News Cut: December 29, 2008 Archive

The longest day

Posted at 7:35 AM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Apparently, I don't have enough to worry about. The economy stinks. The Wild look like an expansion team. I don't remember how to drive on dry pavement.

Now this: The earth is slowing down. It's gotten so slow that the Department of Time is going to add a second to 2008, which has already been acting like the drunken relative who didn't know when to leave.

The second will be added on Wednesday at 5:59:59 p.m.

According to the experts, the earth is slowing because of the braking action of tides, snow or the lack of it at the polar ice caps, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms, although I've always suspected the Foshay Tower was somewhat responsible.

At the present rate, it'll be billions of years before the earth stops rotating -- around the time the Minnesota U.S. Senate recount ends -- and inhabitants of Planet Earth engage in the interstellar version of Wheel of Fortune.

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Bottoms up

Posted at 8:02 AM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Health

Many of the budget-cutting antics of state government in recent years have shifted costs to Minnesota's counties, allowing state politicians to cluck about local governments and counties not doing more to cut their budgets.

The Park Rapids Enterprise (registration possibly required) is carrying the story today about the cost of sobering up drunks. The economy being what it is, people are drinking more and requiring more time in detox, the paper says.

The cost of one day in detox, usually at Pine Manors, has risen from $260 per day to $275. There is a sliding fee schedule depending on the patient's financial status, but most patients are without the means to pay.

And that bothers (Hubbard County social services director Daryl) Bessler. "The state sells the stuff, they allow the license for booze to be sold, they put a tax on it and then they don't assist in the payment of the costs," he said.

The state requires detox services to be provided and the counties have to pay for them. The county official says the declining amount of money should be spent elsewhere. "I have to deny day training services to a mentally retarded person who was born that way versus somebody I had to provide services for because the law said I had to," Bessler told the paper.

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Blogging a war

Posted at 11:31 AM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: War

If there was ever a subject for which there's no upside for a news blogger, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is it. People have, naturally, strong beliefs on the issue and will detect sympathy for the other side's cause if things aren't written exactly as they expect.

Israel's attacks on Gaza over the weekend have again sparked the reactions on both sides of the issue that surprise no one and from the safety of the News Cut cubicle, I'm in no position to say what version of the truth is closest to the truth. (Programming note: Talk of the Nation to delve into the issue in today's first hour.)

Instead, I'm reading blogs, trying to get a better feel for what life is like for people in the region.

Mona El-Farra, a Red Crescent physician, for example, wrote a piece on Christmas Eve, on the blog From Gaza, With Love. El-Farra wrote from the UK, where El-Farra's daughter is marooned after leaving to visit the UK and was not allowed to return to Gaza. But even a hopeful Christmas Eve post became a forum for accusations of insults past and present.

Laila El-Haddad, a journalist who writes the blog Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother, is trying to keep in touch with her family back home from her home in North Carolina.

A little later I called my mother, only to hear her crying on the phone. "The planes are overhead" she cried "the planes are overhead". I tried to calm her down- planes overhead mean the "target" is further away. But in such moments of intense fear, there is no room for rationality and logic.

Sameh A. Habeeb, who describes himself as a photojournalist & peace activist, writes the blog, Gaza Strip - The Untold Story. He wrote yesterday that his news updates have been sporadic because of limited access to the Internet. A commenter points out that in all of his writing, Habeeb did not mention rocket attacks on Israel.

David Bogner, author of treppenwitz picks up the theme:

Unlike Hamas, which has been perpetrating ongoing war crimes against Israel by deliberately targeting civilian population centers with kassams, ketyushas and mortars (even as recently as ten minutes ago!), Israel has made an Herculean effort to make sure that only military targets are hit. Heck, we're even taking their wounded over the border and treating them in Israeli hospitals! Try that in the other direction and see if anyone comes back alive!

Chayyei Sarah, described as "an Orthodox Jewish thirty-something is living,playing, writing, and dating in Jerusalem," said it had to be.

Yesterday I was at the home of my friends C and M, and we heard planes overhead. M went to the window and said "looks like we're about to attack somebody. Those were military planes, and they weren't doing training." There was a pause, and C pointed out "you know things are very bad when even Meretz [a far-left political party that is very into making peace with the Palestinians] say that we have to take military action."

The blog Israelicool is live-blogging the war, saying 60 rockets have been fired into Israel today.

All in all, a glance at the blogs reveals what most people already knew -- there's no hope of any solution to the conflict anytime soon.

(Photo: Getty Images)

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Suggestions for cutting unfunded mandates

Posted at 1:39 PM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Gov. Tim Pawlenty is considering relaxing some state mandates to help cities and counties weather the economic downturn, according to a story today by MPR's Tim Pugmire. In many cases, the state requires school districts, cities and counties to meet certain standards, but doesn't provide any money to make it so.

In the story, Pawlenty said he's waiting for some suggestions:

"We have repeatedly asked the counties and others if there are certain mandates that you think are cumbersome or inefficient or unfair or burdensome or dramatically underfunded, and you want to be relieved of those. Give us a list. We haven't received it yet, this year or last year or anytime we've asked for it. So, it's pretty clear to us they don't want to say which ones they want to eliminate. So we will give them the option," Pawlenty said.

An MPR reader/listener found that to be disingenuous of the governor and he pointed out that such a list has been available for several years. The Legislature encouraged school districts, cities, and counties to provide suggestions for cutting unfunded mandates, and they've been sitting on the state auditor's Web site.

Hundreds of proposals range from the state-mandate for detox services (which I wrote about earlier today) to a relaxation of indoor air quality rules.

The schools, county, and city officials can provide additional suggestions by e-mailing mandates@auditor.state.mn.us, though there is obviously no guarantee anyone is going to look at them.

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Tick tock

Posted at 2:49 PM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

A few weeks ago, Google announced it was putting thousands of Time-Life photos on its image search, and when I checked it out, this was one of the first ones I found. It was from the 1964 World's Fair and this population clock was a big deal to me (10 years old at the time) because it was in the Equitable Life pavilion and my dad worked for Equitable.

I was thinking of this today because the Census Bureau put out a press release this afternoon that said as of New Year's Day, the U.S. population will be 305,529,237.

It said In January 2009, one birth is expected to occur every eight seconds in the United States and one death every 12 seconds.

And, according to the census bureau, net international migration is expected to add one person every 36 seconds to the U.S. population in January 2009, resulting in an increase in the total U.S. population of one person every 14 seconds.

That's a factoid that, coupled with the photo, makes me whip out the official News Cut calculator.

Let's see:

Since 1964, the population has grown by 113,430,699. There are 31,556,926 seconds in a year. There have been 11 leap days since 1964, each containing 86,400 seconds or 950,400. So, since that picture was taken in 1964 (I'll guess and say Jule 1) to New Year's Day, 1,405,233,607 seconds have come and gone.

So the population has increased at the rate of 1 every 12 seconds, somewhat less more than the predicted 1 every 14 seconds for 1999.

One reason for that may be those people sitting at the top of the stops in the picture above. It's a couple and their 14 kids. There's something you don't hear a lot of anymore -- couples and their 14 kids.

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Will the Vikes' sell out?

Posted at 5:13 PM on December 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Sports

According to an official with the Minnesota Vikings, only 55 percent of season ticket holders have purchased tickets to the Vikes' playoff game next week against Philadelphia.

I always take these "Oh, dear, there may be a blackout" stories with a grain of salt. The TV stations that stand to make money on advertisements will eventually step in to buy tickets.

But it's possible that this will be a test of whether the poor economy has hit the football fan yet.

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