Liberal-Progressive leaving cable channel Current TV, which has been plagued with problems that the whole fuss with Olbermann's leaving the network brought to light (basicially, they were operating it on less than a shoestring, and oversold to Olbermann about how professional of a setup he'd be coming into, and refused to ante up to do better - ( Read more... )

Rioting throughout Egypt is reaching a fever pitch today and may be ready to really to explode at any time; here’s the best sources I have for the subject.

The Latest: Try the BBC’s live update area, and the English-language coverage at Al-Jazeera.  Al-Jazeera also has a live TV stream here.

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The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times - not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading.  It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff.

Tastes run like this for entertainment:

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I absolutely refuse to watch the train wreck of Jon and Kate Plus Eight - haven’t for a while, and I did catch about 10 minutes of the start-of-season one before I got nauseated.   I’m hearing stories about their ratings falling apart, and I’m just as glad.

First off, while some find the whole thing of having a view as to how to handle a big family ( Read more... )

If the Seattle Press-Intelligencier survives the next month, it will be as a online paper only.   Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver is about to cease publishing.

The new US government budget (PDF link) under Obama is going to cap federal employee raises (the automatic kind) to 2% next year; the base this last year for us was 3.9%.   On ( Read more... )

• Two big Philadelphia newspapers file for Chaper 11 bankruptcy.
• Delco retirees are suing the company to stop the company from yanking their benefits in bankruptcy court.
• Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is taking a huge $8.4B loss; worse that expected.
• The town I live in, population 20,000, budgeted $85,000 for salt and overtime for clearing streets of ( Read more... )

Rorschach from THE WATCHMEN at Eustace Tilley; my favorite, but I’m a huge WATCHMEN fan.

Every year, The New Yorker has a ‘Eustace Tilley’ cover; this year, they have a contest for Tilley ‘fan’ art contributions that might make it on the cover.

Here’s a set: the Worried Uncle Sam,  the Spare Change,  and the Hope.

As I’ve travelled around, I’ve noted that papers rarely have out-of-town correspondents anymore, and that AP handles the vast bulk of the ‘national and international news’ appearing in 95% of papers in America.  Now, it seems that the AP is pricing itself out of smaller-town newspapers’s reach.