student essay treated as real threat

How did Allen Lee, an A-student and an athlete at Cary-Grove High School senior get charged with two counts of disorderly conduct and a misdemeanor that carries up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine?

He wrote a 342 word essay that referred to "Shooting everyone", and having sex with their dead bodies". The most damning part of the essay was the last line:

No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting. (Cary-Grove)




Lee plans on joining the Marines but now this incident caused the Marines to discharge him from their enlistment program on Friday.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre this case brings up the issue of how can high schools and college distinguish from a kid that is just mad at his teacher and a real real threat.

I believe that Lee had no intention of hurting anyone and the school district has overreacted by threatening legal charges.

If you read the whole essay you can easily see that Lee was just naming of shocking things of the hell of it because he though it would be funny. This is the kind of thing that you laugh about with you friends after class and not something you write in an assignment that a teacher will read.

Towards the end he just goes off on why he does not like his teacher and ends the essay by stating that she may inspire the first Cary Grove shooting. This is a sign of a child that is frustrated with his teacher and just wants to be done with his class. He clearly should be punished for the last line in the essay but pressing legal charges is going to far.

The killer in the Virginia Tech Massacre had a long history of mental mental problems and low self-esteem. His stayed at a mental hospital for a while, his creative writing teacher showed his violent work to the police and then refused to teach him.

In Traverse City, Michigan a 15-year-old Student threatened massacre at a local high school similar to the one at Virginia Tech. What is the difference between him and Lee? simple their behavior patterns:

The 15-year-old in Michigan confided his intentions to a faculty member Thursday and described himself as suicidal. Lee completed the Military Entry Procession station examinations and the psychiatric evaluation.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting there is a lot of paranoia going around that school administrators need to take every threat seriously. Why that make sense for specific threats and creditable bomb threats.
A student with no history of behavior problems bad mouthing his teacher in a essay is not a serious threat.

What Lee said was stupid but that should not hold him back from graduating or joining the Marines if that's what he chooses to do with his life.

Bill to save internet radio

On Friday Congress introduced a bill that could nullify the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) called the "Internet Radio Eqaulity Act." (IREA). The bills aims to stop the ruling which put royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.

After the march 2 ruling advocates were worried that rates could rise between 300 to 1200 percent for webcasters. The IREA would set new rates at 7.5 percent of the webcaster's revenue the same rate paid by satellite radio.

This bill sounds like a good way to keep the CRB from making the world of internet radio to expensive for little radio stations. More community groups and colleges are using webcasts to broadcast their own radio stations most of them will be forced out of business if the CRB rulling stands.

How to start an internet radio station


To learn more check out Savenetradio.org.

Third World PCs

Nicholas Negroponte is still trying to bring cheap wind-up laptops to third world children the only catch is now he says they will cost $175 instead of $100 and production may not start until October.

The former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the not-for-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project said that project has been set pack from their original goals by the rising price of materials and changes in the design.

At least seven countries Uruguay, Nigeria, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Libya have expressed interested in buying the Laptops that have a crank so they can be wound by hand.

Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese manufacturer which will assemble the machine has agreed to take a profit of about $3 per laptop and the laptops will work on a low cost version of Windows.

Mr. Negroponte also said that the project was considering shipping the machines to poor schools in the U.S.

While the U.S. is second in the world for personal computers per capita.

There is still a major gap in internet access between the rich and the poor according to the pew research center.

While 82 percent of those living in households with more than $75,000 in income now have internet access only 38 percent of households earning less than $30,000 have internet access.

Only 34 percent of Internet users have logged on using a wireless connection.

We need to close the income gap in internet access by making it cheaper and easy for people to get high speed Internet access at least school if they are unable to afford it at home. More teenagers are using the internet to learn more and research topics but they are also adding content and videos.

According to a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57 percent of teenagers who are online, create content for the internet. Another study determines that more than 79% of U.S. broadband Internet users watched video in 2006.

The U.S. has a long way to go to provide the next generation with internet access so they can use the internet to its full potential.

According to a report in the Economists Intelligence Unit Asian and African nations are catching up to their European counterparts in affordable broadband.

The best way to truely connect the world is to increase the amount of broadband available so that people in third world countries can communicate and add content in the same ways at first world countries. AS the internet connects the world in brand new ways the media is looking at new ways to work with citizen journalists to cover world events. Citizen Journalists can cover events from the perspective of a witness who has lived in the area and knows the people rather then an outsider reporter who is throw into a war zone with little first hand knowledge of the conflict or the people involved.

MySpace is launching a new site for China last Friday. There are already 7.7 million blogs in China with 17.5 million active bloggers. MySpace China will face competition from similar sites like WangYou.com which has 11 million users.

Hometown Baghdad shows civilian life in Iraq

"Security" Hometown Baghdad



Hometown Baghdad is a video blog that joined YouTube on January 9, 2007 and has produced 18 videos since then of every day life in Baghdad for a group of teenagers. The latest video called "Security" gives a tour of Ausama's grandmother's house after U.S. soldiers raid it because they believed that it was a terrorists haven.


"Powerless"- Hometown Baghdad


Powerless shows us how Iraqis deal with constant power outages and living with only a few hours of power each day.

"Kiss and Tell" talks about the dating stories of Saif, Adel, and Ausama.


Adel plays his guitar for therapy and talks about his band in "Songs of Pain".



A picture of a regular school day in Iraq posted by BlogIraq.

If you want to find out what is really going on in Iraq, blogs and vlogs written by real Iraqis give a much different us a unique perspective on the war.

You can also get an idea of like in Baghdad from the McClatchy Baghdad Bureau at the Inside Iraq blog.

American newspapers rarely report on civilian life on Iraq. I found an article from German newspaper Spiegel called "Anything Is Better than Baghdad"

According to a survey complied by Mercer Human Resource Consulting Baghdad Came in Last for quality of life among global cities. The red cross released a report about the 'ever-worsening' humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

With all this bad news its hard to believe that John McCain's walk through Baghdad was anything more then a political stun to fool Americans into thinking the war is getting better.


In order to get the truth with whats is really going in the American public has to search beyond the mainstream media.

More newspapers cut jobs

The Denver Post announced that it will buyout about 90 newsroom workers to trim costs. The paper only has about 268 workers in the newsroom so this move will take them down to 178. This comes one-year after the Post bought out a dozen newsroom positions. The Rocky Mountain News owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. eliminated 50 employees last month and The Baltimore Sun just eliminated 50 positions.

All these layoffs raise the question can small papers still provide the same quality coverage that their readers rely on with 178 people? Job cuts that are this big must have a lasting effect on what the paper is able to cover and how they divide their resources to cover local and national events. Most papers already rely on the big three to provide them with coverage of most international events. So if a paper cannot afford to have a corespondent in Iraq do they need one in Chicago? New York? Washington D.C.?

All these layoffs will probably lead papers like the Denver post to focus more on local events that they can cover better then any other news outlet.

Many news outlets have used layoffs as a way to boost their stock prices but that rarely ever works.

Media General Inc had a net lost in the first quarter of 2007 of $6.5 million and as a result they are cutting 70 staff positions from the Tampa Tribune.

Discovery started April by cutting 200 jobs, with more layoffs to come.

In the case of Le Journal in Quebec, Canada 140 employees were locked out after the company reached an impasse with the Canadian Union of Public Employees at the daily tabloid newspaper.

Media: Fire newstaff Hire Programmers

Here is the Trib. vs. Sun-times ad Mocking the Mac Vs. PC ads



Tribune only recent Triumph Red Eye?


Look for our classmate in video.

Excutives at the Chicago Tribune have announced another round of firings at its Flagship and the Los Angeles Times with both papers hit by declining advertising revenues and a first quarter loss of 4 percent.

Its hard to believe that this latest round of "spring cleaning" by the Trib. has nothing to do with, real estate mogul Sam Zell purchasing the Tribune Media Group. Last year on August 25, the Trib . laid off 250 jobs and another 120 on July 14. In 2005 they dropped 900 jobs on December 7, and over 200 jobs on July 7 2004. So over the last three years they have laid off a total of 1,720 employees according to I Want Media.

While newspaper ad revenue and circulation is down in almost every category you can break it up to according to The State of the News Media 2006. Many people believe that online ad revenue will one day like 2018 surpass print advertising. Lets hope that day comes a little sooner for anyone who still has dreams of becoming a reporter at a major newspaper. Like me. Damn you Tribune Dream squasher.

While the Trib. is worried about the decline stock price since its peak on 12/32/04 at $82 a share some people other newspapers are exploring new ways to use the Internet to cash in on new ad revenue.

Daily newspapers laid off around 600 people during 2005 which is about half of the 1,200 to 1,500 reduction that is projected for 2006 by the state of the media report that comes in March.

there are a few special cases where newspapers are actually transitions from print to web and gaining in profit at the same time.

The Wall Street Journal is a special case with more than 764,000 paid subscribers to its online version, and profits of its extended online operations, including indexes and “Marketwatch,” now outstripping those of the print edition.

The report had a warning about the effect of cutting staff has on the quality of newspapers.

Our sense based on the data is that deep news-staff cuts, however logical a response to tough times, may be undermining the core product in dangerous ways. The practice is certainly eating away at the range and depth of newspaper journalism in many communities.

What is inspiring the recent layoffs in the newspaper industry? not falling revenue but stagnate revenue growth.

The threat to newspapers now appears from nearly every indicator. From 1950 through 1999, for instance, newspaper revenue grew seven percent a year. From 2000 through 2006, by contrast, it has grown by just 0.5%. Then in the first quarter of 2006, growth was even less: 0.35%.

Newspapers people have been hiring Journalist-Programmers who can make their website more user friendly and using their web sites to cover stories from all angles using interactive graphics. On example of a newspaper that has done this is TheNewsTribune.com Tacoma, Washington.

One other thing that might be causing the Tribune to cut its workforce Moody's cuts Tribune rating deeper into junk since the deal with Sam Zell's will give them $8.4 billion in dept. Which means should they evertake out a loan on anything the interest on it will go throw the roof.

Presidential candidates debate on the Web

from this?



To online debates

Yahoo, Slate and the Huffington post have announced that they have are co-hosting the first-ever online presidential debate. This comes two weeks after the Democratic presidential candidates all lined up behind former Sen. John Edwards by refusing to participate in a debate that was sponsored by Fox News Channel and the Congressional Black Caucus. That was in the wake of remarks made by Roger Ailes that President Bush would have trouble telling the difference between Obama and Osama bin Laden.

There will be two online debates, one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans candidates both hosted by Mr. Charlie Rose held after Labor Day.

The debate will feature real-time questions sent in by the online audience, and viewers questions uploaded on video.

So why online as opposed to the old TV model?

With an online debate the though is that you can engage rather then enrage the audience. For many people the TV presidential debate sometimes feel like way to scripted like a planned out TV drama. With online debate you can members of the public participate in the debate. The 2008 campaign has been all about connecting people through the Internet and giving them the tools to blog about the candidates and raise money online.

This is also a sign of how the campaign is moving away from TV and one to the Internet where you can produce videos and upload them to YouTube for free.

In the past local TV stations have relied on political ads for a large part of their revenue.

"In the 2003-2004 election cycle, some 80 percent of new revenue for local stations came from political advertising," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. said.
Durbin told this story by way of explaining why he has introduced, along with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., S. 936, the Fair Elections Now Act. Durbin says he's tired of political campaigns being a "cash cow for TV stations."

While it is hard to believe that Durbin's plan to take the money out of politics will work I think that the Internet is completely changing the way our candidates campaign.

Now that all the presidential candidate have YouTube channels and some of them have already begun to use their channels to ask questions of the public and answer them in short videos.

In a way the online debate has already began. Through the site ExpertVoter.org you can even keep track of what issues the candidates have made videos on.

What are you going to do to bring about change?



RE: David's Question on Education in a Changing World