WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2007
Wednesday Edition: Rev. Jerry Falwell's Death
The death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder
of the Moral Majority, certainly makes it worth our time to think about who
is the voice of religion in America
these days. Falwell was
a lightning
rod for right-wing issues for more than 20 years. Just
click here for some of his more incendiary remarks over the years.
Falwell once could raise millions of dollars, but more recently
struggled even to keep his school, Liberty
University,
on sound financial footing.
Public opinion
surveys show that religious leaders as a group do not hold the sway they once
did. According
to The Christian Post, a Barna
research project earlier this year found:
Most
Americans [are] unfamiliar with some of the nation's leading Christian
ministers. Evangelical pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren was
found to
be unknown by 72 percent of the adult population and 63 percent among
born-again Christians. One of the most influential Christians and also
once dubbed
the next Billy Graham, Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House in
Dallas was
also largely unknown in both population segments.
According
to Barna's most recent research, Pat Robertson was the only other religious
figure besides Graham known to at least half of the population. The statistics
were similar among born-again Christians. For Robertson, however, only 33
percent of Americans had a favorable impression of him and 25 percent had a
negative one.
Still,
Americans have a relatively high regard for religious leaders. On average, 74
percent of adults have a positive impression of the spiritual leaders whom they
know.
Beliefnet has a
survey that generated a guide to the most influential black religious leaders in America.
In January, The
Church Report surveyed its readers about the most influential Christians in
America. You may have never heard of most of them. The Religion News Service named its list of top GOP "King Makers," which includes some of the country's most prominent Christians. How many of these
folks make it on your radar? I
recognized only four of the names.
Amputees
in the News
I can't remember a day when amputees have been
featured in two of the nation's biggest papers on the same day in different
stories. USA
Today reports:
Some amputee advocates
cheered amputee and model Heather Mills on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," but
her performances were a bittersweet reminder of the increasingly tough
financial struggles the typical amputee faces.
The story points out:
The Amputee Coalition of America
says data it collected in 2006 from prosthetic care facilities found that at least
38 different insurers were imposing restrictions on prosthetic coverage,
including coverage caps as low as $1,000 per year and limits of one prosthetic
per lifetime.
Amputee
advocates argue a prosthesis can cost tens of thousands of dollars, must be replaced
occasionally as the body changes, and also involves costly replacement parts.
The
costs of prostheses will become a more important issue as the number of
amputees increases, says Paddy Rossbach, president and CEO of ACA. There are an
estimated 1.9 million Americans with a limb loss or deficiency, up from 1.2
million just five or six years ago, mostly from amputations because of
diabetes, says Rossbach.
Also
yesterday, The New York Times ran a
piece about an
amputee sprint runner who wants to compete in the Olympics but may be barred
because his prosthetics may give him an advantage over able-bodied
runners.
The Army
Times also has a piece on the need for more amputee care for Iraq War
vets. Various reports point out the significant
increase in amputees filling Veterans Affairs hospitals.
Rudest Driver Survey
Miami, New York
and Boston win bragging rights as
the cities with
the rudest drivers.
More
than 2,500 drivers who regularly commute in 25 major metropolitan areas were
asked to rate road rage and rude driving in telephone surveys between January
and March. The survey was conducted by Prince
Market Research and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The
list of cities with the rudest road-raging drivers include:
1.) Miami
2.) New York
3.) Boston
4.) Los Angeles
5.) Washington, D.C.
6.) Phoenix
7.) Chicago
8.) Sacramento, Calif.
9.) Philadelphia
10.) San Francisco
What do people in your town vent
about the most when it comes to rude drivers? The thing that annoys me most
are drivers who do not use their turn signals.
Other top annoyances might include tailgaters, speeders, rocketbike motorcycle riders who
weave in and out of traffic and so on. It
may well be that bicycle riders endure more wrath from rude drivers than
anybody else. Strap a camera on a
bike rider and see/hear what they see/hear in a rush-hour commute.
10 Percent
of Web Sites Have Malicious Software
CNet
says:
Google is warning Web users of the increasing threat posed by
malicious software that can be dropped onto a computer as a Web surfer visits a
particular site.
The search giant
carried out in-depth research on 4.5 million Web sites and found that about one
in 10 Web pages could successfully "drive-by download" a Trojan horse
virus onto a visitor's computer. Such malicious software potentially enables
hackers to access sensitive data stored on the computer or its network, or to
install rogue applications.
Military
Blocks YouTube and MySpace
If Vietnam
was the "living room war," the war in Iraq
is the Web war, often reported and recorded by the soldiers themselves.
The Defense Department recently blocked [PDF]
access to more than a dozen popular Web sites used by soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers have frequently posted videos
on YouTube and blogged on MySpace. The DoD says all of that traffic is gumming
up government networks. Some
of the most gripping accounts of the war so far, in fact, have been on
YouTube and on blogs written
by soldiers in the war zones. Despite the DoD's new policy, blogs kept on
personal networks and computers are still filing this week.
The Associated Press
reports:
Soldiers
serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones
back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army
official said would take effect Monday.
The
Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube,
MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according
to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.
The policy
is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's
networks, according to Bell.
"This
recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability,
while posing a significant operational security challenge," the memo said.
The fastest way to find blogs
written by troops now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is to go to any of these Web sites and explore their links to
"milblogs" or soldier blogs:
Al's Morning Multimedia
How useful could an $89 camera be? The answer is "pretty darn useful."
In my
briefcase, you will find a Flip Video camera. It will hold up
to 30 minutes of video, and the cool part is when you're ready to upload,
just flip out the built-in USB connector and connect it to your computer. With
a tiny bit of software, I upload video easily. (For Mac users like me, you
will have a little bit more to load.) When I mentioned this to my friends over at
WTSP in Tampa, they ran out and bought a bunch of them for their newsroom. The video is
just good enough for Web or YouTube. It is not broadcast quality unless you are
capturing once-in-a-decade breaking-news scenes. You can buy them at Toys"R"Us,
Target and drug stores.
Here are a couple of stories from WTSP, both shot on one of these
little cheapo cameras. The
first piece was shot by an intern about some young folks who set up a camp
on an island. The kids waded through fairly deep water to get to the camp -- not
the kind of assignment you would want
to send an expensive camera to tell.
My friend, reporter Preston Rudie, also used one of these little cameras to tell the story of big problems with
smoke in Tampa Bay last week.
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.
Posted at 6:35:27 AM
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