Well, it’s trackbacks all around in the Rochester blogging scene today. . .

Sayhar at RT picked up on my point in an earlier post about the need for permalinking and providing a repository of information on the web.  Looking at that and a recent City Newspaper article, he turns in some good analysis of his own:

rochesterturning.com: turning the tide upstate

This is a big problem. You’d think that with the rise of the net, transcripts of public meetings and a more open government would make it easier for reporters to do their traditional jobs. Oh wait. The County Government is the very antithesis of open government.

That doesn’t excuse our local media. If you want to have a hyper-local focus, fine. But part of local reporting is local politics. Or is a local spelling bee more important than undemocratic, unanimously opposed corporate handouts?

Most of what this is, both his points, my point and the City News analysis, boils down to typically flat-footed responses to the new medium of the Internet.  I’m not at all convinced that paper news is going away any time soon, though the print media companies seem to have come to that conclusion all by themselves.  Rather, I think that all-around laziness coupled with half-assed attempts at modernization, served over a bed of fatalism leads many news outlets to where they now find themselves. This all might be perhaps a good subject for a wider article, but for now, let me make a few basic points:   » Continue Reading…

A flurry of activity on the Dead Spook circuit, no doubt about that.

Since Lugovoi has been having his fun talking it up to the media, others just had to get into the act.  The Russian government is positively drooling over any opportunity to get Boris Berezovsky back into their hands, and thus at least one Russian official is trying to get a swap going between the Brits and the Ruskies.  Fat chance, that.  I don’t think Scotland Yard is into trading one revenge killing for another:

Russian legislator suggests swapping poisoning suspect for Berezovsky

MOSCOW (AP) - A high-ranking legislator appeared to suggest Monday that Russia could extradite the main suspect in the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko to Britain in exchange for Boris Berezovsky, an exiled tycoon and Kremlin critic long sought by Russia. The office of Britain’s top prosecutor rejected the idea.

Meanwhile, Berezovsky, Russian oligarch turned exile cum camera hog cum political dissident, has decided to gab in front of the cameras once again:

‘Russian president was behind spy poisoning’ | the Daily Mail

Tycoon Boris Berezovsky today pointed the finger of blame for the murder of his friend Alexander Litvinenko at Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian oligarch said the sophisticated plot to kill the former spy with radioactive polonium could not have gone ahead without orders at the highest level.

{{Snip}}

Mr Berezovsky, 51, said he believed that former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi was responsible for carrying out the assassination.

He said: “I should accept that it’s 90 per cent probable that he’s the killer, maybe more. But on an emotional level, I’m not prepared to do that.”

Aww! How sweet and melancholy!  And how can he be so sure -in his heart of hearts- it was Lugovoi?  Well. . . :

Echoes of Dagestan, World and National Politics ~ DragonFlyEye.Net

In 2001, Litvinenko and fellow former FSB security agent Andrei Lugovoi participated in a jail break of Nikolai Glushkov, business partner of Boris Berezovsky in one of his first companies, Aeroflot. Lugovoi and Litvinenko had worked together in the past, guarding both Yegor Gaidar and Berezovsky as members of the FSB. Glushkov was currently serving time in the pokey for fraud. The attempt failed.

{{snip}}

November 1st, Litvinenko met with a few old friends before eventually succumbing to sickness due to a radioactive poisoning.

One was Andrei Lugovoi, his partner in jail breaking for Berezovsky. Lugovoi brought with him an associate by the name of Dmitry Kovtun and one other. It is believed by Scotland Yard that this was the moment of his intoxication. But Litvinenko also met with Boris Berezovsky himself.

Technorati Tags: Alexander Litvinenko, Lugovoi, Berezovsky, Russia, Scotland Yard, Polonium-232

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We break now from our Alexander Litvinenko coverage to cover the banding of the RFalconCam falcon hatchlings. Each year, this event attracts a large number of people with nothing better to do to watch the falcon cam as the birds get their bands so they can be tracked and monitored throughout their lives for the purposes of conservation.

This year, the falcon cam people decided to bring a camera into where they do the banding so we can see it happen. Even better, they’re going to announce the winners of the falcon naming contest.

Did I enter the contest, you ask? Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops? Didn’t win, though.

I was just browsing through my Alexander Litvinenko article, refamiliarizing myself with the players, when I ran across this passage that I’d forgotten:

Echoes of Dagestan, World and National Politics ~ DragonFlyEye.Net

During this same time, Boris Berezovsky became an investor in Neil Bush’s Ignite! Learning company while living in London in exile, putting him in the same company as George Herbert Walker Bush and Sun Myung Moon, who together with other investors are paying the current Governor of Florida an extra $180,000 annually. In presidential politics elsewhere, Berezovsky was alleged to have participated illegally in funding the presidential candidacy of Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, and a former president produced documents confirming it in 2005.

Keep that in mind on the off chance that the Bushies make another run for the presidency in 2012, which I’ll betcha they do.  Viktor Yushchenko, if you recall, was the presidential candidate most distinguished by being poisoned with Dioxin.

Lovely company our presidential family keeps, eh?

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I have long lamented the loss of my favourite summer pass-time, Thursday concerts at Manhattan Square Park.  In fact, a few years back, I wrote an article complaining of the loss and suspecting that Johnsonville, my name for the High Falls money-pit, was to blame.

Well, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong.  Turns out that many people were interested in the renovations, and they continue into their third phase, reestablishing the long-inactive waterfalls.  The below-linked article goes into the gory details of what, precisely, Manhattan Square Park is and where it comes from.  Interesting reading, sure, but here’s the only part that matters a whit to me:

DOWNTOWN: City is restoring a hidden park - News & Opinion - Rochester City Newspaper

The spacewalk will reopen, and its theatrical lighting will be refurbished. The old restaurant quarters will be renovated to accommodate a small café-style eatery that may be operated only during musical events. And those events will return to the park once work is completed in 2008.

Hell, yeah, baby!  Free music, and pretty women in skimpy clothing!  Tapers in their box before the sound booth! not-so-great-but-still-edible burgers and a few too many “East Enders!”  Frisbee on the lawn in front of the museum!  That’s what summer is all about in Rochester!  It’s been long enough that I don’t really even remember the lighting on the spacewalk, but that’s going to kick some serious ass if they use some nice LED lighting and such.

This is going to rock.

Technorati Tags: Manhattan Square Park, Rochester, Culture, Free Concerts

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Like a story straight out of the pages of a Dostoevsky’s novel, Russian intrigues never really end; they only stay quiet long enough to increase the drama. I’ve been following this story since it’s most recent surfacing, the climatic moment of a mostly-unwritten novel where former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko dies in his British hotel room of Polonium 232 poisoning.

Now, in what seems like a belated and obvious statement, the UK government has signaled that the Litvinenko case is a legal matter. This from the overly-animated and annoying Forbes Magazine webpage. Not to be outdone, CNN picks up on the story:

Ex-KGB spy: UK tried to recruit me - CNN.com

“Britain is making me a scapegoat,” a confident and combative Lugovoi, himself a former KGB agent, told a packed news conference in Moscow Thursday, which was televised live on state-owned television.Lugovoi said he did not know for sure who killed Litvinenko with radioactive polonium in London last November but said there were three possible suspects: British intelligence, the mafia and Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire tycoon who fled Russia for London after falling out with President Vladimir Putin.

“The third theory looks the most likely to me. I am talking about Berezovsky, who is well known as an outstanding master of political intrigues,” Lugovoi said.

Now, this may seem strange to you, but CNN is making a big deal out of it’s own angle on the story for the sake of having any unique angle at all, and that angle is entirely stupid. More upon commencement of flippage. Flip. » Continue Reading…

Wait, wait, wait. . . .

I thought George Walker Bush was supposed to be The Next Reagan? Well, that didn’t work out, so they’re bringing in the Next Next Reagan, the only guy two-thirds of the Republican base does not (yet) despise, Fred Thompson. If this doesn’t work, perhaps FOX aught to air a new reality show entitled The Next Reagan. Does it bear mentioning that even Reagan wasn’t “The Reagan” every Conservative fauns over?

Thompson says he plans to run, wants to be 2008’s outsider - Nashville, Tennessee - Wednesday, 05/30/07 - Tennessean.com

Dissatisfaction among one-third of Republicans with the 2008 field has opened the door for the candidate whose folksy tone, actor’s ease before an audience and conservative credentials drew comparisons to Ronald Reagan at the annual Connecticut GOP dinner here. Thompson addressed the dinner last week to a sold-out audience.

{{Snip}} Great. “Folksie tone” gets you a spokesman for Quaker Oats or Die-uh-bet-us medication, not a president. It continues:

“I can’t remember exactly the point that I said, ‘I’m going to do this,’ ” Thompson says, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame sprawled comfortably across a couch in a hotel suite. “But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: ‘I’m going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it.’ “His late start carries some problems but also “certain advantages,” he says. “Nobody has maxed out to me” in contributions, he notes, and using the Internet already “has allowed me to be in the hunt, so to speak, without spending a dime.”

I love that quote. Thomson “can’t remember” when he decided to run, but basically said, “Well, shit! I could wipe my ass on a web-cam and do better than McCain! Martha! Hand me my overalls! And have the boy bring the pickup truck around!”

But let me get right to the point, here. Can we please stop hearing about “Liberal Hollywood,” now? Of the two major political parties in the United States of America, only one has ever had a Hollywood actor for president. Only one is the party of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And now, that same party has once again turned in desperation to it’s chief ally in political bullshit: Hollywood.

All Democrats have is Sonny Bono. OK, bad example. . But you get my point.

Technorati Tags: Fred Thompson, John McCain, Republicans, President, 2008, Wilford Brimley, Crapola

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I can understand why people who don’t know much about computers or people who don’t care to know much about their computer don’t switch to something like Linux. But what I really don’t get is the people who are PC-savvy enough to be professionals who are constant cheerleaders for this asshole company. Look at what nastiness is in store for users of Windows Vista Beta:

Techworld.com - Vista beta prepares for self-destruction

Unless Vista Ultimate Beta 2, Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and RC2 are upgraded to a legal copy by Friday, machines running those editions will automatically reboot every two hours. This crippled state will continue until Aug 28, at which point the operating system will refuse to boot.

Jackasses! I can understand (or at least, I can take as predictable) the desire to make people all use paid-for versions of your Operating System. But why do you have to be such an asshole company about it and go through all that crap? I mean, even an unregistered version of Windows XP will just stop working.
» Continue Reading…

The human capacity to come up with dip-shit ideas - and to have those imbecilic ideas take hold and become popular - is a thing deserving of nothing less than our unadulterated astonishment.  Just when you thought there couldn’t be more stupid ideas, POP!  Out comes another subnormal rumination which positively reeks of some divine type of stunted genius.

To whit: the “Urban Chicken Movement.”  No, it’s not a dance.  This eager group of go-getters are here to tell all of us that those people who’ve been under the impression that chickens grew in the country - where there’s lots of fresh air and room to roam - just weren’t thinking far enough out of the box:

How to Keep Chickens in a City - WikiHow

Join the “urban chicken movement” and raise your own backyard flock. Chickens are both entertaining and useful to keep. They cost very little to raise and they earn their rent by laying eggs for you. What follows is a brief introduction to keeping chickens within the constraint of an urban environment.

What a great idea!  What could be better than foot-long city rats?  Why, foot-and-a-half-long city rats fed on a steady diet of chicken feed and sharing diseases with our feathered friends, that’s what!  And check out these helpful suggestions for your personal city-yard chicken coop:

How to Keep Chickens in a City - WikiHow

If you’re handy, you can easily build one using a design you find on the Internet, or something you already have lying around. There are many different types of successful chicken coops that imaginative people have created, made from things as strange as an old truck cap to a dog house. . .

Ah, yes. “Imaginative,” . . . that’s the word I’ve been looking for!  A littered lawn is just irresponsible, but let chickens shit on it, and suddenly you’re the Seneca Park fucking Zoo.

Are these people trying to spread bird flu, or what?  It makes me wonder - as often, I do - whether some of the nuttier quarters of the “Green Living” community aren’t being subsidized by Exxon-Mobile for the sake of invalidating the good suggestions the rest of us might have. . .

Technorati Tags: Environment, Health, Stoopid, Dumb Idea, Bird Flu, Green Living

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I made good on my promise this weekend and barely touched the blog, let alone comment on politics of any stripe.  This is despite being clearly called to the mat by RochesterTurning.com.  (Thanks, BTP!)  The results of my hiatus have been positive, and actually my one post of yesterday is probably some of my favourite writing in a while.  But in my avoidance of politics I missed one of the few occasions when I find myself agreeing with an editorial in the D&C.  Passionately agreeing, in fact:

An updated FOIA is vital, but so is Web accessibility || Democrat & Chronicle: Editorials

FOIA reform aside, one aspect of open government the federal government has addressed far more adroitly than local government is Web site completeness and ease of navigation.

Too many state and local sites are either difficult to navigate or overly political. The Monroe County site, for example, tends to focus County Executive Maggie Brooks’ activities. She’s running for re-election, not coincidentally.

Holy crap, yes!  Finally, someone in the Rochester MSM decides to take Maggie to task for having spent god-only-knows how much to improve the MC website only for the sake of using it to promote herself.  You can’t go anywhere on that site without either seeing her cherubic dip-shit smile or at least her name.  All funded on the taxpayer’s dime, but I’ll betcha the commenting folks over there at the D&C have nothing to say about that, hey?  In fact, no one’s posted a single comment on the subject.

But as long as we’re talking accessibility of information, I wonder what people’s thoughts are concerning the media’s obligation to provide information?  I mean, one of the continual annoyances I face is bookmarking or linking to an article in a news website only to have it go away.  Why is that?  Storage can’t be a consideration, so then what is it?  You can search this site for any post I’ve ever done and find it, but if you want an article more than a week old on the D&C, forget it.

Oh, sure, they’ve got an archive.  But in this modern Internet, there’s a little thing called “permalinks,” which means that resources are identified permanently, even after they’ve long-since left the front page. I personally think that if news media outlets are our principle source of information on politicians, and politicians are answerable for their actions, then it follows that media sources need to take all possible steps to make sure the information we need is always available.

Technorati Tags: Maggie Brooks, Monroe County, Open Government

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