{"id":3447,"date":"2009-06-04T11:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T18:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3447"},"modified":"2009-06-04T11:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T18:43:00","slug":"thursday-news-chum-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3447","title":{"rendered":"Thursday News Chum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For some reason, finding good news chum this week has been harder than finding a solvent US-headquartered automobile company. But I know my audience, and did find a few things worth commenting over a few days of skimming the news over lunch:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>From the \u201c<b>Maybe We Need A Part-Time Legislature<\/b>\u201d Department:<\/i> I\u2019ve commented on this before: our state legislators seem far too eager to introduce bills, without realizing that each bill costs money&#8230; and so, one significant way that California could save money is probably by making the legislators get real jobs. Two articles this week highlighted that for me: The first was a story from the SLO local paper about how there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sanluisobispo.com\/news\/local\/breaking_news\/story\/738451.html\" target=\"_blank\">a bill in the assembly to make pseudoephedrine prescription only<\/a>. Yes, I\u2019m aware of its use to make meth. But it is also one of the few effective decongestants out there, and it already requires a log to get, with quantity limitations. Prescriptions will just make it more expensive, with respect to doctor charges. On the state Senate side, there\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/taxdollars.freedomblogging.com\/2009\/06\/02\/controversial-spay-neuter-bill-passes-in-senate\/22205\/\" target=\"_blank\">a bill regarding mandatory spay and neutering<\/a>. Now, I\u2019m all in favor of having animals spayed and neutered, but according to the AKC, this bill is unnecessary.  When you look at <a href=\"http:\/\/leginfo.ca.gov\/bilindex.html\" target=\"_blank\">all the bills introduced<\/a>, and look at <a href=\"http:\/\/leginfo.ca.gov\/bilinfo.html\" target=\"_blank\">the specifics of the interesting ones<\/a>, you wonder how much of our current fiscal problems come from the legislator feeling they need to do something to justify their salaries.\n<li><i>From the \u201c<b>It\u2019s an Original<\/b>\u201d Department:<\/i> Playbill brings news that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.playbill.com\/news\/article\/129842-Valley_Girl_Movie_Musical_Will_Be_Directed_by_Shrek%27s_Jason_Moore\" target=\"_blank\">the 1983 film comedy \u201cValley Girl\u201d is being turned into a movie musical<\/a>. There are also plans to make <a href=\"http:\/\/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/03\/the-morning-feed-60\/\" target=\"_blank\">a movie based off of \u201cStretch Armstrong\u201d<\/a>&#8230; yes, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stretch_Armstrong\" target=\"_blank\">the toy<\/a>. This has led some to argue about <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/the_big_picture\/2009\/06\/can-ishtar-the-musical-be-far-away.html\" target=\"_blank\">the dearth of original movies, and how there are too many remakes of recent movies<\/a>.  However, just as with theatre, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theproducersperspective.com\/my_weblog\/2009\/03\/in-defense-of-the-screen-to-stage-adaptation.html\" target=\"_blank\">being original does not guarantee success<\/a>. What we need is not necessarily original movies or theatre, but movies or theatre from <i>good<\/i> sources. There are plenty of excellent <u>books<\/u> out there that could be well adapted, but this would require that folks actually read books. Perhaps that\u2019s too much to ask.\n<li><i>From the \u201c<b>Teach Your Children<\/b>\u201d Department:<\/i> Sorta related to conclusion of the last item&#8230; Viacom is <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/entertainmentnewsbuzz\/2009\/06\/my-entry.html\" target=\"_blank\">discontinuing Nick Magazine<\/a>, because of the usual problems with print media. It seems that kids these days don\u2019t read&#8230; and don\u2019t buy from advertisers. Soon, the only successful kids magazines might be the ones that don\u2019t have ads (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cricketmag.com\/ProductDetail.asp?pid=5\" target=\"_blank\">Ladybug<\/a>). I\u2019m not holding Nick Magazine as a paragon of great writing (it is more in the category of great marketing), but its death does say something about these shill magazines. I wonder what the future holds for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodnetwork.com\/food-network-magazine\/package\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">the Food Network magazine<\/a>.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some reason, finding good news chum this week has been harder than finding a solvent US-headquartered automobile company. But I know my audience, and did find a few things worth commenting over a few days of skimming the news over lunch: From the \u201cMaybe We Need A Part-Time Legislature\u201d Department: I\u2019ve commented on this <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=3447\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,1],"tags":[459,138,273],"class_list":["post-3447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-chum","category-lj-xfer","tag-books","tag-california","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}