News Cut: March 14, 2008 Archive

The News Cut Week-in-Review Quiz

Posted at 6:16 PM on March 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (21 Comments)

You've waited all week for this. We so enjoyed the Pew Center survey post and quiz earlier this week that I've decided to make a weekly quiz. Now, clearly, regular readers of News Cut have an advantage, but don't let that stop you from taking the quiz below.

If you select the correct answer, it will light up green and move to the next question. If you're wrong -- and what are the odds of that? -- you'll see a red "X" and the correct answer will show itself in green. Hint: Study the images above.

We haven't built a quiz yet to keep track of how everyone is doing so you can compare yourself to others, but we're working on it. In the meantime, we'll just have to depend on your honesty to reveal your results in the "comments" section.

Ready? Begin!

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Escapism

Posted at 8:43 AM on March 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

While on my way to write a post about a father who forced his daughter to kill the family cat, I realized, "do we really need more of that? No. No, we don't.

Here's what we need today: We need to dream about cool things in far-off lands. And so, I'll be searching for neat travelogues today.

For example, here's one from the Guardian site. In the forests north of Angkor Wat in Camobia, a series of mysterious rock carvings line the banks and peer out from under the Kbal Spean river.

Something a little closer to home? The New York Times has a slideshow about spending 36 hours in Pasadena.

If Pasadena isn't your thing, how about Prague? (Just added today)

And they're coming out of hibernation on Cape Cod.

Put your headphones on in your cubicles and escape. Don't worry; the news will still be here when you get back.

If you've got a slideshow of a recent trip, put the URL in the comments section, and we'll review it and add it. If you're looking for tips on how to make a good travel slideshow, go here.

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Where's the optimism?

Posted at 11:03 AM on March 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

There was an unsettling factoid in the news this week. Zimbabwe's dollar tumbled to a record low. Want an American dollar? It'll cost you 25 million Zimbabwe bucks.The inflation rate there is 100,500%.

It's one of the few places left, judging by the news stories today, where the American dollar still feels like it has some "oomph." Beyond that, we old-timers are waking up with bad dreams of needing a wheelbarrow to take our dollars to Starbuck's just to get a cup of cheap joe.

We're all getting a lesson these days about the value of our currency in relation to other countries. It's one of the main reasons why the price of oil has skyrocketed; it's paid for in dollars.

There are, we're also told, some good things from a falling dollar, as NPR reported last night in profiling a company that makes fire suppression equipment and is finding it easier to compete overseas.

"I think a weaker dollar, if it doesn't spiral out of control, is part of the solution here," Barry Eichengreen, an economic historian told the Wall Street Journal today (reg. required). He says the weaker dollar may help cut the enormous trade deficit in the U.S.

This is the type of thing that gives headaches to mere mortals. Our economy stinks, partly because of the decline of the dollar, and yet the stinking economy's dollar may be the cure for the stinking economy.

Is it any wonder that a consumer sentiment survey, released today, showed continuing despair?

"There was nearly unanimous agreement among consumers that the economy was now in recession," said Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan surveys of consumers.

President Bush tried to boost sentiment today with a speech in New York. "In the long run. I'm confident our economy will continue to grow because the foundation is solid,'' he said. But how are we to take comfort anymore from someone who a week ago said he hadn't heard anything about the possibility of $4 a gallon gasoline? A week later, $4 gasoline hit California.

A couple of economic experts are on MPR's Midday today, trying to sort this out and maybe find some optimism in the steady drumbeat of falling indicators.

"It has all the earmarks of a bubble," MPR's economic expert Chris Farrell said of the price of oil.

"The days of $50 a barrel oil have gone the way of a 10-cent loaf of bread," said Dan Laufenberg, chief economist for Ameriprise Financial.

Clear?

(Photo: Patrick Hertzog/AFP/Getty Images

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Waiting for Mr. Good Enough

Posted at 1:15 PM on March 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)

Every now and again, a subject comes along that we know is going to cause a debate. Today's Midmorning broadcast with author Lori Gottlieb is one such subject. She advocates women in their early 40s to stop waiting for Mr. Perfect, and accept Mr. Good Enough, if they want to get married and have families.

Gentlemen, I know what you're thinking: "Thank goodness my spouse didn't settle for 'good enough,'" to which I have only one response. "Are you sure?"

Here's Gottlieb's treatise, which was published in The Atlantic:

To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist--vehemently, even--that we're independent and self-sufficient and don't believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren't fish who can do without a bicycle, we're women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know--no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure--feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

This widespread characterization, of course,is met with a single word of advice: "settle," as in "settle for less."

In another article she wrote for MSNBC, Gottlieb says:

Of course, we'd be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won't tell you it's a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she'll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

Is this true?

Not according to a writer -- a woman -- on Helium who says she's tried the "settle for less" thing and what she longs for in life isn't what Gottlieb says she longs for:

Today I find myself struggling with a decision. Settle for this misery, or be free? Am I being selfish, as my husband constantly reminds me, to go after my goals of finishing school, of writing that book, of having a life outside of my husband and children? Am I trading the happiness of my children for my own? Is it better to be alone than to live your life wishing you were alone?

This discussion isn't exactly new. It's been going on for generations (usually inspired by an impatient mother, I hear.) And last year, on the NPR segment This, I believe, it was given voice by Corinne Colbert, an Ohio woman who settled:

So, yes, I'm settling. Sure, I wish my husband would kiss me more often, tell me he loves me every day, and get as excited about my accomplishments as I do. Emptying the dishwasher without being asked and giving me unsolicited foot massages wouldn't hurt, either.

All that would be nice, but it's not necessary. I'm happy with my husband who, despite his flaws, is a caring father, capable of acts of stunning generosity and fiercely protective of his family. Thinking about him may not set me on fire as it used to, but after 17 years and two kids, our love is still warm. And I believe that's good enough.

This is one of those areas of discussion that my colleague, Mary Lucia, usually turns into a question for which every answer is lacking. Since she's down in Austin at South by Southwest, I'll have to fill in. So here's the question that you might want to think about before going home tonight and discussing this with your insignificant other: If your spouse settled for you, do you really want to know?

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Snarled in Minnesota?

Posted at 4:55 PM on March 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

MPR's Toni Randolph has details today of a study from the Minnesota Department of Transportation that seems to have a high "huh?" factor, especially given the rhetoric surrounding the gas tax debate of the last few years in which we seemed to be portrayed as drivers stuck in transportation quicksand.

The study showed that there were 305 miles of congested freeway in the Twin Cities last year, compared to 267 miles in 2006. MnDOT defines congestion as traffic moving slower than 45 miles per hour.

I'll leave it to you, the good drivers of Minnesota, to supply your anecdotal evidence about whether you think traffic has gotten worse only since the collapse of the I-35W bridge.

The full report is here (pdf).

Theoretically, if congestion hasn't gotten any worse until the last year, it stands to reason we wouldn't hear an increasing number of complaints about traffic. And yet, we do.

Many of the complaints of recent years, though, had quite a bit to do with construction projects designed to ease it. For much of this decade, I-494/694 has been under construction, causing plenty of tie-ups. That work mostly finished in 2007. In the East Metro, the widening of I-94 took a few years and plenty of headaches to get rid of a headache; that was completed a few years ago. Those completed projects caused a welcomed respite from congestion, apparently, until now.

And, of course, not all highways are created equal. While congestion overall may be up slightly, it actually increased significantly in 2006 in some locations -- I-35W, I-94 and I-394/TH12 -- all highways that have more "congested miles" in the morning in 2006 than in 2007, according to the report.

Drivers on I-494, I-694 and I-35E all experienced an increase in congestion, although it's important to point out that one of the largest current highway construction projects in the state happens to be at the I-694 and I-35E weave.

For the most part, congestion on those major highways -- I-35W, I-694, I-94 -- has been increasing for most of the decade, but few match the congestion of late 2000, according to the report.

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