE TSUNAMI? THE LONDON BOMBINGS? Those stories didn't happen very long ago. And each was, for a while, the biggest, most breathtaking thing imaginable, beneficiary of all the energy and resources the news business can muster. Each had legions of reporters, urgent moment-by-moment updates, special reports, chyrons, and all the rest.

And each is now ... well, not forgotten, but in the harried mind of the average news consumer, a pretty distant memory. How could they not be, when you've got DEVASTATION IN THE GULF playing constantly on a screen near you?

During the hurricane coverage, I missed the Kate Bush news I have been waiting for...

Pianist/songwriter Kate Bush will break a 12-year album drought this fall with the double-disc set "Aerial."

The album will arrive November 7 in Europe via EMI and a day later in North America via Columbia. First single "King of the Mountain" will be available September 27 at a host of digital download sites.

Double album, good. It's only been 12 years. The Independent has a good piece on this news as well.

Gotta love timely convergence. It could be possible to get an idea of the New York Times blog reference drop with the new Google Blog Search when the Times puts their editorial content behind subscription. Right now I show 45 nytimes.com bloglinks for September 14th at Google Blog Search (which seems low). I'll keep track daily and we'll see what happens on the 19th.

Of course, if Google's feeds jump enthusiastically over the next few days, the numbers won't mean anything. And I'm not promising they'll mean anything anyways...

It seems to me that news media outlets ought to have something that keeps track of the industry as a whole in this manner...

On Monday, September 19th the New York Times' editorial section goes behind the pay wall. Krugmania will no longer sully Memeorandum. Bloggers will stop linking. Traffic to nytimes.com- some significant portion of it- will dip.

On Monday, September 19th the New York Times will learn where All of This is heading, and it isn't toward the pharmacy-floor exclusivity model.

Louisiana Newspapers are excerpted - and invited to post - at Katrina and Louisiana Newspapers blog. Some interesting things that aren't in national media.

Fugget you, Jon Stewart. Sure, you might be able to give the career of Ed Helms a bit of a boost on your cable television show. On a cable television channel, I might add, that isn't available on every cable system.

But I - I am going to make Ed Helms a star. A Star. A STAR! For I have begun the weekly...

Ed Helms in Blogs

post. Available everywhere the Internet is. China. Peru. Your local coffee shop. Wherever. I know you're reading this at Comedy Central right now. Too late, it's my idea. MINE! Check this copyright out -

(C) 2005

That's official Internetese copyrighting. Don't mess with me, I got it.

Why not? Let's face it, Samantha Bee has topped out. Rob Corddry? Damn name is way too hard to spell, plus, c'mon, he's gunning for the Don Rickles niche in showbiz, and those kinds of guys fly solo. THe 21st Century CPO Sharkey sitcom awaits him. Bob Wiltfong? WILTFONG? What kind of secret code is that last name? Rumor is it stands for Wow I love to fondle over Nancy Grace... and I don't think I can handle that.

Okay, here it is - Ed Helms in Blogs.

Just click here.

See, there he is! And it's not just blogs - there are pictures too, on Flickr! Like this one...

I don't know about those other pictures. There's this

http://a.wholelottanothing.org/junkdrawer/matth.jpg

kinda looks like him, but the only thing I know for sure is that he says he's not Matt Haughey. Which is good, since I'm not making him a star.

Ed, congratulations. More next week. Expect a big phone call from one of the "real" networks. About three foot. Don't accept until they call on a ten-footer. That's big.

Technorati: 1744 posts

Google News: 49 articles

Has David Letterman or Jay Leno said anything on their programs about impeaching Bush? Once the jokes begin, the consideration follows...

Especially 100 year old family-owned newspapers, it's time for conservatives to notice that the population has noticed...

We're to blame, too

Hurricane Katrina was America’s second 9/11. Like the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, last week’s 100-year-storm along the Gulf Coast seared images into our nightmares: neighborhoods flooded to the rooftops, houses turned into scattered piles of kindling, bloated bodies floating in the floodwater, looters running wild and long lines of newly homeless people begging for food, water, medicine and clothes.

There also have been images of a slow, inept and incompetent response by the federal government to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency flunked its greatest test during the first 72 hours when promptness would have saved lives. Even President Bush is critical of FEMA’s performance. Along with leading an investigation into what went wrong, he should fire FEMA Director Michael Brown.

Like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina has jolted America’s psyche. 9/11 taught us that because of terrorism, no one is safe. Hurricane Katrina has taught us that despite billions of dollars pumped into homeland security, our federal government is unable to cope with the aftermath of a national disaster. We are no more prepared than we were four years ago.

We may be even less prepared because we decided, through whom we elect as our representatives in Washington, D.C., to have less government, not more. We decided that the federal government should be more efficient with fewer of our tax dollars.

We decided that more federal money be returned to local governments as to-do-as-you-want grants. We decided to spend more money protecting sand dunes in Iraq than the earthen levees that guard our homes and businesses.

We told the federal government to butt out of welfare, allowing some state and local governments to turn their backs on the impoverished and homeless. No wonder in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath that thousands of people in New Orleans resembled beggars in Baghdad. Nearly 30 percent of New Orleanans lived below the poverty line, before the storm.

What do you expect our federal government to do? The policies of the New Deal and the Great Society died two generations ago with the arrival of Richard Nixon’s New Federalism, Ronald Reagan’s new New Federalism and George H.W. Bush’s Thousand Points of Light, all based on human kindness from elsewhere.

After 9/11, without protest, we resumed living a never-ending “Good Morning in America” without paying for it. We assumed that government would never fail in its three objectives: to preserve order with laws, to provide public goods and to promote equality among its citizens. Hurricane Katrina awakened us to the fact that a federal government with a lesser role in our lives is failing to live up to greater responsibilities.

That, folks, is a call for a change in direction.

I watched in the 1960s.
I watched in the 1970s.
My kids, I suspect, will eventually watch it.
Goodnight, "little buddy." You made the world a sillier and happier place, Bob Denver.

Newsweek sucks, and it isn't getting better with this kind of reporting:

When Air Force One dipped below the clouds on Tuesday so the president could peer out the window down at the disaster, the image was uncomfortably imperial.

It was Wednesday. In the timeline of things, it's a big difference. It's not just a mistake, it's disinformation. One of the things the country was screaming about last week was WHERE IS BUSH, and Evan Thomas can't get the day right? Maybe the biggest story of his life, and he makes a major error in reporting in the sixth paragraph? Fire him, fire him now. And the editors responsible for "fact checking".

Update: Newsweek corrected the error. Too late for print, though. Pity.

At one time, I used to like David Broder's writing. Not so much anymore. He frankly appears to have cemented his foundation in the "no matter what, don't upset the American government applecart before I die" camp. He's the anti-agent for change.

I'm not alone. Here's what some others have said about Broder's last missive of mush concerning Bush's "opportunity to lead" concerning New Orleans...

The Huffington Post: What Relief Effort Is David Broder Watching?

James Wolcott: Is There a Greater Fool Than David Broder, Dean of Washington Pundits?

The Left Coaster: Dean Broder

and probably the most concise of all...

Vegacura: Irrelevant

What is eventually going to happen to people like Nathan Tabor? He's part of the Dividing Brigade of the Republican Party, busy at work labelling "liberals" as if they have some sort of monolithic response to one thing or another, all in an effort to drum up allies by creating bogeyman to fear:

Liberals Hate God

Liberals Hate Freedom, Not War

As a liberal, I should be mad at such simplistic efforts to spraypaint my beliefs, and part of me is, but... just look at the guy. He doesn't even appear to be 30, but he's already created a body of work to be maintained on the Internet that will forever mark him as a dim rabblerouser of the ignorant, a political Carnie of the 21st century Republican medicine show that's surely going to eventually be derided and mocked as much as the carnival "professionals" were in a different era, or the redbaiters closely affiliated with Joe McCarthy.

At this point in time, there's really three ways to look at the political future of this country - political disagreement will get worse, will stay the same, or will become more civilized. Tabor's future depends on it not becoming more civilized, but I, for one, expect that there will eventually be a mending of the political wounds in this country. Of course, that's not going to happen due to actions of people like Nathan Tabor - the stereotypists, the rockthrowers, the hatemongers. It will happen despite their efforts. In an earlier day, people like Nathan Tabor could sink into the woodwork and hide and eventually build a new life and deny their prior involvements, but the Internet has changed all that. Today, the record of Nathan Tabor's ignorance and divisiveness will stand where he builds it, and in the long run, the only one that will be damned by his words will be Nathan Tabor.