What kind of drug are you?

Your Personality Is Like Ecstasy

You’re usually feeling the love for the world around you – you want to hug everyone. And while you’re usually content to sit back and view the world with wonder… Sometimes your world becomes very overwhelming and a little scary.

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

Where surgery and journalism meet…

…and the patient’s getting sicker.

More cutbacks and the resignation of managing editor Douglas Frantz announced today from the L.A. Times.

It’s salt to the wound, but really, what can hard-core journos do in the face of infotainment moguls taking over the helm at the most respected, professional news outlets in the United States? You don’t want the news ballasts to leave, but they’re being hogtied in their responsibilities. You can’t blame them for leaving the Carnival Cruise ship when they signed onto the U.S.S. Constitution.

Interesting (not surprising and smirk inducing), too, that the Reuters piece is more about the L.A. Times staff changes, where the Times piece puts Frantz’s next job in the lede….

Read the story here:

Reuters

LATimes

Quote of the day

“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.”

By Supreme Court Justice Breyer, during his dissent for yesterday’s ruling by the Court that schools limit the use of race criteria for integration purposes.

FULL STORY:
Nytimes.com
Washingtonpost.com

WaPo report from Howard U. RE: Dem. debate on racial issues
Supreme Court Interactive Feature from the Nytimes.com

An overview of the Robert’s Court from Slate.com

Patti Davis helps us understand

Apparently, when Ann Coulter spewed another round of venom towards John Edwards, many people were not only in disbelief and horror, but were searching for a way to understand how someone could be so mean in such volume so consistently.

Clapso weighed in on Egads! Patti Davis wrote a pretty gorgeous essay (HERE) for Newsweek that is definitely worth reading and maybe even rereading. Perhaps this commentary will spawn a spate of WWACD? thoughts as a world peace motivator.

Rx: Laughter

So, Dr. Bottomline – EconoDoc – came into my mother’s hospital room yesterday. Why “Dr. Bottomline?”

Exhibit 1:

The story about leaving the hospital attached to an IV feeding tube

Dr. Goodsense: I don’t want her to leave the hospital with the IV feeding tube. The risk of infection is too high. If she’s still not eating, I would suggest getting a PEG – a feeding tube that goes into her stomach. It’s the safest, healthiest way to go in this situation. It’s highly reversible – extracted in the office – once she starts eating. I would want my mother to be on it.

Dr. Bottomline: We have to talk about getting her out of here and whether she’ll be on the IV feeding tube or something else. [I SAID: Dr. Goodsense said that the IV was too risky for infection.] Well, actually, she can’t be on the IV feeding tube because no skilled nursing place will take her.

SO…yesterday Dr. B. came into Mom’s room to talk to her. He was harsh about her condition – the first doc talk that’s really affected her mood – not that her condition was so horrible, just in the way he spoke. Mom held out her Styrofoam water cup for him to take and set down. He hesitated for a moment (Mom has asked him to do things before – rub her back, move a pillow – and he’s said, “I’ll get your nurse”), then he took the cup.

Mom said, “Throw it away.” He was about to, and I said, “That’s your water cup. Let’s not throw it away.” And he said, “Right, a Styrofoam cup, we don’t want to throw that away. If we throw away too many Styrofoam cups, it could get expensive for the healthcare company that owns the hospital.” I laughed! And shook my head. And said (honestly, I did), “You are all about the bottomline!”

In this case, it was really my fault. Somehow, when he started talking about how wrong it would be to throw away too many Styrofoam cups, I just thought he’d come out with something environmental – like something about releasing chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere, or just being wasteful – even, simply running out of cups and not having more for patients. I didn’t know exactly what he would say, but it was like in slow motion, I so believed that something good was going to come out of his mouth. But no. And of course, no. His concern was party line, corporate. That’s consistent.

I don’t know where my brain had been orbiting – maybe around the Isle of Goodsense on Planet I Care?

Help me understand….

What exactly does Ann Coulter get out of being a vile, nasty, vicious, offensive human being? Don’t we have enough ugliness in the world without this twit slinging the dung she pulls out of her evil cauldron of a brain?! And why is she in the news?! Why do people report on her like some kind of authority figure?

Latest offense here

Egads!, indeed. Nuff said. Moving on….

Strange Maps

A site for soar eyes! As a travel addict and mapoholic, this site left a thin trail of drool on the cockles of my heart….

BONUS TRACK: Posting #134 is Greetings from Bruceville – a map charted ala Springsteen lyrics.

STRANGE MAPS

Save Internet Radio!

ISN’T IT FUNNY that the first time in a loooong time that I’m able to jump onto my favorite NPR Internet stream, it’s the Internet National Day of Silence! The event is a protest against inflated music royalties that threaten to sink some Inet stations and severely hurt others. The new fees are due to come into effect on July 15.

For the occasion, NPR is streaming an hourly program featuring Internet radio gurus – Pandora, Yahoo!, NPR, 365 – Check into it HERE.

Listen through the NPR Web site or through iTunes.

A plug for Internet radio: I’m a big fan of Pandora (see previous blog entries). My favorite, lazy-butt thing, though, is simply opening iTunes and choosing whatever genre I’m in the mood for (usually KCRW’s simulcast or streaming music, which is eclectic ecstasy). It’s great as background music or as an instant party mix or to scope out new artists. The only drawbacks are wanting to hear specific artists or tunes at specific times and having spotty Inet connection.

If you haven’t been a frequent user or if you don’t stream music at all, give it a try. Let me know what you think!

HOW YOU CAN HELP SAVE INTERNET RADIO:

Contact your Congressional Reps and Senators in support of Internet Radio.
What to say: State your support for an emergency stay of the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to raise rates so much that it will critically hurt online radio.

READ MORE:
Washingtonpost.com
Radio and Internet Newsletter