I should be more of an asshole

And I s’pose I should be smarter, too, if the Yelv is right: “Newspapers were more interesting when they were edited by brilliant, obsessive jerks than nowadays, when they’re edited by committees.” He says newspapers should be more like Apple (user-experience focused, aggressively looking outside the company for innovation) and less like Microsoft (know-it-all, territorial bastards?).

Fort Bragg couple gets hitched after Iraq betrothal

A year ago, when Maj. Eric Olson of Flushing surprised Maj. Laura Geldhof by proposing in a combat zone in Iraq. The two Army officers were supposed to wed Oct. 6 in a “dream autumn wedding” that had already been planned with gold hues and tables sprinkled with fall leaves. But in June the couple learned that Olson’s second tour in Iraq would be 15 months instead of 12.

Long story short, they finally got all married up this month. Awww. But a couple of cool quotes from the bride:

“He was wearing his rifle and everything. How many people propose armed?”

“I think being in a combat zone can be easier than planning a wedding.”

Bhutto’s sanitized assassination

As has become the norm, American media clean up images of people killed in war or terror attacks. Even Wonkette has taken notice:

During the interview, they showed one of the photographs I swore mainstream media wouldn’t show you (and the one the editors of the New York Times had the stones to put unedited on the front page above the fold this morning). But, did they really show you?

The debate over whether to show the grisly reality of death crops up every time a highly public killing takes place. The last one I recall was after the train bombing in Madrid. Unretouched photos showed body parts scattered about. Some (particularly American) newspapers ran photos that were blurred or retouched to hide the blood.My opinion is, if you’re going to run the photo, don’t fake it.

However, I recognize that, from a purely marketing perspective, readers don’t respond well to gore. One of the worst-moving editions of SmartNews featured soldiers who were burn victims. The photo on the cover wasn’t totally horrifying, but it was arresting — and people didn’t really like it.

Thanks to Robb Montgomery for posting the Wonkette link on Facebook.

Bhutto’s murder: You had to see it coming

Pervez Musharraf, al-Qaida and its ilk, the secret police, maybe even the Pakistani army — Benazir had more than her fair share of enemies. So I wonder if she didn’t see it coming, as well, but felt it better to take her chances with martyrdom than to be an exile. No way for me to know from this great distance. Government officials expressing “shock” ring hollow; seems like they could have done better.

Here’s some of the coverage:

BBC package: lots of stuff

Not as big a package on Al Jazeera but everyone’s got an opinion as to who was behind it: radical Islam, Musharraf, the CIA.

My favorite strategist says that, from our American perspective, her death won’t change things much. Pakistan is pretty screwed up, and she wasn’t going to fix it anyway.

This might seem bloodthirsty, but I’m surprised there’s not a better-quality video. You can’t tell me there weren’t a gob of video cams at that event. Is it a matter of news sites not wanting to show gruesome footage? Even Al Jazeera didn’t have anything posted when I looked.

Nearly 95 percent of all e-mail is spam?

Well, that’s what Barracuda Networks says. It’s not impossible that the report’s numbers could be skewed: the company’s phone number is 1-888-ANTI-SPAM.

Barracuda Networks, Inc., the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, released its annual spam report today. The findings included: 1) The majority of business professionals view spam email as the worst form of junk advertising – worse than postal junk mail and telemarketing calls, and 2) spam email accounted for 90 to 95 percent of all email in 2007, up from an estimated five percent of email in 2001.

How much of your e-mail is spam? How big of a pain in the ass is it? Oddly, I don’t have a whole lot of trouble with it; I suppose my server has an ass-kicking anti-spam module.

UNC suspect: Hey, you can’t sexually assault the willing

You have to admit, this is pretty juicy, no matter what the actual truth of the matter is. File it under “Three too many martinis.”

Michael Lewis says he and his two friends, Monique Taylor and Tnika Washington were at the Martini Bar in Chapel Hill last Saturday night when a UNC football player propositioned one of the girls.

“When I came back he was talking to Monique,” Lewis said. “He was like, ‘I like your friend,’ this that and the third. Do you want to come back to my place? And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t really know nobody, but if she want to go, you know, I’m not just going to leave my friend.’”

When they got back to the Chapel Hill apartment, Lewis says one of the players started talking about sex, bondage and money.

“He’s like, ‘I want to pay for a foursome,’” Lewis said. “And I’m like, ‘Pay for a foursome? I ain’t with that. He’s like let them tie us up it’ll be cool dude.’”

The story’s caveat: “Police contradict a lot of what Lewis told Eyewitness News, and he is facing serious charges. Even though there are allegations of paying for sex, no prostitution charges have been filed.”

Full disclosure, I’ve had a martini or two at the Martini Bar in Chapel Hill. However, I did not take any women (or men, for that matter) home for a foursome.

‘Police are investigating whether alchohol was involved’

I’ve had a drink or two too many before, but not quite to this level. Damn, what a way to go.

As stunned bystanders watched, a Patriots fan on his way into Gillette Stadium for Sunday’s game leapt off an overpass and fell 17 feet onto the pavement below. “He thought he was going to land in a snow bank,” said one witness to the incident.

‘New’ idea: Lower the price of your house in order to sell it

Well, I guess it’s a little bit more scientific than that. They call it absorption-rate pricing. It’s a little complicated for the average, math-challenged journalist. But it’s not hard to imagine a Multiple Listing Service-based algorithm that’d do the work for ya. Basically, the idea is to actually use real-estate market research to set your sale price, not just your gut feeling, or that of the real estate agent.

If you are in no hurry to move, then, yes, you can offer your place at the high end of the market and hope someone eventually comes knocking on your door. But if you want out fast, you have to be more realistic. Thus, you need to find a price point at which it will sell as quickly as you need it to.

Absorption-rate pricing isn’t new. Practically every type of business uses the technique. But it is new to real estate. “Our industry is just now catching on,” says Fayetteville, N.C.-based real estate agent Zan Monroe, who teaches agents how to help clients determine an asking price commensurate with their need to move on.

There are some other interesting tidbits, too; worth reading on a slow Sunday if you’re trying to buy or sell a house and you have a wonky mindset.

UNC football players allegedly sexually assaulted by women

Normally, you expect the jocks to do the sexual assaulting. Hey, they do things a little bit differently up in Chapel Hill.

Three UNC football players were the victims in a kidnapping, robbery and sexual assault incident involving two women, the university confirmed Thursday afternoon. “This is a very unusual case,” attorney Glenn Gerding said. “Almost unbelievable, at first blush.”

Someone is so going to lose his job over this headline

I clipped the screen view in case cooler (get it?) heads prevail at the Mainichi Times Web site.

Charities report: Better to have given recently than in the past, for some

Vultures are everywhere, aren’t they? I boldfaced the critical part.

North Carolina charities that hire paid solicitors kept nearly $41 million more in their recent year of fundraising than the year before. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall released her office’s annual report Monday for the fiscal year that ended June 30. It found that solicitors kept a smaller percentage of money raised during the year compared to the year before. Charities raised $265 million during the recent fiscal year and kept almost $134 million, or just more than 50 percent. The charities collected $194 million the previous year and kept $93 million, which is about 48 percent. Marshall said charities appear to be doing a better job negotiating contracts with their solicitors. The report doesn’t include most churches and universities.

Your annual dose of year-in-review celebrity snooze

Normally, I cannot stand the year-in-review stories that pack newspapers this time of year. They’re generally not very thoughtful. Instead of providing some sort of perspective on our passage through time, they’re just a rehash. Frankly, they represent newspapers’ effort to pad out the space between the ads in a dead time for news — and for the newsroom; even journalists like to take time off during the holidays.That said, I ran across this bit of cheese, and it seemed to fit the SmartNews obsession with dumbness. So, in case I can’t find room for this bit of journalistic corned-beef hash in print, here ya go in blogoland:

2007’s wacky and tacky celebrities
From Britney to Paris, there was no shortage of star shenanigans this year

Pennsylvania bride, groom really fell for each other

Sounds like something that’d happen around here. Maybe a HALO jump, at that.

Talk about taking the plunge. Jeanie Dulski and Jamy Knittle got married at an airport in Pennsylvania, then they went sky diving.

Santa adds dry cleaners to his naughty list

One Santa’s as good as another, right?

CHERRY HILL, N.J. — One dry cleaner now knows how to get on Santa’s naughty list: lose his suit. After Christmas last year, Max Weisberg took his red velvet suit to Royal Cleaners, which accidentally gave it to someone else. The family-owned business acknowledged the mixup and offered to pay him half the value of the nearly $400 suit, said Jean Hwang, who said she’s the owner’s sister.

‘Bike Man’ provides Christmas gifts for kids

Sometimes, obsession is healthy. Merry Christmas.

He’s known as “the Bicycle Man.” His warehouse, on Black & Decker Road, is full of bikes, trikes, scooters and motorized vehicles.  For 14 years, Moses Mathis has been refurbishing and giving away bicycles to needy children throughout Cumberland County.  Every year the number of bikes he distributes goes up.

Psy Ops Santa at Fort Bragg

Sgt. Patrick Fuhrman waits to donate a doll to area children during Operation Toy Drop at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Dec. 8. The annual Randy Oler memorial Operation Toy Drop is a community service operation hosted by Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) supporting the military and local citizens in the Fayetteville, N.C., area. Repost from army.mil

Bah! Humbug!

“What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?”

Christmas shopping is totally out of hand for most of us, or many of us, at least. But the tradition of doing nice things for the people you care about, and having them do the same in return, is — even to a hard-bitten journo — pretty cool. Heartwarming, even. Not to mention what makes retailers happy usually helps make newspapers happy.

Too bad about the ridiculous debt and global warming that result. Bah!

Judge hands Vick longer sentence than prosecutors asked for. Long enough? Too long?

Fair disclosure: I like most dogs more than I like most people, so it’s hard for me to have sympathy for someone who abuses and fights pitties, which are capable of being very gentle and loving animals. On the other hand, some people have been thrown in prison longer for less. Here’s an SI.com q&a on the sentencing:

On Monday, Judge Henry E. Hudsonsentenced Michael Vick to 23 months in prison — exceeding the 12-18 months that prosecutors recommended. SI.com caught up with legal expert Michael McCann to answer some important questions about the ruling.

Former paratrooper said to heck with Fayetteville AND Wall Street

“I could quit this job, go to New York and make $1 million easily,” says David Blain, a bronze-star who graduated from West Point, served on Fort Bragg and in Desert Storm, and later became a money guy. “That’s what most financial advisors want to do. But I wanted a family, to be different, and that’s why I’m here in New Bern.”

From doing more than 500 jumps from airplanes, he broke his neck. So he left the Army in 1999. That’s when he started his own financial advising company in Fayetteville.

“My wife asked me if we always had to live in Fayetteville,” he said. “She wanted to move around, so we settled on New Bern.”

Read the whole thing here.

Maybe some relief for some who’re getting hammered by their home loans

I have no idea how many folks a five-year reprieve from ballooning interest rates will save from bankruptcy. So many people have already defaulted. I don’t really have a fantastic rate on my mortgage, but it’s not horrible and it’s not going anywhere. My heart goes out to those who got themselves into a vicious adjustable-rate deal and are losing their homes, their dreams. Yeah, I guess you could say they should’ve known better, but it’s hard not to jump at that chance at some tiny slice of the American Pie, when those chances come along more rarely for some than for others.

Here’s the latest on Big Guv’mint’s efforts to stave off a wave of homelessness and misery:

Subprime Rate Five-Year Fix Eyed by U.S. Regulators (Update5)

By Alison Vekshin

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) — Federal regulators and U.S. lenders are focusing on five years as the duration of an interest-rate freeze on subprime mortgages, said a person familiar with negotiations aimed at fending off a jump in foreclosures.

Such an agreement would satisfy the shortest fix sought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. That period is longer than the minimum, two- to three-year modifications suggested by Fannie Mae, the largest source of finance for American home loans. The Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision advocated between three and five years.

Will it work? Or will it just make things worse? Most everything that’s been done in the last 30 years has worked to the advantage of the super-wealthy, one way or another.

Don Imus: ‘Dick Cheney is still a war criminal, Hillary Clinton is still Satan and I’m back on the radio.’

I’m not a big Imus radio-TV fan. Mom and Dad both used to like and watch him. That was before his “nappy headed” incident. However, he was funny a long time ago: His “Rev. Billy Sol Hargus’ Discount House of Worship” schtick was priceless.

I have not read the book, so I don’t know if it stands up to the standup.

Anyway, click here for the story on his triumphant slouch back to the airwaves.

As an aside, years ago we did buy “Two Guys, Four Corners” which I can recommend for the photography.

Redskins safety’s killing brings back memory of former FSU player

Player’s killing not headline news in 1976 

JERRY MAGEE

UNION-TRIBUNE

December 2, 2007

In 1974, Blenda Gay served the Chargers as a defensive end, playing in only two games but scoring a touchdown in one on a fumble recovery. Two years later, he was dead, his wife having slit his throat while he was sleeping. His death was not a matter of interest comparable to the murder of Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins in his Miami-area home or the killing of Darrent Williams of the Denver Broncos on Jan. 1 in a drive-by shooting.

Google News dredged up this interesting item.