I had the chance to see Bonhoeffer at the Siskel Film Center this weekend with my dad. He’s much better student of Bonhoeffer than I am, but I still found the film rather impressive.
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The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same-sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause.
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Talk about great entertainment — a bunch of the Democratic candidates for president got together with Jesse Jackson in Chicago this weekend. Not exactly a Mensa meeting. Here are some of the gems that came out of the session:

Dick Gephardt: “When I’m president, we’ll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day.”

Huh? Is he really that dumb? How many years has this guy spent in Congress? Can you imagine if Bush had said such a thing when he was running in 2000? … But it gets better …

Al Sharpton: “Just look at Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas is my color, but he’s not my kind.”

Talk about tipping your hand. This is why the whole affirmative action thing falls apart at the end of the day. What liberals really want are not racial preferences but “kind” preferences. They don’t just want minorities, but the right KIND of minorities. Not only is that insulting, but it’s just plain stupid. The fact that Al Sharpton is running for president betrays the depths of the Democratic party. If Trent Lott got in trouble for what he said back in December, Shaprton should feel the same heat for this.

Let me confess that, in general, I like Bill O’Reilly. I think his show is entertaining and he isn’t afraid to slaughter some sacred cows on both the left and the right. But I do think that he suffers from a syndrome comon to people his age — a general fear of new things. I know plenty of people in their 40’s and 50’s who are sharp thinkers and are pretty savvy about the ways of the world, but they are completely unwilling to comprehend new technology. They live in the same world that they grew up in 30 years ago. Case in point, Bill O’Reilly, who went off on the Internet this week:

The reason these net people get away with all kinds of stuff is that they work for no one. They put stuff up with no restraints. This, of course, is dangerous, but it symbolizes what the Internet is becoming.

Huh? This comes in the context of a rant about a newspaper, not an Internet site.

The Internet has become a sewer of slander and libel, an unpatrolled polluted waterway, where just about anything goes. For example, the guy who raped and murdered a 10-year old in Massachusetts says he got the idea from the NAMBLA Web site that he accessed from the Boston public library. The ACLU’s defending NAMBLA in that civil lawsuit.

Talking Points noted with interest the hue and cry that went up from some quarters about the FCC changing the rules and allowing big corporations to own even more media properties. But big corporations are big targets. If they misbehave, they can be sued for big bucks. These small time hit and run operators on the net, however, can traffic in perversity and falsehoods all day long with impunity. It’s almost impossible to rein them in.

Wow … For a guy with a degree from Harvard, O’Reilly doesn’t come off all that bright. He’s saying that because a technology CAN be used for purposes that he considers inappropriate, that technology is bad. I guess that applies to books, magazines, newspapers, films, etc. The accountability argument is meaningless, see also NY Times.

The fact is, media in the 21st century has become a buyer beware operation. But that’s a GOOD thing, if you ask me. The First Amendment works best when everyone has a voice to say what they want to say to as large an audience as they want. If someone wants to call O’Reilly a pig, then so be it! Does he really think the best thing for a democracy is for big media to control the flow of information? Well, maybe he does since he works for NewsCorp.

The great thing about the Internet and blogs is the great leveling effect they have on media. O’Reilly’s website can reach just as many potential readers as mine. He can’t hide behind a printing press, a radio tower, or a satellite dish. For a guy who constantly whines about people being afraid to come on his show, he seems pretty quick to cry foul when he’s put in the spotlight.

You’d kind of hope that people would keep better track of their airplanes:

The Boeing 727 had not budged from its parking place at the airport in Angola’s capital city for 14 months, so when the jetliner started taxiing down the runway, the men in the control tower radioed the pilot for an explanation. There was no reply from the cockpit, even after the plane rumbled to a takeoff into the African skies.

The plane has been missing since it took off from the Luanda airport around dinnertime on May 25, setting off a continent-wide search for its whereabouts that includes the CIA, the State Department and a number of African nations. Their fear is that terrorists could stage a replay of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, using the plane in a suicide attack somewhere in Africa.

The guy suspected of stealing the thing can’t be found. His name is Benjamin Padilla (remember the suspected dirty bomber Jose Padilla?), and he was thought to be travelling to Africa on behalf of the company that bought the plane from American Airlines. This wouldn’t sound so sinister if it weren’t for this story:

An Ohio truck driver, reportedly part of a plot to bring down New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, has agreed to plead guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday.

Ashcroft said Iyman Faris “appeared to be a hard-working truck driver” but traveled to Pakistan, met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and “joined al Qaeda’s jihad against America.”

So PLEASE, keep your jumbo jets locked up if you’re going to leave them out on the runway!

I can tell this is going to be a fun election cycle already. Sen. John Kerry in New Hampshire this week:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday that President Bush broke his promise to build an international coalition against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and then waged a war based on questionable intelligence.
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With school finally being finished (and I do mean *finished*), I actually had a chance to watch a couple of films that I hadn’t seen from the last year. Let me preface this by saying that it’s been a real sparse year for film viewing since last summer. There are a number of reasons why, but needless to say, I haven’t seen much.
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This market has been dominated by NetFlix in recent years, and I’ve considered subscribing but never have. My biggest hestitation has been that since I’ve got TiVo and HBO, Showtime, and Encore, I see most of the movies that I want. I can’t justify $20 for DVD rentals.

Walmart certainly has some strategic advantages, notably their huge revenue base. They could simply outlast NetFlix and Blockbuster. Or they could just buy NetFlix.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my little sister, who was born on a sunny April day in 1982, now has a blog. I love the world we live in. Now if only I could get my wife, my brother, and my parents to blog, we’d have some good fun. Who wouldn’t read the BobBlog? Or the NateBlog? Or the FarrahBlog?

Anyway … my sister Julie is going to Madagascar, and she’s going to keep a blog of her experiences. She’ll actually be on the island of Nosy Be, just off the northwestern coast of the big island, in a town called Hell City, which is the captial. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? I’m sure my mother is thrilled to be sending her daughter to Hell City for the summer. Anyway, go read JB’s blog for all the details.

As expected, the FCC went ahead and voted to ease restrictions on media ownership. Prepare for radio and TV to suck even more now:

Federal regulators relaxed decades-old rules restricting media ownership Monday, permitting companies to buy more television stations and own a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same city.

The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 - along party lines - to adopt a series of changes favored by media companies.

These companies argued that existing ownership rules were outmoded on a media landscape that has been substantially altered by cable TV, satellite broadcasts and the Internet.

Critics say the eased restrictions would likely lead to a wave of mergers landing a few giant media companies in control of even more of what the public sees, hears and reads.

The decision was a victory for FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has faced growing criticism from diverse interests opposed to his move toward deregulation.

The good news is that a bipartisan group of Senators wants to put some pressure on the FCC that would limit the implementation of these new rules. It’s not much, but it’s something.

This week, the FCC will vote to ease its media ownership rules. Right now, a single owner can own enough television stations to reach up to 35 percent of U.S. market. That’s not entirely true, though, because UHF stations only count for half. So 1 VHF station in New York equals 2 UHF stations in that market. The FCC wants to raise that percentage to 45 percent. Also, the current rules prohibit the cross-ownerhsip of television and/or radio stations in the same market as a newspaper. This rule really own applies to NEW licenses, because companies like the Tribune Company have owned radio, TV, and newspapers in the same market since the 1950’s. In Chicago, they own WGN-AM, WGN-TV, and the Chicago Tribune, not to mention cable news outlet CLTV.

It’s not too difficult to argue that media consolidation is a bad thing. It will mean fewer points of view, fewer indepedent sources for news, less jobs for media workers, less bargaining power for advertisers, less public service. The only people who will be better off if this happens are the big media companies, no matter how they spin it. But it looks like this is a done deal.

Well, after a month, I’m back. I began to have problems with my e-mail back in early May, so I contacted my webhost to see if they could fix the problem. I called on a Friday and followed-up with an e-mail. They didn’t get fixed before the weekend. By Monday, I was furious at their lack of response. Finally, the tech support guy e-mailed me back. He said that my account had been locked because someone had been trying to hack the server. Obviously it wasn’t me, which I tried to explain to him, but he said that there was nothing he could do. That was the end of my relationship with that webhost. Talk about poor customer service.

Do not use newglobalnet.com for your hosting needs. They are horrible. I’m now with ANhosting.com. They are MUCH better and very affordable. I highly recommend them.

So in the meantime, what have I missed? The flap at the New York Times was pretty interesting. More than anything else, Jayson Blair is an example of what happens when a company’s management simply fails to do its job. After repeated warnings from staffers, Blair’s behavior was ignored. It finally came full circle to screw them. Now, Blair is working on a book deal and has started his own blog.