news

The school year hasn’t even begun, yet threats of violence are already stalking the hallways of our nations schools.

Police in Ardmore, Oaklahoma believe they may have thwarted a violent start to the school year in their community. The Huntsville Times is reporting that police have placed a 16-year-old boy into custody following a raid by Ardmore police. Police say the raid turned up a “book of hate” that contained threats to attack teachers and students. The raid also turned up numerous weapons including swords and knives.

The Ardmore police chief described the high school youth behind the plot as a “loner” who was attempting to recruit other students to target teachers, students, the school crossing guard and the school resource officer. A boy who told his parents of the violent plan, turned in the teen plotter.

Statistics show violence in our schools is actually down.

Despite the news of threats of violent crimes in the nations public schools, Government statistics released by the National School Safety Center in 2006 show violent crime in schools has actually been on the decline. In fact, your child is safer at school than they are away from school. And while statistics illustrate that school violence may be on the wane, the percentage of students who reported gang activity in their schools was on the rise.

Keeping your children safe at school.

What can you do to keep your child safe? The school and youth violence prevention program “America’s Front Line Against Crime,” has some common sense advice for parents and educators worried about school crime and violence. Their 4-step program recommends keeping your kids involved in afterschool activities, providing access to child care programs for all children, identifying troubled and disruptive children at an early age and prevention of child abuse at home paired with counseling for deficient and high-risk parents.

Can you text and chew gum at the same time? The doc at the local emergency room has his doubts.

According to The American College of Emergency Room Physicians, the elite practitioners that have the privilege of doing everything from removing cell phones in places they shouldn’t be to complaints from toddlers with excess bellybutton lint, it’s time to become concerned about the dangers of “text walking.”

We’ve all seen it firsthand, and maybe, just maybe, you’re guilty of it too. Text walking is the indelicate balance of texting on your cell phone and navigating from point A to point B without looking like a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner pinging off walls, people, parking meters and sometimes Mack Trucks.

The good doc’s at ACEP have seen a big uptick in injuries resulting from text walking, ranging from pedestrians stumbling into oncoming traffic to facial lacerations from tripping over your own two feet. Although text walking may have its comical moments, the ER doctors say it’s no laughing matter. There has been at least one reported death attributed to text walking when a man was killed, distracted by his cell phone as he crossed the street.

This new warning from the American College of Emergency Room Physicians is being released, as kids get ready to head back to school. The ER doctors are afraid that there could be a flurry of text walking injuries involving returning students as they catch up with their friends sending and receiving critically important OMG’s and TTYL’s.

You think this is just an American problem? Oh contraire. According to emergency physician Dr. Paul Walsh: “In Ireland, the government developed advertising specifically targeted at teens for this very reason.” The problem is so bad in urban environments here in the good ol’ USA; the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the Sate of Illinois wants to enact a new bill that aims to ban texting or talking on the phone while crossing the streets. In Chicago you could get slapped with a misdemeanor and a $25 fine for walking and using a wireless device while crossing the street. Wonder if that covers GPS too?

It’s doubtless that scurrying urbanites are going to realistically change their text walking habits. It’s just so important that we catch up on the gossip about who’s gonna’ win American Idol and the hygiene habits of Suzy at the Starbucks. With much bravado and chicklet fingered confidence, we’ll boldly proclaim with chest thrust forward in triumphant defiance: “That cross-town bus won’t dare turning me into road kill!”

The ER doctors would just like us to pay more attention to our surroundings. They’re used to seeing us in the emergency room with marbles stuck up our nose or complaining that we have a yellow jaundice tinge to our body parts, only to point out we’ve been eating cheetos without washing before we rubbed our “nose.” Happy texting everyone.

I’ve abandoned the world of television. It’s been about six months now since I’ve given up the burden of paying for and watching brainless TV. Of course, if there is a TV show or a movie that I absolutely have to or wanna watch, there’s always Netflix or torrents. But the one thing I really pined over and truly felt that I might be missing, although this too may be just something I convinced myself of, is watching TV news. Of course you can always read the news on-line, still there is something easy and dare I say fulfilling about watching television news.

So how do I get my video news fix without TV? Video podcasts. Two of the ‘big’ broadcast networks. ABC and NBC both offer video podcasts of the nightly news. ABC’s feed is hands down the best. ABC produces a separate podcast feed especially for the the web with Charlie Gibson. Gibson is friendly and personable while maintaining an authoritative news presence. The ABC feed is available every day at about 4ish Eastern Time and again updated around 7 or 8. The feed contains elements especially produced for the podcast including a Google segment. Although I subscribe to the NBC feed, I find myself almost never watching it. The newscast is a feed of the recorded nightly news and unfortunately isn’t available until sometime after 10pm ET. So by the time I get around to watching it, it’s usually the next day. The NBC feed is almost an automatic delete the following day. NBC also offers a weekly podcast of “Meet the Press” in its entirety. ABC makes available the Sunday morning roundtable “This Week,” if you can handle the no-talent, ponderous George Snuffleupagus.

CNN offers a couple of interesting feeds. By far my personal favorite is “In Case You Missed It.” This podcast is news stories cut together as a vignette, without a talking head. Kind of a “produced” raw feed. Usually there are one or sometimes two daily feeds of “In Case You Missed It.” The other CNN feed I use is “Now in the News.” These podcasts are usually around 3 minutes, updated every few hours and are produced much like “CNN Headline News.”

On the international front, Sky News offers a couple of different podcasts. After subscribing to a few of them, I’ve paired it down to just one: “Sky News Headlines Update.” Very similar to the “Now in the News” CNN feed, but from a Brit perspective with both international news headlines and news from the UK. Well worth the subscription. By far, My favorite podcast subscriptions for news come from Link TV. Link offers a few news related podcasts including: “Mosaic,” “Mosaic Intelligence Report” and “Global Pulse.” “Mosaic” is an insightful program with news reports from numerous MIddle East broadcasters in a half-hour format. I highly recommend it. “Mosaic Intelligence Report” is Middle East broadcast reports with commentary and dare I say, sometimes unnecessary opinion. The excellent “Global Pulse” reports on news stories from a perspective of numerous international broadcasters. It’s informative and telling to see how different countries and broadcasters report on the same story. “Global Pulse is by far my favorite news podcast.

Here’s my “short list” of recommended video podcast feeds, formatted for iTunes subscriptions, of course:

• ABC World News Tonight
• NBC Nightly News
• Meet The Press
• CNN In Case You Missed It
• CNN Now in the News
• Sky News Headlines Update
• Mosaic
• Mosaic Intelligence Report
• Global Pulse

If you’ve got any other suggestions for video news podcasts that you think are worthwhile, please share em’.

Being unemployed, needless to say, can be a real drag. I mean, how much time in a day can you spend looking for work. After a while, it just becomes relentless. So to find just a little bit of a creative outlet for my splendiferous broadcasting talents, I decided to whip up a little newscast this morning. Oh I just love having editorial control!

A short history… of the site, not necessarily me.

Johnford.net started quite a few years ago as the now defunct radiosurfer.com. Radiosurfer was a radio news portal patterned after the macsurfer.com site. But, instead of the news being geared towards the Apple fan-boy’s, it was radio intensive. Essentially a links and commentary site highlighting the latest news in the world of corporate and not so corporate radio broadcasting. Radiosurfer lasted a few years, but in the end, it was all just too much damn work for very little return. Other sites have popped up to take it’s place, including the excellent radio news and industry site allaccess.com. Unfortunately, the niche wasn’t completely filled, and there really isn’t a ‘one stop’ radio news portal supplying links to the other radio news sites. Radiosurfer was pretty handy, but sorry, it’s gone.

About this time I got the bright idea of using my personal domain as a blog. Over the years, johnford.net swung from a site primarily about radio and media, to a singer-songwriter/americana music links and commentary site, and eventually becoming just my personal blog, with commentary, inane and often insane ramblings on whatever strikes my mind. The archives could go back quite a bit further than are currently listed, and there are thousands more postings on my old movable type blog. However, importing them all is just more damn trouble than it’s worth.

So what do you get here? Basically me. My thoughts, songs, poetry, photography, etc… It’s a continuing work in progress to get things up and running again after almost a couple of years of letting the site flounder in the wings. Where will the site go next? God only knows. But thanks for stopping by and visiting. I do promise to be more vigilant in the future about keeping the site more up to date. Feel free to contact me by shooting me an email using the form below if you have any questions or just want to say hi!

Here’s some other places you can find me on the Net:

• Suite 101
• Associated Content
• Bright Hub
• FaceBook
• MySpace

You can contact me using the form below:

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