An Article That Finally Made Sense of What Happened To Tamarack.

Very well written but semi-long. I never knew what was going on, who owned it, or who was in bankruptcy, but some journalists just understand how to put things in "LAME MAN" terms for us that are economically challenged.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aT4PzNc1EgrU

What do you think?

Great Story, this is what journalism is.....asking questions, not always finding answers, letting you decide for yourself based on your experience!

Airport Security Getting Smoother, But Are We Safer?
by Brian Naylor
September 11, 2009


As any airline passenger can attest, security at the nation's airports has gotten infinitely more stringent in the eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks.
While the technology to screen passengers has become more advanced and the check-in lines a little shorter, the question of whether flying is terrorism-proof remains.
By now the routine has become mind-numbingly familiar: Travelers take off their shoes and put them in gray plastic containers along with their toiletries. They carry no more than three 3-ounce bottles in a 1-quart plastic bag, remove laptops from cases and so on. It's a scene played out millions of times a day across the country's airports.

If not a showcase, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is certainly one of the nation's better-equipped facilities, security-wise. It has the latest in explosives-detecting luggage X-rays and something called a "millimeter wave whole body imager." The machine produces an image of each traveler who passes through it and leaves little to the imagination.

We're wasting immense amounts of time and manpower searching through people's bags for little knives and pointy objects, and taking harmless liquids away from people. That doesn't make us safer.
- Patrick Smith

A TSA employee who cannot see the passenger checks the scan for what Robin Kane, assistant administrator of security technology at the Transportation Security Administration, calls anomalies.

"He'll just see the image come up," Kane says. "They'll look and see if there are any anomalies on the body." For instance, he says, the employee scanning the images might notice the person has something in his right pocket, which would allow a targeted search.
The machinery at the checkpoints is just the tip of the iceberg of what the TSA says is a 20-layer approach to security.

'9/11 Hangover'

But critics of the airport-screening process call all this "security theater."
Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot who writes a blog called Ask the Pilot, for Salon.com, says much of what occurs at airline checkpoints is needless.
"We have this 9/11 hangover going on for eight years," he says. "We see it most poignantly at the airport."
Smith says there should be less emphasis on looking for sharp objects, which, since the advent of secure cockpit doors inside planes, don't pose much of a threat anyway. The focus, he says, should be on explosives detection.
"We're wasting immense amounts of time and manpower searching through people's bags for little knives and pointy objects, and taking harmless liquids away from people," he says. "That doesn't make us safer."

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon says airports need to beef up security in another area — the "back" of the airport, where maintenance personnel have unfettered access to planes.
"Our original vision was that everybody accessing the secure area of the airport, whether it was the terminal or the tarmac, would have to go through screening — similar to the system at Heathrow airport," he says. "I mean mechanics — everybody has to go through that system every time."

Positive Steps

But DeFazio defends the TSA. He says screening has improved dramatically in recent years. "When I came to Congress, the level of security at the airport couldn't even find a fully assembled .45 in a briefcase with a pair of socks and a pair of underwear," he says. "Today there is no question they would find a fully assembled handgun."
The government has spent about $45 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, on aviation security. DeFazio says one step remains to be taken — the appointment of a permanent administrator for the TSA.

ERIC IS IN THE BIG CITY!

HERE HE COMES NEW YORK!

Using Journalism/Advertising for GOOD!

We all remember this...

I ran across this awesome video today! In remembrance of September 11 and the war that soon followed, here's what we can do! I may not agree with everything that these women support, or even the war, but I agree with them on this one!

I'm glad that they are using media for good, and I think this video is very well done!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCE60IYTQU

Cool Angle

President Bush's Iraqi Shoe Thrower Due For Release Monday

I was surfing through NPR and came upon this story! Whoever wrote it really tied in the current Obama "you lied" situation with Bush's "shoe throwing" situation. Not to mention, it's kind of hilarious that ths guy pent nine months in jail! haha give it a read...very interesting, satirical, and comparable to now!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/09/president_bushs_iraqi_shoe_thr.html

MY ESSAY!

Candace Burr
Aug 31, 2009
Comms 239 – Cressman
Essay #1

Journalism Defined: What it is, Who Does it, and Why It’s Important

Journalism is inescapably woven into the fabric of American Society. In societies of the world where freedom of speech is available, journalism, or the free exchange of ideas and information, is also a permanent and vital institution. Journalism is about conveying information to better educate society. Journalism creates an open forum for the exchange of information, ideas, and events. Information sparks the desire toward change for an increasingly functional society. For this to happen people needs to be connected and informed and journalists facilitate that need.
Journalists are information gatherers for the public. Information drives people’s reactions, and reactions drive change for the future. Journalists take upon themselves the duty of improving democracy by becoming an open and unbiased channel for communication and information. They dedicate time and effort to help inform the public of events that impact their communities and personal situations for better or worse.
To be a good journalist it takes time, commitment, meticulous investigative skills, and proper education. One of the most important qualities of a journalist, though, is the constant curiosity they carry with them. Journalists are never satisfied that they know enough, a good journalist is not a lazy person.
Journalists are also part of an extra check and balances system. They take upon themselves the responsibility of being a societal watchdog. By exposing what others don’t want known, journalists protect and warn the public. People want to know that their representatives are being held accountable for the actions that they take on their behalf, and journalists make this possible.
It seems to me those who choose journalism choose a very patriotic path of life. Journalists are directly involved with democracy. They do their job so that I don’t have to walk blindly as a citizen of this country. People say that “journalism is so negative these days”. I disagree. Although many unfortunate things are reported on, journalism fills me with confidence, not negativity. Journalism gives me the confidence because it lights the sometimes ambiguous world with bright, shining truth.

As We Head Back to School

This weekend in Boise was so fun! It was reat to lay back and enjoy the comfort of home! Not to mention the two great football games (go Broncs/Cougs)... I returned to Provo this morning, drove home from the airport jamming to EFY songs the whole way, parked my car, and headed straight to church.

I wasn' ready for what I saw. I've been talking a lot about Provo and the phenomenons that occur here! One I think I'll have to get used to is being in a setting with over 100 smart, outgoing, beautiful girls in one room. Unfortuantely, competition is at an all-time high.Classes, church, going to the gym...for some reason female interaction is so strange here. ( to be fair, I am generalizing a bit, I have met some of the most amazing, strong, friendly girls here. However, they are definately a MINORITY).

Having personally seen the effects comparison and pressure can place on young girls I found the below article very intriguing about research being conducted about the issue.

Girls and Dieting, Then and Now

By JEFFREY ZASLOW

One day in January 1986, fourth-grade girls at Marie Murphy School in Wilmette, Ill., were called down to the principal's office.

A stranger was waiting there to ask each girl a question: "Are you on a diet?"
Most of the girls said they were.

"I just want to be skinny so no one will tease me," explained Sara Totonchi.
"Boys expect girls to be perfect and beautiful," said Rozi Bhimani. "And skinny."

I was the questioner that day. As a young Wall Street Journal reporter, I had gone to a handful of Chicago-area schools to ask 100 fourth-grade girls about their dieting habits. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco were about to release a study showing 80% of fourth-grade girls were dieting, and I wanted to determine: Was this a California oddity, or had America's obsession with slimness reached the 60-pound weight class?

My reporting ended up mirroring the study's results. More than half of the 9-year-old girls I surveyed said they were dieting, and 75%—even the skinniest ones—said they weighed too much. I also spoke to fourth-grade boys and learned what the girls were up against. "Fat girls aren't like regular girls," one boy told me. "They aren't attractive."

The front-page story helped spark discussions about America's worship of thinness and its impact on children. It raised the question: Would these girls be burdened by the dieting culture as they grew into women?

Those girls I interviewed are 32 and 33 years old now, and when I got back in touch with some of them last week, they said that they and their peers have never escaped society's obsession with body image. While none of them descended into eating disorders, some told stories of damaging diets and serious self-esteem issues regarding their weight.

They felt—and recent studies make clear—that the weight-focused pressures on young girls today are even stronger. In the now-quaint era of 1986, the girls had told me about drinking Diet Cokes and watching Jane Fonda exercise videos. Ms. Totonchi had read a teen novel about a girl with an eating disorder.

But today's fourth-grade girls are barraged by media images of thinness. They can cruise the Internet visiting "Pro-Ana" (pro-anorexia) Web sites and can view thousands of "thinspiration" videos on YouTube celebrating emaciated young women.
"Models look like popsicle sticks," Suzanne Reisman told me in fourth grade. Today, she amends her observation: "Now they look like toothpicks."

In fourth grade, Christy Gouletas told me thin models "are sexy, so boys like them." Today, she is a middle-school teacher in Wheeling, Ill. On lunch duty each day, she notices 10 girls who eat nothing. "We make them take a few bites," she says, "but they fight me on it. They say, 'I'm not hungry,' and I tell them, 'You've been here since 8 a.m. Of course you're hungry!' "
"The influences are worse now," says one researcher, Kerry Cave, a clinical nurse leader at Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, Fla. Earlier this year, in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, she chronicled the latest research on "the influences of disordered eating in prepubescent children."

Among the findings: A preoccupation with body image is now showing up in children as young as age five, and it can be exacerbated by our culture's increased awareness of obesity, which leaves many non-overweight kids stressed about their bodies. This dieting by children can stunt growth and brain development.

Incidences of bulimia have tripled since the 1980s and anorexia incidences have also risen, according to studies collected by the National Eating Disorders Association. Parental fixations on weight, children's urges toward perfectionism, family conflicts, and a $40 billion-a-year dieting industry can all lead girls to disorders.

But studies also show that self-starvation in girls can be triggered by media images, including Internet sites promoting anorexia and bulimia as lifestyle choices. Among the pitch lines used on these sites: "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels."

On one recent "Pro-Ana" blog, a woman suggested a 30-hour group fast and received 64 responses such as "I can't wait to do this fast with you. Thirty hours food-free sounds like heaven" and "I'm with you. Down to the bones."

Researchers have seen a marked increase in children's concerns about thinness in just the past few years. Between 2000 and 2006, the percentage of girls who believe that they must be thin to be popular rose to 60% from 48%, according to Harris Interactive surveys of 1,059 girls conducted for the advocacy group Girls Inc.

Compared with the fourth graders of 1986, girls today see body images in ads "that are even further from reality. Retouching is rampant," says Claire Mysko, author of "You're Amazing," a book encouraging self-esteem in girls. She worries that childhood obesity-prevention efforts can make girls obsessive about weight. While these programs are important vehicles to fight a growing problem, "we have to be really careful how we are implementing nutrition and body imaging," she says.

Those fourth graders of 1986, now all grown up, offer heartfelt reflections on all of these issues.
Ms. Totonchi is public-policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. In fourth grade she told me she wanted to be thin so no one would tease her. "What I said that day is still very true," she says. Today, she watches her weight "so I can be successful in a world that puts great emphasis on how a person looks."

She vows to do so through healthy eating. As an adult, she once experimented with a low-carb diet and says she still has high blood pressure as a result. "It did so much damage to me," she says. "It was a lesson to me not to follow fads."

Ms. Reisman, now a writer and blogger in New York, says she was an emotional eater as an adolescent, "turning to food for comfort." She got heavier in college, but she now watches what she eats and weighs a healthy 125 pounds. She is concerned about the heightened pressures on girls today to be thin and sexy. She knows of 9-year-olds asking their mothers to buy them thong underwear. "That's horrifying to me," she says.

Ms. Gouletas, the teacher, says she was "always a fat kid" and is now 40 pounds overweight. Even though she eats healthy food and exercises five days a week, it's hard for her to shed pounds.

As a fourth grader, Krista Koranda recognized that some people can't help being overweight. "We don't make fun of fat girls," she said. Not all her male classmates were as empathetic. One boy in her class responded that if someone can't help being fat, "then you shouldn't make fun of them. But girls in the fourth grade can help it."

Now a public-relations consultant in Boulder, Colo., Ms. Koranda Torvik (her married name) says she appreciates it when ad campaigns today use plus-size models. "That's encouraging," she says, even though such ads are the exception.

In fourth grade in 1986, Ms. Bhimani says, she and her friends admired teen celebrities such as Molly Ringwald, "girls who were skinny but healthy." Now, the actresses on teen TV shows such as the resurrected "90210" are being called "alarmingly thin" in media reports. "They look so unhealthy," says Ms. Bhimani, an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in Chicago. "And it's a skinny that's unattainable for most people."

Ms. Bhimani became heavy in college and later took off 40 pounds through exercise and portion control. When she reread my 1986 Journal article, she found some of the boys' comments "appalling." She thought about her 3-year-old son. In six years, he'll be in fourth grade.

"I hope I am able to instill values in my little guy that help him see past weight," she says. "The pressure to stay thin comes from many different sources in society, and I just hope my son isn't one of those sources."