Dowbrigade

He was the first anchor to take over a network evening
newscast in the 21st century, so it was probably inevitable that Brian
Williams would begin channeling his inner Gawker by getting his own daily
blog.

"There is no better way to say this than to whip
out a cliche from the old cliche bag or drawer," Mr. Williams said
in an interview. "We are trying to lift the veil. We’re trying to
expose ourselves as a collection of humans grappling with how to spend
our precious 22 minutes each night."

"I said to my wife," he added, " ‘I don’t have a therapist. I
have my blog.’ "

The Dowbrigade has said the same thing to Norma
Yvonne, many times. Unfortunately, she always responds with an
aphorism "You get what you pay for". We’re still not exactly sure what
she means.

This is a good thing, we think, if it allows us
to see the man behind the curtain.  We plan to monitor the Brian
Williams blog for a while and see if it really exposes the inner workings of the
media machine. If it does, it will be interesting to observe the
reactions of William’s colleagues and bosses….

story from the
New York Times

Brian William’s Blog
(the Daily Nightly)

NEWBURYPORT — A 19-year-old man from Salisbury was
supposed to be cleaning up a cemetery last week as part of court-ordered
community work after he broke into an apartment building last fall.

Instead, officials said, Neil J. Goodwin Jr. invaded the tomb of a Civil
War veteran, pulled apart the 142-year-old skeleton, and then played with
the bones, balancing the skull on his shoulder and posing for pictures.

”It’s bizarre, absolutely bizarre," said Lieutenant Richard Siemasko
of the Newburyport police. ”I can’t even imagine what was in his head.
This is just a whole new level of weird for me."

Goodwin pleaded not guilty yesterday in Newburyport District Court to a
charge of desecrating a corpse and breaking into a tomb, both felonies.
Prosecutors said he was doing community service in the Old Hill Burying
Ground on Aug. 17 when he kicked in the thin marble entrance to a tomb
marked ”1863 Pierce" and twisted off the spine, collarbone, and skull.

”Every time you think you have seen it all, something like this happens," Siemasko
said. ”We just can’t understand why anyone would do this."

story from the Boston Globe

Brigitte
Bardot, the 1950s and 1960s film star turned animal rights campaigner,
has called on the French government to halt the reported use by fishermen
on the island of Reunion of live puppies and kittens as shark bait.

"It is imperative that the government does something to end this practice," she
said in a letter to the minister for French overseas territories, Francois
Baroin, a copy of which was given to AFP Thursday.

According to Clicanoo, a newspaper in Reunion, a French island located
in the Indian Ocean, a six-month-old puppy was found last month with hooks
implanted in its snout and one of its legs.

The French Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) told the daily the
dog was the victim of cruel fishermen who attract sharks by throwing puppies
or kittens into the water, tied to fishing lines, and wait for the predators
to swallow the thrashing animals.

And they call themselves civilized?

story from APF