Terry Cowgill

The “black box” or flight data recorder of the Air France Jet that went down way off the coast of Brazil last month is said to be some 3 to 4 miles below the surface of The Atlantic in very rugged and uneven terrain. At this point (about a month later), it’ll be a miracle if they find it.

Why don’t they design those black boxes so that they float? Seems to me it would save investigators lots of trouble and uncertainty. Would it really be that difficult to engineer and design floating black boxes?

Just asking …

If you’re one of them, you probably won’t like this quote very much.

Legendary rocker Ted Nugent (Cat Scratch Fever et al):

Ted Nugent, rock star and avid bow hunter from Michigan, was being interviewed by a French journalist, an animal rights activist. The discussion came around to deer hunting.

The journalist asked, “What do you think is the last thought in the head of a deer before you shoot him?  Is it, ‘Are you my friend?’ or is it ‘Are you the one who killed my brother’?”

Nugent replied, “Deer aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, what am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away? They are very much like the French.”

The interview abruptly ended.

Yah, Nugent’s response is a bit snarky and insulting, but it sure looks like he was provoked. I laughed for about 90 seconds after reading it.

H/T to JP.

I nearly fell off the toilet this morning and dropped my iPhone while reading his column.

Paul Krugman thinks I’m a traitor to the planet for expressing doubt that man is the leading cause of climate change (and for being opposed to the energy tax — um,  Cap-and-Trade bill — passed by The House on Friday).

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But I do know Krugman should stick to economics. He didn’t win that Nobel Prize for political commentary.

At about 6:30 pm a bolt of lightning came down from the heavens and rocked
my neighborhood like it has rarely been rocked before

Out went the lights for a out an hour. I honestly thought the bolt had struck my neighbor Art Eddy’s house.

Turns out it struck a house on Wells Hill Road. At 6 pm there were almost 30,000 customers without power in CT, according to CL&P.

Still no cable or Internet. Try blogging sometime on an iPhone. Too much work for me. As John McLaughlin would say, “Bye, bye!”

If you post an anonymous comment on this blog that threatens someone else with bodily harm, are you entitled to keep that anonymity or should I (and The Lakeville Journal Company, which hosts this blog) turn over information to the authorities that they can use to track you down and nail your ass?

That’s the question posed by a federal subpoena issued to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where an online article about the tax evasion trial of a local businessman elicited a couple of comments that implicitly threatened the jury and prosecutors.

My answer is … it depends. Context is everything. Lots of people use hyperbole about lots of different topics in the comment sections. But when your saber-rattling even hints at doing bodily harm to those charged with maintaining the integrity of the criminal justice system, then you lose your right to remain anonymous.

This is not the same thing as a journalist being forced to reveal his/her sources. I have made no promises to my anonymous commenters in return for their contributions; nor should I.

Of course, the real issue is what responsibility do websites have to police their comments? In strictly legal terms, they have little to none. Unlike the writers of letters to the editor, online commenters are legally responsible for their own words — not the media outlet itself.

But I really think if you’re going to allow comments at all, you have a moral repsonsibility to remove objectionable and potentially defamatory content. If you don’t have the resources to assign someone to perform that task, then don’t allow comments, period (as Marshall would say).

So far, I’ve managed to resist blogging about the sad case of Gov. Mark Sanford, who, during a cringe-inducing news conference yesterday, confessed to having carried on an extramarital affair after he had disappeared for several days without telling the truth to his staff about where he was going.

There was no wife standing by his side biting her lip in humiliation (she had already kicked him out of the house), but a solitary and still powerful man wiping away the tears and laying it out there for all to see.

There was something refreshing about how unscripted it appeared. He just got up there, stumbled a bit and went into a remarkable amount of detail about the most intimate aspect of his life.

Of course, there are those who take considerable delight in the hypocritical spectacle of an elected official (the second in only a few days) sympathetic to the religious right being brought down by his own moral indiscretions.

This is not unlike the glee Republicans took at the parade of candidates for cabinet posts in the Obama administration who cheated on their taxes — all those candidates being from the party that likes to lecture us about “paying our fair share.”

I guess the question now is whether Sanford can survive this. I don’t think he can. South Carolina is a deeply conservative state. My guess is he will be gone on a few weeks.

Then he can commence the grueling process of rehabbing his image and repairing the damage he’s inflicted on his family. Maybe he could get some free advice from Eliot Spitzer.

Yours truly in my first year of teaching — circa 1982. My former student, Jorge Diaz (at right), shared the photo with me on Facebook.

I think it was during a study hall. Certainly doesn’t look like I was doing much in the way of instruction.

The (Naugatuck CT) Valley Independent Sentinel ia everything we’ve been hearing about: online only, hyperlocal, multimedia, updated constantly and very solicitous of audience feedback. I wonder if (and hope) they can make a profit without a print version.

Also, here’s a really cool link (courtesy of the Newseum). Click on any dot on the map to view today’s front page of each city’s daily newspaper. It’ll be interesting to look every week at that map to see how many of those dots disappear over the next few years.

Thanks to Rick Green (a.k.a. the hardest working man at The Courant) for steering me to both these links.

I’m saddened by the death of Ed McMahon just after midnight this morning.

Ed was no stranger to this area. He had a granddaughter with special needs who attended Maplebrook School in Amenia, where I was the development director for four years.

In 2002, Ed came to Amenia to be the auctioneer for the school’s annual auction at Silo Ridge Country Club. He did a splendid job and helped us raise a lot of money. He paused often to sign autographs and have his photo taken with anyone who wanted it.

Afterwards, I congratulated him on doing such a great job for us and asked him if he’s done a lot of auctions before. He said, “No, not really. I saved Carson’s ass for 30 years. I can do an auction.”

And the comment didn’t come across as arrogant. More mater-of-fact than anything else.

I think what happens is you reach a certain stage in your career and you simply trust in your ability to cope. And cope he did …

Sympathies to his daughter Linda Schmerge, whom I got to know fairly well. Nice people.

The last pics.. AIR FRANCE Unbelievable pictures..

These photos were found in a digital Casio Z750, amidst the remains. Although the camera was destroyed, the Memory Stick was recovered. Investigating the serial number of the camera, the owner was identified as Paulo G. Muller, an actor of a theatre for children known in the outskirts of Porto Alegre. It can be imagined that he was standing during the impact with the Embraer Legacy and during the turbulence, he managed to take these photos, just seconds after the tail loss the aircraft plunged. So the camera was found near the cockpit. The structural stress probably ripped the engines away, diminishing the falling speed, protecting th electronic equipment but not unfortunately the victims. Paulo Muller leaves behind two daughters, Bruna and Beatriz.