News Cut: June 12, 2009 Archive

One picture

Posted at 6:35 AM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: War

It's been a long, long time since we've seen such a compelling picture. It was the homecoming for an Alabama soldier who was killed in northern Iraq. He was supposed to come home next month.

There are more pictures from photojournalist Bernard Troncale and the story from the Birmingham News at al.com.

There have been 4,227 soldiers killed in Iraq since 2003.

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Five at 8 - 6/12/09

Posted at 8:00 AM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

5) It's a dark, dark day for those of us who cannot carry a tune. Singing in a Choir is Good for You, reports Alison Young, a host of MPR's classical music service. The tone deaf might as well go buy a cat. (h/t Julia Schrenkler, Tom Weber)

4) If you still think "space shots" -- as we used to call them in the old days -- are cool, I recommend Spaceflight Now. The shuttle Endeavour is to lift off on Saturday. Former CNN anchor Miles O'Brien is leading the coverage, which begins at 3 a.m. tomorrow. If you're staying up late tonight to get your vanity Facebook URL, just stay up a little longer. Oh, and Mark Polansky, who is commanding the mission, is on Twitter.

3) Charter schools have been taking it on the chin recently, but the work of one in Northfield is worth noting. A group of 6th-8th graders are rehabbing a boat as part of a project to learn about the Mississippi River. That sort of creative teaching reminds me of Peter Denny, the Washburn High School teacher in Minneapolis who got kids interested in things like science by having them build airplanes -- real airplanes. Peter has since retired and the program was shut down. Take your seats, kids.

2) The reviews are in on the first comedy show entirely taped, edited and broadcast in a war zone. The New York Times says Stephen Colbert's week in Baghdad was "unexpectedly charming," but he's no Bob Hope.

Now this:

1) Here's a topic we touched on in a good give-and-take on Twitter the other night. Is there a fair link between the Republican Party and the shooter at the Holocaust Museum? By way of NPR, the New Republic's Jonathan Chait stirs it up.

First, the "conventional political classification" is a rubric that accounts for extremists on the far right or left who abhor Democrats or Republicans. Ralph Nader has a lot of bad things to say about the Democratic Party, but that doesn't make him hard to classify on the left-right spectrum

WHAT WE'RE DOING

I may drive out to Redwood Falls today for the Minnesota Inventors Congress (there's very little weekend News Cut audience so it may not be worth spending your money to go). If I do, posting will be non-existent here. But click to here anyway because I've got to eat, too.

Midmorning - First hour: Life after death. Second hour: Wolfgang Puck on life before death.

Midday - First hour: Bird experts Chet Meyers and Jim Williams. Second hour: Playwright Tony Kushner speaking with Guthrie Theater Artistic Director Joe Dowling earlier this week. Kushner discusses his work, including his latest play, "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures."

Talk of the Nation - It's Science Friday! NASA's upcoming moon launch, could planets collide in our solar system, twin European spacecraft studying the origins of the universe a look at the controversial experiments of psychologist Stanley Milgram, what are fingerprints for, and the world's stinkiest flower blooms again. Yes, it's the Corpse Flower. Been there. Done that.

All Things Considered - Tim Post provides an update on the University of Minnesota's plans for dealing with less state funding. Students are said to be pleased, but staff are worried they ll take the brunt of cuts. Euan Kerr profiles the large exhibition of pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

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Googling Pawlenty

Posted at 11:01 AM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

I stumbled across this while doing some Google searches this morning. The governor is buying ads on Google to tout his Web site, which asks for political contributions, even though he's already announced he's not running again.

Apparently they've been running for at least a week.

Based on our own knowledge of Googleads, playing around with various keywords (even if you just Google "governor," you get Pawlenty) and seeing various versions of the Pawlenty ad suggests it's a pretty extensive ad buy.

President Pawlenty, however are not one of the keywords for the ad. "Sarah Palin Tim Pawlenty" and "Mitt Romney Tim Pawlenty" are. "Barack Obama Tim Pawlenty" are not. "Minnesota budget" are.

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Imponderables: Fingerprints

Posted at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Science

Among the day's unanswerable questions -- why can't the Twins win on the road or when will the Minnesota Senate race end, for example -- we add one more this afternoon: Why do we have fingerprints?

Up until now, it's been theorized that fingerprints exist to create friction when we grab things.

Scientists today announced the theory is invalid, according to the BBC.

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Life after the recession

Posted at 12:30 PM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

When the recession ends, how long will it take for U.S. businesses to recover from the way they survived it?

Lane Wallace of the Atlantic considers that question today:

A friend of mine who runs a management and innovation consulting business recently told me that almost all of his clients were responding to the recession by making drastic cuts in budgets and personnel, including innovation, R&D, product development and marketing efforts. "The problem with that," he said, "is that when the economy recovers, it's going to take them another two years to ramp up again. They won't even have the right personnel or teams in place anymore. They'll be way behind."

To explain risk vs. uncertainty, she uses the metaphor of a sailing race in a storm, in which the sailor who let out sails takes advantage not only of a favorable wind, but also of the sailors who trimmed their sails.

We forget that sometimes, in our canonization of the innovative heroes of America. Or ... maybe we don't forget it. Perhaps the reason we give such great lip service to taking innovative risks but don't, as a market whole, tend to follow suit ... especially in tough economic times ... is precisely because we understand quite clearly the risks involved. As the saying goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Playing it safe may not win the race, but it's less likely to end up with you going down in flames.

On the other hand, as the former CEO of Continental Airlines once said, if you're in the pizza business and you just keep cutting one topping after another, pretty soon, all you have is crust. And it's hard to sell crust.

I'm not asking you to reveal your company's secrets here, but what did your firm stop doing that was strategically important before the recession, but was deemed worthy of sacrifice once it started?

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Iran's elections

Posted at 3:01 PM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Like many people, we've been watching the images coming out of Iran today where voters are selecting a president. The polls had to be ordered to stay open to accommodate the crush of voters. It's the kind of factoid that can easily lead one to sigh and think, "If only we took elections that seriously."

Then another factoid was uncovered on aljazeerah.net. The highest turnout in Iran's elections was 80-percent in 1997. Minnesota's turnout last November was 78.5%. and 78.4% in 2004.

Like Minnesota, two candidates are claiming victory.

This afternoon, the Washington Post had an online chat wtih Mohamad Bazzi, an adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, who had this observation on whether a president, who serves under the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can make a difference:

I don't believe that President Obama's speech in Cairo played a significant role in this election, or in the turnout. Many voters in Iran are going to be motivated to vote against Ahmadinejad just as much as they might want to vote for Mousavi. During Ahmadinejad's term, economic conditions worsened considerably, and social freedoms became more limited. Many Iranians who did not vote in the 2005 presidential election now realize that it does make a difference who is president.

There'll be substantial coverage this evening on The World ( 7 p.m. on MPR), which is providing additional images via Flickr, and provides good background on democracy, Iranian style, on its Web site.

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Picks of the week

Posted at 3:53 PM on June 12, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

News Cut's two favorite radio moments of the week. Maybe this will be an every-Friday thing. Maybe not. We'll see.

1) Betty LeVette on MPR's Midmorning (full interview here). In particular, her opinion of American Idol winners.

"They could make me like it better if the people worked for 13 weeks and then instead of winding up at the end of 13 weeks on the cover of Vogue, they could open for James Brown," she told Kerri Miller. "If they can survive that, then they're someone to be idolized."

2) For sheer feel-good, the story of Chuck Walkley can't be beat. It aired on The Story on Thursday night. He was a Special Forces soldier in Vietnam who survived a helicopter crash. He was sent home and when he was released from the hospital at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, he tried to hitchhike home to see his mother, only to be stopped by a police officer who said it was illegal to hitchhike. What happened next is what motivated him to become a cop.

Find the whole interview here. It's a good reminder how simple acts can change lives.

Here's the thing: Chuck's excellent story only got told because his neighbor notified someone that it should be. Who do you know whose story should be told? News Cut is always ready to tell it. Contact me here.

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