The Daily Grill

Photo Op Of Health

White House Resident Bush today visited complaint-plagued Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., today, to apologize about appalling conditions revealed last month and to award 10 Purple Hearts to wounded troops there. He shook hands with amputees and joked with various other wounded veterans of the Iraq War™. While assuring the soldiers there that they've be receiving the best of care, Bush did not get a check-up or a urine test, not to mention a full physical exam, while there. It seems he prefers the spic n' span surroundings of the Bethesda Naval Hospital for that.

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"Mr. Rove’s role has put him in the center of a Senate inquiry into the dismissal of eight United States attorneys." - NYTimes

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News To The News

It occured to me as I was watching one of the local TV stations teasing their upcoming newscast just how lame and desperate it is. They try to pique our curiosity by hinting at several upcoming stories but without naming names or conclusive details, hoping that we'll stick around and tune in to find out how it all ends. It's as if they don't realize that we can simply jump online, check the news feeds and trump their "scoops" in no time flat. How about just focusing on actually finding some new news that no one's reported on yet? Or better yet -- run a halfhour Bowflex commercial.

Hurray For Uni-Tasking!

According to several studies just out, the human brain isn't really built for multi-tasking. The more different things your little brain is trying to do, the more prone it is to delays and making mistakes. Even listening to music with lyrics while working counts. There was more information and a bunch of statistics, but I was on a phone call, driving and text messaging while reading the story, so the rest didn't really sink in.

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Synchroni-City

Amongst the newsage (news + sewage = newsage) I scan every day is a summary email from the New York Times. There's always an ad embedded with it -- gotta have your daily dose of commercials -- and today's was inadvertantly funy, juxtaposed as it was against the lead story. The piece was about the NY police spying on people across the country and into Canada in the year leading up to the 2004 Republican't National Convention, which was held in New York City. It seems NYPD Blue wanted to try and sift out what bad apples might be heading for the Big Apple to cause bedlam and mayhem. The neighboring ad was from the NY Board of Education, touting their upcoming teacher career fairs, and featured the line "There are more languages spoken in New York City than in the Olympics -- funny how diversity brings out the best in people." Except the ones in uniform, apparently.

The Kids Are At It Again

There's something really heartwarming knowing that the Inner Circle of White House Resident Bush's administration is at each other's throats. Right now it's over wha tto do with the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. It seems newly installed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleeze Rice want it shut down and the prisoners, er, suspects moved the U.S. to await trial. Meanwhile Beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a battery of lawyers and Vice President Dick Cheney are pushing to leave everything as it is. The Decider says Gitmo stays where it is, for now. In Cuba. Far from where America's crumbling Bill of Rights and Constitution can touch it. Of course, if Gonzales goes down because of the prosecutor firing scandal, the Gitmo grudge match is back on. Stay tuned -- watching the Bush Administration implode is more exciting than American Idol. I just wish we got to vote. Oh, wait. We do.

Sick Determination

The Democrap run at the White House in '08 is beginning to look like the Island of Misfit Toys. Hillary Clinton, The Ice Queen. Barack Hussein Obama, The Man With The Unelectable Name. And now John Edwards, The Mourning Man who, after learning that wife Elizabeth has incurable cancer, announced that he's going to keep campaigning anyway. My heart goes out to Ms. Edwards and I applaud her courage, but the last thing America needs is a President whose attentions would be split between his dying wife and an ailing country. And if you don't think the Republicants would jump all over that weak spot before Election Day, then you haven't been paying attention.

Wrong Pot To Piss In

An 8th grader at a middle school in Muncie, Indiana, is looking at expulsion after a teacher noticed an unusual odor coming out of his faculty coffee pot. It turns out the student had put urine in the coffee. The link was discovered when school officials found urine in the boy's locker. Sounds like a frame-up to me. Why would the kid keep the pee in his locker when he has a perfectly good bladder?

What Was That Again?

A study just out yesterday -- or no, it was last week -- indicates that the rate of Alzheimer's disease rose 10% in the past 5 years. Or was that 5% in the past 10 years? I can't remember...

Infringement vs. Infection

I'm not sure I get the business sense of moves like Viacom suing Google for copyright infringement because of videos uploaded to their YouTube site. Similar suits from broadcasters against that and other shared video sites are somewhat perplexing. While there may be some money to be made and knuckles to be rapped by the legal eagles here, aren't these monoliths of content missing out on the bigger picture and profit from the bits and hours of free advertising and exposure that these sites are providing?
In the rush to keep their content proprietary and within their sphere of influence and distribution, it seems to me that the media giants are shorting themselves out of the whole viral marketing phenomenon. Their thinking is, no doubt, that if they selfishly only provide the content on their own websites, they'll be able to reel in the legions of web surfers out there. What they don't seem to understand is that those folks don't want to be trapped in the corporate superstructure of superslick sites that only have a limited scope of offerings -- the same dynamic that has viewers fleeing from conventional television in the first place.
Now I'm no corporate beancounter and if I had the makings of a media magnate I wouldn't have the time available it's taking to write this entry. But I would bet if you put all of the eyeballs Viacom has garnered for free by having "illegally" streamed clips from "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" on a scale across from the viewers at their own one-dimensional Motherlode on Comedy Central's website, there'd be no comparison. And who's benefitting, ultimately? Viacom, of course. But they can't stand the idea that Google and whatever other corporate entities are getting some advantage along the way. "Collateral gainage" is what I'd call it. And with whatever counts as being counter culture in today's web-driven society generally avoiding the more obvious corporate influences, Viacom and its ilk should be counting their lucky stars and coins that the means for virally increasing awareness exists instead of working so hard to innoculate against it.