Month: October 2005

We’ve Come To Take Your Airwaves

Woe betide the high school radio station that has a broadcast frequency coveted by Christian broadcasters. The Boston Herald reports:

Maynard High School’s radio frequency, 91.7 FM, is being seized by a network of Christian broadcasting stations that the Federal Communications Commission has ruled is a better use of the public airwaves.

“People are furious,” said faculty adviser Joe Magno.

Maynard High’s WAVM, which has been broadcasting from the school for 35 years, found itself in this David vs. Goliath battle when it applied to increase its transmitter signal from 10 to 250 watts.

According to Magno, that “opens the floodgates for any other station to challenge the station’s license and take its frequency.”

Using a point scale that considers such factors as audience size, the FCC ruled the Christian broadcasting network the better applicant. WAVM is given 30 days to appeal, and has done so.

If the FCC refuses to overturn its decision, WAVM will fall silent.

You’d think providing an educational experience for high school kids would be considered valuable, but I suppose given the FCC we’ve got, that would be asking too much.

Who Decides?

I’m guessing Markos isn’t snowed under with his book anymore, because he made some excellent points over at dKos today:

I wrote above that most progressives “agree on most things”, but there are probably few issues, if any, in which 100 percent of progressives agree. And such disagreements are not necessarily born of ignorance, or “using Rove’s talking points”, or being a “DINO”. But disagreements born from research and exploration and each individual’s varied life experiences. This is a reality in which we must operate and thrive, and it can’t be by forcing a party line on every single issue. Because really, who will set the party line? Who will enforce it?

Getting Bolder

I need to start a new category called “WTF?” to cover those achingly jaw-dropping loads of garbage unloaded onto an unsuspecting public by key political figures. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pulled one this morning on Meet The Press. No, I was not awake for it, but (un)fortunately my East Coast blogger bretheren were.

The arrogance is astonishing:

The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda

Eeep!

Apparently this has just fallen off the Yahoo ‘Most Emailed” list , so by now the story of the Duggler family and their 16 children has already made the rounds. I couldn’t resist crunching the numbers on Michelle Duggar, though.

According to the AP report, she is 39, just gave birth to her 16th child, and had her first child when she was 21. Two pregnancies resulted in twins.

So over the course of 18 years, she’s had 14 pregnancies. Assuming each pregnancy ran the full 40-week term, she’s spent 560 of the last 936 weeks pregnant. That’s 59.8% of her adult life.

In other words, she’s spent more of her adult life pregnant than not.

Wow.

Scary.

Friday Cat Blogging

Bear is now about three months old. He’s getting bigger & spends a lot more time running around and working off his considerable kitten energy. He still finds time to cuddle up with other members of the household, though. Tommy seems to like Bear, but he’s not sure he wants to share my lap with him.