Tag: Radio and TV

Vatican Radiowave Crime!

You just never see a story like this every day – a cardinal convicted in a sordid shortwave radio plot:

A court in Rome on Monday convicted a Vatican cardinal and the head of the city-state’s radio station for electromagnetic pollution. They were given 10-day suspended sentences, which they have appealed. Cardinal Roberto Tucci, former head of Vatican Radio’s management committee, and the Rev. Pasquale Borgomeo, the station’s director general, were charged with “dangerous launching of objects,” referring to the station’s electromagnetic waves. Residents of the Rome suburb Cessano near the station complained they could hear Vatican Radio broadcasts through their lamps because of electromagnetic disturbances.

That is just beautiful. Sadly, it is not just funny nutty tale as the high intensity transmitters, still using shortwaves to broadcast to the globe, are a possible source of illness in the neighbouring residential area. Within the actual city, there are around 100 Kw worth of transmitters dated to the early 1950s. That is a lot less than the 1700 Kw worth of tranmitters Canada has at Sackville, NB (seen left 60 years ago when style was king) but they are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of acres of salt marsh as opposed to Italian suburbs. This 2001 defence of Vatican Radio‘s transmitters indicates that the allegation was leukemia rates were higher and is contrary to this statement in support of the correlation between RF and leukemia. It also indicated that the district of Rome in question is not cheek to jowl with Vatican City’s walls but one called Santa Maria in Galeria where the Vatican’s transmitters pump out 2410 Kw under an agreement reached decades ago. The VR PR looks better in Italian but what doesn’t.

The defence I came across in favour of the Vatican contains one most charming argument in terms of its sensitivity to public health issues:

All the more “correct” were the observations made by the director of Vatican Radio, Father Borgomeo, who recalled that in 1951 the area where the transmitters were being installed was virtually uninhabited. The development of the area, and the construction of homes there, began only after the transmission facility was in place. So one might ask: If there is a direct link between the electromagnetic transmissions and cancer statistics, why aren’t the local builders and administrators, who allowed the residential developments in the area, called to account? For that matter, why are only radio broadcasters being investigated, and not television stations? After all, the transmission facilities of the state-owned RAI television network are located right in the heart of Rome, on Via Teulada.

Amazing and takes no responsibility for the fact that 2000 Kw of the 2410 Kw were built since 1976. No wonder they can hear the radio through light bulbs. I bet if they checked, there also would be a low instance of perms being ordered at hair dress salons as well.


“I’m on the Vatican, woe-oh, Radi-o…”

Free

It’s freedom night on my TV apparently. CBC plays A Bug’s Life – yea, kill the grasshoppers – and then the less happily ended Braveheart – yea, kill the English…oops – and flip to PBS’s Austin City Limits and it is the Polyphonic Spree (warning – the best and most appropriate use of introductory flash pages ever), a seduction of 1968 Jesus freaking Godspellishness meeting an echo of Supertramp, followed by the band Ozomatli which “meshes traditional Latin rhythms with modern hip hop blending in Middle Eastern and African beat.”

I think I need a cup of joe before bed just to straighten my head out. Whew!

Feds to Fund CBC ‘Cause They Can

From this morning’s Globe and Mail:

An Ipsos-Reid poll shows that 47 per cent of Canadians think the Prime Minister and his Liberals deserve to be re-elected. This represents a jump of 18 points since the question was asked during last spring’s federal election campaign, which saw the Liberals reduced to minority status.

But Martin cannot break into the Parliamentary majority range – the Liberals at still stuck at 37% nationally according to this poll. Given that the Tories are still mired in the 20% range due to…hmmm…the fact that they stand for so many things the vast majority of Canadians do not want, they cannot afford to force an election to try to push Martin out. Catch 22.

So that means in the impending Liberal budget, we can expect a well-deserved payback for twenty years of restraint, cuts and downsizing – things Canadians want and have paid for. What has got me excited? More for the CBC if it is spent on radio and regional broadcasting. The cuts have left the CBC in an awful state. One has to only listen to the morning radio to be bombarded by blandness and repetative broadcasts of the same show: another panel on the future of short story writing on the Prairies anyone?

I am hopeful. Hidden in a CBC Feburary 2005 presentation is the idea of a CBC radio station for Kingston. Right now we get the Ontario wide rural morning show, and the excellent but a little irrelevant Ottawa drive home show hosted most days by the formidible Brent Bambury. Given the catchment of about 350,000 from Belleville to Brockville up to highway 7, a station is due here. It would cause a shake up for sure as a local morning and afternoon show would add 15 or more hours of news to the local market every week driving well-paid, quality journalists to find the story, shaking up the venerable but could be shaken Whig-Standard newspaper as well as region-covering CKWS-TV along the way. Too bad it is set for a 2007-08 opening but that means it will be in place in time for the next NHL playoffs.

The Cob

This is the TV show I not only want to be in – but host. It may have an alternate title like “What Not To Be”. It is all about the ideal of the average male…or maybe an average ideal about a male.

Here is the premise. Me and portland get a bunch of guys to take the bait and sign up for a reality show. In that show, we promise, somewhat like “The Swan” to recreate you, but as a real guy. Like “What Not To Wear” we promise to renew your ability to interact with humans as a better you – but, unlike these shows, we teach the poor saps who are competing for our good opinion to actually be a good person, not just look like an attractive person. We will not make you richer, get you a better carrer or make your home a mansion. We teach you not to be a jerk or humilate you trying.

In one episode, we take apart the jerk who treats pals’ sisters like crap and leave him a whimpering ball of jelly at around 23 minutes past the hour. We break in on a date gone wrong with the girl of his dreams, show how a slob can treat a lady right (portland’s talent shining here) and leave him in our tracks begging to learn the secrets of being decent. But 57 after the hour, we do. In another show, we start by taunting pro-bowlers from the stands about spending more time with their families instead of on the lanes of mid-sized Mid-West towns. They learn to get real if dullish jobs with reasonable long-term prospects and get a hobby involving something actually useful like homebrewing. I can do that. In the grand finale, we teach a group of the quiet and shy to rock-out, live on gin and condiments for a week and finish a big night out having eggs on toast at dawn in a town where no one speaks your language or takes your currency. The winners of every episode compete for a big final prize at the end of the season, which we award arbitrarily to someone who shares the cash with us as a lesson that life is not based on merit.

It could happen.

10:29 pm

I am under a denial of interest attack. Why can’t people in Ohio all vote before noon? Is it too much to ask?

On the upside the Daily Show is doing an hour long special.

Update: Gmail lives again.

Update: Why isn’t Alaska’s Peter Tosh memorial ballot measure being reported during this two hour break in anything interesting? Here is what it is about:

Would legalize the cultivation, use and sale of marijuana for persons 21 and older; the state and local government would regulate marijuana like alcohol and tobacco; doctors would be able to prescribe drugs to all patients, including children; public use laws could be enacted by the government as well as laws in the interest of public safety.

Interesting to see that Utah’s same sex marriage proposition (as it were) passed without the popular wording “that marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman…or some women…related or otherwise”

Good Night: 198 Bush to 188 Kerry not counting another 18 for Kerry in Oregon and Washington. Which really makes it 198 Bush to 206 Kerry.

Miles to go. Larry King, who does not need sleep because he is an ALIEN, will be still talking at breakfast and Ohio will still be uncertain. Certainly it would be easier to be a Bush supporter at this moment than a Kerry one but it could all come down to the split allocation of electoral votes in Maine. What the hell did the neighbours do, portland? On the upside, the sofa is there for you and yours, our token political refugees.

Congratulations to Ian and Tessa who singlehandledly out-Ezekiel-ed the Mennonites of Lancaster County with tales from both the Book of Mormon and sin-centrals NY/Cali, swinging to the Democrats those confused but mightily good folk who run lovely train museums.

See you in the recounts.