They're all Savage Wars

It is rather unusual that Murray Brewster has selected the recent war in Afghanistan as the one deserving of the title The Savage War  As wars go, it's towards the tame side.  No chemical or nuclear weapons have been deployed and combined fatalities (civilians and combatants on both sides) for the entire war clock in around ~9000 per year.  The mean average DAY in World War One had more fatalities than that. 

This isn't to say that it is full of sunshine, rainbows and smiles.  Ultimately it is still a war, and they aren't pretty things.  People die, get wounded, lose thier property and livelihoods.  Brewster, a Canadian Press reporter, tells interesting tales of some of the casualties, how they impact the people around him and how the civilian population suffers.

Though most interesting are the people who are finding ways to survive and even profit from the war.  Brewster facilitated many interviews through local fixers, and their stories are among the more interesting the book has to offer.  And also among the more tragic, as one is imprisoned and ultimately killed because of the nature of his work. 

Brewster's book does little to place the conflict in the history of the world.  He makes a couple of mentions of the previous Russian invasion of Afghanistan, tangentially mentioning the scorched earth policies of the Soviets and stating that several of the weapons used by the Taliban originate from the communist nation.

To gain a bit of insight to that earlier war, it is useful to watch the ITN (a British TV station) documentary Modern Warfare: Russia in Afghanistan.  It is available on YouTube at  Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

While Brewster focuses on the conflict as it influences the life of an individual or tiny group through his writing, the ITN documentary is made with the old-school macro level of analysis.  There are strengths and failings to both.  It is difficult to gauge just what is going on in the total war effort though Brewster's words but with the ITN documentary it is hard to fell any empathy because you never get to know anyone.

Ultimately, Brewster's work is an excellent glimpse into the war, but paraphrasing his own words, it is looking at a panorama through a straw.  It offers fantastic insight to the political decisions back in Ottawa, gives a face to the Canadian war effort in Kandahar, but doesn't quite feel complete. 

And by it's nature as something published so close in time to the war itself, it does not include any reflection on the events in the book.  Luckily, such things can be penned at a later date and included as a new afterward.  I'd certainly give it a read when it came out.

Aboriginal futures

There is no issue more important (and harder) to overcome for Canada to address issues facing its Aboriginal population than racism. 

Though it’s impossible not to be aware of phenotypic differences between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, it is really time that people stop thinking these differences carry with them a genetic pre-disposition to slothfulness, greed and vice.  I have no idea how this unenlightened position continues to exist or how its subscribers rationalize that a Caucasian drunk is just a person who needs to dry out by an Aboriginal drunk is beyond repair. 

But at the end of the day, a person is a person.  It might be that one has more pigment and perhaps their teeth have a slightly different shape, but these things are overall meaningless.  And although I've never thought otherwise, I was given a nice reminder of this over the weekend.       

I had the opportunity to instruct three Aboriginal grade 10 students on the ins and outs of the workings of a radio station.  Mason, Diandra and Payton are from the Skownan reserve and were in Winnipeg as part of the CareerTrek program. 

They weren't all overly interested in getting jobs in radio, but went through the program and seemed to have a legitimately good time being "on-air" and selecting music to play.  Which is admittedly easy when you don't have to try to adhere to CRTC standards when programming a largely hip-hop centric music station.

The worst I could possibly say of them was their education seems to be lack the knowledge of contributions to the world of music made by Vanilla Ice.  I can’t imagine why anyone would think this an important inclusion in a curriculum, but I can say that the fact that a couple of them through I was talking about icing on a cake which made me feel a great distance from my own days of youth.   

The highest praise I could possibly give is that they all have a fantastic sense of humour.  Some of it is rather dark humour, like a sarcastic assertion that one of the girls might not achieve anything greater than being the First Nations version of the octomom.  And this "most embarrassing moment" story from Mason: http://www.hilderman.info/resource/mp3/mason_story.mp3

And in the end, they were a group of kids probably more connected with the world than some adults I know.  One spoke at length about a former Member of Parliament (I'd hazard a guess that most Canadians probably couldn't name their current MP), there was talk about the need of jobs on their reserve (what's that racist line again? that they all just collect welfare?), and dreaming of the biggest dreams. 

I suspect that none of them will ever have the chance to walk on the moon as they hope, but it's awesome that they aren't ruling it out. 

Take me out to the ballgame

Spring has sprung, the grass has ris

Arizona and Florida are where the baseball is

Real baseball, with commentary, real big-league players and a TV feed.  Look!

Yes, it is only spring training baseball, but with the amount of snow dumped in Winnipeg over the past few days, it will do. 

Baseball is great for stories as there is conflict everywhere.  Each at-bat is it's own little chapter in the game, each run and out are important plot-points.  So here's what happened following the above screenshot.

The 8th inning ends on the next pitch, a flyout to centre.  The Yankees come up in the top of the 9th and add a couple runs.  The score is Yankees 8 and Phillies 2 heading into the bottom on the 9th.  Even the poor Mudville team had a better chance when old Casey was at the bat.

Michae O'Conner is out to pitch for the Yankees and Juan Pierre leads off the bottom of the 9th for the Phillies.  Pierre gets a single by swinging at a pitch so low that he probably gets his knuckles dirty as he brings the bat around. 

The next batter pops out to centre and then Kevin Frandsen takes a pitch from O'Conner deep to left for a two-run homer.  Can the Phillies come back?  Or will the home run kill the rally, as it is so often said to do?

It certainly seems to start that way.  O'Conner gets a little help from his defence when short stop fill-in Ramiro Pena makes a leaping grab to prevent a lob from Freddy Galvis for dropping into shallow left for a hit.  Not a highlight reel grab, but for the first outing of spring, it is pretty impressive.

But the pendulum starts to swing the other way with the next at bat.  Someone feeling chariatble to the young Yankees hurler says that Scott Podsednik shows a bit of veteran poise in turning 0-2 count into a walk.  Someone less inclined to sugar coat things would say O'Connor is suffering control problems as the four consecutive balls that out Podsednik on base were all well outside the zone. 

But spring training is the best time to see how a player will respond to adversity so O'Connor is left on the mound.  Tyler Gilles is up right after Posednik and the first pitch his way is errant and comes dangerously close to his head.  O'Connor settles down and again finds the strike zone, but gives up a RBI double to deep left field. 

Even though the Yanks' lead is cut in half and the tying run is on-deck, nobody motions to the bullpen for another pitcher.  It is the first spring training game that is on TV and in just this half an inning there's already this awesome story line.

Then it all falls apart when the pateience the Yankees have with O'Conner is rewarded when Cesar Hernandez strikes out on three straight to end the Phillies' chance at coming back.  O'Conner has a 27.000 ERA but he is out of the inning and his team wins.

OK, it's a bit "what could have been" from where the Phillies stand and it certainly doesn't come close to the awesomeness that was game 6 of last year's World Series, but it will more than do for the first  spring training game.

Taking numbers and making pictures

One way to measure some amount of economic success is to compare the imports and exports of a place.  So let's do just that for all of Canada from last year and then break it down provincially.


Statistics Canada makes available the total international imports and exports of each province on a monthly basis.  With that, it is no great trick to get yearly totals and then calculate the surplus or deficit of trade.  Since it stands to reason that more populated provinces will have more in raw numbers, a comparison is most easily done on a per capital basis.  So, a quick check of the census numbers that have been just recently released and a comparison can be done. 


All that math breaks down to look like this: 

Region	Per Capita Trade Surplus or Deficit (2011)
National	-$806.56
Newfoundland and Labrador	$16,441.80
Prince Edward Island	$4,773.76
Nova Scotia	-$4,275.02
New Brunswick	$1,590.72
Quebec	-$1,550.74
Ontario	-$7,745.24
Manitoba	-$3,650.51
Saskatchewan	$19,465.71
Alberta	$18,809.29
British Columbia	-$1,716.68
Territories	$14,873.44

Well, hey, that's pretty neat, though the numbers just kinda float out there by themselves.  The quickest explanation for the disparity between provinces comes down to how much oil or fish a province has available for export.  If the answer is: "lots", that province will have a massive trade surplus. 

It isn't that simple, there's plenty of sustainability talk that probably needs to happen there.  Manitoba or Ontario could likely rocket to the top of the standings if every tree in the province was cut down and shipped elsewhere for pulp and paper.  But that's a really bad idea.  But as a birds-eye view, it is useful.

Tables are nice, but here's a neat thing that IBM let me do:


That should be clickable, so check it out. 

Now, here's the thing about the IBM Many Eyes tool: it's pretty awful.  For a couple of hours, I couldn't get the visualizations to work.  Turns out that I needed to update Java, but there was nothing on that site to tell me I needed to do this.  That's a really crappy thing to do to a user.

Next, it is pretty rigid.  As you'll note from my data set, I combined the territories and included a national average.  These are not things Many Eyes is capable of handling.  It's easy enough to exclude them, but it means some of the picture is missing.  Yes, I could have done the independently, I didn't because their populations are really small.

Finally, don't blame me for the colour choices.  If there is an option to change it from horrible brown and overused blue, I can't find it.  You take what you get with Many Eyes, which is better than nothing.  But it is hardly perfect and kinda skirts the territory of "not very good".

Saving the seven words you can't say on television

Another Super Bowl half time show, another celebrity behaving badly.  Thankfully it wasn’t Madonna.  Perhaps 30 years ago the viewing audience would have wished otherwise, now many of us are probably glad there wasn’t a tunic malfunction on Sunday.
No, it was M.I.A., a British songstress who used a bit of sign language during the performance, a gesture urging viewers to give themselves a gentle caress.   

People saw and were outraged then apologies were made and fines were levied.  And now we can be certain that the next half dozen Super Bowl half-time shows will feature acts closer to their government pensions than the impetuousness spontaneity of youth so embodied in Miss M.I.A.

But what’s really missing in action is a reason for her to urge the 114 million viewers to love themselves just a little bit more.  She didn`t seem mad, upset or perturbed.  No, just casual cursing, just because she can.

And, as I see it, that`s really the problem here.  It`s not the oft-thought-of-children that we have to worry about here.  Really, can you think of a little one that has the attention span to get through a half time show that is also unfamiliar with the one finger salute?

No, it`s us everyday people that are cheated.  She`s watering down our gesture of frustration, our words of anger.  To do nothing more than pander.

When profanity becomes profuse, it starts to lose its meaning.  Cuss words aren`t commas, they`re really supposed to be reserved for those special occasion when un-salted language doesn`t fit the situation. 

This isn`t just me talking, there`s hard science backing this up.  Professor Richard Stevens of Keele University in the U-K has linked swearing with a reduction in pain. Apparently  A-hem and A-ha are an analgesic for our ailments.

But you probably knew that.  If you’re like most, you’ve had an oral flow of effluent, probably as recent as your last toe stubbing.  You may not be proud, but it made it feel better, didn’t it?

What is it that those people who use these words like they’re going out of style do when they need to make a point?  What is it someone like local Member of Parliament Pat Martin does?  He seemingly can’t help himself from tweeting out words banned by Beauchesne's. 

He’s unapologetic of it, and that’s fine.  I can well understand how the life of a career opposition member might make Martin feel like he needs a gimmick to draw attention his way.  There is, after all, only so often you can call for an axing of the penny before people just yawn and move on.  And it’s not like he’s the first politician to toss out a fuddle-duddle, and nor will he be the last.

But the more often the well is visited, the shallower it will become.  An explicit lyrics warning sticker once meant albums would shoot off the shelves and into stereos.  I imagine if people still bought CDs, the warning would now just blend in with the album’s artwork. 

We can’t allow the dirty words we know and love to lose their status.  And maybe we do have to think of the children the next time we think about contributing to the swear jar.  Because if we aren’t careful to conserve our curses, what words will they have when they need to make a sailor blush?

OAS changes to hit the most vulnerable

Two years of benefits for Canada’s retirees are at stake today as Members of Parliament returned to Ottawa for the first day of session in the new year. 

Unless the government reconsiders, the Old Age Security income supplement will not be available until a person reaches age 67.  This is up two years from the current 65.

“It’s age discrimination in its worst case,” says Dennis Lewycky, executive director of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg. 

He says that the loss of the OAS between 65 and 67 may not be an issue for people with retirement planning beyond the Canada Pension Plan, “but for those on a fixed income, it’s going to be a big hit.”

 “It’s the difference between buying groceries and going to Winnipeg Harvest or between merely existing and going to visit grandchildren.”

He says people who need to be concerned with the change are beyond those in their mid-60s. “By the time people hit 50 or 55 and start retirement planning, there is a psychological hit.  If they roll back these two years, are they going to roll back the amount?” 

Marilyn Kelly is a 62 year old who hopes to retire this year.  She has spent the past 30 years working for Manitoba Public Insurance and hopes her employer pension will be adequate.

She could opt to work a few more years, but she says she won’t. Her house is already paid for and she wants to enjoy her life instead of working.  “I think if I did, my health would deteriorate,” she says, “I don’t think I should push my luck.”

But Kelly understands what the Harper government is trying to achieve.  “I can see the government’s point, they need the money,” she says, “but I hope they give us some time to make a decision.”

Harper addressed the matter when asked about it by Official Opposition leader Nycole Turmel during question period. 

“This government received a mandate to gradually reduce our deficit to zero,” said the Prime Minister, “At the same time, we will ensure that our vital programs are sustainable for the long term and for future generations.”

Lewycky offers an alternative method for the government to save the money that would otherwise be paid out in the income supplement.   “Take from who can afford rather than those who cannot.  Anyone worth more than a million dollars shouldn’t get OAS.”

Fun on the Internet

There was a time when inventing games to play with the resources at hand was a good skill to have.  It's want gave us stuff like Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon, which is how people would pass the time before IMDB.  The Internet has made that unnecessary as there is always some little flash game just a website away, or whatever bored.com will serve up or anything really.  But for what it takes, it also gives as there are a few news ways to make your own fun.

The Google Game

Type two words, no quotes, into the Google search engine and get only one result.  I haven't had much luck at this game in a few years as there are just too many word lists out there.  I consider it a pretty decent success to have under 500 matches.  Elocular (having but one cell or cavity; not divided by a septum or partition) and variegated (varied in appearance or colour) produce 492 results as of writing.  That's not bad. 

Plecular and variegated produce only one result on Google, if you've ever wanted to see what that looks like (providing this site isn't indexed before you check).  Only problem is, plecular isn't a word.  But it looks like it might be!

The Wikipedia Game

Head to Wikipedia and bring up a random article.  Then bring up another.  See if you can get back to the first one just by the links available on the pages.  It is surprising how often it can be done if you are willing to work at it.

Here's an example: St. Gabriel's Church (Manhattan) to Harpalinae

Harpalinae -> Violin Beetle -> Thailand -> Buddhism -> religion -> Roman Catholic Church -> Diocese -> List of all Roman Catholic archdiocese -> New York -> List of churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York -> List of closed churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York -> St. Gabriel's Church (Manhattan)

Ten steps, not too shabby for such unrelated things. 

Stories stories everywhere, all need a drop of ink

Like going to the market

Press releases and the conferences that go with them are an easy place to look.  Some people like calling them news releases, but that's sometimes being overly charitable to the contents.  But whatever they're called, there is something in there that someone thinks is news, so its worth a look.

There is a better rate of return if you look at things like the Ombudsman's office, the public utilities board or  the CRTC.  How else are you going to find out if there are medical documents blowing around a gravel pit, that a hike in transit fares was approved or that a local jazz station is changing to an adult contemporary mix station?

If you have access to the Canadian Press news wire, they publish a list of things worth watching.  Do a search for "News Agenda" and find out what they're looking in on.  Because if they're watching it, its news worthy.

Almost like fish in a barrel

Heading down to city hall, the legislature or turning on CPAC to watch proceedings at the House of Commons is a potential place to find news.  Question period is a good place to start and its good to have a peek at the order paper. Also important is bills that hit third reading or ones that recieve royal assent.  Then there's a media scrum for interviews and you get to hear all about what the shadow minister for intergovernmental affairs thinks about things.

Tune in and turn up a police scanner and you'll get all sorts of stories.  Over the span of about 6 hours one night I heard about two major fires, a gas leak at a high school, several assaults and a woman who locked her kid in the car when parked at McDonalds.  Oh, and a guy with a "rectal bleed" in the basement of the local cop shop.  It's like the original Twitter, only a thousand times better.  It would be more, but I heard people once talk about their lunches so that drags it back down to Twitter's level.

The law courts are full of stories.  Something interesting in always happening in a trial before Queen's Bench and the bulk of stuff that moves through provincial and bail courts almost assures something will turn up.  And of course there is a whole civil side of things if criminal matters don't pan out.

Filing for access to documents through freedom of information legislation is a great, if slow, way to get stories.  Its probably going to be a lot of work and it could get expensive, but there is almost always something to be had.

Really fishing

This is mostly about keeping your eyes open.  Follow emergency vehicles, observe people and maybe even peek in dumpsters.  You don`t know what you`re going to come across, but if you happen across something its probably going to be pretty good.  And better yet, nobody else knows what it is until you tell them about it.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

One of the most captivating monologues in film history almost seems out of place in a movie about a giant shark.  It's like plunking Henry V's St. Crispian's Day speech into a Michael Bay movie.

It's about Hiroshima and so is a book by John Hershey.  The first half of Hiroshima was originally published as an entire issue of The New Yorker roughly a year after the first atomic weapon was used against Japan.  It was wildly popular and was converted to book format shorty there after.  The second half, which deals with the same people featured in the first, but 40 years later, was added to the book editions.

The focus of the text is on six people who were far enough out of the blast zone to survive the bombing yet close enough to tell stories about those who didn't.  Their stories intertwine a fair bit, a likely indication that Hershey went in one direction from the centre of the blast rather than travelling around the circumference of the circle of people who survived.  It seems almost hokey at times that the major players have as much interaction with each other as they do.

While it would have been unimportant for audiences of the time, the book could benefit from a forward that sort of sets the scene.  The battle of the Pacific would still be fresh in the minds of readers in 1946 but the absolute carnage of battles on Tarawa, Luzon and Iwo Jima are not necessarily known by modern readers.  The reality is that the Americans believed that losses on both sides would be so great that they felt they had no option other than using the atomic weapons.

Here's a table that summarizes the losses on both sides of the war leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki).  It is adapted from a similar table in The Ghosts of Iwo Jima by Robert Burrell. 

                              American Military               Japanese Military

Battle	KIA\MIA	WIA	Total	KIA\MIA	Captured	Total
Luzon	8,310	29,560	37,870	192,000	9,700	201,700
Tinian	389	1,816	2,205	9,162	0	9,162
Marshalls	711	2,339	3,050	11,087	361	11,448
Leyte	3,593	11,991	15,584	48,790	0	48,790
Okinawa	11,933	39,119	51,052	110,000	10,755	120,755
Saipan	3,452	13,160	16,612	27,000	2,000	29,000
Guam	1,435	5,648	7,083	10,000	0	10,000
Palaus	1,948	8,515	10,463	13,600	302	13,902
Gilberts	1,933	2,725	4,658	5,236	430	5,666
Iwo Jima	6,821	19,217	26,038	18,110	216	18,326
Col. totals	40,525	134,090	174,615	444,985	23,764	468,749

Doing some math on the battles leading up to what could have been the attack on Japan, the table illustrates that Japanese military doctrine of the time of defending to the last man was something they took quite seriously.  In all of these encounters, 5% of the Japanese forces involved ended up surviving and surrendering. The rest, were killed by American soldiers or by their own hand.  Another 40 thousand Americans and that's a total of half a million people lost in the battle of the Pacific.

These numbers do not include civilian losses, either through bombings or suicides.  In particular, 5000 or so civilians were lost on Saipan.  Of the suicides, there were some that leaped to their deaths rather than face what they had been told the Americans would do to them based on the propaganda they had heard at the time.



Had Japan been invaded, the American military had worked out that 500 thousand to a million American combatants would die, Japanese losses would be at least five million and perhaps as many as ten million.  The combined death toll of the sinking of the USS Indianiapolis and the bombings of  both Hiroshima and Nagasaki is about a quarter million and seems rather small in comparison.

And that's just the dead, not the wounded.  The U.S. military had made up half a million purple heart medals in anticipation of the invasion of Japan.  The purple heart is given to soldiers, sailors, air men and marines who are wounded in combat.  The medals that were made for the invasion that didn't occur supplied the Americans with all of the purple heart medals they needed for the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War and they still have some left over.  Nearly 60 years after and they still haven't had as many wounded as there would have been by invading Japan.

That's a lot of history and all of is only barely eluded to in Hiroshima on page 6 of the 1989 edition where Hershey mentions a "squad of soldiers who had been digging into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion..."

One of the things about Hiroshima that is really interesting is the guesses that the Japanese recount as to what has happened to them.  Bombings are nothing unusual for the Japanese, but they have no concept of what an atomic weapon is, or what kind of damage it can cause.  Their lack of knowledge about a major turning event in world history is rather similar to the early reports of the D-Day invasion from American media.

The complete broadcast day can be heard by checking out the archive.org archive of the day's broadcast of CBS. The Americans (at least the Columbia Broadcast System) learned first of this major incident in world history first through German broadcasts, not their own war office.  That makes sense I suppose, its a bad idea to give away military secrets to civilians, but there is definitely a parallel in knowledge between the two incidents that is hard to ignore.

Anyway, I had known a fair bit about the war prior to reading Hiroshima, and had heard some of the stories of survivors.  I have no idea where I read it anymore, but one that always stuck with me from before was of a small girl who, as she grew up, continues to pick glass out of her scalp as it pushes its way upward from her skull.

Hiroshima had a couple of moments like that for me.  At one point some soldiers ask for some water and they are described as having their eyes melted from their sockets.  Another anecdote tells of someone trying to assist a woman (I think) to stand, and in holding her hand, her skin leaves her hand as if it were a glove.  Those are absolute chilling images.

Broadcast News Breakdown

I don't get to see a whole lot of television news as I'm generally not near a TV when the news is on. Even if I were, I'm not convinced that there is enough to be gained in seeing someone behind a lectern make an announcement than there is in just reading about it for me to make the effort.  But I'm not everyone, and plenty of people watch the news, so its probably good to know something about how TV news gets made. So I'm in a class to teach me just that.

Like the learning of anything, there is always more to know than what can reasonably be taught in a classroom. This means work outside of class studying the subject matter. So I started to watch a bit of television news, and it wasn't as helpful as I might have hoped.

The problem with looking at something done by someone who more or less knows what they are doing is that I can see only that it works, but it doesn't teach me why it works. Its the equivalent of knowing the answer to a mathematical problem but not understanding how the answer is obtained.

For me, a major part of learning the process of anything is making mistakes. Compile and stay mindful of enough things that should be avoided and eventually whatever is produced can be measured as successful. It stand to reason then that more mistakes at the beginning of something means a quicker progression to that point of success.

But it can take time to make those mistakes, so in the absence of opportunity to make my own mistakes, seeing the mistakes of others is a reasonably satisfactory substitute. But if the pros aren't making the mistakes at a quick enough rate from which to learn anything, where is there to turn to see the errors of an other's ways?

Naturally, to others who are most likely to make mistakes I should avoid: students. And that means YouTube as there are heaps of broadcast and journalism school students who are eager to show off their work.

And on YouTube I found this, a segment on vicious animals done by Tara Prindiville from Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication:


Now let me be clear here, this isn't a complete loss of a story, but there are a couple of major things I took away from it that I will never do. Also, I'm not suggesting that Ms. Prindiville is a journalist of poor quality or that the Cronkite School is an inferior institution. Her other uploads are much better and what I've seen of the Cronkite NewsWatch leads me to believe they know what they're doing.


Anyway, I think I took a lot away from watching this story with a critical eye.  So, for the benefit of anyone who comes across this blog and is also learning how to make news for television' here's a frame-by-frame critique of the story.

Audio of dog pulling on rope, guy says something like "get it boy, get it" to the dog then a sharp yelp by another dog.

I don't care for the sharp yelp here since its not coming from the dog that can be seen on screen.  It's also a pretty harsh sound.  Not a deal breaker though, but I can't think of any good reason for it to be there either.

Prindiville: When many people think of aggressive animals –

Things aren't off to a great start.  In print, radio, TV or wherever, a phrase like "many people" screams to me that someone didn't do any research and is hoping that whatever they say sounds believable enough that nobody will bother to check and call them on it.  Especially when referring to people in the general sense, as in the whole population.  The word "most" just as bad and "everyone" is even worse.  Like everyone (in the general sense) could agree on anything or be linked in any way other than basic biologic necessities like needing air to breathe. 

This isn't to say that I haven't slipped this sort of thing into my work before, though I make an effort to instead say "some people" and then offer up the counter point as well.  I think this is better, and even if its not, it helps me sleep at night.

Audio of the dog pulling some sort of sled.

Uh, ok.  I'm not really sure what that thing is or why this is happening.  The whole story on YouTube clip exists in isolation of whatever the anchor might have said to throw the anchor to Prindiville before she started her story, so maybe whatever was said there gives this come context.   But based on the rest of the story, the anchor probably mentioned the vicious animal bill.  Because this animal is strong it's also aggressive?  To me, it comes off as a sound-up just for the sake of having one, and I think I'd avoid doing it when it splits up a sentence like this one does.

Prindiville: - pit bulls are one of the first that come to mind. 

Are they really?  Above things like tigers?  Or sharks?  Or tiger sharks?  Maybe Arizona was gripped in a rash of pit bull attacks like Winnipeg was in the early 90s that would make people think first of pit bulls.  If it was, this isn't anywhere near as bad.  But if it wasn't, why single out one specific breed of dog over others?  And especially over other animal species that haven't been domesticated?

Prindiville: But its not just pit bulls that have the potential to be aggressive.

Aside from this questionable assertion and then wasting some time, what she is saying doesn't even match what's going on in the video. That pit bull isn't anywhere near a state of aggression, I'd say it looks pretty content, maybe even happy.

Female voice: Our two kids, Mike and Karen, and uh, Luke, the Brittany spaniel.

Woah, how did we get here?  A medium shot of a dog to a close up of a photograph of a different dog.  And who is talking?  Who are these people and why do they matter?  I'm a bit lost.  Where was the previous place and why did it matter to this photo?

Prindiville: Rhode didn’t know Luke had a history of violence-

If I wasn't watching this story particularly to note its faults I might not have thought much of the stuff I criticised earlier, but I would have picked up on these next two things in even a casual viewing.  First, when the shot cuts from the still of the photograph to the pan to the woman, there is a pop in the audio.  It wasn't cut together all that well, the audio of the two speakers could have been blended into each other to avoid that error.

But the bigger issue is that Prindiville hasn't shown me this Rhode person before she starts to reference her.  I, as a viewer, later learn that Rhode is the owner of Luke, and the woman who was talking before Prindiville told me about the attack.  But at this point of the story, its just an educated guess based on who spoke last.  And I think the problem could have been fixed by simply reversing the order of these two shots.

Prindiville: - until after he attacked a young girl she was babysitting.

Again, Prindiville isn't writing to her video.  I think that's one of the same kids from the first photo, so the viewer isn't being shown the person that she's talking about.  At least the dog is there though.  But is showing the dog at the end of a successful hunting trip really the best way to juxtapose the idea that the dog is sweet and gentle with the attack it made on the girl who was under Rhode's care?

Also, either Rhode's family are horribly dated in their fashion choices and card stock for photos or I'm being told about things that happened at least a quarter century ago.  Are there that few dog bites in Arizona that this is considered new enough for the news?

Rhode: She was laying down with her face on the ground and when I turned her over - - it was just a bloody mess.

With regard to story, this works as its a great clip.  Visually it looks a bit weird.  She appears twisted with her torso facing the left of the frame and her head facing the right.  Giving the benefit of the doubt to Prindiville and her camera operator, Rhode could have shifted into this weird posture just before making the statement.  It's too good a thing not to use.  Though it comes off as weirdly unemotional. 

Prindiville: What Marge didn’t know when she adopted Luke from the Humane Society -

GAZE INTO MINE EYES.  I have no idea why someone would be inclined to use this sort of shot unless someone was crying or their eyes had some special property.  It's not flattering to the point of being creepy.  It's almost enough to distract the viewer from Prindiville switching to referring to Rhode by her first name.  Maybe if you're this close to someone it would feel strange not to call them by their first name.  I don't plan on doing either.   

Prindiville: - was that he had bitten before.

This shot is great if for no other reason than it moves the viewer away from the previous shot.  And Prindiville gives us a fact, and those are good in the news.  It is a bit too dead centre but I'm going to give the camera operate the benefit of the doubt again.  It looks like Rhode would fill the frame on standard definition, which would look better.  This happens with lots of high-def footage and will continue to do so until HD screens are in the majority over SD screens.

Prindiville: But if you do own a dog, and that dog has attacked in the past, yet you still let it wander the streets, this new vicious dog bill is targeting you.  The bill's sponsor says they're going after those who let their animals loose, as well as people who train their dogs to attack.

When Prindiville says "still let it wander the streets" she gestures to her sides, telling me that this is one of those streets that dogs might wander.  I've never been to Arizona, but I was under the impression that they had the technology I know as pavement.  Based on what Prindiville is showing me, I might have to rethink my earlier assumption.  But seriously, I don't see either a street or any dogs.  If the shot had either it would work, both would be even better.  This has neither in it so again she isn't writing appropriately to her video.

She's also giving me a mixed message about the nature of the bill.  Is this a vicious dog bill or a vicious animal bill?  In either case it applies to dog owners, but if its a vicious dog bill, that means any jerk who is into falconry can sic his pet on people without fear of the new bill.  That doesn't seem right, but why am I again having to try to figure this stuff out for myself?  So there's another good thing to keep in mind, don't interchangeably use words that mean different things.

I will say though that she has a very good presence on camera.  She appears quite naturally and handles a 31 word sentence like it's nothing.  I'm not sure that I'd ever write something that long for myself to read, but it works very well for her.  And this despite the fact she is wearing a jacket with sleeves in desperate need of some tailoring.

  Montenegro: [some talking point] 

Story-wise this seems well written into and it doesn't really matter what he thinks about the bill for the purpose of my little review.  If I was shooting it, I'd probably have moved clockwise around him to minimize the windows to the left of the frame.  It's rather blown out on that side of the frame.  Again, maybe the camera operator was stuck where he or she was as part of a scrum, so I'll give him or her the benefit of the doubt.

Prindiville: Once a dog has attacked someone it is labeled as aggressive.

This is the state capitol building, maybe, or city hall.  Some seat of power that the people in the market for Cronkite NewsWatch would recognize but is unknown to someone living hundreds of kilometers away.  I've seen the same shot in other stories done by students producing Cronkite NewsWatch, so its some stock footage they have.  It's a bit bland and something of an orphan right now but...

Prindiville: And under this new bill, if that dog bites again, the owner will no longer be charged with a misdemeanor.  They'll be charged with a felony. 

Hey, that's pretty cool.  She's telling me that it isn't a misdemeanor anymore so it's crossed out and felony is there in big bold letters.  It's driving home the actual news as what she says and what I see reinforce each other.  And there is bonus information too.  The bill is called HB 2044 so if I'm so interested now I have more information at my disposal and I can look up the bill if I felt so inclined.

[Those who know me well will be pleased to know that their guess was right and I did look up HB 2044.  The bill relates only to dogs, so this really calls into question why Prindiville uses the word animals in as general a sense as she does.  To the best of my knowledge the bill is not yet law.  Also, Prindiville is off in Madagascar doing something with the Peace Corps.  She lists her mailing address on her blog if you want to send her letters telling her that I'm picking apart her work.  But don't send any tampons or frisbees, she apparently has more than enough of those.]

Prindiville: Rhode says she's proof that any kind of dog has the potential to be aggressive. 

Back to this meaningless phrase again.  Too bad, things were starting to get better.  Equally bad is that a shot is essentially being reused.  These pictures have been shown to us once before, there is nothing to be gained by panning from one to the next.  It's better than straight up reusing a shot, but not by much.  This reinforces with me the necessity of shooting lots and lots of b-roll.  I never seem to have enough and it leads to including some marginal shots, like this one.

Rhode: Luke was a Brittany spaniel, that's not a, what I consider an aggressive breed.

Noted Chandler resident Marge Rhode serves up some wisdom on the nature of a breed of dog of which she has already had one incorrect assumption.  I have very mixed feelings about asking Joe or Jane Public about something likely beyond their scope of experience and education, but it happens so often that I'm lead to believe that its something that people want.  I can see how the people doing the talking appreciate the chance, but the plural of anecdote isn't data so I don't really know what it brings to the audience. 

I don't go up to random strangers and ask them to influence my opinion on important matters, I don't know why I think it's appropriate to force the voice of a nobody on my audience.  And I'd hate to be responsible for being the guy that allowed the ball to get rolling on some nonsense like autism being caused by vaccines, which is what can happen when people who have no idea what they are talking about are allowed a venue where they can spout their warped and uninformed beliefs. 

But back to the story... her body is twisted again, leading me to believe that the earlier shot wasn't just the best of a bad situation.  Her body, like her head, should be facing the right side of the frame.  In light of her not really speaking from a position of authority on the subject, and the poor look of the video, I'm not really sure why we're back to her what Rhode has to say.  I can imagine good reasons to go back to someone who was seen earlier in a story, but this isn't one of those instances. 

Prindiville: And under this new bill, it doesn't matter the kind of dog -

A puppy!  Puppies bite everything because they don't have hands and that's how they explore the world.  It sucks, but they don't bite hard and they don't do it once their curiosity about a thing is satisfied.  I guess I'm being shown again that place from the beginning, I recognize some of the stuff around the location, whatever it is.  I still have no idea what location this is but I've been given the news of the matter so I don't hold out a whole lot of hope in ever finding out. 

Prindiville: - if it attacks again, harsher penalties will follow. 

So the dog is doing something that could be considered aggressive, I guess.  I still don't know why I'm seeing this and since she's reiterating what it is that she's said already, I'm not ever going to find out what's going on in this video.  If it really didn't matter what was going on in the background, as long as it had dogs doing physical things, the editor could have just cut it any random dog footage.  I'm betting there's actually an angle here that is going unexplored. 

Prindiville: Tara Prindiville, Cronkite News.

That's the end of the story?  But I still have questions:
Where was that place with the pit bulls?
What do they do at that place?
Are they in danger of shutting down if that bill becomes a law?
When did that attack on the little girl that Rhode was babysitting happen?
Was the little girl ok?
Why didn't Rhode know that Luke was a known biter?
How did she even find out that Luke had bitten before at all?
Was Rhode charged under the old law?
If she wasn't, why not?
If she was, what happened to her?
What happened to Luke?
Who cares about the names of Rhode's kids if they don't factor into the rest of the story?

That's about a dozen questions too many to come up from a news story and there is no particularly good reason that any of them should have gone unanswered or even asked at all.

Pucks and Punchups

-I apparently never published this last week, so here it is this week-

As the old joke goes, I went to see the fights and a hockey game broke out.

Hockey is a physical game, as Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller would be quick to confirm. Miller found himself the victim of an open ice check from Boston Bruin forward Milan Lucic. Lucic had himself a clear breakaway but nudged the puck too far ahead of himself as he crossed the blue line into the Sabres' zone.

Miller skated out of his crease to to play the puck toward the boards. Lucic was still coming in and "ran into" Miller at about the middle of the face off circle to the right of the net. Miller went down, a brawl nearly broke out and Lucic was given a two minute penalty for charging.

Here's a replay:


This hit is going to be talked about for a while, mostly in the context of trying to determine just how dirty it was. Those on one side will say Lucic didn't have time to avoid the hit and that the goalie should be treated as just another player outside of the goal crease. Those on the other side of the debate will say that Lucic had about 40 feet of ice to avoid a collision and that goalies deserve some special considerations to keep them safe. I'm with the latter group, but that's not what I came here to talk about.

I came to talk about the boxing.

The same night that Miller was getting his bell rung by Milan Lucic, there was what passes for a mega-match up in boxing.

Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao had his third fight with Juan Manuel Marquez. Like Lucic's hit on Miller, there's going to be a lot of talk about this match up.

Not this Pac-Man

The fight went the distance, all 12 rounds, and Pacquiao was awarded a minority. That is, two of the ringside judges awarded more point to Pacquiao and one had the bout scored as a tie. Not quite the one sided victory that many of Pacquiao's more recent fights have been, and not one that many boxing pundits or fans would have given at all.

Fans booed when the decision was announced. This is unusual as Pacquiao is by far the more popular of the two fighters - the crowd should have been happy but they weren't showing it. The commentators in the coverage I was watching thought Marquez had won, the not-so-impartial fans thought Marquez had won, I thought Marquez should have won, so why didn't he?

I've never read the official rules that boxing judges use to determine the winner of a fight, but based on Saturday (and many other similar Saturdays) I figure they can be paraphrased as "give points based on popularity." I don't think I'm alone in my jaded opinion as I've heard allegations of blindness and corruption among the judging panel. This is one of a couple of things that boxing has to address if the sport ever again aspires to interest the public as it did in the days of Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.

Among the other things, nobody really knows who the boxing champion is. Its understandable that there are weight classes, it would be unfair to match a 260 pound bruiser against someone who barely manages to hit 110 on the same scale. But each weight class has five different titles that can be won. With 17 weight classes, that's as many as 85 men who can claim to be boxing champion. And one of the associations has provisions to have two or even three people listed as a champion, so maybe its even more than 85. But some are vacant so maybe there are less than 85. Trying to keep it all straight is a bit like an Abbot and Costello sketch.

This plays into a bigger problem though: catch-weight fights. These happen when a lighter fighter wants to take on a heavier one so they agree to meet somewhere in the middle. On the surface, that seems reasonable, but it means that guys who are "naturally" 154 pounds have to find ways to drop seven pounds so they can participate. Which is their choice if they want to do it or not, but when the heavier fighter is putting up a championship belt (one with an allowance that permits a fighter to be 154 pounds to fight for it) its an unfair advantage for the smaller fighter.

But that's pretty minor to how fights get made in the first place. There's no league in boxing so there's nobody making match ups other than the fighters themselves (or rather, their promoters). And when you leave this sort of thing up to guys like Don King and Bob Arum, egos play far too large a role and fights that should happen either take too long to set up or maybe they don't happen at all. Haye should have fought Klitschko earlier than he did, same with Mosley and Mayweather. And Mayweather will likely never stand opposite Pacquiao in the ring.

When grown men agree to punch each other, these two men make a lot of money.

Just to float a prediction out there: Mayweather would trade equally punches on his shoulders and forearms for shots on Pacquiao's face and then lose the fight because he never smiles and isn't very good at karaoke.

The official reason that this fight hadn't gone forward was because of a disagreement between the Mayweather and Pacquaio

These problems have made boxing a mess. What fans want to see doesn't happen and if it does, it doesn't have the appearance of a fair contest. Much of the attention that was once given to boxing has been turned towards mixed martial arts. This is despite the fact that the average fight boils down to two burly men hugging each other on the ground for four out of every five minutes.

So when I want to watch boxing, I just turn on a hockey game.

It's pretty much the same:

in the first round the combatants just get a feel for each other;


the combatants are generally evenly matched; and


and sometimes fans even get to see a knockout.



And it has the added bonus in that the athletes ensure that the officials remain honest.