Not Necessarily the News: This article in Time magazine is causing something of a stir. It's an evaluation of anti-terrorist activities and strategy before and since 9/11. In typical Time magazine fashion, it is all bombast and drama; filled with dire warnings and defeatist allusions. Note the breathless title: Can We Stop the Next Attack?

Apart from the revelation that some folks in the intelligence community had strong suspicions that someone had a nuke in NY last October, the upshot of the whole article is that some things must change in our security strategy to better combat future terrorism and that no matter what we do we will never be certain that we are safe.

File that under D for "Duh."

This is to be expected from a publication as vapid as Time magazine, but the thing that amazes me is how the author builds a what seems to be a powerful and significant article from what may be the most obvious concept imaginable. Believe it or not, there are times I wish I had that talent. I'm struggling to come up with a topic for a new feature for this place. There are lots of concepts that come to me but I reject them if I don't think I can generate anything of informational or entertainment value. My life would be so much easier if I could just take whatever minor, commonplace idea that comes to me and expand it into some extended blather that carries a tone of weighty social and political importance.

But no. I must suffer for my art.

Similarly, The Guardian, a British news rag, recently stationed some clogged-sphinctered Euro-snob at an Olive Garden restaurant in Alabama from whence he waxed ignorant about the food, the state, U.S. international policy and everything else that occurred to him that wasn't properly European. Thoroughly obnoxious. I'd link the abomination up, but weblogger James Lileks published a withering dismantling of it that is much superior to the original article.

My respect for the press these days has dropped from minimal to just about zero.