On the heels of my “what’s wrong with newspapers” post, starting September 1st, both the Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I will raise their price to 75 cents from 50 cents for the daily (non-Sunday) paper.

From Downsizing the News And Pretending to Increase Quality :

During the past few years, newspaper owners demanded and were getting at 20–40 percent profit, among the highest for any industry–and that includes Big Oil.

Go to any journalism conference, and you’ll see a lot of hand-wringing. Reporters and editors are whining about how bad it is. They rightly blame owners and publishers. But, they also blame readers for accepting abbreviated news drops from TV and myriad cable networks. They whine about the Blogosphere and Internet domination. They complain about the short attention span of their readers. It’s this and it’s that. And so, with the help of $500 an hour consultants who eruditely harrumph their grandeur of divine guesses, they make cosmetic changes.

The system is broken, and it’s the owners’ fault.

According to the Wall St. Journal , "Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.’s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld," a stodgy oldster who appears mainly in reruns of a TV show that began 19 years ago and ended 10 years ago.

He will be paid $10 million as part of a $300 million ad campaign that promotes Windows Vista.  Story also reported in the Seattle P-I .

From not just NBC ("Nothing But Commercials"), but also the usually far superior CBUT Canadian broadcast. Are men’s beach volleyball or traditional indoor gym volleyball Olympic events?

Quicker than reading lamelist, scan the “wordle” of my most recent posts to absorb the latest lameness. Looks way better than your usual word cloud.  Create your own wordle here.

An update on my post about Ed McMahon’s house going into foreclosure .  Donald Trump has come to McMahon’s rescue as reported by traditional news media here , here and here plus in this unsympathetic post that is more in tune with my thoughts on the issue.

Articles note that the 85-year old McMahon has returned to work. Not reported is whether McMahon is now a Wal-Mart style greeter at some Trump property.

In The Mystery of the Dangerous Flying Bats , Popular Woodworking magazine looks at why baseball bats break more than they used to.

Is it due to using a different type of wood?  No, bats break because current players prefer longer, lighter bats with thinner handles and a "bigger business end."

And to make the handles thinner, some players are shaving them. Can’t you imagine the MLB clubhouse equipped with a Brian Boggs shavehorse and set of spokeshaves ?

Given these guys probably lack much woodworking know-how, I have this mental image of the rookie hearing about shaving the handle to improve his performance. I see this kid with his bat all lathered up and his razor stropped and ready to shave. That cracks me up!

Stranded by a management-union dispute, my family had a sleep over in the airport as a result of United AIrlines pilots "sick out " canceling our flight.  Pilots were calling in sick in "retaliation to the airline’s plan to reduce its fleet size and furlough pilots" according to Aviation Week .

The pilots may think they are so clever for "sticking it" to management, but instead were "sticking it" to paying customers. After paying outrageously high airfare for a 3-day trip to a family reunion, we arrived a day late. We tried calling it a "sleep-over" and "camping" to generate some fun for our 4-year old son. He bought into it for about 15 minutes.

I have no symphathy for the pilots who use strong arm tactics where the customers incur the pain.  Plus, it even calls attention to the fact that they make more money than I do.  Trying to avoid layoffs?  Only aged professors have tenure.  Maybe there will be more layoffs after people stop flying United like the all the stranded people waiting in the customer service line for 2 hours with us claimed they would do.

Mailinator is simply awesome. Useful for all those lame websites and companies that want your email address. Mailinator provides a disposable email address. This is a nifty email companion to my recent entry about how having a fake name comes in handy.  Mailinator and fake name generator are both free.

The lawlessness continues in Belltown in another article about troubles in Belltown, a neighborhood of downtown Seattle. The final sentence is the best part:

All this in a part of town with million-dollar condos, foie gras and a brand new motto: "Come to Belltown, Get your bell rung."