And Still I Persist

A few days ago, I asked for comments on what you thought the media did wrong or could have done better in covering the San Diego fires. Several of you have taken the time to respond, either via private e-mail or by posting comments. Sad to say, the comments tended to be largely uniform and largely negative. Since this posting is rather length, I’ve placed all the comments after the jump (click on ‘Read the article’ to see them). If you have comments of your own that you’d like to make, feel free to attach them to this post.

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This one is a goodie. I am trying to figure out if someone is being serious here or if this is just a really good joke about the pot-bellied transvestite Elvis impersonator who is running North Korea.

It includes such notables as:

Korea is well on the way to the great national reunification under the wise leadership of Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il, as the south Koreans, yearning deeply for the Leader of Mt. Paektu born on the Sacred Mountain, defy the bad brutal brigandish Yankee colonialist oppressors to launch the joint train operations between North and south, reports the Korean Central News Agency

And even bonus videos of North Korean propganda. As a long time student of Korea and a careful watcher of the insane government in North Korea, this site is an amazing resource.

When this happened it was far less interesting than what we were covering here, but this one was quite alarming to me.

From the Federal Times:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s deputy administrator, Harvey Johnson, had an unusually friendly audience at an Oct. 23 news briefing on his agency’s response to the California wildfires: his own spokesmen.

As a result, Johnson took questions like, “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?” from agency spokesmen Mike Widomski, Cindy Taylor, Pat Philbin and Ali Kirin.

First off, FEMA has been rather creepy for a while, even more so since Katrina. Secondly, we now come to find out that the person who concocted and executed this stunt was in line to be the press secretary for the Director of National Intelligence:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The man who staged a fake Federal Emergency Management Agency news conference concerning the Southern California wildfires has lost a chance to be National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell’s top public information officer.

John P. “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s external affairs director, who had been scheduled to move into the new job today, will not be getting it after last week’s phony news conference. The staged question-and-answer session was harshly criticized by both the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose department oversees FEMA.

The last thing the intelligence community needs is a self aggrandizing BS artist anywhere near it. Perhaps this guy should send his resume to Kim Jong Il, it seems more in line with their government than ours.

First off, I would like to thank everyone for the mountains of praise and complements on our coverage of the fires in San Diego last week. It was a large amount of work, but I think it really helped everyone, including myself, understand what was going on. Several folks have expressed interest in how and why my efforts to map and visualize the fire came about. A discussion of “Sources and Methods” after the jump.

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Morgan Davis, an old friend of mine, sent me a link to photos that he snapped as the Harris Fire was roaring over Mt. Miguel in southeast San Diego County last week. Here are a few of the photos:

And here’s his description of the photos on his site, as well as a link to a map that Morgan made indicating what you’re looking at and from what direction. ..bruce w..