Camarillo Springs Fire Reaches Pacific Coast Highway in Ventura County

This has been the big story on local news today. It's hot weather with Santa Ana conditions.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California wildfires: Springs fire reaches PCH in Ventura County."

More at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "Camarillo fire at 8K acres, new evacs ordered."

Reports on the Death of Blogs Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

I've been having a lengthy email exchange with David Swindle and Michael van der Galiën regarding my post the other day, "The Death of Collaboration in the Independent Blogosphere." David's the associate editor at PJ Media and Michael's a new media professional with longtime experience in the conservative blogosphere.

My essay argued that "We've still got lots of independent bloggers out there doing what the mainstream press refuses to do." I recognized the increasing professionalization of the conservatives 'sphere but indicated that blogs will continue to play the key role in alternative media and government accountability going forward. Here's how David responded:

I think there's a big intellectual divide between "bloggers" and "new media professionals." Bloggers are just hung up on the medium of blogging (a medium that is now more than 15 years old and pretty ancient.) New media professionals are people who make their living by exploring and developing new forms of media. I am a partisan of the latter temperament. Blogging is just a means to an end. It shouldn't be an end in and of itself which it is for the kinds of "independent" bloggers who are complaining now about how nobody wants to work with them and link to them anymore. (Not talking about you with that comment, Donald.) New Media professionals should be more interested in finding and developing the next media formats (right now I'm interested in e-books and apps). Preserving the blogosphere as it was in 2002 in like wanting to preserve the newspaper as a format. Time to move on to the next medium and stop fetishizing blogs and "the blogosphere."

I agreed with David for the most post, although I suggested that for all the talk of these "new media professionals" it continues to be bloggers who're among the most well-known alternative media personalities shaping the direction of traditional news reporting. Folks like Michelle Malkin, Ace of Spades HQ, and the Power Line crew are prominent examples. David and I went around a bit more then Michael chimed in:

Listen folks, there are hobbyists - people who run blogs - and there are professionals - people who work for new media organisations. The difference between all too often isn't passion, but strategy, approach, and the time they're taking for it.

As for 'blogging' as in blogging, that's - professionally - more or less dead. It's about generating news yourself, offering different kinds of 'news' (sport, culture, political, etc.), in different ways (Internet TV, written, short written, long written, apps, mobile, normal on the Net, podcasts).

If you're making a living off of this - as I do, and David does - it isn't 'blogging' anymore, it's being a member of the new media.

We all went around for a number of iterations after that. David and Michael pressed further on the "new media professionals" while I continued to hammer the vitality of blogs as watchdogs on the mainstream press.

I don't make a lot of money so I resist the "new media professional title." still, I've been blogging at a number of top conservative blogs for awhile and continue to publish occasionally at PJ Media. When Rick Moran first recruited me to PJ Media in 2008 he mentioned that I was, like him, one of the last "long form bloggers," so even at that time, 5 years ago, the nature of the form was changing.

Change is the theme Andrew "RAWMUSCLEGLUTES" Sullivan stressed in a blog post on the topic earlier this week, "The Death of Blogs? or of Magazines?":

Of course, blogs have evolved – and this one clearly has from its early days. What began as one person being mean to Maureen Dowd around 12.30 am every night is now an organism in which my colleagues and I try to construct both a personal and yet also diverse conversation in real time. But that doesn’t mean the individual blogger – small or large – is disappearing. Our entire model requires, as it did from the get-go, links to other sites and blogs – and we have not detected a shortage.

One reason we have had to grow and evolve – and this started as far back as 2003 – is that the web conversation has grown exponentially since this blog started (when Bill Clinton was president). Yes, many bloggers now get employed by more general sites, or move on to more complex forms (think of Nate Silver, a lone blogger when the Dish first championed his work and now part of an informational eco-system). But every page on the web is equally accessible as every other page. Blogs will never die – but they might form a smaller part of a much larger online eco-system of discourse.

My own view is that one particular form of journalism is actually dying because of this technological shift – and it’s magazines, not blogs. When every page in a magazine can be detached from the others, when readers rarely absorb a coherent assemblage of writers in a bound paper publication, but pick and choose whom to read online where individual stories and posts overwhelm any single collective form of content, the magazine as we have long known it is effectively over.

There's more at the link.

Sullivan is of course one of the premiere (ancient) bloggers who started fifteen years ago. He concludes by arguing that blogs have now evolved into one patch of a larger patchwork of digital forms that constitute a larger presence of web content.

For me, It's been seven years with blogs and I'll keep plugging away like a dinosaur, as long as folks are interested enough to read and link what I have to say.

And returning back to the original theme of collaborative blogging, here's TrogloPundit, "In the spirit of keeping all this blog collaboration going, I shall now coin a new word..."

I'll have more later...

Hat tip to Mark Twain on the title, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Occupy Wall Street May Day 2013

From Charles C. Cooke, at National Review, "Occupy Wall Street: 2013 Edition."

Cooke says "I found a very different group than I saw in 2011. My report is here."

Well, the Occupy goons were pretty much always warmed over communists, but hey, I need to get back out on the streets!

Anyway FWIW, at the New York Times, "Occupy Movement's Changing Focus Causes Rift."

RELATED: At the Seattle Times, "May Day of peaceful protests grows rowdier at night." Isn't it always Seattle? And on Twitter, "#WaMayDay."

'We've forgotten what abortion really is...'

From Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "Video: “We’ve forgotten what abortion really is”":

Lila Rose gets straight to the heart of why the media didn’t want to cover the Gosnell trial — and why they won’t want to cover what happens in other late-term abortion clinics, either. They don’t want to see the brutality or the inhumanity, and the culture sanitizes the horror of abortion in order to keep public opinion from turning against it. These films, and the Gosnell trial, strip the façade away...

Angry White Dude Gets Angry at Geico's Eddie Money Commercial

I'm re-posting the old Midnight Special segment of "Two Tickets to Paradise."

I'm sure AWD would rather remember old Eddie this way

See: "GEICO EDDIE MONEY COMMERCIAL – WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!"

Smokin' Mila Kunis Named FHM's 'Sexiest Woman in the World'

Well, she's definitely a looker.

At London's Daily Mail, "'She's the perfect girlfriend': Mila Kunis voted no. 1 on FHM's 100 Sexiest Women In The World list."

And at the source, "FHM 100 Sexiest Women In The World 2013: The full list."

Kelly Brooks checks in at #5. Yes!

Helen Flanagan takes the #3 spot and is Britain's top ranked sexy woman. More at Daily Mail, "So that's why! Helen Flanagan shows off her best assets in lingerie shoot to become Britain's sexiest woman."

Reports of al-Qaeda's Imminent Defeat Are Greatly Exaggerated

A great editorial, at the Wall Street Journal, "The al Qaeda Franchise Threat":

President Obama has preferred disengagement from the Middle East and South Asia to focus on "nation-building at home." One result is Middle East instability and the al Qaeda resurgence. To address these emerging problems, the Administration first needs to acknowledge them. The tide of war, to correct President Obama's other favorite line, isn't receding. It's rising.

RTWT.

Rick Perlstein, Call Your Publisher

Perlstein is the go-to author for idiot progressives attacking the GOP's alleged "racism" in the post-1968 era. It's a bunch of hokum, of course. The Democrats by that time had a 100 years of the most vile eliminationist white supremacy under their hats, and the left is nearly as racist today as it was back in its Jim Crow heyday.  But it's especially good to see political science research showing empirically that progressives like Perlstein are charlatans and liars. See Steven Hayward, at Power Line, "THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY” DEBUNKED AGAIN":

Liberals will never tire of calling conservatives racist, because it’s always a show-stopper, a way of cutting off further debate on any issue where a liberal is likely to lose. So don’t expect it to go away any time soon. (Though why Republicans aren’t better at “punching back twice as hard,” e.g., by pointing out the permanent racist legacy of the Democratic Party, noting the vote tally for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, etc., is beyond me. Another example of Republican rhetorical incompetence.)

Gerard Alexander began a thorough debunking of this theme in the Claremont Review of Books several years ago (“The Myth of the Racist Republicans“), and Sean Trende continues the job with a fine column today on RealClearPolitics, “Southern Whites’ Shift to GOP Predates the ’60s.” It’s worth reading the whole thing...

More at the link.

Hat Tip: Instapundit.

And remember, progressives are the biggest racists.

Perlstein's book is here, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.

Three More Suspects in Custody in Boston Bombing

Interesting.

At Legal Insurrection, "Boston Police: 3 more suspects taken into custody in Boston Marathon Bombing."

Updates on developments later today...

'Obama Channels Clinton’s Worst Day in Office...'

'...Raises Doubts About Relevancy,' from Ron Fournier, at National Journal, on Monday:

A president is in trouble when he’s forced to defend his relevancy, as Bill Clinton did 18 years ago, or to quote Mark Twain, as Barack Obama did Tuesday. “Rumors of my demise,” he said at a news conference, “may be a little exaggerated at this point.”

Not wrong--just “exaggerated.” Not forever--just “at this point.”

Parsing aside, Obama channeled Clinton’s April 18, 1995, news conference by projecting a sense of helplessness--or even haplessness--against forces seemingly out of a president’s control.

For Clinton, it was ascendant House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the GOP's takeover of Congress five months prior, a vote of no-confidence for the first-term Democratic president. “The president is relevant here,” Clinton insisted in the East Room.

For Obama, his nemesis is a far-less charismatic and influential House Speaker John Boehner, as well as the intense weight of structural problems that favor Washington gridlock. These include the Senate filibuster, hyper-partisan House districts, polarized media outlets, and a fast-changing electorate that is sorting itself in political tribes.

“So my question to you,” ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asked Obama, “is do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through Congress?”

Ouch. “Well, if you put it that way, Jonathan,” Obama quipped, “maybe I should just pack up and go home. Golly.” Then he quoted the humorist Twain, who famously denied his death.

More at that top link.

The Jonathan Karl query is here.

At the clip at top, Dear Leader heads back to the podium to take a question on Jason Collins, the "heroic" NBA star who came out this week. Twitchy just rips President Barebacker on that: "President calls Jason Collins, praises his courage; Slain heroes overlooked," and "Greatest orator ever? Obama says gay NBA player Jason Collins ‘can bang with Shaq’ [video]."

Freedom, Privacy, and Boston

We've lost a lot of our privacy with instant dissemination of the terror.

From Nicole Gelinas, at City Journal:

Much has been made, since the Boston Marathon bombings, of how social media have transformed policing and counterterror techniques. A less-remarked aspect of social networks is the way they have changed how individuals respond to disasters, whether man-made or natural. In particular, some who think nothing of snapping and instantly posting photos of themselves around the clock also have no compunction about snapping and instantly posting photos of the view outside their office windows or across the street during an attack or disaster. What they’re viewing and enabling others to view may be not only gruesome but also intensely personal—images of people gravely wounded or dying. Do people have the right to endure their suffering in private?

A decade ago, this problem didn’t exist. On September 11, digital cameras were still new, and uploading photos was cumbersome. Today, of course, everybody has a digital camera embedded in his phone, and it takes just seconds to send pictures around the world. Minutes after the Boston bombing, before cable news and newspapers had begun reporting it and before emergency responders had “cleared the scene,” as the euphemism goes, social-media users were already redistributing graphic photos of blood-soaked sidewalks still populated by victims with horrific injuries...

Continue reading.

Are there more abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell?

And do we want to know?

From Melinda Henneberger, at the Washington Post.

BONUS: From Kirsten Powers, at USA Today, "Gosnell's abortion atrocities no 'aberration'."

Saudi Arabia Warned About Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012

At London's Daily Mail, "Saudi official: Kingdom 'warned the United States IN WRITING about Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012 and rejected his application for an entry visa to visit Mecca in 2011'."

Boeing's Queen of the Skies Nears End of the Road

It was the glamorous jumbo jet of my childhood, now fading away.

At the Wall Street Journal, "How the Boeing 747 Got Left Behind: Boeing to Launch New Model as Drop in Air-Cargo Business Squeezes Its 747 Jet":

A drop in the global air-cargo business is hastening the decline of the 747 jumbo jet just as Boeing Co. is preparing to launch a new plane that could ultimately replace it.

With its distinctive hump and four big engines, the 747, nicknamed "the queen of the skies," has been a symbol of jet travel for much of the past four decades. But in recent years, as airlines have chosen to fly passengers in more fuel-efficient, two-engine planes, the 747 has increasingly become an aviation packhorse. Most new 747 orders have involved freight carriers, which have been weighed down by two consecutive years of recession in global air cargo.

Earlier this month, Boeing said it would cut production of the 747-8, its newest model, to 1.75 airplanes a month in 2014 from two a month now because of weaker demand for large passenger and freighter airplanes.

Since it launched the 747-8 passenger model in 2006 with a longer body and new engines in hopes of rekindling sales, Boeing has sold just 31 of them to airlines, plus another nine to VIP users. "It's a market that hasn't delivered like we'd anticipated," Randy Tinseth, Boeing's vice president of marketing, says. Meanwhile, the company has sold 70 freighter versions.

Boeing would like to keep producing 747s even as it lays plans for a new model of its twin-engine 777, which could eventually supplant the older plane. As early as this month, the Chicago company is expected to seek permission from its board to formally start selling new stretched models of the 777, dubbed the 777X, with additional lucrative under-cabin cargo space and the 747's 16-hour range.

The new 777X, often dubbed a "mini-jumbo," arriving in 2019 or 2020, will seat around 35 more passengers and fly thousands of miles farther than the first "jumbo" 747 flown by Pan American Airways in 1970.

Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney says he doesn't "see the 777X introduction cannibalizing" the 747-8 significantly because the jets are different sizes. But analysts believe the 777X will be attractive to buyers who want many of the same capabilities with more fuel efficiency.

Launched on commercial service in 1970, the 747 was widely credited with making global travel more accessible. At the time Boeing estimated that the 747 halved the cost to airlines of flying a single passenger, compared with its smaller 707. Sales boomed, with Boeing receiving more than 1,400 orders between the 747's launch in 1966 and 2005.

But economic volatility and swinging oil prices made big bets on big aircraft with four engines seem increasingly risky. Sales surged for big twin-engine jets that could fly just as far. Boeing introduced the twin-engine 777 in 1995 and added subsequent models that stretched the jet's capacity and range, cutting into 747 demand.

More at that top link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Dude Recreates '70's Pan-Am 747 in City of Industry Warehouse."

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Kristen Nicole Playmate Miss May 2013

She's lovely:

Photos here, and SFW, "Kristen Nicole - Miss May 2013."

'It takes a big man to admit when he was wrong, and Alex Seitz-Wald is a very, very small man...'

OMG, this is hilarious!

At Pamela's, "SALON TOOL ALEX SEITZ-WALD: GELLER STILL WRONG EVEN THOUGH BOSTON BOMBING WAS JIHAD."

Read it all at the link.

It's like I was saying earlier, the progressive trolls are relentless: "Salon's Geller-Obsessives Shill for Islamic Supremacy."

ZoNation: Left-Wing Ghouls and the Kermit #Gosnell Trial

"The MSM is still keeping quiet on the Kermit Gosnell abortion trial. So why is the left keeping mum on a story tailor made for prime time coverage?"

Via Theo Spark:

The left's contortion's on #Gosnell are freakin' abominable. Ed Kilgore almost knocked my socks off the other day, at the Washington Monthly, "More Phony Outrage." The ghoul argues that pro-life conservatives "don’t really care about late-term abortions other than as a lever to move public opinion away from legalized abortion generally." Someone should vacuum out that dude's brain. Gawd, what a sick f-ker.

Virgin Galactic Successful Test Flight

At Telegraph UK, "Sir Richard Branson watches Virgin Galactic spaceship's first rocket test."

Two-Year-Old Girl Gets Life-Saving Trachea Transplant Made From Her Own Stem Cells

An amazing story at today's New York Times, "Groundbreaking Surgery for Girl Born Without Windpipe":

PEORIA, Ill. — Using plastic fibers and human cells, doctors have built and implanted a windpipe in a 2 ½-year-old girl — the youngest person ever to receive a bioengineered organ.

The surgery, which took place on April 9 here at Children’s Hospital of Illinois and will be formally announced Tuesday, is only the sixth of its kind and the first to be performed in the United States. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration under rules that allow experimental procedures when otherwise the patient has little hope of survival.

Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, a specialist in the field of regenerative medicine who developed the windpipe and led the complex nine-hour operation, said the treatment of the Korean-Canadian toddler, Hannah Warren, made him realize that this approach to building organs may work best with children, by harnessing their natural ability to grow and heal.

“Hannah’s transplant has completely changed my thinking about regenerative medicine,” said Dr. Macchiarini, a surgeon at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He said he would like to proceed with a clinical trial in the United States, something that critics of his approach have called for.

Hannah was born without a windpipe, or trachea — an extremely rare condition that is eventually fatal in 99 percent of cases — and had lived since birth in a newborn intensive care unit in a Korean hospital, breathing through a tube inserted in her mouth. Because of other developmental problems, she cannot eat normally and cannot speak.

Nearly three weeks after the surgery, the girl is acting playfully with her doctors and nurses, at one point smiling and waving goodbye to a group of visitors. Dr. Mark Holterman, a pediatric surgeon at the hospital, said that Hannah was breathing largely on her own, although through a hole in her neck, not through her mouth yet. “She’s doing well,” he said. “She had some complications from the surgery, but the trachea itself is doing great.”

Dr. Macchiarini described a look of befuddlement on the child’s face when she realized that the mouth tube was gone and she could put her lips together for the first time. “It was beautiful,” he said.

The goal of regenerative medicine, or tissue engineering, is to create or regrow tissues and organs to ease transplant shortages or treat conditions that do not have an effective cure. After years of scant progress, tissue engineers have begun to make advances as they have gained a better understanding of the role that stem cells — basic cells that can become tissue-specific ones — play in signaling the body to grow and repair itself...

To make Hannah’s windpipe, Dr. Macchiarini’s team made a half-inch diameter tube out of plastic fibers, bathed it in a solution containing stem cells taken from the child’s bone marrow and incubated it in a shoebox-size device called a bioreactor.

Doctors are not sure exactly what happens after implantation, but think that the stem cells signal the body to send other cells to the windpipe, which then sort out so the appropriate tissues grow on the inside and outside of the tube. Because the windpipe uses only the child’s own cells, there is no need for drugs to suppress the patient’s immune system to avoid rejection of the implant.

Continue reading.

Kelly Andrews at Egotastic!

A lovely British glamour model out of Liverpool.

See: "Kelly Andrews White Lace Body Suit Striptease."