I was on my way to Lincoln, Neb.,
yesterday (where I am teaching a seminar for the Nebraska Broadcasters)
when
Transportation Security Administration officials started
telling folks to
ditch liquids, gels and lotions from their
carry-on luggage. I saw a woman leave an entire bottle of
Chanel perfume on a
window ledge near the security checkpoint. I saw a couple of guys downing
miniature vodkas rather than part with them. I had to throw away a brand-new
bottle of Scope and had horse breath all morning.
I saw a family get flagged at security for having some
liquid cough medicine in their carry-on bags, but Time
magazine told about a guy who had toothpaste and lotion and walked
through security unnoticed.
So -- why liquids?
Here is a site from Global
Security, which will tell you more than you will ever want to know about
liquid explosives.
NPR also has
a more concise Q&A about liquid explosives. Terrorism experts have
been warning that the next terror attacks might be committed people who have to
assemble their bombs onboard a plane. Some airports, like Tampa's
TIA have "trace portal"
machines, but most passengers who travel do not have to go through them. The machines are not designed to detect things that are in sealed containers.
X-ray scanners can't detect explosive liquids. X-ray
scanners examine density, not volatility.
Newsday
reports that, until recently, most explosive detection efforts have focused on solid
explosives, rather than liquids.
According to William Martel, a professor of international security studies at Tufts
University, "We've focused for the last ten years on solid explosives and
their signatures."
However, Martel pointed out, liquid poses a different
problem. "Liquids are ubiquitous -- shaving cream, shampoo, bottles of water,
juice, infant formula," he said.
According to Martel, the most common
explosive test -- a swipe test where a cloth or tape is wiped over luggage and
put through a sensor -- is specifically designed to pick up residue from solid
explosives. "We didn't start looking aggressively for liquids until a few years
ago," he said. Some, but not all, can be picked up by "sniffer" sensors using a
technique called neutron activation analysis.
Newsday
explains:
The newest form of liquid explosives are so-called "binary" formulas that
were developed to clear land mines in Third World countries. They're
undetectable until mixed, and also require a detonator.
There are even
liquid explosive blends that don't need a detonator, though their exact
composition isn't widely known. Methyl nitrate, which has been used in some
types of antipersonnel mines including improvised explosive devices, explodes
when mixed with another chemical.
Reuters says regular medicine-cabinet supplies can be
dangerous:
Such mundane items as nail polish remover, disinfectants
and hair coloring contain chemicals can be combined to make an explosion and are
not detectable by "sniffing" machines, which detect plastic explosives but are
not used with all baggage.
Explosive ingredients can be concealed in bottles or other
innocent-looking containers that would pass through X-ray
machines.
That does not mean they are easy to make into bombs,
cautioned Neal Langerman, a San Diego consultant who is former
chair of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical
Health and Safety.
"Many of the ingredients like acetone are household
chemicals," Langerman said in a telephone interview. But some
kind of expertise is usually needed to buy peroxide that is
concentrated enough to work in an explosive, he noted.
Bombers who attacked London Underground trains and a bus
in July 2005 used homemade peroxide-based explosives carried in
backpacks.
An explosive chemical called triacetone
triperoxide, or TATP, can be put together with sulfuric acid, found in some
drain cleaners, hydrogen peroxide, a medical disinfectant and hair bleach, and
acetone, found in nail polish remover.
"I would doubt that the average layperson would
successfully make TATP without killing themselves," Langerman
said.
TATP starts out as a liquid that crystallizes into a white
powder. "When they mix it, it detonates," Langerman said.
"When you do that at 25,000 feet in the middle of the
Atlantic, you and everybody else die."
And the voltage from any battery, combined with the right
detonater, such as a powerful camera flash attachment, could
act as a detonator for several chemical explosives, Langerman
said in a telephone interview.
Some combinations can be set off using another chemical
such as hydrochloric acid, easily carried in a small glass
bottle.
Nitroglycerin, a clear yellow or colorless liquid, can
produce an explosion sometimes with vigorous shaking.
People have tried several times to use such easily
concealed explosives on aircraft. British-born Richard Reid was
tackled by passengers in December 2001 while trying to detonate
explosives stuffed in his shoes in an aircraft lavatory.
But don't get the idea that it would be easy to mix
explosives on a plane.
The
Times of London explains.
In the meantime, I wonder what will happen to all of
that toothpaste and all of that hand cream left at airports. Since much of it is
used, I suppose it can't be collected and handed out to the homeless -- or
could it? Somebody could use that bottle of Scope I threw away.
I did have one other thought. I wonder what people who go to see
the new 9/11 film are thinking about this latest terror threat.
Morgellons: Is It Really a Disease?
For nearly a year, some people have been claiming to have a skin disease that's been called Morgellons. Even though nobody knows exactly what it is -- or if it is a unique disease -- the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is organizing a committee to investigate it. A Web site attempts to describe this mysterious condition. (See more about that Web site below.)
A couple of months ago, the San Francisco Chronicle said:
"Not a day passes when I don't talk to somebody who claims to have this," said CDC spokesman Dan Rutz. "In the absence of any objective review, people have jumped to conclusions and found each other on the Internet and formed their own belief structure. We really need to debunk this if there isn't anything to it or identify if there is indeed a new, unrecognized disease that needs attention."
No one knows how long Morgellons has been around, but about four years ago a South Carolina mom who says her three children have the disease was researching their symptoms and found reference to a 1674 medical study that described a similar condition, called Morgellons.
The disease sounds like a nightmare. In fact, one Web site claims Morgellons was "invented" recently to help promote a summer horror movie. A search on the Internet reveals dozens of people who have posted magnified photos of their symptoms -- usually twisted, thread-like protrusions from the skin and sometimes hazy images that look like small bugs.
It doesn't help convince skeptical doctors that many sufferers complain of hard-to-believe symptoms. One San Francisco woman describes "tiny green shrimp" that come from her face, and she said she saw a fly pop out of her right eye. Even doctors and patients who believe Morgellons exists cringe at such reports.
The American Journal of Clinical Dermatology published an article on the condition, suggesting that it might be a condition that has been around for 300 years.
Popular Mechanics did a terrific job reporting the story last year. Here is a passage:
Across the country, thousands of people complaining of the same horrifying phenomenon have formed an illness subculture. They share lists of symptoms, medical speculation and tales of run-ins with mainstream doctors at www.morgellons.org, the official Web site of a group called the Morgellons Research Foundation. It was founded in 2002 by Mary Leitao in McMurray, Pa. Leitao named the condition Morgellons Disease -- after a disease with similar symptoms mentioned in a 16th-century medical text -- while investigating a skin affliction on her then-2-year-old son.
Morgellons has barely registered on the radar of mainstream medicine. Few doctors have heard of the condition; fewer still know what to make of it. So when people walk into an examination room and announce they have Morgellons, they are often met with skepticism. Conflicts would seem to be inevitable.
"Dermatologists are afraid to see these patients," says Dr. Peter Lynch, professor emeritus of dermatology at the University of California, Davis. He says he has examined about 75 people with Morgellons-like symptoms in the past 35 years and believes they suffer from delusional parasitosis -- literally, delusions of parasites in the skin. It's a diagnosis people don't like. One patient, threatening malpractice, convinced the state medical board to investigate Lynch. Another warned he had a pistol in the glove compartment of his truck, Lynch says. "He told me, 'I'm going to shoot the next doctor who tells me it's in my head.'"
Morgellons.org has some controversy of its own. The Associated Press reported:
Last week, at least three of the eight members of the organization resigned over disagreements with [Mary] Leitao, the executive director, about how she's been running the foundation. One member -- the board's chairman -- sent a letter to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, saying Leitao had failed to produce requested financial records and he voiced suspicions of financial impropriety.
Another board member who resigned, Dr. Greg Smith, a Gainesville, Ga., pediatrician, had recently posted a donations-soliciting letter for the foundation on an Internet site frequented by Morgellons patients. Last week, he posted a retraction.
Here are links to TV stories.
Here are links to newspaper stories.
Photo Manipulation
It may be time for some clear reporting to your public about how you edit pictures/video for your newspaper, Web site or TV station. The public has every right to be increasingly concerned about whether what they see is true or not. Maybe you can show what is possible, and explain your newsroom's ethics policies.
Why do this? For the second time in three weeks, news about media has included scandals involving alleged doctored news photographs.
Reuters got stung by a freelancer who is alleged to have altered two photos from Beirut to make things look even worse than they were. Two weeks ago, a Charlotte Observer photojournalist was fired for altering the color of the sky in a front-page photo of a firefighter on a ladder. As NPPA .org reported:
Days before, ... editors at a Spanish-language newspaper, el Nuevo Herald, combined part of an Associated Press photograph with part of a freelancer's photograph to create one fake image that appeared to show Cuban police ignoring prostitutes and prostitution.
Nobody was fired.
Bloggers have been going full tilt this week, pointing to many other pictures that they claim have been monkeyed with. Blogs such as zombietime.com, littlegreenfootballs.com and Ynet News have questioned the integrity of journalists. The blogs jumped on the New York Times' photos of a man who was reported to have died in a Beirut attack, and after the bloggers raised questions, the Times issued a clarification.
My Poynter colleague Kenny Irby points out that practically every photograph published goes through some editing that may fix problems with color or contrast that restores the photograph to its "authentic" truth. Often, as Kenny points out, the process of capturing a picture distorts what the photojournalist actually witnessed through the viewfinder, so the editing process should restore the truth of the picture, not change the truth.
Reuters News Pictures Editor Gary Hershorn explains what is off-limits when it comes to altering photographs:
News photographers routinely process images using Adobe Photoshop software. But there has been a basic premise in the world of photojournalism that what was allowed in making prints in the pre-digital days of darkrooms is all that is acceptable today.
Back in the days of the darkroom, we used very basic tools to develop prints. In black-and-white printing, the contrast of a picture was controlled by a paper's grade. The higher the number of the paper, the higher the contrast. In the wire agency darkooms I've worked in, we typically used grades 3, 4 and 5. We allowed "dodge and burn" to lighten or darken areas. A dodge tool was made by taping a small piece of cardboard the size of a quarter onto a paper clip. A burn tool was a piece of cardboard the size of an 8×10 sheet of paper with a hole in the center. If a print had dust spots caused by a dirty negative, we used Spotone, a photographic paint that was dabbed onto a print with a very fine paint brush to eliminate the unsightly marks.
One other tool that was allowed when printing color pictures was changing color balance. This was done by placing filters between the light source of the enlarger and the paper that the image was being printed on.
When we moved to scanning negatives and then to shooting digital, we began using Photoshop. This program allows us to do the same things we did in the darkroom. Changes in contrast, dodging and burning and color balance are now done with software. The most controversial tool in Photoshop that we use is the cloning tool. The only accepted use of this tool is to clear dust from the image. We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to using the cloning tool to change content, and by that we mean removing something that exists in a photo, moving or replicating it or adding to a photo.
The tools we use in Photoshop are levels, curves and saturation for changing contrasts; and, color balance to bring the image back to the way the natural eye would see the color. Here is what we tell our photographers in the Handbook of Reuters Journalism.
Photoshop is a highly sophisticated image manipulation program. We use only a tiny part of its potential capability to format our pictures, crop and size them and balance the tone and color. For us it is a presentational tool.
The rules are: no additions or deletions, no misleading the viewer by manipulation of the tonal and color balance to disguise elements of an image or to change the context.
Here is the National Press Photographers Code of Ethics.
NPPA just released a training DVD on photo ethics, including manipulation cases.
Kenny Irby has written and taught extensively about photo ethics. Here is a collection of some of his writing over the years:
Prior to NPPA's rewriting of its national ethics code -- which addresses manipulation -- I wrote this essay urging television stations to begin enforcing standards for how broadcasters (and online video sites) use editing and manipulation to alter reality.
Other resources:
- NewsDesigner.com's 2004 discussion of photo manipulation in the coverage of the Madrid train bombings, in which some newspapers digitally removed images of a severed limb.
Drug Wars/Political Turmoil Hurt Mexican Tourism
Tourists are starting to think twice about traveling to Mexico. In fact, thousands are cancelling travel plans. Check with local travel agents. An AP story said:
Growing political unrest and drug violence are making foreigners think twice about visiting Mexico, where the $11.8 billion ... tourism industry is the country's third-largest legal source of income, after oil and remittances from migrants in the United States.
The story continues:
In Mexico City alone, hotels, restaurants and stores are losing $23 million a day, according to the city's Commerce, Services and Tourism Chamber. Some businesses have threatened to stop paying taxes unless the government cracks down on the demonstrations.
Protestors in Oaxaca, claiming fraud in the state gubernatorial race, have taken over the picturesque downtown to pressure Governor Ulises Ruiz to step down. They forced the cancellation of an ethnic festival, and tourists must pass through checkpoints to reach the arch-ringed main plaza.
Who Will Care for the Kids?
It is so interesting to me that NPR just ran a story about how to select a guardian for your kids in case you die.
A month or so ago, the family friend who my wife and I named as one of our kids' guardians, should we kick the bucket, died himself. So I wrote a note to my sister asking her if she would take over -- just in case. She agreed, but urged me to stay well.
NPR's story lays out a logical set of questions that are worth a look and certainly are worthy of action. Can you find local cases tied up in probate or other court proceedings because these matters were not resolved?
I remember when I was little, asking my mom what would happen to me if she and dad died. She always had an answer: "You would go live with Uncle Bill." Having that reassurance was a comfort to me. I suspect every kid needs to know the answer to that question.
By the way, I am fairly heavily insured, so if I meet a surprising and unfortunate demise, please ask some questions about whether my sister might have been behind on her mortgage.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas,
edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites,
as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes
directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be
provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends
upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors
and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
