If Michelle Kosinski’s canoe had sprung a leak on NBC’s “Today” show Friday, she didn’t have much to worry about.

In one of television’s inadvertently funny moments, the NBC News correspondent was paddling in a canoe during a live report about flooding in Wayne, N.J. While she talked, two men walked between her and the camera _ making it apparent that the water where she was floating was barely ankle-deep.

Well, of course she was trying to make it worse than it was. Why tell the truth? Devastating floodwaters requiring a canoe are much better for ratings!

Of course, the tools over at NBC rushed to defend the sensationalistic nature of paddling a canoe down a residential street:

Later, an NBC News spokeswoman explained that Kosinski had been riding in deeper water near an overflowing river down the street, but there were concerns that the current was too strong for her.

“It’s not like we were trying to pass it off as something it wasn’t,” spokeswoman Lauren Kapp said.

Oh yeah. No attempt to deceive at all. Ankle deep is way too deep to walk in.

And they wonder why no one watches them anymore.

Link

Oh, and lest ye, my wonderful readers, think I would just leave you hanging, here’s the actual video:

Click here to watch her struggle to navigate the deep waters of Wayne.

Video thanks to News Busters

The layout I’ve always wanted, brought to life by one very talented guy.

Thanks Slobo!

Wow… Major Windows fan there!

“If he runs, I would support him,” Kennedy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Boston office.

Maybe Ted will drive John to the campaign events, too.

“My kids don’t watch TV. We have televisions but they’re not hooked up to anything but movies.

“TV is trash. I was raised without it. We don’t have magazines or newspapers in the house either.”

So… Madonna has no media in the house. Yet Madonna’s opinion on war, Bush, and other matters is so important that the AP and others rush to get that information to the papers as soon as possible.

Anyone else find this odd?

No media consumption, and yet she’s “informed” on the issues.

“The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy. … We must be ready starting now.”

Zarqawi received those words from Aymen al-Zawahiri.

I think that speaks volumes.

The UN has linked poverty to violence against women.

LONDON - The world will never eliminate poverty until it confronts social, economic and physical discrimination against women, the United Nations said Wednesday.

“Gender apartheid” could scuttle the global body’s goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, the U.N. Population Fund’s annual State of World Population report said.

“We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls,” the fund’s executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, said at the report’s launch in London. “We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic and political rights.”

The report said gender equality and better reproductive health could save the lives of 2 million women and 30 million children over the next decade — and help lift millions around the world out of poverty.

Hmmmm… Stopping violence against women and girls… I can think of one particular patriarchal religion followed by a few billion people that might be a problem in that regard… Of course, it’s never mentioned…

Improving women’s political, economic and educational opportunities would lead to “improved economic prospects, smaller families, healthier and more literate children, lower HIV prevalence rates and reduced incidence of harmful traditional practices.”

“Inequality is economically inefficient, it is a violation of human rights and it is a hazard to health,” Obaid said.

Yawn. Yeah, we know… But what are you going to do about it? The cliche, “a strongly-worded resolution” comes to mind. I will give the fine writers over at the AP credit for one thing. They did pick an interesting example of the inequality women face in the world and the disconnect between rights and roles…

In Iraq — called the world’s youngest democracy by its government — many women felt the country’s draft constitution “will not be presenting them with all the opportunities for equal rights that they would have wished,” Obaid said.

Iraq…

Yep… They picked Iraq… Now ponder that for a minute. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, and even China are all historically bad countries when it comes to equal rights for women, and yet none of them get mentioned. Instead, they fret over Iraq.

Lack of contraception leads to 76 million unintended pregnancies in the developing world and 19 million unsafe abortions worldwide each year, the agency said. More than half a million women die annually from preventable pregnancy-related causes — a figure that has changed little in a decade.

Ummmm, no… “Lack of contraception” does not lead to “unintended” pregnancies. Having sex does. Are we ever going to hold people responsible for having children? It’s always lack of education… Lack of condoms… Lack of money… Lack of guidance… Lack of lacks… I can’t take it anymore.

I will say, though, that it’s probably safe to guess that a good number of those “unintended” pregnancies are due to rape. In most of the countries I mentioned above, it’s perfectly okay to rape a woman. In fact, in just about every one of them, if the woman is raped, she’s stoned to death because she disgraced her family.

That’s another concept in that afforementioned religion.

You know the one… The one whose name we dare not speak lest we offend…

The one religion of the region where only 51% of women are literate…

The one religion of the region where only 5% of women hold parliamentary seats (second only to Oceania, which includes Indonesia, the largest country in the area, and predominantly that same religion)…

It’s the great elephant in the living room. If we addressed the petty arab dictatorships, shari’a law, and all the other things that keep women subjugated around the world and fostered a true understanding and desire for actual real freedom, things would be different. That should be something the UN looks into.

But they won’t.

They’ll keep watching television through the elephant’s legs.

Link To Article

Link to Fact Sheet on Gender Inequality From Report

Mel Stottlemyre on George Steinbrenner’s praise for the Angels management during their series:

“I laughed when I saw it,” Stottlemyre said. “My first thoughts were, `What about Joe? Joe had done a hell of a job, too.’ To congratulate the other manager and not congratulate your own after what he’d done this year, I laughed.”

What did he do?

Win a division in the last week? Big deal, they played like crap all year long. They didn’t win it, Boston lost it. Any Yankees fan who thinks otherwise is in blatant biased denial.

Lose a playoff series? Amen. Lost it big time.

Hell, if you want to credit him for something, be prepared to criticise him because he certainly earned plenty of that. He couldn’t get that team to play this year. Proves that if the team can’t manage itself, he’s useless. I pat myself on the back a bit because I’ve been saying that all along about him, and this season it was starkly obvious.

Mel? Shut up.

Link

The media reported today, with breathless giddiness, that Gerhard Schroeder, loser of the elections in Germany, has problems with American policy and their ability to respond to a crisis…

In an apparent reference to Hurricane Katrina, Schroeder castigated Washington for liberal, hands-off policies that left it exposed in times of crisis. The Bush administration was widely criticised for its response to the devastating storm.

“I do not want to name any catastrophes where you can see what happens if organised state action is absent. I could name countries, but the position I still hold forbids it, but everyone knows I mean America,” he said to loud applause.

Don’t wanna name any catastrophes?

How about a heat wave where 7,000 people died?

How about an unemployment rate reaching anywhere from 10-12%?

A wise man once said that you should leave the splinter in my eye alone as long as you’re walking around with a tree trunk in your own. Some German losers might do well to follow that advice. After all, if Schroeder was doing such a good job, why wasn’t he re-elected?

Link

Yahoo, Microsoft close to IM pact
By Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: October 11, 2005, 5:30 PM PDT

Microsoft and Yahoo are close to a pact that would allow users of their respective instant messaging services to exchange messages with one another, a source told CNET News.com on Tuesday.

The exchange of both text and voice messages is being considered, although the source stressed that details of the pact are still being finalized. The two companies are planning to announce the deal on Wednesday, the source said.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the matter. A Yahoo representative was not immediately available for comment.

The three major IM providers–Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL–have talked about interoperability for some time, but there has been only limited progress.

For some months now, workers at businesses running Microsoft’s Live Communications Server have been able to exchange text messages across multiple instant messaging programs. However, consumers have had to manage multiple accounts in order to use more than one of the big three services: AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. Third-party programs like Trillian have allowed users to connect to multiple services within a single program.

Details of the Yahoo-Microsoft agreement were reported earlier Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal.

CNET News.com’s Alorie Gilbert contributed to this report.

I wish they would all interoperate. This way, I could just use MSN messenger and be done with it.

Linksys has partnered with Skype to offer a cordless DECT 1.8-1.9Ghz phone complete with a backlit color display, backlit keyboard, and other features, called the Linksys CIT200 Cordless Internet Telephony Kit. The Linksys CIT200 is tightly integrated with Skype utilizing the Skype API for not just making and receiving calls but also accessing your Skype contacts and profiles. At some point today (Tuesday), Skype and Linksys will officially announce their partnership and the official launch of the Linksys CIT200.

The reviewer likes it. I want one. Need more be said?

Skype is the coolest thing ever. If you use it, why don’t you Skype me?

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of XM Radio. Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would buy Sirius at this point, unless they’re a huge NFL fan, but even then, why not either watch the game on TV or buy Direct TV?

Anyway, Howard Stern is going to Sirius and is getting off commercial radio. All six of the people who still think he’s funny are really going to miss him, but I digress. Since Sirius and XM have been locking horns for a long time, the mudslinging has gone back and forth fast and furious. Something that has recently come up, though, is that Sirius isn’t actually playing fair with their subscriber numbers:

Sirius added 359,000 new users in the third quarter, nearly doubling its year-ago increase. At first blush that looks far more impressive than the 48% subscriber growth at rival XM Satellite .

But it turns out that not all those new Sirius subscribers are actual people.

XM and Sirius both count on arrangements with big automakers like Ford (F:NYSE - news - research - Cramer’s Take) and GM (GM:NYSE - news - research - Cramer’s Take) to power subscriber gains. But where XM waits until a car buyer activates the service to add to its new-user tally, Sirius sometimes starts counting as soon as a car with a factory-installed radio arrives at the dealership.

So a number of those freshly minted Sirius subscribers could actually be Chrysler Concordes sitting on a dealer’s lot somewhere. Observers say that kind of liberal math could be bolstering Sirius’ growth — especially now, as dealers are receiving a new crop of 2006 models.

Sirius’ practice means the company can “call it a sub, even if it is sitting under water on a dealer’s lot in New Orleans,” says one investor who sold Sirius and holds XM.

Now, I work in the wireless industry. This would be akin to T-Mobile calling every phone shipped to a dealer a subscriber. Needless to say that no one doing such a thing should be taken seriously, but think about the implications of that.

Sirius, of course, defends the misrepresentation of their subscriber numbers:

Frear says he counts the car as a subscriber because that’s when the car company pays Sirius for the radio subscription. He says Sirius receives the one-year subscription money upfront from the carmaker and defers the revenue by booking it in monthly installments or amortizing it over the life of the service contract. Sirius also books the subscriber acquisition costs upfront.

So whether or not you make an active effort (ie: buying a Sirius satellite receiver), you’re a subscriber just because you have one in your posession that you may or may not actually activate (what Frear doesn’t tell you is that just having it doesn’t mean you get the service; in order to get the service you have to call up and turn it on, so that “subscriber” may not ever actually hear a single show on the network).

Shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Howard Stern has been claiming Sirius has 3 million subscribers due to his announcement that he’s going to be appearing there in January on Channel 100. Unfortunately for Howard, they don’t even have 2.5 million yet. I guess lying about the numbers is a Sirius thing.

Source: The Street

You know what the best part of the Halos dropping the most arrogant team in baseball right on their pointy feeble little heads is? I won’t have to deal with Yankee Assholes (their idiot fans who can’t tell a 4 from a 5 and only ride the subway to get to the crumbling house that the fat italian built) on my trip home.

Oh, and I won’t have to hear what “we” did last night, as some beer guzzling out of shape senior citizen talks about what “we” did and how good “we” played.

I love it when the Yankees get bounced.

Okay, so I wasn’t in the mood to work today either. Here… Play this until the end of the work day.

Via Lifehacker

…could juxtapose the following two completely unrelated headlines:

(Screen Grab from Fox News.com earlier today)

Esquire has named Jessica Biel as the Sexiest Woman Alive.

Not for nothing, but who am I to argue?

NEW YORK - Jessica Biel has been proclaimed “the sexiest woman alive” by Esquire magazine.

The actress dons the cover of Esquire’s November issue, following last year’s honoree, Angelina Jolie. The 23-year-old Biel, who began as a teenager on the family TV series “7th Heaven,” plays a supporting role in the upcoming “Elizabethtown” and starred earlier this year in “Stealth.”

“It seemed like it would be great — having named Anglina Jolie sexiest woman of the year last year — to try to come up with somebody who was on everyone’s radar screen, but who was also fresh,” said Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger. “It just seemed like Jessica Biel’s moment.”

Indeed. They have completely atoned for the debacle last year of picking Angelina Jolie.

Red Hot Off the Presses:
As if this wasn’t enough news, my good friend RKB has alerted me that there’s much more in the works with the lovely and talented Ms. Biel…

Random breathalizer testing… In public high schools.

Lovely…

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Students who attend homecoming dances on Saturday will be doing some heavy breathing — into Breathalyzers.
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At Santa Barbara High School, officials will screen every third or fourth student who arrives and anyone who appears drunk, said Principal Paul Turnbull. Dos Pueblos High School administrators will use the Breathalyzer only if they suspect a problem, said Principal Quentin Panek.

“There’s a lot of heavy drinking going on,” said Penny Jenkins, executive director of the local nonprofit Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. “Something’s got to be done.”

I cannot even believe I’m reading this. It’s one thing to search lockers (I’m okay with that) but to start testing students for chemical dependency? What right does a school have to do that? Oh, that’s right. None. One student makes an interesting point:

Senior Alexander Argyropoulos said alcohol testing encourages students to use drugs that cannot be detected with the Breathalyzers.

“(Drinking) is kind of part of growing up, something all kids are going to do,” Argyropoulos said. “It’s better than possibly trying cocaine.”

Drinking may not be a part of growing up, but let’s take his first point… If the school starts testing for beer, people will start smoking pot. I actually think he’s right, believe it or not. But let’s not kid ourselves here; if they can do a breathalizer without cause, what’s to stop them from taking hair, urine, or other samples testing for other drugs?

And it’s not a slippery slope.

Hopefully the ACLU will stand up for these kids. They’re going to be meeting about it before the policy is implemented.

Source: Yahoo News

Click Here

Sometimes I marvel at the stupidity of the mainstream morons. Witness, if you will, the sheer idiocy of this headline:

NYC Commuters Head to Work Despite Threat

I have to wonder… What the hell did the AP expect? Did they expect New Yorkers to skip work today en masse? Hell, I went to work on 9/12/01! People in this city move on with their lives very quickly, that’s why we’re the greatest city on earth.

It pisses me off that they report this as if they’re suprised by it. There’s nothing surprising about it, guys.

It’s called living life and refusing to do so in fear.