Jack Shelley of WHO

The TMR morbidity content is elevated this evening, but another man from the era  when broadcast journalism contained journalism has died.

Jack Shelly, 98, was a fixture on 50,000-watt WHO for decades.  In 1944 at Bastogne he interviewed Iowans in combat. A year later in the Pacific he was the first to record interviews with B-29 fliers returning from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is stretching things only a little to say that for some 30 years, Iowa and much of the Midwest stopped whatever they were doing at 12;30 p.m. to listen to a deep, melodious voice reporting the news of the day and resisting every urge to report his opinion of the news.

It was a  lucky young reporter who had the privilege of knowing him.

Edwin Newman

Dead at 91, and we have lost a premier defender of the English language as a vehicle for the exchange of rational thought.

Or, as Wiki says, an old-school journalist with a "fierce belief that degrading the language was damaging the nation."

RIP.
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Kansas Concealed Carry, Concealed Meaning

It's probably wrong to come down too hard on the New Kansas. Jayhawks  had  pretty much solved the Sibelius problem even before shipping her off to be one of His Obamaness's unicorn herders. It has become shall-issue, and the new law seems reasonable enough.*

However, as I was digging through some administrative rules on concealed carry around the nation, I ran across this from the Kansas attorney general:

The Concealed Carry Unit (Unit) of the Attorney General’s Office (AG) is tasked with the administration, interpretation and to a quasi degree, enforcement of the KPFPA.   (Kansas Personal and Family Protection Act.)

How does a cop or prosecutor enforce a law to a "quasi" degree?  That kind of  language from people with the power to toss me in jail makes me think of  Kafka's prisoner.

But maybe the law clerk who wrote   it was just having a bad day. Or maybe it was a warning to other law enforcement agencies that they would have to do the heavy lifting. Still, quasi makes me queasy.

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*At least reasonable enough so long as we are stuck with the notion that it is okay to require a permit to exercise Constitutional rights.

The Naked and the Dread

At first glance you might think the Transportation Security Administration has decided there's something infinitely creepy about having a guy look through your clothes, at your short hairs, bumps, and dangles. Suspend that visionary idea.  It may be that the new full body scanner software is just cheaper.

Ostensibly stung by criticism of naked scans of your daughter as you and the family fly to Grandma's for Thanksgiving, TSA is touting a new experiment in body-scanner software. The gizmo substitutes a clothed generic avatar. It highlights a general body area where there  might be contraband. Then comes the frisk.

But a TSA spokesman makes much of the cost savings. The government will not have to go to the expense of having an employee in an isolated  room look at your nakedness. That's the TSA  sop to citizens bitterly clinging to the notion that it's wrong to have their privates on public display at the check-in line.

But:


The upgrades don’t resolve privacy questions, said Rotenberg, whose Washington-based group objects to the use of the devices as a primary screening tool. The agency may someday decide it wanted to record passenger images or link scan results to traveler names, he said.


Coffee break at 612 South 12th Street in Arlington: "Hey, Art, ya wanna look at some naked people? How 'bout some of them wise-ass blog people always giving us crap? We can use the HD  upgrade and  make a list of the shorties and flatties and ...".