Responsibilities of the Press

The press has succeeded in turning the next presidential campaign into the social event of the season, complete with raw personal criticism and a neglect of the true issues of the campaign.  The press has a lack of respect for the electoral process, given their willingness to exploit anything that leaves them in control of the discussion. 

Why is there so little on the issues and so much on the personalities?  Let’s talk about the issues instead.

Possible Issues?  How about:

• Defense capabilities and condition of the military and veterans and bases
• The economy and joblessness and interest rates and taxes
• National Infrastructures  
• Forced unionization
• The European Union
• The Middle East
• The Orient
• Latin America

I know there are more issues, many more………

I’m tired of seeing the talking press heads insisting that this presidential campaign be held in the arena of the trivial instead of the land of real issues.  The press is covering the sideshow instead of the main act, which leads viewers to believe the sideshow is the main act.  These candidates need to give detailed analyses of issues so the voters can make intelligent choices and the job of the press is to report on the stands of the candidates on various issues that are of importance to our nation. 

The Media and Self Regulation

To the Media

To the Media and Self-Regulation

 

I just heard on the news that the feds had requested the press stop showing stale footage of the Middle East while discussing new news about it.  I know it is inappropriate for anyone to tell the press what to cover……

However, the stale footage issue is important.  I suggest that the press self-regulate and do this:

If you are showing footage more than x days old, either label it as such or announce it as such.  It is misleading to show old footage while you are discussing what is happening now.  Match the visuals with the actual new news.

Keep track of how many times you show a segment.  Pete and Repeat loses news hounds and if it goes on for days and days like on CNN, it loses the casual viewers also as they see there is no new news and not everybody wants to see the same thing from yet another slant. 

At least program a large, important prime time world news segment that is inviolate and dependable for the viewers.  Viewers are being kept in the dark, like mushrooms, when there’s a whole world out there.    I think part of your duties as Press is to inform and thus educate the public.   

‘Breaking News’ should be reserved for x number presentations as such before it is relegated to normal news.  And ‘breaking news’ is not really just another ‘expert’ opinion.  Avoid trivialization and only use ‘breaking news’ for the most important NEW stories. 

Seek footage that matches the news you are talking about.  If Ferguson is discussed, show the streets as they are now and if you show riots, put the date and time on the segments during the whole segment run.  Matching the view with the words is part of honesty. 

Show respect for the stories you are covering by leaving out the drum beat in the background during news summaries.

 

I love all you reporters who risk their lives to give us the worldwide information our citizens need and crave.  My appreciation goes out to all of you and the people who prepare and present the news in the media, the technicians who bring it to us and everybody else who shares in the process.   

Tucson Unified School District Gives Raise

 

I read about TUSD giving teachers all a $500 a year raise and then noted the fact that all other district employees will get a 2.5% raise. 

Teachers make from $32,000 to $71,000 a year with an average of about $58,000 per year, which shows this is an older workforce.  $58,000 a year would yield about $1450 at 2.5% but $500 is the raise.   There are 1750 regular teachers and 760 special education teachers and the teacher raise is expected to cost about $875,000.

Certificated Administrators make from $58,000 - $107,000 and their raise at 2.5% is expected to cost about $400,000.  There are 237 administrators.     

This raise is expected to cost $1,275,000 for certificated staff, with administrators getting 31% of the certificated money while they are just 13% of the total.   

The Superintendent’s contract has a base salary of $210,000 but is pumped up by bennies to $247,000 and possibly more.   At $210,000, a 2.5% raise would generate $5,250 for the Superintendent.  If the raise is based on $247,000, it would be more.

To quote from Tucson News Now:   “TUSD officials have estimated it will take $4.4 million to implement these increases and that it will be funded by money from the Maintenance and Operations budget.”   It looks to me like this raise is mostly going to support staff.   Given their dire budgetary predictions and dropping student enrollment, can they really afford this raise without taking needed materials from classrooms, cancelling field trips, and limiting student options?

After looking over this ‘raise’, it is obviously a palliative for the teachers and a bonus for the administrators.  If TUSD is truly on the financial ropes, then this raise is only self-serving to the administrators and does not assist the students at all.  As for the teachers, they get $500, which is something in the teaching world but they are being preempted by the administrators, who are getting way more than that.  How about the lower paid workers who get way less than that?  How about a $500 raise for everybody and funnel more money into the classrooms for the use of the students and teachers? 

Preface to A New Timeline

A New Timeline   

Short Introduction

I was born and raised in Tucson Arizona USA, in the heart of El Gran Desierto that spans the present nations of the United States of America and Mexico.  Archaeological ruins abound in that area and my family enjoyed scouting out rock art and pottery strewn sites of the Hohokam and maybe Salado.  Those experiences plus weekly trips to the library where some long forgotten librarians had created a dreamland in history that allowed me to feed a lifelong interest.  I thank to this day whomever it was over there at the library who loved history and passed it on to the citizens of Tucson. 

Receiving a classical education based on Greco-Roman and Anglo thought and achievement, I was taught European and American history and a survey of world history as it was known at that time.  We had Columbus Day off and learned to recite the Columbus poem, never doubting he was the first European to visit the Americas, even though Leif Erickson remained a possibility due to the Norse lobby who maybe could smite with Thor’s Hammer. 

I will say those people who taught history were sometimes wrong about what happened and the further back in time, the greater the error, which tended to compound itself.  I am always amazed by the certainty of historical dogma, which has produced way too many strictures on the examination of knowledge and alternate theories.

I like alternatives, variables, and choices.  The more ways to interpret data, the better.  Data interpretation is not an ego exercise or an artistic exercise but is a factual exercise.  Defending one’s theory is one thing, but suppression of alternative theories is another.  Our world is in a data flux right now, and interpretive data creation is hugely important.  Everybody needs free access to all the historical data and everybody needs to refrain from crowing about other’s mistakes in order for data sharing to proceed.  New data brings new determinations.  Ego need not apply.   

I like Wikipedia and I thank them for all the data, which is so useful in the area of human genetics and so many other areas.  Please donate to their cause.   I love the internet and all the data out there.  That’s what my Timeline is, a small compendium of data as of 2014 AD, the Zodiac Ages, the Maya Long Count, the Melancovich Cycle, Historical data, impact events and climate and sea level trends through a history reaching 3,000,000 BP to the present, with emphasis on the genetic proliferation of Homo from 500,000 BP and the indicators of extremely ancient civilizations previously thought to be mythology.  Electronic publishing is wonderful, because of the opportunities to revise as new data adds to our understanding.  If incomplete data led to a fallacious conclusion, then correct it immediately.  I’m not one to defend the indefensible. 

Dating methods are crucial.  Carbon 14 is possibly not as accurate as portrayed, since factors other than deposition must be considered when judging the accuracy of C 14 dating.  Artificial nuclear explosions deposit C14 as does the sun during certain conditions.   

I also thank the astute authors and players in their TV shows like Ancient Aliens and Decoded and America Unearthed for their interesting interpretations and presentations.  Using their shows for leads, I was able to research topics I didn’t even know existed, like the Ica Stones and Father Crespi and the obvious Inca structures atop far earlier megalithic structures.  I look forward to their shows!  They could be right about aliens landing on Earth but I believe there existed in the misty past, a grand human  civilization that was destroyed at the end of the Pleistocene.  This civilization had settlements in many different parts of the world or locally developed civilizations had hooked up, like ours today.  I do believe that rising sea levels combined with a monster bolide just eliminated it, leaving only tattered remnants of humanity to recreate what they had lost, which remained in mythology and religious compilations.  I thank George Dodwell for documenting an aberration in the ecliptic that coincides with a bolide hit and the drying of the Sahara and Levant and the subsequent fall of nations.  I thank Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, who produced Uriel’s Machine, a comprehensive explanation of the meaning of megaliths and their observatories.  The work of these men contains religious musings, which does not disarm the actual data.  I just concentrate on the facts.      

Rising sea levels and bolide hits and climate change and Antarctica freezing over and now it’s melting again!  We live in flux and cataclysmic possibilities and I think it’s time we guarded our planet with early warning defense systems.  All nations should cooperate and see if we can avert being hit yet again by bolides.  The fall of some human civilizations is inexorably linked to bolide hits…..