Happy New Year from the Talk of Delmarva!

New Year’s Eve UPDATE: Daredevil Robbie Maddison just made a 322′ 7.5″ motorcycle jump in Las Vegas, but he wanted to make 360′, so he wants to try it again…how cool….

UPDATE: Is Robbie available to jump the Indian River Inlet?

I’m always interested in tech stories. I’m a little bit of techie, I suppose. I like to read about the newest contraptions, the new trends, new improvements in technology. I don’t often do the topics about technology on the air, so, maybe I’ll post some on here… I mean you’re on our Web site, so you at least have a computer, so they may be interest to you.

The Record Industry, RIAA, is angering everybody today with the latest story about unauthorized music copying. Now, I fully agree that trading, giving away, stealing people’s mp3s, bitTorrent-ing songs, copying mp3s off of other peoples computers, iPods, giving away CD-r copies of songs and e-mailing mp3s is stealing and for the most part wrong. It’s so easy these days with record stores online, amazon.com, Best Buy, Walmart, half.com, iTunes, CDbaby.com, and countless other services and stores to get music, and get it cheap, that trading songs amongst your friends is wrong. CD sales are down again 20% this holiday season because kids, adults and everyone seems to be trading music. To curb this trend, the RIAA is now saying that copying/ripping a CD that you purchased into your computer is illegal.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122800693.html

So, according to the RIAA, if you go to Walmart(s) and buy the new Barry Manilow Christmas CD, take it home, put it in your PC, rip it to iTunes and jam it on your mp3 player or iPod, you are “Breaking the law” - cue Judas Priest.

I’ve never illegally downloaded a song, call me an mp3 saint. Everything that I have was purchased legitimately at a record store, online, at iTunes or actually given to me by the artist. However, I have copied CDs to my iPod, to listen to in my car, so that these rare CDs I just bought don’t get scuffed. According to the RIAA, that is “unauthorized” - Even if no one besides myself ever touches my iPod or even hears it. It’s not illegal to listen to a CD in my car, but, it is illegal to listen to a copy of that CD. It’s akin to the debate in the 1980s regarding copying that Air Supply record to a tape and listening to it in your car.

A similar debate came about regarding the ownership of Roms of video games about 10 years ago. A lot of people figured out how to “rip” the rom images of old Nintendo and Atari games. Nintendo of America threatened lawsuits and shut down a myriad of Web sites offering free download of Roms of old Nintendo Games. Their legal said “it’s only legal to own a backup rom if you already own the cartridge” - that you could, in effect, own one backup copy, anything else was illegal. It was actually the same problem as the problem facing the music industry. Lots of unscrupulous people were downloading Rom images of brand new Playstation games and Nintendo 64 games, and either playing them on video game emulators on their computers or creating a CD-rom and playing them on mod-ed Playstations, or later, Gamecubes and Wiis.

It’s essentially the same problem. People want to own the content without paying for the right to own it. Whether it be DVD movies, music or video games…. The digital revolution, the lack or a hard copy, has created a generation of people who feel entitled and don’t want to dish out any cash for other people’s work. Bands just starting out feel like they have to give away their music to get any attention, established bands like Radiohead are offering their music for “whatever you want to pay for it” for publicity because their real CDs aren’t selling. The RIAA thinks that telling people that creating back-ups is illegal will help curb this behavior. But it won’t.

It’s a losing battle, but thousand of digital thieves have caused these reactionary tactics.

So many events from around the world reported by news media just make us shrug our shoulders and ask why?  Then you read a column (provided by the adjoining link) and you are reminded there are forces which can impact lower Delaware.  The writer lays it out piece-by-piece and you see the threat of clear and present danger:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071231/EDITORIAL/622390676/1013/EDITORIAL

Every December media outlets recap their favorite and/or biggest stories for the year. In that same tradition, I’ve decided to put up some of my favorite blog pictures of the year and 10 posts I’ve made that I feel changed the course of world history and, of course, saved all of humanity.

My Favorite Pictures of 2007

A beautiful day at Tower Road.

A Civil War Reenactment during Milton’s 200th Anniversary.

Governor Ruth Ann Minner running away from me and out of the Georgia House in Millsboro the night of the 41st District special election.

Even after his resignation from the State House for ethics issues, John Atkins’ supporters launched a failed write in campaign to send him back to Dover. His campaign signs cropped up all over the 41st.

The table where Laura Bush ate breakfast at the Royal Treat on Wilmington Avenue in Rehoboth Beach.

The Cohen brothers, they found the ill fated Rissos dolphin washed up at Tower Road.

The Rissos dolphin dying on the beach at Tower Road.

The SINKING South Side approach of the “new” Indian River Inlet bridge and the road it tried to pull down with it.

John Andretti, I met him. How cool.

The “Dic Dang” sandwich at the Corner Market Bistro in Milton.

Lighting the balloons up like lanterns during Milton’s 200th Anniversary celebration.

Joe Biden talking about Iraq at Browseabout Books on Rehoboth Avenue.

Jared Morris and Dan Gaffney having fun at the Best of Delaware celebration in Dover. (And yes, Dan always has that light shining above him, it’s the most amazing thing…).

The French invade Rehoboth Beach.

Disheveled Barbies from Washington DC spotted loitering on Columbia Avenue after their Dream House furniture was recalled.

Dr Wray and Stell Parker Selby changing seats at the Cape Henlopen School Board meeting in December after Wray resigned the Presidency.

My Favorite Posts of 2007

# Ten: Your Sussex County Council

# Neuf: The French visit Rehoboth

# Eight: The Atkins Scandal

# Seven: The Indian River Inlet Bridge

# Six: Biden at Browseabout Books

# Five: European Football

# Four: Laura Bush visits Rehoboth Beach

# Three: My interview with John Andretti

# Two: Toy Recalls

# One: The Global Warming

Scanning the TV dial last night I came across a station called WCPB.  It’s a “public” station and it was airing a canned holiday greeting for something known as Kwanzaa.  From what I can make out this is a holiday created in a political science lab by some Marxist college professor with hopes of destroying the United States as a national entity.  In the 41 years or so since inception the intent of this Kwanzaa has morphed into something more akin to St. Patrick’s Day but without the pints of stout.  It appears Kwanzaa is a holiday celebrated by a handful of academics and members of the news media.  The academics put on brightly colored clothes, similar to the beach shirts seen at summer services at St. Jude’s.  And there are trays of food at Kwanzaa, many with the consistency of a termite mound, and this food allows the celebrants to commune with a long ago imagined past.  A local library basement or school gymnasium is the site of the event, which allows the news media to be educated about history, injustice and segregation, because the only way to end these crimes is by creating a self-segregating holiday.  Some 23 year old bleached blond arrives with a microphone attached to a camera and photographer and the photographer scouts the gym for donuts and is quickly disappointed. 

 The reporter is then educated after asking the piercing question, “So, what is it that you’re doing here today?”  

The answer involves slavery, Ken Norton and Alex Haley.  The photographer then grabs some b-roll and the bleached reporter makes small talk and feigns serious interest.  Even on a slow news day the story will be at least third in the rundown.  

I know a man from Nigeria.  He’s an old friend from my television days.  He was an outstanding electrical and IT engineer.  He didn’t smoke or drink and he read a Bible every day.  We became such fast friends that after the 6:00 news on Friday nights we would pull up chairs in the empty newsroom and spend a couple of hours talking about life.  Later we would become traveling companions as the company sent us away on many training seminars.  Our jobs were to bring back the latest equipment and instruct our own staffs in the use of the latest technology.  

Abiodun liked to talk about growing up in Africa.  He was raised Muslim and after a religious conversion to Christianity and a political coup he feared for his life.  He lived for a time in Australia and then Las Vegas and finally settled in upstate New York.  He found the shores of North America the most appealing and welcoming of any continent he had visited.  His wife found work teaching at a large university and he landed in television.  He raised lovely children and they were scholars and now are grown and a source of great pride.  They are leaders and value hard work and self determination.  It reminds me of a neighborhood where I once lived among Ukrainian immigrants.  The children all became doctors and dentists and lawyers.  

I miss the long talks with Abiodun and remember his reaction to Kwanzaa and hip-hop and the need to portray the self as a perpetual victim.  He explained the people of Africa thought distant relatives in the United States were suffering from mass delusion.   A people so long willing to play the role of oppressed that any progress was impossible.  Abiodun’s family didn’t celebrate Kwanzaa but at Christmas he would wear a colorful sweater over his dress shirt, just like he did all those years ago in far-flung places in Africa, Australia and the western United States.  I guess it’s because he didn’t see himself as different and as a humble man didn’t call much attention to himself.  He liked being an unhyphenated American.  

I thought of him yesterday when I read an essay in a major Canadian paper.  The writer is a scientist raised Hindu in India.  While at college he met and married an Australian Catholic.  The couple’s children were born in Canada and New Zealand and now reside in Australia.  Family members travel extensively and the writer made one very important point.  The only place his kin feel most “ordinary” is while visiting the United States.  It’s because they don’t feel pigeonholed.  They don’t have a need to self-segregate and can’t understand the desire to be separate.  

What is the difference between the two families mentioned and the Kwanzaa crowd?  Check political persuasion.  Abiodun and the family with its roots in India and Australia succeed on merit, hard work and determination.  The Kwanzaa crowd believes government spending, political correctness and the nanny state are the solution, however.  If self-segregation is taken to its terminus there won’t be a single institution left standing.  Then what will we have?  I suspect 300 million individual Rwandas.  

Happy SHAM-a-Lam-a-Ding-Dong. 

 

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden seen during an August 2007 press conference in West Rehoboth.

We covered the press conference in West Rehoboth when Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden announced he would “aggressively pursue” the “newly enhanced Drug Nuisance and Social Vices Abatement Act,” and now we’re seeing the results.

A property in West Rehoboth is the “first residential property in Delaware to be judicially declared a nuisance under the Nuisance Abatement Act.” According to a press release from the Attorney General’s office:

In his ruling Judge T. Henley Graves ordered that several conditions must be met within 15 days, including:

- Any tenant on the property besides the property owners must be evicted

- Two apartments on the property must be vacated and shuttered

- Only the property owners and a limited number of specific family members are permitted on the property at any time

- Signs must be posted stating that loitering, trespassing, and illegal drug sales are prohibited

Biden’s DOJ also filed another lawsuit against a neighboring house. The Act allows the State to take action against properties declared a “nuisance.” Actions can include “closing” or even bulldozing a property.

Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, wearing brand spanking new hunting gear.

Mike Huckabee, in a totally transparent attempt to gain support from sportsman, took the press on a little bird hunt this past Wednesday where he showcased his ability to shoot a confused bird:

Presidential contender Mike Huckabee bagged a pheasant Wednesday, offering Iowa voters the image of an experienced outdoorsman on the hunt, shotgun blasting and dogs braying….

“Maybe it will show that I certainly understand the culture of being outdoors,” Huckabee said. “It’s not something we had to go out and get a primer in. It’s very much ordinary to me.”

The GOP contender also used the occasion to take yet another jab at the Bush Administration, (Huckabee campaigned for Bush in 2004, incidentally), this time his target was Dick Cheney:

He also jested about Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident in which a fellow hunter was shot. Asked why Cheney hadn’t been invited, Huckabee chuckled, “Because I want to survive all the way through this.”

WELL, now it comes to light that while on the hunting trip, his folksie hunting image was shattered after he fired a round a little close to the press:

Any good sportsman, though, couldn’t miss a distinctly Cheneyesque moment in the press accounts of the former Arkansas governor’s morning hunt: At one point, Huckabee’s party turned toward a cluster of reporters and cameramen and, when they kicked up a pheasant, fired shotgun blasts over the group’s heads.

This, friends, is dangerously bad hunting form….

Huckabee emerged happily from his hunt, three dead pheasants in tow, Oliphant reports. Asked for a metaphor to describe the hunt, he replied, “Don’t get in my way. This is what happens.”

Nuff said.

Seems like the only props Huckabee’s failed photo op was missing Wednesday were a tank and a helmet.

We almost had venison for Christmas dinner.  A doe but a very large doe.  The one that slammed into my car just after sunset Sunday afternoon on State Route 54 north of Hammondsport, New York.  Route 54 was named one of America’s 10 most scenic drives by some publication just a few years ago.  It’s a designation I won’t dispute and over the last 20 years I’ve probably logged more miles on it than any other route save for the ones I drove on back and forth to work.  So I know it well and when this doe came charging from my left I braked and then all I could see was the animal’s head coming to rest on my hood.  Then it spun and raced off across the road and into the forest.  And I’d never even reached a full stop. 

My daughter asked if it was dead.  No it wasn’t.  I pulled the car off the road and couldn’t even find a scratch.  This was like a metaphor for my time away.  Some close calls but for the most part a good week.  My daughter has been in that car or another car I owned for trips to New Hampshire, the Adirondack Forest, Quebec and many trips to Ontario.  We’ve seen moose and black bears and all sorts of deer but never had a collision and I always worried about her and about her reaction if something like a collision would occur.  On Sunday she just shrugged her shoulders. 

 Her odometer reached 14 years Thursday and she’s seen a great deal for a young woman.  Some early family strife and many, many, maybe too many broadcasting moves by her dad.  Now she displays a calm I believe will serve her well in life.  Two years from the day I write this she can begin driving, with supervision, in New York State.  I still need to research the laws here.  If she stays there she’ll drive in some nasty conditions.  It rained steadily and all day Sunday and there was flooding because the December snow totals are nearly 3 times average.  On Christmas day there was an ice storm and when I left for Delaware a light rain became a heavy rain and then big snow flakes that slapped the windshield with a “plop”.  The big difference between here and there is that there all the cars and trucks are covered with the grime of winter.  

 The grime wasn’t a problem before I stopped for lunch today.  At a steakhouse in Springfield, Pennsylvania and I ate and I talked until it was almost 5:00 P.M.  The Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-95 were suddenly crowded and switching lanes was made more difficult by the film on my windows.  When I finally was near home I bought gas for 2 dollars and 80 cents a gallon.  A good 45 cents less than I had paid starting the return trip.  A man on the radio in Philadelphia talked about potential fuel alternatives and as I snaked through the earlier traffic I wondered what was holding up the promises.  The future can seem so bleak when you fill the tank and listen to the stories about the housing market and the potential for a catastrophe in Pakistan, however.  Christmas was pleasant.  There was family and friends and the men gathered in the den to talk about the merits of Presidential candidates and reached no consensus. 

When I was waiting for my date in Philadelphia two thoughts converged.  My cousin, Mike Gordon, dropped me a line earlier this week.  His folks still live in the hamlet of Black Creek, New York.  People there have weathered depression and war and all sorts of fads and life goes on almost unchanged.  I was thinking about it when my cell phone jingled and it was Mary telling me she was on her way.  A cell phone.  Cable TV.  Computers and the internet.  Can you take a moment and total all those monthly costs?  

 I doubt Uncle Paul and Aunt Laura are wrapped up with these things back in Black Creek.  He still rings the bell at church, a real bell, on Sundays.  She still bakes for Christmas.  The house is warm. 

It’s good to be back in my warm house on the road near Millsboro.  And looking forward to a new year filled with family, high hopes and some common sense about where we’re going. 

 

From WGMD News:

We now have confirmation about a situation surrounding the case of the missing woman—27 year old Christine Sheddy of Milford—who vanished from Pocomoke November 13th. Contrary to what Maryland authorities were telling us, Delaware State Police Corporal Wes Barnett told WGMD that Christine was not in the computer system locally or the NCIC missing persons list, however WGMD’s Dan Gaffney just spoke with the mother of Christine Sheddy—Lynn Dodenhoff and she says State Police have given her a printout of Christine on the NCIC missing persons list.

That pretty much takes care of that. One caller raised this question, and I wonder about this myself: Why do similar cases like this get national attention, and then there is a missing person story like this, which besides our extensive coverage, doesn’t even get enough local attention?!

 

The NFL is allowing the New England Patriots vs. the New York Giants game to be broadcast on CBS and NBC and not just their own, obscure network that 60% of American households don’t have (and let’s face it, they don’t want to get it to watch their team play).

“We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “What we have seen for the past year is a very strong consumer demand for NFL Network. We appreciate CBS and NBC delivering the NFL Network telecast on Saturday night to the broad audience that deserves to see this potentially historic game. Our commitment to the NFL Network is stronger than ever.”

The game is “potentially historic” because the Patriots will be shooting for a perfect, 16-0 season (but really, how “perfect” can your season be after you were caught cheating?). Unfortunately, there are rumblings that the Giants won’t play their “A” team since they’ve already secured a wild card spot in the playoffs and they won’t get a week off to rest. Wide receiver Plaxico Burress is going to sit out Saturday night’s game to nurse a bad ankle.

Now check this out, were members of Congress a factor in the broadcast change?

Kerry asked football Commissioner Roger Goodell today to move the game to NBC – and threatened Senate hearings if he does not.

“Under the unfortunate circumstance that this matter remains unresolved, leaving 60 percent of households across the country – including thousands in Massachusetts – without access to Saturday’s game, I will ask the Senate Commerce Committee to hold hearings on how the emergence of premium sports channels are impacting the consumer,” he wrote to Goodell today in a letter released by his office.

The Massachusetts Democrat added that he would “consider what legislative measures may be necessary to ensure that consumers are more than bystanders in this process.”

Kerry, who had offered earlier to convene a meeting between the league and cable operators, is only one of several lawmakers attempting to intervene. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have threatened to reconsider the league’s federal antitrust exemption if the sides do not come to an agreement.

And you’d think Congress would be too tired to care about the little guy’s enjoyment of NFL footballl after strapping us with over 9000 earmarks in their $555 billion dollar spending bill.