Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...

Tomorrow night's 60 Minutes Wednesday will have a feature on the new Monty Python Broadway musical, Spamalot. And tonight's Charlie Rose Show, which runs tomorrow in some parts of the country, includes an interview with its director, Mike Nichols.

• Posted at 6:26 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

As mentioned earlier, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has introduced a bill that would make it illegal (!) for the National Weather Service to make its forecasts available for free on the Internet. The National Weather Service is supported by those of us who pay taxes, and its data is the foundation of all weather forecasting across the continent. There are private weather services that take the NWS info and supplement it with additional data, as well as processing the NWS data through different computer models. There are others that do a fair amount of their own forecasting but even those firms have derived their computer models by studying NWS data, and their forecasts are always done with one eye on what the NWS says. So basically, what the private weather services sell is information derived from the work of the NWS. Santorum's bill is based on the premise that it is "unfair competition" for the NWS to give away this information because it might make it harder for private companies to charge money for their versions of it.

The most prominent of the private companies is AccuWeather, which is based in Santorum's alleged home state of Pennsylvania. (He actually lives in Virginia, a fact you'll probably hear mentioned often as re-election time draws near.) Is anyone surprised that the top execs of AccuWeather have donated a couple thousand bucks to the "Santorum in 2006" campaign?

This is out-and-out, unabashed bribery. Sometimes, when a representative takes money from the cheese industry and then pushes for a law that benefits the cheese industry, there's a rationale: The legislation was long overdue. Others have noted the problems it's intended to fix. The beneficiaries are just supporting that benevolent cause. Something like that. But in this case, no one was pushing for this change. In 50+ years, no one thought it was bad for the National Weather Service to be making its findings available to the public. It's just Santorum taking money for screwing the public...and his price is darned cheap, at that.

Yeah, this kind of thing happens all the time, and about bigger issues than the weather forecast. But it still ticks me off.

• Posted at 6:12 PM · LINK

The Kreskin of Komix

The other day here, I noted that Garry Trudeau has a tough job in Doonesbury, writing topical material that has to go to press way in advance. As noted, he's had a pretty amazing track record of not having his "projections" go awry. What happens between the time he sends a batch of daily strips off to his syndicate and the time they see print rarely renders them untimely.

As Ray Arthur noted to me in an e-mail just now, the Trudeau Luck is holding: Today's Doonesbury strip is about George W. Bush pledging his friendship and support to the embattered Tom DeLay. And today's developments in the DeLay situation are being summarized in news stories with headlines like Bush Gives DeLay Show of Support. A nice bit of prognostication there, in a strip that was probably drawn two weeks ago.

• Posted at 11:53 AM · LINK