As I mentioned the other day, at least two of my high school classmates are now lobbyists/think tank … thinkers. (I have no idea what the generic job description for a think tank would be.)
Jessica has, in fact, just gotten a piece published in the online version of The Nation:
There are many things I think women will come to regret, but not the ones Justice Kennedy fears. They will regret that their doctors are no longer allowed to use an abortion method that can reduce the risks of hemorrhaging, uterine perforation, infection and infertility; that women carrying malformed fetuses will no longer be able to have an abortion procedure that lets them hold their child and mourn it; that doctors will no longer feel free to develop new techniques that might be even safer for women; that doctors will have to modify the techniques that aren’t banned to ensure they won’t be prosecuted; that women whose health is endangered by new abortion restrictions will have to fight them on a case-by-case basis, when a remedy will likely come too late.
But most of all, I think women will regret that a paternalistic government has taken away their right to make their own decisions about their family composition and their medical care. Because ultimately, isn’t freedom the right to make decisions for yourself–good or bad? Wouldn’t you prefer to regret your own mistakes rather than those of the government?
See, when you’re a think tank deep thought-production specialist, they’re not paying you to write knock-knock jokes.
Well, now I can officially say I’ve heard everything when it comes to saving money in the journalism biz:
Pasadena news site outsources local coverage to India
The job posting was a head-scratcher: “We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA.”
A reporter half a world away covering local street-light contracts and sewer repairs? A reporter who has never gotten closer to Pasadena than the telecast of the Rose Bowl parade?
Outsourcing first claimed manufacturing jobs, then hit services such as technical support, airline reservations and tax preparation. Now comes the next frontier: local journalism.
James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.
But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India’s lower labor costs.
“I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications,” said the 51-year-old Pasadena native. “Whether you’re at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you’re still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview.”
The first articles, some of which will carry bylines, are slated to appear Friday.
OK, I hear him on the whole Webcasting thing, but from personal experience, I have to say there’s no substitute for being able to clarify things after a meeting with residents, elected officials and staff. And, of course, residents coming in to vent at meetings are an invaluable source of story leads and you miss out on those entirely if you don’t go to meetings, even if you watch the Webcast of people who will never have your business card pressed into their hands.
Still, I bet this idea spreads.
So, I was innocently listening to Marketplace on my iPod when I heard Deron Lovaas speaking on the air, although Marketplace spelled his name wrong in the transcript. Despite the spelling issue, I figured it was him: How many people could there be with that name?
And, indeed, Deron works for the National Resources Defense Council:
DERON LOVAAS is vehicles campaign director and deputy director of the smart growth and transportation program. He currently directs NRDC’s oil security issue campaign and served as chief lobbyist on the federal transportation bill. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Deron coordinated Sierra Club’s Challenge to Sprawl campaign and managed Zero Population Growth’s sprawl educational outreach program. He also worked on transportation and air-quality planning at Maryland’s Department of the Environment.
See, I might be a journalist, but he’s a lobbyist.
He’s not the only one who’s making waves in Washington. Our mutual friend and classmate Jessica Arons is Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress (a leftie think tank that’s a counterpart to the Cato Institute). I haven’t caught her on the radio, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
Given how many fellow South Lakes graduates stayed in the Washington area, I suppose the real surprise is that more of them haven’t yet shown up in visible positions in the world of politics and policy.
So much for the anti-blogging order being misunderstood: Now the Pentagon is cutting access to YouTube, MySpace and other sites entirely:
Lt. Daniel Zimmerman, an infantry platoon leader in Iraq, puts a blog on the Internet every now and then “to basically keep my friends and family up to date” back home.
It just got tougher to do that for Zimmerman and a lot of other U.S. soldiers. No more using the military’s computer system to socialize and trade videos on MySpace, YouTube and more than a dozen others Web sites, the Pentagon says.
Citing security concerns and technological limits, the Pentagon has cut off access to those sites for personnel using the Defense Department’s computer network. The change limits use of the popular outlets for service members on the front lines, who regularly post videos and journals.
Memos about the change went out in February, and it took effect last week. It does not affect the Internet cafes that soldiers in Iraq use that are not connected to the Defense Department’s network. The cafe sites are run by a private vendor, FUBI (For US By Iraqis).
Also, the Pentagon said that many of the military computers on the front lines in Iraq that are on the department’s network had previously blocked the YouTube and MySpace sites.
The ban also does not affect other sites, such as Yahoo, and does not prevent soldiers from sending messages and photos to their families by e-mail.
Among the sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.
We had the baby shower this weekend at Ellis Truss and there were cousins and neighbors and Scattegories and bingo and lots and lots and lots of food. We now seem to be pretty much set for newborn diapers and got a Diaper Genie (I wish I could train the cats to use it), and a crib set and an amazing handmade pirate quilt (the nursery is going to be ocean/pirate themed) and lots more besides.
Peter and Sharon from the Star gave us a bunch of stuff from our Amazon registry and some other books as well, and a very fat stuffed cat who looks more than a little like Hanna.
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