Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

The scare story about CFLs. For reasons even I don't entirely understand, I seem to write a lot (1, 2, 3) about compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). I think it's the many benefits that can result from such a simple act as changing light bulbs. It's one thing to try and persuade people that they should somehow sacrifice to reduce energy consumption -- good luck telling Americans that -- but CFLs end up saving users money, too. Everybody wins, pretty much.

Probably the biggest qualification behind that "pretty much" is the issue of CFL disposal. CFLs contain mercury. Throw one into a landfill and it's not a big deal, but when everyone starts using them and throwing them away, it becomes a serious problem.

Some people argue that the mercury is such a serious problem that rushing to CFLs is a big mistake. Earlier this week, Slate's Brendan I. Koerner looked at the CFL mercury issue and punched a hole in that argument with an interesting point:

The irony of CFLs is that they actually reduce overall mercury emissions in the long run. Despite recent improvements in the industry's technology, the burning of coal to produce electricity emits roughly 0.023 milligrams of mercury per kilowatt-hour. Over a year, then, using a 26-watt CFL in the average American home (where half of the electricity comes from coal) will result in the emission of 0.66 milligrams of mercury. For 100-watt incandescent bulbs, which produce the identical amount of light, the figure is 2.52 milligrams.

The math is less compelling in areas where significant amounts of power come from sources other than coal (hydroelectric, nuclear, etc.). And yes, we need to make it much easier to recycle CFLs. But avoiding their use due to mercury concerns doesn't make sense.

Labels: CFLs, environment, Light bulbs

posted by Paul Murray at 8:14 PM | permanent link |

Why Las Vegas is worried about this year's Super Bowl. Las Vegas casinos are nervous as The Big Game approaches, according to the Wall Street Journal:

But too much of that [heightened] interest, at least as far as Vegas is concerned, is in the underdog Giants. Sports books prefer an even amount of betting on both teams to mitigate risk, because they make an additional amount (called vigorish) on losing bets. Even a 60/40 split would be reasonable, said Jay Kornegay, executive director of the Race and Sports SuperBook at the Las Vegas Hilton. Too much money on one side, though, exposes them to significant losses if the public's team wins.

As of yesterday, 75% of the wagered money at the Hilton was on the Giants. "There's definitely concern," Mr. Kornegay said. "If you find any Patriots fans, make sure to send them our way."

The reason for the lack of belief in the 18-0 Patriots is the point spread, or the minimum margin New England must win by in order for its backers to collect. Initially, the Patriots were favored by 14 points last week -- and should have been favored by even more, some experts say. Sean Van Patten, an oddsmaker at Las Vegas Sports Consultants, says he would've made the line 15. "I still think in the back of my mind that the bad Eli Manning might show up," he says of the Giants' up-and-down quarterback.

But bettors found the 14-point spread overly generous, considering the Giants' current 10-game winning streak on the road and the Patriots' recent close calls, which include a three-point victory over the Giants Dec. 29. As money has flowed in on the Giants, the sports books have lowered the spread to 12 or 12½ to encourage betting on New England and to even up the action. They are hoping that the line eventually will rise back to 13 or beyond, because history has shown that casual bettors -- who typically bet in the final few days before the game -- overwhelmingly favor the favorite.

Despite its current predicament, Vegas doesn't expect a repeat of Super Bowl XIII in 1979, a disastrous event that casinos still refer to as Black Sunday. In the lead-up to that game, the Pittsburgh Steelers were initially favored over the Dallas Cowboys by as few as two points. Bettors flocked to the Steelers, causing the spread to rise as high as five. Then sentiment switched to Dallas, driving the spread back down. Pittsburgh wound up winning, 35-31, in a worst-case scenario for the sports books, because bettors on both sides, those who had the Steelers minus fewer than four or Dallas plus more than four, got paid.

"I'm glad I wasn't working here then," the Hilton's Mr. Kornegay said.

Labels: football, gambling, sports

posted by Paul Murray at 12:06 AM | permanent link |

Ice. I know a few people who chew ice, but I didn't appreciate how popular it is down south until I read this Wall Street Journal story.

Ice isn't just for chilling drinks anymore, or for packing fish and treating sprains. It's a hot snack. Some Sonic Drive-In franchises sell it in cups and in bags to go. Ice-machine makers are competing to make the best chewable ice, with names like Chewblet, Nugget Ice and Pearl Ice. One manufacturer calls the ice-loving South the "Chew Belt."

Generally, more ice is sold during the summer, but people who compulsively chew ice do so whether it's hot or cold outside. One Sonic in Texas sold 13 10-pound bags, at $1.49 apiece, in one week this month.

Sales of machines that make easier-to-chew ice jumped about 23%, to 16,673 units in 2006 from 2003, according to data from the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute. Some ice chewers, including country-music star Vince Gill, have had the machines installed in their homes.

But what really piqued my interest was a single paragraph mentioned halfway into the story:

Today, obsessive ice chewing has been linked to iron deficiency, which afflicts about 2% of U.S. adult males and as many as 16% of young females between the ages of 16 and 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Treating the deficiency -- whose link to ice eating is unclear -- tends to end the compulsive chewing for such people.

Labels: health

posted by Paul Murray at 12:04 AM | permanent link |

A belated R.I.P. Apparently Kelloggs, which owns Nabisco, which in turn owns Sunshine, killed off Hydrox cookies in 2003 -- without bothering to announce it. Some people still can;t over it.

But Ms. Burton, who maintains the Hydrox Web site, is unconvinced. She says she grew up in a "Hydrox family." Her grandparents ran a grocery store when her father was a child. "He had access to all sorts of cookies," she says.

In college, when friends ridiculed her for preferring the cheaper knock-off Hydrox to the real thing, she did some research. Among her findings: Hydrox was created in 1908 by what would later become Sunshine Biscuits Inc. That was four years before the National Biscuit Co. (later called Nabisco) came up with the similar Oreo. Oreo was the knock-off.

The Hydrox name came from combining the words hydrogen and oxygen, which Sunshine executives thought evoked purity. Others thought it sounded more like a laundry detergent. Still, the biscuit gained a loyal following. In an informal taste test held in Manhattan in 1988 by Advertising Age, 29 tasters voted for Hydrox, 16 for Oreo.

More damaging to Hydrox over the years was Nabisco's far larger marketing budget, Hydrox fans believe. Sunshine also stumbled in 1991, when it tried to revamp its mascot, a glob of vanilla crème that morphed into a smiley figure named Drox. Pillsbury sued Sunshine, arguing successfully in court that Drox resembled the Pillsbury doughboy. Sunshine was forced to shelve the little fellow.

When Keebler acquired Sunshine in 1996, Sunshine was a distant third behind Keebler and Nabisco. Keebler then replaced the original Hydrox with a reformulated, sweeter cookie aimed more at children, called Droxies. When they failed to make a dent in the Oreo, Kellogg, which had acquired Keebler in 2001, quietly stopped making Hydrox two years later.

I grew up eating Hydrox cookies. My mother always bought them instead of Oreos. When I finally tried Oreos, I didn't like them as much. So I guess I sympathize with these people.

Labels: cookies, food

posted by Paul Murray at 7:33 AM | permanent link |

The gray lady lets her hair down. The New York Times displayed a flash of informality Sunday. Their obituary for Suzanne Pleshette ended by talking (naturally) about the legendary ending of Newhart ... and referenced the headline of this short 1999 story from The Onion.

Labels: humor, newspapers

posted by Paul Murray at 11:56 PM | permanent link |

A tale of two papers. The two major newspapers in Detroit, the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, both redesigned their websites in 2007. To me, there was no question that the News site was much more attractive, definitely easier to read and arguably easier to use.

Nielsen Online has just released its newspaper website traffic measurements for December, and they are (unique audience and year-over-year change)...

27. The Detroit News -- 1,256,000 -- 21.4%
29. Detroit Free Press -- 1,168,000 -- (-22.9%)

Maybe I'm not the only one who feels that way about the websites.

For comparison, here's the circulation of their physical printed papers, as of 3/31/07, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (via BurrellesLuce):

20. Detroit Free Press: 329,989 Daily / 640,356 Sunday
47. The Detroit News: 202,029 Daily / 0 Sunday

Both newspapers are a mere shadow of their former selves, in more ways than one. While newspaper readership is declining in general, both Detroit papers hemorrhaged readers during a long strike that began in 1995. Gannett took over the News after a 1985 merger, and the quality went downhill. Having ruined the News, Gannett unloaded it to MediaNews Group in 2005 when they bought the Free Press from Knight-Ridder. So we have the distinction of having Gannett spoil both of our once-great newspapers.

Wikipedia: Detroit News, Detroit Free Press

Labels: news, newspapers, websites

posted by Paul Murray at 12:28 PM | permanent link |

End the loudness war! You know how everybody thinks that commercials on TV are louder than the programs? (I'm not talking about what can happen with cable TV, which is unregulated; I'm talking about broadcast over the air TV.) That's because the producers compress the dynamic range. It's not that the loudest parts are any louder -- what would have been the quiet parts are compressed and made louder.

Since the early 1990s, music producers have been using this tactic as well. It's gotten to the point that a lot of experienced producers hate listening to new recordings -- or even remastered versions of old ones. From Rolling Stone:

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," [producer David] Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume contest."

Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore." ...

... even most CD listeners have lost interest in high-end stereos as surround-sound home theater systems have become more popular, and superior-quality disc formats like DVD-Audio and SACD flopped. Bendeth and other producers worry that young listeners have grown so used to dynamically compressed music and the thin sound of MP3s that the battle has already been lost. "CDs sound better, but no one's buying them," he says. "The age of the audiophile is over."

The Austin Statesman had a similar article in October 2006.

Labels: MP3, music, recordings

posted by Paul Murray at 3:28 PM | permanent link |

Spare us from the FairTax zealots. Some people are relentlessly pushing the "FairTax," a national sales tax, as a miracle solution that will solve all our problems -- including allowing the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service.

When you have a blowhard talk radio host pushing the idea, it refuses to go away. And now GOP candidate Mike Huckabee is on the bandwagon. So the Washington Post takes a look:

A national sales tax won't work, at least not according to tax experts and economists of all political stripes. Even President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform dedicated a chapter [PDF] of its 2005 final report to dismissing such proposals.

"After careful evaluation, the Panel decided to reject a complete replacement of the federal income tax system with a retail sales tax," the panel said. It concluded that such a move would shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor or create the largest entitlement program in history to mitigate that new burden....

To offset the burden on the poor, the FairTax system would send monthly checks to everyone in the nation, compensating for taxes paid up to the poverty level and ensuring that some minimum standard of living would go untaxed. The president's tax overhaul panel, in its final report, estimated that such a program would cost $600 billion to $780 billion a year, making "most American families dependent on monthly checks from the government for a substantial portion of their income."

But the biggest criticism is that the tax cannot be administered. Many economists say a black market would develop overnight, especially in the service sector.

"Under the FairTax, every time you purchase a service, you would probably get two prices -- one you can pay with a check or credit card that includes the FairTax, and one you can pay in cash and save 23 percent," conservative economist Bruce R. Bartlett wrote this week in the publication Tax Notes. "Because there would no longer be any audits of income, since the IRS would have been abolished ... massive evasion is inevitable."

At the same time, federal spending would shoot up because the government would have to pay sales taxes on purchases. To compensate, the sales tax rate would have to rise to more than 40 percent for the government to take in as much as it does now, said William G. Gale, a tax economist at the Brookings Institution. State and local governments, facing a new burden on purchases, would have to increase taxes to maintain current levels, as well.

FactCheck.org also has a good explanation of it: "while there are several good economic arguments for the FairTax, unless you earn more than $200,000 per year, fairness is not one of them."

Still not convinced? The idea originated with a group of Texas businessmen.

Labels: FairTax, taxation

posted by Paul Murray at 12:47 AM | permanent link |

The story behind the song.

The Washington Post tells the story behind a modern Christmas classic recording: Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy."

Bowie, who was 30 at the time, and Crosby, then 73, recorded the duet Sept. 11, 1977, for Crosby's "Merrie Olde Christmas" TV special. A month later, Crosby was dead of a heart attack. The special was broadcast on CBS about a month after his death....

The original plan had been for Bowie and Crosby to sing just "Little Drummer Boy." But "David came in and said: 'I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?'" Fraser said. "We didn't know quite what to do."

Fraser, Kohan and Grossman left the set and found a piano in the studios' basement. In about 75 minutes, they wrote "Peace on Earth," an original tune, and worked out an arrangement that weaved together the two songs. Bowie and Crosby nailed the performance with less than an hour of rehearsal.

And that was almost that. "We never expected to hear about it again," Kohan said.

But after the recording circulated as a bootleg for several years, RCA decided to issue it as a single in 1982. It has since been packaged and repackaged in Christmas compilation albums and released as a DVD.

Labels: Christmas, music, the story behind

posted by Paul Murray at 5:55 AM | permanent link |

Thank goodness we have the MPAA to protect us. Here's a quiz for you. Which one of these movie posters is "not suitable for all audiences"?



According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), it's the last one, for the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side (website). They specifically objected to the hood, and pointed out that posters for horror movies that used hoods had been rejected as well.

Well, hooray for consistency.

I'm so glad that imagery of a masked woman strapped into some type of torture machine, fingers with ripped nails, and a woman suspended upside down with her hands apparently bound can be used for "torture porn" movies for "entertainment." But to promote an award-winning documentary with an image of a hooded man being led away by American soldiers -- an image based upon an actual news photo, mind you -- is unacceptable. As it was in 2006 for another award-winning documentary, The Road to Guantanamo.

This is as idiotic as the "zero tolerance" stories you hear about kids being suspended from school because they had aspirin or a butter knife. Heaven forbid that people in positions of authority use their judgment.

The producers say thay plan to appeal ... if they can. They can ignore the MPAA's ruling and use the poster anyway, but they risk losing their "R" rating if they do -- and very few theatre chains will show an unrated movie.

More info here.

Labels: censorship, documentaries, MPAA, zero tolerance

posted by Paul Murray at 2:05 PM | permanent link |

The real Charlie. With the movie Charlie Wilson's War (trailer) opening this weekend, you might to know about the real Charlie Wilson, coutresy of the Washington Post.

The movie is pretty accurate, as movies go. The problem is that director Mike Nichols had to leave out so much good stuff. If truth be told, the life of "Good Time Charlie" Wilson is way too wild and crazy to be captured in any movie shorter than the "Godfather" trilogy.

A USA Today story quotes him as saying, "I think they made me a little better than I am."

Labels: Charlie Wilson

posted by Paul Murray at 1:45 PM | permanent link |

A Christmas story. On his blog, Mark Evanier points to a 1999 post about Mel Tormé that gets more hits than any other on his site. Go read it and you'll see why. It's a great story.

I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.

If you're curious to read more about him, here's his Wikipedia biography.

Labels: Christmas, Mel Tormé

posted by Paul Murray at 1:06 AM | permanent link |

101 Dumbest Moments in Business. There are few if any traditions here, but this one: linking to Fortune magazine's Annual "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" list.

In their quest for ad revenue, each one is now on its own page, beginning here. That's right, you're going to be clicking 100 times to see the whole list ... or glance at this overview.

I haven't bothered to read the whole list, but judging from the comments, there are a few poor choices in there. I guess that happens when you have to pad out a list that long.

Labels: business, lists

posted by Paul Murray at 11:25 PM | permanent link |

Red are magazene.
So I'm in a drug store yesterday and I decide to take a minute or two to glance at the magazines, and this is what I see.

Maybe it was intended as a Greek or Latin name for some vehicle, I thought, so I took the time to open the magazine and look at the table of contents. Nope -- that's supposed to be the plural form of "hero."

I don't expect Hot Rod to be written or edited as elegantly as, say, The New Yorker, but ...

Too bad there isn't a popular TV show or something that might have jogged their memory. Oh, wait a minute ...

Labels: oops, typo

posted by Paul Murray at 5:27 PM | permanent link |

Scorsese does Hitchcock -- for an ad. I think the only time I might have linked to an ad before might be Jerry Seinfeld's short for American Express. Today we have another: Martin Scorsese doing an homage to Alfred Hitchcock with "The Key to Reserva". Hitchcock fans, see how many allusions you can spot.

You'll need Flash to watch it. It's 9:21 long. (Apparently Spanish TV on New Year's Eve is like our Super Bowl, with elaborate commercials.)

Labels: film, Hitchcock, homage, Scorsese

posted by Paul Murray at 10:37 PM | permanent link |

Obsessing over image. There's a number of things that trouble me about the idea of Hillary Clinton as president. One of them is her campaign's obsessive efforts to manage the media, well-described in this New Republic story.

If grumbling about a [NYT Barack Obama pickup] basketball story seems excessive, it's also typical of the Clinton media machine. Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. "It's one of the few times I've seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them," says a veteran Democratic media operative. The media has paved a smooth road for signature campaign moments like Hillary's campaign launch and her health care plan rollout and has dutifully advanced campaign-promoted themes like Hillary's "experience" and expertise in military affairs. This is all the more striking in light of the press's past treatment of Clinton--particularly during her husband's White House years--including endless stories about her personal ethics, frostiness, and alleged Lady Macbeth persona.

It's enough to make you suspect that breeding fear and paranoia within the press corps is itself part of the Clinton campaign's strategy. And, if that sounds familiar, it may be because the Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation. "The Bush administration changed the rules," as one scribe puts it--and the Clintonites like the way they look. (To be sure, no one accuses the Clinton team of outright lying to the press, as the Bushies have done, or of crossing other ethical lines. And reporters say other press shops--notably those of Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards--are also highly combative.)

So far, the strategy has worked brilliantly. In the current climate, where the mainstream media is under attack from both conservatives and liberals, Clinton may have picked the right moment to get tough with the press. But, as the murmur of discontent among the fourth estate grows--and Hillary's coverage has taken a sharper tone since a widely panned debate performance late last month--even some Hillary supporters fear that the strategy may produce a dangerous backlash.

Emulating the Bush Adminstration -- yeah, that's an appealing attribute, all right.

Author Michael Crowley goes on to describe the various tactics the campaign uses, which are familiar to anyone paying attention. He also notes that many of her media advisors worked for fellow Senator Charles Schumer. (Schumer inspired the Bob Dole wisecrack that's been recycled about other politicians: "The most dangerous place in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.")

(via somewhere I can't remember -- I don't normally read the New Republic)

Labels: Hillary, journalism, media, politics

posted by Paul Murray at 12:06 AM | permanent link |