News Cut

News Cut: March 17, 2009 Archive

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Five at 8 - 3/17/09

Posted at 8:00 AM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)

  • If this economy turns out not to be the next Great Depression, what are we going to do with all of this video and stories that are based on the assumption it will? Will there be a display at the Minnesota History Museum 100 years from now. "Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen where you'll see how Minnesotans used their $90 a month cellphones to tell each other how much the economy mirrored the Great Depression." A poll out today says about half of us believe it.

    The New York Times is presenting videos with people in a fascinating series "The New Hard Times." They're inviting you to interview your neighbors and friends and send your own. Tip: Shoot it in black-and-white.

    Program note: Midday takes on the economy at 11 a.m. And be sure to check out Cathy Mayfield, MPR's youth reporter's (I didn't know we had one, either), look at payday loans.

  • Is the housing market picking up or falling down? Realtor Teresa Boardman, who writes the St. Paul Real Estate blog, reports on absorption rates -- how long it would take to sell all the homes on the market at the current pace. She reports we've gone from the Shop-Vac to toilet paper level, and Q-tips are on the horizon. Maybe.

    Program note: This afternoon on All Things Considered, Jess Mador looks at mortgage modification scams. I suspect the story will be on the Web site here by early afternoon.

  • In the aftermath of the Daily Show's anti-CNBC rants, I mentioned on Twitter that even if they told me what was going on, I wouldn't have understood what they're talking about. How do I know? Because after months of talks about credit derivatives and swaps and bundling, I still don't know exactly why the meltdown happened. I only know that some congresspeople, who passed a bailout bill that gave away their oversight to the Treasury Department, are suggesting corporate executives kill themselves.

    Local writer Erik Hare took me up on my challenge. How'd he do?

  • Country-of-origin labeling started on Monday. It's a difficult concept when you recall former state epidemiologist Mike Osterholm on MPR a month or so ago noting that a typical food in our homes can be made up of ingredients that come from as many as 12 different countries. The blog, The h, has a chart of cool/uncool. Example: Cool: Sliced cantaloupe needs to be labeled. Uncool: Fruit salad does not. It sounds like Jesse Ventura's ranting over the inequities of the sales tax.

  • What happens to your underwear in space? When you hear that the space shuttle crew is conducting science experiments, now you know. Oh, that reminds me, if you want to see the space shuttle overhead, go here and be sure to enter your location (Go here for St. Paul). The best view looks to be Thursday.

    Posting might be a little light today. I'm filling in for Jon Gordon on Future Tense today.

    (9 Comments)

    • Wikileaks banned

    Posted at 10:05 AM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
    Filed under: Tech

    The Web site that published the database of Norm Coleman's campaign contributors has been banned in Australia.

    Australia's Communications and Media Authority added the site on its blacklist for leaking a list of Web sites that have been banned in Denmark. "It comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

    The will be blocked for everyone in Australia if the federal government there implements a planed Internet filter.

    Unclear in all of this is what the overriding interest is in the Australian government over what people in Denmark can or can't see in their country.

    Wikileaks was created by an Australian and more than 100 Australians reportedly work on the site.

    (h/t: News Cut reader Kyle)

    (4 Comments)

    Potholes

    Posted at 1:30 PM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)

    I generally don't get too upset at potholes; they are what they are and they are a fact of life. This year, however, they seem particularly bad and each time I reset the curvature of my spine to and from work, I wonder to what extent they're particularly severe because of the difficult winter, and to what extent they're severe because municipal officials want me to scream, "Go ahead, raise my taxes! Just fix these potholes!"

    If keeping our streets safe to walk on is widely recognized as an important duty of government, where does keeping them safe to drive on come in on the list?

    But, to give the officials a break: Maybe they don't the potholes are out there.

    Here's a few links you can use to help them out:

    Report a pothole to MnDOT (state highways in the Twin Cities)
    Report a pothole to St. Paul
    Report a pothole to Minneapolis
    Report a pothole to Hennepin County

    In the meantime, we'll accept pictures as nominations for the meanest pothole in Minnesota. Use this form.

    Alternately, you can report the location in the comments section below, and I'll go take a picture.

    (11 Comments)

    Press releases vs. news headlines

    Posted at 4:34 PM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins

    Just comparing today's press releases with the subsequent headlines.

    Press release from the Department of Employment and Economic Development:

    mar17_deed_pr.jpg

    Headline from Finance & Commerce (one of the few news sources to cover the story)

    fincommerce_headline_mar17.jpg

    Press release from Gov. Tim Pawlenty on his revised budget:

    pawlenty_pr_mar17.jpg

    The DFL's press release:

    dfl_press_release.jpg

    The Star Tribune's interpretation:

    strib_pawlenty_head.jpg

    MPR:

    mpr_pawlenty_headline.jpg

    Hometown Source (ECM Newspapers)

    hometown_source_hdline.jpg

    A plug for productivity

    Posted at 6:27 PM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
    Filed under: Tech

    I'm balancing filling in for Jon Gordon on Future Tense with the crushing burden and awesome responsibility of News Cut this week.

    For tomorrow's (Wednesday) show, I interviewed a professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, who has developed a system that my makes my cubicle neighbors weep, but appears to put a glint in the eyes of the bosses.

    ashish_gupta.jpgWhile you're reading this entry, the chances are pretty good that you'll get some e-mail. You'll stop what you're doing and read it, and it probably won't be all that important. That's the problem. Every time you get some e-mail, you drop what you're doing to read it.

    Ashish Gupta, an operations management professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, along with his colleague Ramesh Sharda at Oklahoma State University, has developed a computer model -- called SIMONE -- that allows your organization to release e-mail to you in batches, and you wouldn't miss the important ones -- the ones that are important for you to do your job.

    It can be configured to allow messages from your boss to zip through. Through the use of keywords, other important e-mail can get through. But the e-mail that isn't critical to your job, wastes up to 30 minutes of your time each day, compared to a structured four-times-a-day release of e-mail to you, according to Gupta.

    Some of this you can already test. Just set your e-mail client to check for new mail every two or three hours instead of shooting it to you instantly. But would you want that? Do you hang on every e-mail? Does it interrupt your day and if it does, how much of it has anything to do with your work?

    Here's an extended interview with Professor Gupta. Listen

    (8 Comments)
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