OK, some of these headlines are repetitive from the “Open Thread” this morning, but here goes:
- Canceled summit is the latest sign of faltering U.S.-Russia ties (WashPost) — It’s about Snowden. For a look at the Russian perspective, NPR did a historical piece on three people wanted to extradite from here (one of whom we let them have). Still, we need to get Snowden back — preferably before they wring all useful intel out of him.
- Yemen Strike Kills Six; Officials Say Plots Foiled (WSJ) — But U.S. sources say the threat is still out there. You know, if this were an episode of “Homeland,” this would just have been the decoy plot. Not that real-life terrorists are as clever as the ones on “Homeland”…
- MOX layoffs confirmed at SRS (Aiken Standard) — We’re talking about 500 jobs lost by Oct. 1. Probably good, high-paying tech jobs, although the story doesn’t say, so I could be wrong…
- Tuberculosis patient on the loose in Columbia (thestate.com) — This is a serious matter, but the wording of the headline cracked me up. It was the “on the loose” part. I’m picturing a wild-eyed, wild-haired maniac running shrieking through the city in a flapping hospital gown, with everyone running from him in terror. The stuff of an Ariail cartoon. But he’d have to do it in the style of Mad magazine in the 1950s. Anyway, the headline lacked a certain… restraint.
- Android Obliterates Smartphone Market (WSJ) — I put this up because I keep reading this in various places, and it’s so counterintuitive. Almost (but not quite) everyone I know who has a smartphone has an iPhone (Clare Morris has a Blackberry, which is just so quaint). Google Analytics tells me every month that about three-fourths of people who read my blog on mobile or tablet are on Apple devices. Of course, maybe that just says something about my readers…
- Early Film by Orson Welles Is Rediscovered (NYT) — Surprisingly, it was not a porno. I say “surprisingly” because the title was “Too Much Johnson.” Really.
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Android user here, and I like it fine. The folks in my circle of friends are probably 60/40 towards iPhones, though.
Like my Droid as well.
I have the Android phone mentioned above, but I rarely use it to web-browse. I use my Windows desktops, occassionally my laptop, and mostly my Kindle Fire HD, also a ‘droid device. I would have gotten an iPad, but they are too expensive!
Love my Droid — and my husband has an iPhone 5, but for me, my Galaxy S4 blows the iPhone 5 out of the water. I read the blog on a Nexus 7 droid tablet on a fairly regular basis….
Droid.
Well, y’all are in a distinct minority among readers of this blog. Of the 23.81 percent who read this on mobiles and tablets, 74.6 percent are using Apple products. I just checked Google Analyyics to be sure…
I read this blog, mostly, on an iPad. That’s because using the comment box is so frustrating on a phone. I carry a droid in my pocket, however. It’s my communication Victorinox.
I have only a dumb phone, but I use only Apple computers, most often my iPad mini, but also my MacBook Air…..
The tuberculosis case is scary. Now The State is reporting that authorities have found the guy up in Lumberton, NC, which is good. The scary part is that it took hours to let law enforcement know the guy was missing, that DHEC never issued a detention order, and that the public wasn’t informed of the guy’s absence until a day later. You’d think that after the Greenwood TB outbreak debacle, DHEC would be a little more on their game.
I have a Droid 4. Though I mostly read the blog on my windows laptop. Occasionally when not at home, I will read/comment from the Droid. My husband has a Droid Razr, but everybody else in my immediate family has an iphone.
The Droid 4 is pretty tough. So far it has survived being knocked out of my hand by my nephew at the beach which caused it to fly through the air from the second floor balcony and land on the gravel driveway below. It also flew from my hand and across the porch just the other day when I walked into a scary scary spider web on my front porch. It still works fine, though the sliding keyboard doesn’t slide quite as easily as it used to.
It was a really cool spider. Once I stopped having hysterics and ascertained that the spider was not on me, I almost emailed Rudy Mancke. She was a Golden Silk Orb Weaver. She has been safely relocated to the fence in my backyard with the aid of a very very long stick.
When phones can fly…
“….Google Analytics tells me every month that about three-fourths of people who read my blog on mobile or tablet are on Apple devices. Of course, maybe that just says something about my readers…” Brad
I still use an HP PC – in fact, two pc’s for work; a laptop, Nook, and Kindle for personal; and my phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note II. Not one of my devices is an Apple product. Does that imply or indicate a lack of intelligence, sophistication, and an indication of insignificance because not one of my devices is a member of the “Apple Product Club”? Does owning an Apple device or a Mac have the same object lesson as the Dr. Seuss story, “The Sneeches”, about the in group of “sneeches” having a star on their stomachs and the out group not having ,”stars upon thars”?
Now my feelings are really hurt. I have no “Apple Star” on my stomach. But I always try to stay at a Holiday Inn Express when travelling. 🙂
Don’t worry. I’m sure Sylvester McMonkey McBean will show up with his fix it up chappy machine anytime now.
Scout,
Thanks for the heads up. Sylvester stopped by not long after reading your email. Whew! That was close, I may have paid for his services. Have a great day! 🙂
Android phone, Kindle Fire (Android), Sony Vaio Windows laptop.
I don’t look at blogs from my phone. The screen size just doesn’t make it worth it… maybe because I read very quickly and I’d spend too much time scrolling.
I’m a PC guy. In fact, that’s what our IT guy at ADCO calls me — “the PC guy.” Because everyone else uses Apple and nothing but.
I have two PC laptops — although one of them is becoming my wife’s, as she uses it more and our old desktop (also a PC) less.
I have the use of a Mac laptop at work, but I only use it on rare occasions when I can’t avoid it.
I just don’t like the Mac interface. I do so many things on a PC so very quickly — with lots of ALT+TABbing back and forth between windows, and a great deal of copying and pasting, all using the keyboard. Which you have to do differently on a Mac, and it really, really slows me down and causes me to make a lot of unnecessary errors. It’s just much more difficult for me to manage multiple tabs and windows and files at the same time on a Mac.
But I think the touchscreen environments of the iPhone and iPad (nothing like a Mac, it seems to me) are great.
I read the blog — or rather, y’all’s comments — a lot on phone and tablet. What I DON’T do that much on those platforms is write, aside from an occasional comment reply.
For writing, the PC laptop’s keyboard and mouse allow me to work a lot more quickly and accurately, moving between multiple tabs while doing so. Writing the way I write is quite laborious, by comparison, on an iPhone or iPad.
Each device has its functions for which it is better suited…
Because I see the laptop and the tablet as such different devices, for different purposes, I have my doubts about such things as Windows 8, which tries to merge the two. I see no reason to merge them; each different interface has its virtues…
I don’t like the way the comments on the blog format on my Droid or Kindle. But that’s a minor gripe. It’s definitely much easier to comment from a device with an actual keyboard.
re: 2. “But U.S. sources say the threat is still out there. ”
Since 2001, Ayman al-Zawahiri has been listed as al Qaeda’s number 2 man. Last week he was credited with issuing the call for violence connected with the latest closures of our embassies in the Middle East and Africa.
Has Zawahiri been able to hide better than Osama bin Laden did, or does this administration not really wish to launch a Hell Fire missile on him. Clearly, this administration is guilty of “Mission Accomplished” than G.W. Bush was; al Qaeda’s former #2 has ascended to #1 !
No discussion here about Obama’s (general lack of intellect) and his recent extreme geography fail?
http://bit.ly/11ODdZQ
“If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don’t do that, those ships are going to go someplace else.”
Yeah, that sounds pretty awful — until you actually read the quote. What he was talking about was ports that needed to be deepened because of the bigger ships that would be coming through the newly enlarged Panama Canal. And that list does indeed include those three ports. He misspoke saying “along the Gulf,” but what he was saying was true. The set of ports needing deepening, I believe, includes those as well as ports on the Gulf. He just didn’t say it right.
James Taranto, who does the WSJ’s “Best of the Web Today” feature, tried to make a big thing of that and another “gaffe” that was even more of a stretch. He quoted the president as saying, “The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately,” and gave him hell for it, saying, “Does the president really wish more Americans were killed in terrorist attacks?”
To Taranto’s credit, he went on to say that he knew what the president meant — as everyone hearing him would have. But then he makes a mighty leap of logic: “He simply misspoke–just as Todd Akin did last year when he used the unfortunate phrase ‘legitimate rape.'”
Yeahhhhhh…. I’m afraid I’m just gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there, James, if you think those two things are in the same category… And I’m speaking as a guy whose position on abortion is a lot closer to Todd Akin’s than the president’s…
Let me tell you, from long experience — the politician who speaks in complete, flawless sentences all of the time is rare.
The late Sen. Jack Lindsey was one who did. In fact, as Cindi Scoppe used to say, Jack spoke in complete, logical PARAGRAPHS, which really set him apart. There are a lot of bad things that can fairly be said about Jack, but he was brilliant…
I’m just a moron, but exactly where is this someplace else that these ships are going to go? All of these ships are destined for the United States. If they don’t go to those ports they will go to other ports in the US.
And one final thought:
Supertankers full of oil = Good.
Pipeline full of oil = Bad.
Way to have a coherent policy there, skippy.
That was my first thought, too. If they want access to American markets they pretty much have to go to port somewhere….
This falls into the “binders full of women” and “corporations are people” quotes that were blown out of proportion.
The AP reporter (Russ Bynum) actually covered up for Obama on that when he wrote the piece, and inserted the words “and in” to correct Obama’s gaffe.
Again, the story isn’t the gaffe – it’s a journalist covering up for someone they support. You can’t have readers start to get the inconvenient facts. And people wonder why journalism is going down the tubes.
Any Republican would have been crucified. “What about your gaaaaaffes?”
We have always been at war with Gulf-Portia.
“I can see Russia from my house.” – NOT Sarah Palin, but in fact, Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on SNL.
The best bit of political satire on SNL in at least 20 years, maybe ever.
And Amy Poehler as Hillary was awesome, too.
Let’s take another look at that…
No Palin didn’t exactly say those words but what she actually did say was pretty ridiculous. We dodged a bullet back in 2008. If Tina Fey helped in that regard she deserves a group hug.
It is not legitimate to add words into a quote. It IS legitimate to use only the parts of a quote that make sense, or to paraphrase so that it says what the source was trying to say.
If you don’t do those things, you do a tremendous disservice to the reader, by giving him a story he can’t follow.
I never quoted people all that much as a reporter — or as a columnist, either. This was partly because I was a slow note-taker, and had trouble taking down complete quotes while keeping up with the thread of what the source was saying.
But I was very good at understanding the gist of what the source was saying, and putting it clearly to readers. Consequently, I used to get complimented for quoting people so well, when what I think they were reacting to was the paraphrasing, not the quotes. One of my few talents is the ability to explain what someone is trying to say better than they can do it themselves.
Unless the subject of the story or column is how inarticulate the source is, you do a greater service to the reader by explaining as clearly as possible what the politician meant. For that reason, when a source said something that wasn’t quite right, and then corrected himself, I quoted the corrected statement. That’s because my mission wasn’t some cheap “gotcha” to embarrass the person. My purpose was to let the reader/voter know what this person was really thinking, what he was actually trying to do. That empowers voters to make sound decisions about public figures, to judge them on the bases of what they are actually thinking and doing. A misstatement here and there is mostly just distraction…
A little self-flagellation here…
I wrote, “One of my few talents is the ability to explain what someone is trying to say better than they can do it themselves.”
Yes, but apparently I’m unable to do so grammatically. The singular “someone” does not agree with “they” or “themselves.”
I realize such constructions are popularly accepted these days, but not by me…
The error of the President’s quote is not in the geography, but in the ship type. Supertankers will still be too wide to travel through the Panama canal once it is enlarged. What the canal widening will do is enable larger container ships to bring in junk from overseas. Of course, it can still be a two-way street and exports can also move westward on the new, larger container ships.
To move modern supertankers and aircraft carriers through – either built since the early 1960’s – would basically require removing the isthmus of Panama to permit sea-level transit.
Thanks for setting us (and POTUS) straight, Mark!
Post-Panamax, beeyotch!
Thank you, Jesse Pinkman…
Have y’all ever noticed that the Atlantic end of the canal is farther west than the Pacific end?
Uh, can’t say that I have….