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Showing posts from October, 2012

Breaking Bad: Available Evidence

It's been killing me: How can Walt be free at 52 (albeit miserable, evidently alone and more in fear of his life than ever) since Hank now knows (or soon will realize) that Walt is Heisenberg. Here's a possibility: Walt comes clean (how can he not?) but blackmails Hank. What story would Hank's superiors be more likely to believe? That  Walt eluded Hank's scrutiny, or that Hank was in on it? Hank has even accepted money from Walt for medical bills. But the fact that neither family is living beyond their visible means supports the conspiracy theory. It's all in the family. The settling up will come someday, but needn't now. Walt has already decided to quit the meth business; this is another pressure point to Hank since he wouldn't be asking the DEA ASAC to turn a future blind eye, only the lies that were necessary in the past.  Clearly, even if this is the scenario for season 5, part II, it won't hold forever. Hank wouldn't take this

Get Over It: It Was a Fair Fight, And Obama Blew It Himself

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I can't help but think that many of my liked-minded friends have completely missed the point of last night's debates. It doesn't matter how much dissembling Romney might have done, or how preposterous the internal logic of his statements may add up to. The moderator's role is a sideshow — moderators are a stupid modern convention that clever politicians know how to play. Debates are not about policy discovery. They are theater. That is all. It's all about heart. The day before, and the day after — that's the time to score the head. On stage it's all about your media training. What makes so many Obama supporters angry is that the distance between head and heart were so wide. But there is nobody to blame for that, and for the appearance — the performance — that conveyed. I saw Felix Salmon today (thanks again for RT'ing, even if, as you explained, it must have been a mistake / the result or boredom or all you have left to do when your own Twitter

How The Blog Ethic Will Cripple Debater Romney

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One of the most important modern advances in journalism — courtesy, mind you, of the ethics of blogging -- is the opportunity for writers and publisher to own up to mistakes in the same place, time and fashion where the mistakes were made. Journalists have always had an obligation to correct their errors, of course. Not all have, of course. And the truth can be elusive, even a matter of opinion sometimes. But what isn't up for debate is requirement to tell the same audience you deluded that a) you were wrong and b) here's the truth. Not to pile on, but newspapers haven't always been too good at this. Even when they have grudgingly acknowledged error, they did so in an error section that only the curious few bothered to check, often exposing themselves to the story in question for the first time. Once the paper was out it was out, and gone. Fish wrap. No sane publisher was going to spend valuable paper and ink to re-print old news, just so an error could be acknow

The NY Times & HTML5: "This Is A First Step."

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I felt a tiny burst of joy on my morning commute today when I read that the New York Times was going to launch an HTML5 version of its digital edition. Then I had a cow when I discovered that it was iPad only. I Tweeted disapproval with my usual reserve: I also wrote to the Times , which quickly responded: "We wanted to test the Web App among a highly engaged audience of NYT subscribers, which made the iPad a natural choice," spokeswoman Linda Zebian wrote back. "This is the first step, but the HTML5 format does allow us to explore the idea of launching Web-based apps other platforms in the future." Indeed it does. The question is, why wait and do even a tiny bit of damage to your street cred as a leader in the digital arena? And invite unfavorable comparison (as I did) to the Financial Times, whose HTML5 app works great on both the iPad/Safari and Nexus 7/Chrome/Jelly Bean? @OttoBerks had a thought: This makes sense, and hews to the Times'

Where Angels Fear To Tread: Bernd Debusmann

Five years ago I wrote about the start of an era at Reuters . Now it's time to write about the end of two. Bernd Debusmann is leaving The Baron after one of the most storied careers not only at that news agency but but surely in journalism. He reported from more than 100 countries since joining the company in 1964 and, five years ago, was the marquee name when Reuters began an opinion service with three writers. They don't make them like this anymore. If ever there was a living Le Carré character, it is Bernd, from his lifelong passion of jumping out of airplanes (most of the time, I think, with a parachute) to the 7.65 mm round, delivered with a silenced pistol on behalf of someone who didn't care for his reporting. Bernd leaves with that bullet still lodged near his spine, and with the admiration of generations of reporters who got to watch how it was done, day-in-and-day-out, even on those rare occasions when he wasn't being shot, threatened or throw