Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

This is, perhaps, one of the more depressing stories I've seen come through lately.

Among all the turmoil in the world of newspapers and magazines, there was always one place I knew I could turn to get straight and solid information: Editor & Publisher. Now, after 125 years in business, the magazine is shutting down both print and online operations by the end of this year.

To quote them:

Nielsen Business Media, of which E&P was a part, has forged a deal with e5 Global Media Holdings, LLC, a new company formed jointly by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners, for the sale of eight brands in the Media and Entertainment Group, including E&P sister magazines Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, Backstage, Billboard, Film Journal International and The Hollywood Reporter. E&P was not included in this transaction.

That's a lot of high-powered industry mags changing hands right there. I expect to see more shuffles like this over the next year.

When I was working for a newspaper, E&P was one of the best magazines I subscribed to. It helped me keep my niche in perspective with the larger whole of the news and print worlds. I learned a lot from reading articles on circulation and newsroom management techniques. Once or twice, I even wondered a little what it would be like to actually get mentioned as one of the notables they'd have listed--an actual old school editor or publisher.

What does it mean in the long run? I don't know. In the short term, there's going to be a vacuum that needs to be filled for the print journalism world. Obviously, that's going to be filled by one or more online resources... because starting up a new print publication to cover the faltering print industry seems a bit... flawed.

I think we're still a long way off from seeing print as a whole become an extinct industry. There's still too much of the world's population that's just more comfortable with something solid and paper-like in their hands. (Plus, what would we use to pack dishes or line the bird cage without newspapers?)

Or, maybe, the future of publishing moves away from focusing on the delivery medium and becomes fully concerned with the content on (or displayed through) that medium. There has been some good solid movement in the realm of "electronic paper" over the past year. Imagine something like Amazon's Kindle , but on an even thinner scale--something that you could actually roll up like a current newspaper.

Only time will tell. It's just too bad we won't have the century or so of experience and wisdom of E&P to watch and comment on those changes.

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

It looks like Comcast is well on its way to becoming part-owner of NBC-Universal.

According to a post at the New York Time DealBook blog:

General Electric has reached a tentative agreement to buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion, helping clear the path to a sale of the television and movie company to Comcast, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.

This is one of those slightly worrisome business dealings that only gets worse the more one thinks about it.

While NBC may be faltering a bit in the regular TV network ratings, it still holds a lot of broadcast clout. Add in the stable of entertainment properties that it’s Universal branch brought in and the online suite of destinations (like Hulu) and it’s a major player across the new media board.

Comcast, of course, the largest of the big cable companies that now bring television, Internet, and voip phone service to our doorsteps.

The combined NBC-Comcast behemoth would be, without question, one of the most powerful media conglomerates around. Check out this bit of analysis from Media Daily News:

“You become a cable network,” he added. “You become the most powerful network. You would eclipse USA Network.” Malone was one of the main architects of the U.S. cable TV industry in the 1980s and 1990s — especially with his dominant cable system operation, Tele-Communications Inc.

That’s from someone who definitely knows what he’s talking about.

In the paragraph before the one quoted, Malone mentions that the best way to get to that point is for NBC to divest itself of it’s local affiliates. Not something easy to do, but not an impossibility.

Mergers like this do more to hurt the diversity of news, entertainment, and information in general than anything else around. With fewer providers, we’re left with fewer choices. And here we even have the potential for a tremendous loss of jobs (if local affiliates are, indeed, axed in the name of more power and profits).

Will the FCC step in and say something about this? That’s kind of up in the air. Over the last decade, the FCC has been going back and forth on its media ownership and saturation rules. Those are coming up for discussion again. According to the LA Times Blog Company Town:

That the FCC is looking at reevaluating how it measures media could be a good or bad thing for the industry depending on what direction the Obama administration wants to take. The consensus is that his FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, will look more harshly on media concentration than the Bush and Clinton administrations did.

Free Press has set up a campaign to stop the merger. Josh Silver, the executive director of Free Press, said in a statement:

“Approval of such a merger would trigger a new wave of mega-mergers, as other giants like News Corp. and Disney bulk up to exert more control over new media. We don’t have to speculate about what this would mean for consumers. Decades of disastrous media consolidation have already given us higher prices, fewer independent and local voices, and the same cookie-cutter content wherever we go.”

On this, I tend to agree with him.

We’ve seen very clearly what big business can do when it gets “too big to fail”. For years we’ve let our media companies–old and new–glom together into larger and larger homogeneous hunks, all the while sliding into more and more partisan places. Polarization is not diversity. Homogeneity is not choice. And lack of competition does not breed quality. (Though these days I often wonder what does breed quality in the media.)

I’m going to wait for a few more details to come out over the next few weeks before I really start to worry, but I will be watching. If you care about your media–be it online, in print, or over the airwaves–I’d recommend you keep an eye out, too.

If this goes through and bad things happen, we have only ourselves to blame.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

2009 DC Metro Accident: Originally from the AP (via Google)
District of Columbia Fire and Emergency workers remove a victim from the site of a rush-hour collision between two Metro transit trains in northeast Washington, D.C. Monday, June 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
If you're in the DC area, this news has been unavoidable the last couple of days.

If you're a commuter in the DC area who uses the Red Line of the Metro system, you're struggling through one of the worst times the system's seen. At least the worst time that's not related to tourists and security scares.

I worked from home on Tuesday so I wouldn't have to deal with the crazy problems caused by this terribly accident. Getting home Monday night, just a few hours after it happened, was a challenge. Not as much a challenge as it was for people actually on the trains involved... and far from as bad as those nine who didn't make it out alive.

That's a bunch of bad stuff right there. People dead. Transit disrupted. Expensive bit of commuter equipment destroyed.

The worst thing is that it's starting to look like this could have all been prevented.

I've held off commenting on all this until there was some small amount of actual fact coming through in the news reports. Some bit of investigation that pointed toward an actual cause. There were suppositions and insinuations of mechanical problems and driver error all over the place Monday night. People all up in arms over all sorts of things that had little basis in any facts connected with this particular DC Metro accident.

Now there are some facts and I'm rightly pissed off.

From the LA Times:

Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said the emergency brake was depressed, and the steel rails showed evidence that the brakes were engaged. Investigators also said the moving train had been in automatic mode, which means onboard computers should have controlled its speed and stopped it before it got too close to the stationary train.

This is a system failure. This crash should not have happened.

Back in 2004, there was a similar accident at the Woodley Park metro station, also on the Red Line. One train rolled backward down the track, building up enough speed to end up sitting on top of the front of the train that had stopped at the platform. Thankfully, the trains weren't full of people. But the main train involved in that accident was also one of these 1000 series trains--some of the oldest equipment in use in the DC Metro system.

That 2004 accident prompted a lot of attention from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

From The Roanoke Times:

Hersman told The Associated Press that the NTSB had warned in 2006 that the old fleet should be replaced or retrofitted to make it better able to survive a crash.

Neither was done, she said, which the NTSB considered "unacceptable."

"Unacceptable," indeed.

Metro (and the officials who fund it) knew this could happen--that it already had happened--and the major source of the problem wasn't dealt with.

From CNN.com:

There should be nine data recorders aboard the first train, which will aid the investigation a great deal if they aren't damaged, Hersman said. The recorders provide data on such things as speed, braking and emergency applications. She said there were no recorders on the rear train.

"We've recommended for years that WMATA either retrofit those cars or phase them out of the fleet. They have not been able to do that. And our recommendation was not addressed, so it has been closed in an unacceptable status," she said.

The facts, as they stand now, are these:

• The train was in auotmatic mode
• Auotmatic mode is supposed to keep trains a certain distance apart
• The driver tried to apply the brakes
• The structure of the old cars can not handle a collision without massive internal structural failure
• Nine people are dead

This is nothing short of some sort of negligent homicide.

Unfortunately, since there were no "black box" type recording devices in the 1000-Series cars, we may never know exactly what happened.

All we know for sure, right now, is that this a tragedy that could have been prevented--if Metro had listened to the NTSB, if funding had been there to upgrade the cars, if those upgrade happened in a timely manner, if... if... if...

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

For more than a few years now, I've been doing my darndest to keep my High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) intake to a minimum.

For anyone who's ever read a handful of ingredients labels at the supermarket, it's clear this is something that isn't all that easy without either a) making everything from scratch or b) buying really expensive things. HFCS is in everything from ketchup to frozen dinners and cereal to toothpaste... and has been since the early 80s (at least).

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

I spent all of "Black Friday" comfortably seated either in bed or on the couch, still basking in the internal glow of good food from the day before and warmly insulated from the goings on of the world outside my apartment.

After about twelve hours of being immersed in things I recorded on the DVR weeks ago, I get around to my e-mail and message boards and whatnot.

One of the first stories I see is this:

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

WTF people? Seriously? It's a fargin' sale at WalMart. It shouldn't be a life or death situation.

The article hints that the store was at fault for not having adequate crowd control in place. As much as I'd like to blame the behemoth of evil that is The Big Box Store for this one, I just can't.

What kind of crowd control short of cattle prods, tazers and fire hoses could keep back a crowd like that? Without calling in the SWAT team or spending almost as much as you'd make from the sale on having half the police precinct standing there in riot gear, what else is there to do?

Having more employees on premises? Nope. That didn't help. Why? Because there's no holding back a crowd of crazed consumers--people so blind with want, rabid from pointless desire, and eager to do whatever it takes to be first.

This is the worst I've ever read of on Black Friday. I'm guessing it's some sort of convergence of the tense economic climate, store location and just the wrong mix of people near the front of the line that lead to the death.

But now we've made our first sacrifice to the golden gods of commerce. Maybe that's what it takes to turn things around. Maybe Mr. Damour's blood will appease those fickle fates that inspired the greed of Wall Street and investment banks. Maybe this tragedy will snap us all out of our buybuybuy-focused haze of senseless consumption.

I hope something good comes of it. Anything good would be nice. It won't do much to reduce the actual tragedy of the event, but at least it would be something other than more death and destruction in the name of the almighty dollar.

Here's the thing, if you're willing to risk your own life, damage property and, ultimately, not notice that you're grimy shoes are slipping on the blood of someone who's there to help you, you should probably re-examine your priorities in life.

Or, y'know, take a long walk off a short icy pier.

Welcome to your holiday season. Here's hoping this is the only retail-related death that happens.

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

Less than a year after the original Stargate series made the jump to direct-to-video movies, Stargate: Atlantis seems to have gotten the ax.

It won’t be completely gone right away, though. Thanks to the odd way the Sci Fi Channel breaks up its seasons, the current (fifth) season will run through January some time. Then there’ll be a two hour movie some time later in 2009. There may be other movies after that.

According to a quote over at Multichannel News:

“We’re excited to tell Atlantis stories on a bigger canvas,” Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, co-creators of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis and currently executive producers on Atlantis, said in a statement. “The successes of the two original Stargate [direct-to-video] movies The Ark of Truth and Continuum have shown us the opportunities that the movie format offers. We have plans for both SG-1 and Atlantis to remain vital as we expand the franchise.”

I can’t exactly say I’m sad to see Atlantis go. I’ve always found it to be more than a little uneven as a show. There have been some really solid episodes, but there have been just as many that left me scratching my head wondering “How the heck did they no see how bad this was before they spent all that money making it?” Somehow, they managed to never get their characters quite as vibrant as SG1 did in the same time frame.

Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons SG1 lasted a decade and Atlantis only five years.

For those die-hard Stargate fans, though, there’s little reason to really despair. There’s already a new series that’s been pitched and it’s been promised to be bigger and better than either of its predecessors.

Stargate: Universe, while it has an unfortunately silly title, seems to be based on a good concept. According to the GateWorld website, the premise focuses on a project the Ancients (you know, the race that built the gates, fought the Wraith, created the Replicators, ascended into two warring camps and did all sorts of other questionably intelligent things) started and just kind of let run. That project? Seeding the entire universe with stargates using an automated ship. That ship’s been out there, bouncing along for thousands of years at this point. The second part of that project? A second ship following it to explore the areas around the new gates.

That could be interesting. Kind of a return to the Star Trek idea of “new worlds and new civilizations” being found using a starship. With the extra added bonus that, thanks to the gates, you could easily arrange cameos from favorite characters from the previous two series.

Of course, I’m not going to hold my breath on this show getting made, let alone made well. As a third generation derivative being run by the same people that ran the previous two incarnations of the franchise, it automatically has a lot of baggage to deal with. As we’ve learned with the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises the temptation to apply the same formulas to incompatible ideas is hard to resist. But I’ll wait to at least hear that the series has a green light before I fully rip into it.

In other SG news, it looks like the Stargate Worlds MMORPG is still on track. I can’t imagine it will do exceptionally well if there’s no series to tie into, though. I know I’d be willing to play it… if I had the time and money. And  maybe my own group of friends to put together into a solid SG team. (I’ve signed up to maybe get in on the beta of the game, just for fun.)

So, there you have it. We’ve gone from a little movie that got a big following to a series that started on a pay cable network, segued into syndication and then was picked up by a regular cable network and spawned a spin-off with a bigger scope to an online game and, possibly a third series with an even larger scope than its predecessors. Here’s hoping it doesn’t just leave a bad taste in a lot of fans mouths.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

In a vote that was way closer than it ever should have been (5 to 4), the Supreme Court has declared that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay do, indeed, have the right to challenge their imprisonment.

Finally, something to cheer about in this situation.

At least until POTUS finds a way around the ruling. Can't wait to hear him whine about this, though.

Court gives detainees habeas rights

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

Maybe this will kick start some support for our own rights.

Or maybe we'll start pursuing legal action against our own leaders who've broken the law. OK, probably not.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

Further proof that the U.S. media is still failing to do it's job properly.

These two stories--each at least a semi-big deal--appeared in foreign press coverage before they showed up in our mainstream media.

US congressman moves to impeach Bush

Former Democratic presidential contender, Dennis Kucinich, has called for the impeachment of George W Bush claiming that the president set out to deceive the nation, and violated his oath of office with the Iraq war.

The Ohio representative yesterday introduced 35 articles of impeachment against Bush on the floor of the US House of Representatives.

Kucinich unveiled a list of alleged illegal and improper acts by Bush, including war crimes.

Now, anyone who pays attention to these things knows this isn't the first time this has been tried. It failed before and it will probably fail again. Chalk that one up to a bunch of weak-willed idiots being in charge of our country's well-being.

I guess you have to cheat on your wife and get caught to get impeached these days. You know, like Bill Clinton did. Lying to the American people about national security issues and war profiteering? Oh, those are OK.

Speaking of war profiteering...

BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.

A gag order? Seriously, this administration will do anything to keep the people in the dark and the money rolling in to the pockets of its friends.

Here's another choice quote from that particular article:

Henry Waxman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious.

"It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."

Let me repeat that: It may turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history. That's pretty impressive considering all the war profiteering that's gone on in the past.

Guess it's good to be the king--and almost as good to be the king's friend.

This coming election year is going to be nasty. The people who's extra money is on the line are going to be fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo.

Based on past performance (and the fact that we're in the mess we're in right now), I have some serious doubts as to whether the opposition will step up and fight back hard and strong enough to win.

And even if they do win, I fear that they won't push hard enough to actually change things.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

The other day, Yves Rossy took to the skies in Switzerland with a winged backpack loaded with four mini-jet engines.

He swooped and soared for a handful of minutes before cutting the engines and pulling the cord on his parachute and drifting to the ground.

It's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. Read about it here.

When I saw the first pictures from it, though, all I could think was, "Hey! I've seen that before!" It took me a little while to remember where...

(From YoJoe.com.)

Then I realized not only had I seen it in that comic, but I had the toy, too.

And now I feel like just that much more of a geek. :)

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

One of my favorite news commentator of all time, Kieth Olberman, has once again masterfully taken the Bush regime to task in a way I could only hope to do.

Love him or hate him, Olberman has facts to back up most of his criticism (if not all). Read it. Watch it and discuss.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World

Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

This a news story many people out there would never expect to see.

It's also one I wouldn't expect to have made it out just yet. But I saw it on the TV news before I came across a link to the above article, so it has made it into the mainstream. Which is more than I can say for some other stories that have been done much better by the BBC than any news outlet I've seen here.

There's no question that our economy is in deep, deep trouble. There's also no question that that our economic problems are having quite the negative impact on the global economy.

The only real question is: How bad is it going to get before it gets better?

Thankfully, we're still much better off than a lot of other nations (like Haiti where people are eating dirt). That just means we've got a little more buffer space to try to make things right.

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

Good news for everyone: The Writer’s Strike is Over!

Everyone gets to go back to work tomorrow and, if all goes well with the ratification of the contract (which I’d imagine it will), those of us sitting in front of out TVs can expect to see new episodes of old shows by April.

This has been a trying time, I’m sure, for all those writers. But I think they did the right thing and fought a good fight to ensure a comfortable spot for their profession in the world of New Media.

Maybe they’ve opened the eyes of the conglomerates, too. Maybe this outcry will inspire some innovation in the usage of new technologies and techniques. We’ve already got a show making the jump from online to the main screen. That’s something new.

So, now that things will be back to what passes for normal in the entertainment world, it will be interesting to see what really comes of all this. And, of course, how our favorite shows come back from their little break.

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

With the writers on strike, some shows are in immediate trouble. Others have between a few weeks and a couple of months before they run into trouble.

The LA Times put together a nice grid about it the other day.

And, for Lost fans, today’s Ask Ausiello over at TVGuide.com points out:

Question: What does the strike mean for Lost? Any idea how many episodes they finished pre-strike? Is it still scheduled to air some time in February?— Mike

Ausiello: Why do I suddenly feel as if I’m talking to myself, Mike? Why do I also suddenly feel like I’m not going to like what I have to say? At least I know the answer to that second part — it’s because I don’t like what I have to say. If the strike extends into the new year and beyond, there is a chance ABC may opt to delay the new season until the fall. Or worse yet, February 2009. Another scenario has the network simply airing the eight episodes already in the can this February as originally planned — something Team Darlton would not be in favor of. Says Lost cocreator Carlton Cuse, “Damon [Lindelof] and my concern about running the [eight] episodes we will have made is that it will feel a little like reading half a Harry Potter novel, then having to put it down. There is a mini-cliff-hanger at the end of Episode 8, but it’s like the end of an exciting book chapter; it’s not the end of the novel. Damon and I didn’t write [the ending of Episode 8] differently [with the looming strike in mind]. We wrote it to be the ending of Episode 8.” In any case, he concedes that the decision to hold or air the episodes isn’t ultimately theirs. “It’s really [ABC honcho Steve MacPherson's] call,” Cuse notes, adding, “No one was happy with the six-episode run last season.”

So, this season may end up a complete wash depending on timing.

Jack Bauer fans may be a little out of luck, too. A recent TVGuide.com Strike Watch blog post says:

Fox’s “revised” 2008 schedule kicks off Jan. 13 and 14 with the series premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and starts cooking with gas on the 15th with the two-night return of that singing show known as American Idol, but now is experiencing a Bauer outage. “The seventh season premiere of 24 is being postponed,” explains the network, “to ensure that Day 7 can air uninterrupted, in its entirety.” Fair ’nuff.

Heroes will make it through its current arc, but may end up going with an alternate ending if the second half of the season won’t be ready. And the Heroes: Origins mid-season break replacement is already dead.

Hopefully, this strike will be over quickly and things won’t get too much more screwed up. I’m not holding my breath for that, though.

So, enjoy your shows while they’re on and new.

warrenelliscom

Scientists at the University of Rochester and the J. Craig Venter Institute have discovered a copy of the genome of a bacterial parasite residing inside the genome of its host species.

The research, reported in today's Science, also shows that lateral gene transfer—the movement of genes between unrelated species—may happen much more frequently between bacteria and multicellular organisms than scientists previously believed, posing dramatic implications for evolution.

Such large-scale heritable gene transfers may allow species to acquire new genes and functions extremely quickly, says Jack Werren, a principal investigator of the study. If such genes provide new abilities in species that cause or transmit disease, they could provide new targets for fighting these diseases.