Information Station

Here are various items in the news or in my thoughts for this week...

As a study, I listened for and noted any time that Twitter was referred to as a source within TV, as I surfed many channels for one week. I heard only one reference. It concerned a "tweet" from reality TV star Snooki concerning her "baby bump." (And I do dislike the replacement of the word "pregnancy" with something that sounds like it came from a TV reality show, which I also dislike.) Anyway, I don't know what this says about Twitter, but it would make a fascinating graduate study about the times that other media forms use the social media of Twitter and if it is about serious news or celebrity chatter.

I have not joined the Twitter world yet. I tend to think the restriction of words mainly only makes sense for headlines or for cussing.

According the Rock the Vote organization, 13,000 young Americans turn 18 years of age every day.

Another statistic: About 600,000 students drop out of high school every year.

Another statistic: Being terminated from your job can take one year off your life, according to a recent study.

What creature has killed the most people in history? According to the History Channel, the answer is mosquitoes.

For the first time in American history, minority births (at 54 percent) outnumber white births. But does that mean then that everyone becomes part of a minority group?

When Kim Kardashian, Rhianna, and Justin Bieber end up on Forbes magazine's Top 10 list of the Most Powerful Celebrities, it does make me realize how unfair life is. And that luck is an underrated commodity.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made $20 million in one day when Facebook offered shares of stock this past week. Apparently the rich 1 percent were the ones who had early access to buying shares. (The rich 1 percent always need an edge to help them out.) But 57 percent of Facebook users apparently never click on ads or sponsored messages.

Not all social media stories end with great success. Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace for $580 million, but later sold it for $35 million.

Over the last 100 years, only two names for babies have remained in the top 10 of popular baby names in America (and they are both for baby boys). The names are Michael and William.

A reality show on Spike TV channel is called "Repo Games." It is about this guy who quizzes frazzled people (who need their cars) about trivia. If they answer the trivia questions correctly, he won't repossess the car. !!!

A SyFy channel show called "Total Blackout" puts contestants in total darkness and they must identify objects with only their senses of touch or smell (not sight). It was amusing to hear this one lady screaming like crazy when, in her imaginative mind raising all kinds of fears, she had to touch the rough texture of a pineapple. Scary!

Fourth of July, 2011...

The memorial report on PBS for July 4, 2011 of American soldiers killed in war (all in Afghanistan) noted the following eight men:

Riley S. Spaulding, 21, of Sheridan, Texas (Army)
Nicholas S. O'Brien, 21, of Stanley, North Carolina (Marine Corps)
Jason D. Hill, 20, of Poway, California (Marine Corps)
Michael W. Newton, 30, Newport News, Virginia (Army)
Mark A. Bradley, 25, of Cuba, New York (Marine Corps)
Gustavo A. Rios-Ordonez, 25, Englewood, Ohio (Army)
John F. Farias, 20, of New Braunfels, Texas (Marine Corps)
Donald V. Stacy, 23, of Avondale, Arizona (Army)

Information Station...

Here is some information from TV and Internet reports, as well as some comments...

• In a previous blog, I had mentioned that Americans need more news and information on subjects that really matter, rather than about celebrities and scandals. Add one more name to my list of those mentions that we don't need to hear about: Chelsea Clinton (and her $2 million wedding).
• Excluding the cost of college, the cost of raising a child for an average middle-class family is $11,000 to $13,000 per year. (CNN)
• The Pentagon can't account for 95 percent of the $9 billion for Iraq reconstruction money. (CBS).
• The War in Afghanistan costs America $5.5 billion per month. (CNN)
• The U.S. House of Representatives recently approved $37 billion for continued Afghanistan War funding. (PBS) (Wow, you add a billion here and a billion there for the war machine, and then does any politician wonder why there's a large budget deficit?)
• British Petroleum (BP), the oil spiller in the Gulf of Mexico, could qualify for a $9 billion tax cut. (CBS)
• Pakistan receives $1 billion per year in foreign aid from the United States. (MSNBC)
• Facebook has more than 500 million users. Facebook also has been recently criticized for its blocking of certain words, such as "Palestinian." (I have also noticed that if you place something light and trivia on the site, it is added pretty immediately to the news feed for others to read. If you place something political or the least bit controversial, the gatekeeping blockers kick into gear. A positive comment I made about the Americans With Disabilities Act, which is celebrating its 20th year, took more than 24 hours before Facebook posted it. It is to say that Facebook definitely is a SOCIAL networking site, with preference of talk about picnics over talk about politics.)
• The more you sit, the shorter your life span, according to a study, which also noted that the effect is worse, percentage-wise, for women than men. (MSN on the Internet)
• The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are soon to expire. (What are the odds that the Democrats will cave and join the Republicans on keeping the tax cuts for the rich in place?)
• Last winter was the worst in the United States since 1979. This year so far is considered the hottest ever recorded for America. (CNN)

Quote: "My husband worked all his life to feed his family. He died hungry." -- Written on a paper plate at a soup kitchen in Ohio, July 2010. (CNN)

Information Station...

Here is some assorted news and information from various sources:

• As of July, 14 million Americans were unemployed and looking for work. Another 8.6 million Americans were forced to settle for part-time work. And another 1.2 million Americans have given up looking for a job. (CBS News)
• Recently, the U.S. senators, who make $174,000 per year and are given a lifetime of health care benefits, decided to go home for the Fourth of July vacation after Republicans, with the help of Ben Nelson, filibustered and killed a bill that would extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans whose benefits had run out. With each week that passes, 375,000 unemployed people will lose their benefits. (My personal comment: The lack of action of the Senate and particularly because of the Republicans was shameful and disgusting.) (CBS)
• British Petroleum was so well-connected in Washington D.C. that even after being cited for 760 different safety and environmental violations, it still got environmental waivers for the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that's still leaking oil and destroying the Gulf of Mexico. (MoveOn.Com)
• Lady Gaga broke the record on July 2 for 10 million "friends" on Facebook. (CBS)
• 200,000 kids get hurt every year playing soccer. Boys mostly hurt their ankles, while girls mostly hurt their knees. (TV news)
• A recent Marist College poll showed that 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds didn't know what country the United States of America won its independence from and one-fourth of Americans of all ages in the poll didn't know. Only seven percent could name the first four presidents in order (TV news and the Internet)
• Ninety percent of all creatures on Earth are insects. (Animal Planet)
• There are 120,000 different kinds of flies. (Animal Planet)
• "Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed." --lecturer Michael Pritchard

Information Station...

Here are some interesting pieces of information that I heard or read recently, with some of my commentary...

• The ocean oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is now America's greatest environmental disaster. As of mid-June, it now equals about 14 Exxon-Valdez oil spill incidents. And it's not over yet.
• Wouldn't you know that some Republican Congressman (Joe Barton from Texas, to be exact) would apologize to BP for the disaster of their continuing oil leak?!!! That guy has to be an incredibly inept and stupid politician. Now, with a ton of bricks falling on him in political heat, he has apologized for his apology to BP.
• British Petroleum (BP) spent $50 million on a recent TV ad campaign. That tells me, considering all the money that BP is going to have to dish out for its oil disaster, is that we all are certainly paying too much for our gas prices at the local pumps. All those oil companies have reaped huge profits. Talk about a shakedown of consumers.
• BP has $9 billion in contracts with the U.S. Defense Department and billions for contracts with other governmental departments. So far this year, BP has garnered $837 billion in federal contracts.
• BP has enough oil in reserves to furnish the U.S. gas needs for more than two years.
• Okay, some non-BP oil leak news...Since 1910, the color border of National Geographic magazine has been yellow.
• My father, who liked to use his hands to fix his own cars, would be annoyed at the modern cars of today which are dependent upon electronics under the hood. It often takes a diagnostics test at the car repair shop to see what's wrong with the electronics of a car. Well, here's something distressing...A recent AOL report noted that criminals now can use laptop computers to disable the brakes of a car or even turn off a car engine.
• With a 9.7 unemployment rate nationally, there are 7 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months.
• Mother Jones magazine for July-August has a story about Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks. His website has been referred to as the world's most famous source of secret information and, to quote the magazine, "the uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis."
• I remember that my mother (and I) thought country singer Jimmy Dean was very entertaining and talented. He could play the banjo and other instruments and had a likable personality. I remember being impressed by his talents when he was a guest host on the old Mike Douglas Show, among others. Later, he became known as a brand name for breakfast sausage. He died this month.

Information Station...

Here are some random news and trivia items...

• There are 1.5 million children who are homeless in America. That means one out of every 50 children is homeless. (CBS News)
• An average of 14 deaths per day happens at U.S. workplaces. (ABC's Nightline)
• The most common form of litter: cigarette butts. And they contain some toxins. (NBC)
• In 2008, the last year of the Bush presidency, the Bush administration denied 47,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. In 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, the Obama administration denied 70,000 FOIA requests. (Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC)
• "When cheaters prosper, it drives honesty out of the market." --William K. Black, author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." On the Bill Moyers Journal show, Black talked about the alleged fraud of Goldman Sachs investment bank. He said, "If you don't regulate, you create a 'criminogenic' environment for fraud." (PBS)
• Singer Lena Horne died in May 2010. She was the first African-American entertainer to have a Hollywood contract in movies. Her most famous song was "Stormy Weather." Her scenes in movies where cut out of the movies when they were shown in the South in the 1940s and 1950s. She left a USO tour during WWII in protest after she saw that black soldiers were seated at the rear, even behind the German POWs. (CNN)

The life (and death) of Miep Gies...

Miep Gies died on January 11. She was 100 years old. I read about her in a book I'd recommend, titled "Anne Frank, A Biography" by Melissa Muller. She was also mentioned in the book, with another theme of a diary, titled "Freedom Writers' Diary" by the Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell.

Probably not a lot of people know her name. Certainly, more people would know the name of Anne Frank. Anne Frank was the Jewish girl who hid with her parents and others in a secret annex in a commercial building in Amsterdam, Holland, a country that was occupied by the Nazis during WWII. Born in Austria, Miep Gies was one of the Dutch residents who hid Anne, the Frank family, and the others, and supplied them with food and necessities while trying to keep them from being discovered by the Nazis. It was risky and dangerous, and it led to the tragic ending when someone informed the Nazis of the hiding place and Anne and others were sent to concentration camps. Of the Jewish people who hid there, only Otto Frank, Anne's father, would survive the concentration camp. When he returned to Amsterdam, Miep Gies gave him the diary journals by Anne that Gies had found and saved.

After Otto Frank published what is best known by the title of "The Diary of Anne Frank," Anne became the face representing the millions of innocent people who suffered the brutality of Hilter and his Nazi regime.

With all his power, Hitler delivered hatred and death to the world. No one in that time in that place was probably as powerless as a Jewish teenage girl. Yet the publication of her story demonstrates that the powerless can be given a voice and can speak to greater and lasting lessons.

The story of Anne Frank is about hiding from unimaginable evil. It is about the grace of courage and hope. It is about the inspiration of words on paper, thoughts of a girl mature beyond her age. When I think of the Nazi era, I think of Hitler and I also think of Anne Frank. The powerless trumps the powerful in the important ways.

Anne Frank said, in her writings, that she wanted to become a journalist. In journalism, giving voice to the voiceless, to the powerless, is a crucial and meaningful ethic. Without the media, through books and movies and the TV mini-series programs and the websites over the years, the story might have been unknown. Without Miep Gies preserving the diaries, the story might have been lost. And Gies stands for something greater as well. She represents the goodness of people who act on principle and care about others rather than just stand by and do nothing in the face of cruelty and injustice.

Miep Gies had a long life. Anne Frank had a short life. But their lives touched each other in amazing and positive ways and then touched the lives of millions of others.

Information station...

Here are some interesting random facts from books, TV, and the Internet...

• There are 9,000 species of birds. There are 28,000 types of fish. There are 350,000 kinds of beetles. And there are 2 million (and counting) living species on Earth. (Source: Nova on PBS)
• A human has 23,000 genes, which is the same number that a chicken has but is less than what an ear of corn has. (Nova on PBS)
• An astronomer has estimated there are 37,000 galaxies and that probably at least 361 of them could support life. (CNN)
• Forty percent of Greenland's ice sheet has disappeared in the last 40 years. In Greenland, 100 billion tons of ice per year are melting. If the entire ice sheet would melt, it would cause the oceans to rise by 23 feet. (Anderson Cooper's news show on CNN)
• Of the 3,000 plants used in the fight against cancer cells, 70 percent are found in the Amazon rainforest. (CNN)
• Ninety to 95 percent of people in airplane crashes survive. (CBS)
• The biggest reason for false imprisonment is eyewitness misidentification. DNA has freed 248 people in prisons who were wrongly convicted. In those cases, it also has found 155 real perpetrators. (Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project)
• Latinos are the biggest targets of hate crimes in the United States. (Federal report)
• Thirteen hours of video are posted every minute on YouTube.
• If the U.S. cut its military budget by 10 percent, the United States would still be spending more money on its military than do Russia, China, India, France, England, and Germany on their military budgets COMBINED.

Information Station...

Here are some interesting news items from TV, newspapers, and the Internet...

In the current U.S. job market, there are six applicants for each job opening.

Recently writing about Iraq and its future, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tom Ricks described the Iraq War as the biggest mistake in recent American history.

In 1950, life expectancy in the United States was 58 years. It is estimated that half of the babies born in the U.S. this year will live to the age of 100.

According to an article in the AARP Bulletin, Elizabeth Smith, 28, of Sumter, S.C., recently won a $2 million jury verdict after a dentist at a Florence, S.C., clinic extracted all 16 of her upper teeth--13 by mistake. Smith's attorney said she now has trouble eating and covers her mouth in conversation. Implants will cost about $80,000.

According to a New York Times poll, 65 percent of Americans want a public option included in the health care reform legislation.

I want an electric car one day...

The information from GM about the Chevy Volt electric car was certainly interesting. The company says the car will have a gasoline-gallon equivalent of going 230 miles per gallon. The car also has zero emissions for the environment. I hope my next car is an electric car. If GM, Ford, and other car companies can get the cost down to an affordable price for middle-class Americans, then the whole picture of the U.S. automobile and fuel will change dramatically. And Americans can wave good-bye to the Saudis and other oil cartels.

Information Station about health...

Here are some quick facts that I noted from books, TV news, or the Internet:.

1. Every day, 14,000 people lose their health insurance in the United States.
2. Eight million children in America, along with 12.5 million women of reproductive age, have no health insurance.
3. Before Medicare, 40 percent of senior citizens didn't have health insurance coverage. (Medicare and Social Security are socialized programs and benefit a lot of Americans. Another socialized program, by the way, is the U.S. military which benefits a lot of soldiers, veterans, and their families.)
4. Each year, 40,000 people die of breast cancer. It is the highest cause of cancer deaths for women.
5. One in nine Americans are using food stamps. (July 2009)
6. Eighteen percent of U.S. children under 18 years of age live in poverty.
7. The United States ranks 29th out of the 30 industrial nations for infant mortality.
8. The United States ranks 24th out of 30 industrial nations for life expectancy.

So, why are those ignorant people at the health care reform town meetings screaming about leaving U.S. health care to the free markets, which actually means leaving it to the "costly" determination of the private insurance companies?

Information Station...

Here are some random pieces of information that I have scribbled down from TV or Internet news, each ranked according to "Holy Cows"...

One Holy Cow!...

1. Sodium bisulfite that makes up 50 percent of some toilet bowl cleaners is also found in wine, potato chips, and pet food. (Hey, was it a very good year for that toilet bowl cleaner...I mean...wine?)
2. According to reports, 80 percent of 2009 graduates moved back in with their parents.
3. One in three Americans are obese.
4. Thomas Edison had 1,093 patents.

Two Holy Cows!...

1. For a lesson in journalism, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite had one-half hour of broadcast news printed on a newspaper page and it only covered three columns on one newspaper page. (Actually, I already knew TV news would equal that small proportion of a newspaper. All newspaper journalists, like Cronkite who worked in the newspaper business first, know that.)
2. There are only 30,000 lions left in Africa. Thousands of lions have been killed or poisoned.
3. Some sunscreen ointments have an ingredient that, when it washes off, kills the coral reef.

Three Holy Cows!...

1. Texting while driving is 23 percent more dangerous than just driving. (Here's what I am wondering. I will probably be the last person on earth to have a cell phone. So, since I don't text or use cellphones or play chess and with other toys while driving, shouldn't my car insurance rates go down, while people with texting devices have increased rates?)
2. An estimated $1.3 million from insurance companies is being put into lobbying against health care reform EVERY DAY. (Wow, that industry has money and I know where they got it--from all of us with or without costly health insurance.)
3. Rush Limbaugh makes $54 million per year. (No way! I would think that media companies could surely find someone just as irritating, rude, and obnoxious at half that cost for a tremendous budget savings.)

Four Holy Cows!...

1. It was reported that the Taliban in Afghanistan pay $10 per day to keep some men as combat recruits. Per day, not even per hour. (Huh! You mean to tell me that we are paying millions and billions for two endless wars, with much of the billions going to greedy, awful companies like Blackwater and Halliburton, and the Pentagon could be offering a higher but still small price to pay, like $20 per day, to keep some Afghans from being insurgents. Seems like we're not using our finances wisely, but what else is new when it comes to military and war spending.)