It is a total perversion for a journalist to tell a source what to say without reporting that the thought or statement was the journalist's and was made or agreed to at the request of the journalist. If the journalist wants to report, I had a chat with X and suggested this is what he wanted to say, that is perfectly permissible as long as the story reads like this:

This is a news article and my editors would never in a million years let me state my opinion here. However, I want to state my opinion here. So, I called X and X agreed to allow me to quote him saying "_______", however those words never even left X's mouth even though I am reporting to you through the use of quotation marks that the material in the quotes was actually said by X. Alternatively, if the statement is reported as an indirect quote and is not in quotation marks, X never said or thought anything close to what I reported X said. Therefore, on the authority of The New York Times, I hereby report on the front page of The New York Times that X said: "____", or alternatively, X said that ______. You, dear reader, should have every confidence that the next time I report something on deep background or attribute it to an anonymous source or state something else as fact that you have absolutely no way of verifying that what I say happened or was said is exactly what happened or was said.

"I've seen the lights go out on Broadway
I saw the ruins at my feet
You know we almost didn't notice it
We'd seen it all before on Forty second Street"

-- Billy Joel, "Miami 2017"

The idea that a set of spotlights should be part of a memorial to the dead and injured of September 11 had been floated even before the dust settled. In a city where production values rank high on a list of civic virtues, the idea of twin towers of light extending to the heavens felt distinctly apropos. When the Towers were first attacked in 1993, the city made sure that the lights in the buildings came back on as soon as possible; that the building at least looked alive made everyone feel a little better in the immediate aftermath.

There were problems with the concept, including the minor matter that a spotlight powerful enough to be seen would be powerful enough to blind pilots. (That pilots were still allowed to fly over the World Trade Center site was not a little discomfiting, but that's another matter.) Nonetheless, on the six-month anniversary of the attack -- and by the way, is there a better or more elegant term than "six-month anniversary"? Semi-anniversary? -- the spots came on. Eighty-eight of them, arrayed in two squares with the same footprint as the towers, though about a block west of the original site. The lights came in from as far away as Salt Lake City, where they'd last been used in the Olympics. Even in New York, it seems, there is sometimes a need to import lighting.

Seen close up, the lights look more like a beaded curtain than a beacon, the individual strands not merging until the atmosphere spreads the beams. From a distance of a mile or two, the towers of light look different depending on the day: crisp and close on cool dry nights, ethereal and more distant on nights with high humidity. On overcast nights, the beacons paint the bottoms of low-hanging clouds. From many angles, they looked more like a single tower than two.

It was clear from the start that the lights were a temporary thing. It's expensive to rent spotlights and operators, not to mention the electrical power required. And the lights themselves are probably booked for a supermarket opening somewhere. But many in the city hope that whatever replaces the World Trade Center has some sort of memorial not unlike the towers of light -- something that New Yorkers can look toward the skies to navigate by, a constant reminder of the monstrosity inflicted on the city and the nation.

"[CBDTPA] raises many questions. For instance, when did it become government's job to promote broadband and digital television in the first place? How will making TVs and computers less capable foster that goal? What's to stop the other 5.9 billion people on earth from making their own, non-copy-crippled hardware and software? And just why do we need this technological totalitarianism in the first place?..."

Mike was the first of several readers who sent along this wonderful item:

After the AOL/Time-Warner merger, the edict went out to all 82,000 employees of the media giant that they had to use AOL email for company communications.

To its chagrin, the company has finally admitted what millions of others already know: "...the e-mail software frequently crashed, staffers weren’t able to send messages with large attachments, they were often kicked offline without warning, and if they tried to send messages to large groups of users they were labeled as spammers and locked out of the system. Sometimes, e-mails were just plain lost in the AOL netherworld and never found." In fact, they found that about 2% of AOL emails never made it to their intended recipients!

You gotta love it.

A farmer got pulled over by a state trooper for speeding. The trooper started to lecture the farmer about his speed and, in general, began to throw his weight around.

Finally, the trooper got around to writing out the ticket, and as he was doing so, he kept swatting at some flies that were buzzing around his head. The farmer said, "Having some problems with circle flies there, are ya?" The trooper stopped writing the ticket and said, "Well yeah, if that's what they are. I never heard of circle flies. "The farmer says, "Well, circle flies are common on farms. They're called circle flies because they're almost always found circling around the back end of a horse." The trooper says, "Oh!", and goes back to writing the ticket. After a bit he stops and says, "Hey! Wait a minute! Are you trying to call me a horse's ass?"

The farmer says, "Oh no, officer. I have too much respect for law enforcement and police officers to even think about calling you a horse's ass."

"Well, that's a good thing.", says the trooper, and goes back to writing the ticket. After a long pause, the farmer says, "Hard to fool them flies though."

April 11, 2002

NOTE FROM CHRIS:

"SlamBall," a new sport, will soon debut as a TNN TV series with the intention of becoming a sports league. The hybrid sport incorporates trampolines, and combines elements from basketball, football, hockey and gymnastics.

15> Stop laughing!

14> All teams must contain at least one monkey. Hey, it can't hurt -- monkeys are funny *and* play good defense.

13> Double points for anything slammed off of John Madden's or Dick Vitale's head.

12> Players can earn immediate release from penalty box by coming up with a new "You might be a redneck" joke.

11> No poking fun at the former XFL guys on the team.

10> Any team losing two in a row is forced to play naked until they win a game.

9> No exposed internal organs? No foul.

8> Stepping off your unicycle to cross-check an opponent who is dismounting from the electric bull will result in a five-yard penalty, and the opposing team will regain possession of the snitch.

7> Score a goal: 5 points. Score a cheerleader: 500 points.

6> The offside rule doesn't apply while either coach is breast feeding.

5> If the puck collides with the pig, the possession arrow changes -- unless the pig dies, in which case the game is declared a draw and the post-game luau begins.

4> At random intervals, the P.A. music stops and all players have to find an empty chair.

3> Twenty separate two-minute periods are each followed by a 10-minute Zima break.

2> Automatic suspension for stating, "Hey, this game SUCKS!"

and Topfive.com's Number 1 "SlamBall" Rule...

1> White guys get to use extra-bouncy trampolines.

I'll have you know that 'Cabin Boy' has provided my friends and I with one of the finest non-sequitur comments around...

"Do you wanna buy a monkey?"

Oh and,

"Thank you for that...whatever that was"

Oh and "These Pipes...are CLEAN!"

While it may certainly be the worst movie ever made, I encourage everyone to see it at least once so they can universally concur on this fact. It's so utterly bad, I find myself compelled to watch it.

God bless Chris Elliot. And God Bless America!

(Because God knows it's only in this crazy country he could have tripped on a pile of dung and landed in Hollywood.)

Gobsmacked?

The pro- and anti-ANWR-drilling PR machines have been kicked into high gear this week as the Senate debates the issue, which is already included in a House-passed energy reform bill. Here are two stories on the cat-and-mouse (or is it wolf-and-caribou?) PR game being waged over this issue:

...

Over the last few years, executives at some companies released inaccurate earnings statements and, before correcting them, sold large amounts of stock at inflated prices. At others, executives insisted for months that the recent recession would not much affect their businesses. By the time they acknowledged their error, some had sold millions of shares at prices that were just a memory.

It happened at major technology companies like Oracle and Sun Microsystems . It happened at Guess and at Xerox , at Dollar General , a discount retailer, and at Providian Financial , a credit card company.