It still sounds like Tuesday might be the announcement day for the Pentagon's plans to close up to one-fourth of the nation's 425 military bases.
I gave you a ton of resources on that story earlier this week.
The Knight Ridder newspapers have a story about what the closures would mean to communities.
The New York Times reported:
State and local officials from California to Florida are bracing for the worst, and going to extraordinary lengths to insulate hometown bases from cuts or consolidation.
Some bases in Texas, however, like Fort Hood and Fort Bliss, may actually grow by absorbing troops returning from Europe.
In Illinois, officials fear that Scott Air Force Base, near St. Louis, and Rock Island Arsenal could be on the chopping block. These officials have also expressed concern that two Air National Guard bases, one in Springfield and another in Peoria, are considered vulnerable as the Air Force looks to merge many of its active-duty and reservist units.
In late March, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and two other senior Illinois lawmakers wrote Mr. Rumsfeld to warn him that closing any National Guard base would, by law, require the state governor's approval.
The Pentagon's top acquisition official, Michael W. Wynne, wrote back to the lawmakers last month to inform them politely that they were wrong.
In Massachusetts last month, Gov. Mitt Romney asked the Department of Homeland Security to build a new antiterrorism training center at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, in an effort to protect the installation from closing.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gives us a glimpse of what some states are doing to protect their bases from winding up on the list.
In New England, which has seen a huge exodus of military installations in previous realignments, politicians have been warning that more cuts will leave the heavily populated Northeast vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Texas has spent millions buying up land around its military bases to make them more attractive, and Alabama is spending $6 million to build a military training facility.
In Kansas, a commission with a $1 million budget developed a DVD describing the value of its bases to send to commission members, and the state also pays two Washington, D.C., lobbying firms to coordinate its campaign.
Pennsylvania has its own task force and a lobbying firm, too, and leaders here say they're doing their best to spare the state's 12 bases.
There are also conversations going on in Washington about how to stop the closings. Congress created the legislation that directs the base realignments, so it could be that Congress can also direct the process to delay.
End of School Ideas
All of these came from my Poynter colleague Kelly McBride:
- Scramble for summer camp. I was going to enroll my kids in a city-run camp at local community center with a pool (Walter Fuller). But the director told me that if I wanted to guarantee myself a spot, I would have to camp out with the other desperate parents the night before registration opened.
It's even worse for parents of teenagers.
- Gross lunch boxes. Go into the cafeteria of an elementary school one day and just look inside all the lunchboxes. They are beyond rehabilitation. The metal ones are rusty. The fabric ones are torn and food is floating around inside the insulation. But nobody wants to invest in new ones. There is stuff growing there, I'm sure.
- Lost and Found. On the last day, the school will pack up all the stuff left over in lost and found and ship it off to Goodwill. It's really funny to just look through all the stuff in there.
Find People Fast
I often teach a workshop that I call "Places Journalists Should Go Online," where I show folks how to go online to find people, information and information about people fast.
One of my current favorite hotspots is ZoomInfo.com.
This site has built millions of background files on people, all sorts of people, which you can access free by entering a name, a workplace or both. For example, you can enter a name, like I did for my boss Keith Woods, and find out where he went to school, where he has worked and even quotes and clips from things he has written.
Think about how you can use this for background people, finding snitches inside companies or finding former employees.
I am also pretty crazy about Argali.com which uses a bunch of search engines at once to find people. You have to download a small file to run this one, but it is great.
Argali can perform the following searches:
- search for people's phone numbers
- search for business phone numbers
- reverse search like "whose phone number is this?"
- reverse search like "who lives at/on this address/street?" and "what businesses are at/on this address/street?”
- search for toll-free phone numbers
- search for e-mail addresses
- search for maps
- search for area codes
- search for zip codes
- search for weather conditions and forecast
Analyze a Drivers License
As my WTSP-TV friend Theresa Moore said when she saw this, "I have not been this freaked out by a Web site in a while."
HighProgrammer.com provides a way for you to enter a name and a DOB and come up with a driver's license number, or enter a license number and DOB and come up with a name. It turns out that drivers' licenses in many states are not random numbers. They are a code that includes numbers representing sounds in a name and your license includes such things as your birth date embedded in them.
This site is a BETA version and includes Florida, Illinois and Wisconsin. The site also has calculators for Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
Patent Reform
I have done a good bit of reporting here on Al's Morning Meeting about patents.
The business of patents is big business. The Washington Post says there is a sort of gold rush going on right now to secure patents and there is also a push to reform what gets patent protection.
In order to get a patent, the inventor must show the product or idea to be unique, useful and non-obvious. But critics say that too many products are being patented and that the standards the government uses are getting soft.
To see what schools have landed the most patents, check my column from March 2005.
To find local inventors near you who have landed patents, check my column from January 2005.
Derby Mania
Click here to see the silk colors that the jockeys will wear and see the post positions. I click on the site and listen just so I can hear the track announcer announce Secretariat's win over and over. It almost makes me cry. Here are the current track odds.
Pretty much everything you need to know about jockeys, breeders, horses, owners and trainers in Derby history is here.
Here are the lyrics for "My Hold Kentucky Home" for you to sing when the University of Louisville band plays before the race. It is OK to cry when you sing it. We all do.
If you can't be near a TV Saturday, here are some live Churchill Downs Web cams.
If you want to sound like you know what you are talking about on Derby Day, read this site.
Louisville.com is a good Kentucky Derby site.
If you listen closely, the horses will tell you who will win. As I do every year, I will now encode the winner of the race using a method passed on to me years ago by the great Tennessean sports writer John Bibb. He said that if you spell the names of the horses backward, you can gain the secrets of the race.
Sort it Out = tuo it tros (I am feeling really good about this one. Tros was also known as King Tros in Greek mythology. He is the father of Ganymede who was given immortality by Zeus. Zeus also gave two incredibly swift horses to Tros in a sort of payment to Tros for sending an eagle to snatch up the boy. The horse is described as being fit for a god. Yup -- this one is speaking to us. Plus Sort it Out has the inside post position.
Andromeda's Hero = oreh sademordna
Sun King = gnik nus
Noble Causeway = yawesuac elbon
Coin Silver = revlis nioc
High Limit = itmil high
(could this be saying it will be stacking up million$ high?)
Flower Alley = yella rewolf
Greater Good = doog retaerg
Greeley's Galaxy = yxalag syeleerg
Giacomo = omocaig
High Fly = ylf high
Afleet Alex = xela teelfa
Spanish Chestnut = tuntsehc hsinaps
Wilko = okliw
Bandini = inidnab
Bellamy Road = daor ymalleb
Don't Get Mad = dam teg tnod
Closing Argument = tnemugra gnisolc
Going Wild = dliw gniog
Buzzard's Bay = yab sdrazzub
If you decipher other hidden meanings, please post them on the feedback board so we can all be rich Saturday night.
A Great Kentucky Derby Story
Mike James, the editor of NewsBlues.com, has one of the all time great stories about betting on the Kentucky Derby. I won't ruin it for you -- go read it. What a tale. I asked Mike to move the story out on the free section of his site for you to read.
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 websites, 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.
