Thursday, April 9
In addition to the specific news about the economy, the times had a great feature on the aspect of recession that is arguably what everyone really cares about—not loss of jobs, cut wages, difficulty finding work, home foreclosure, etc, but rather the misery that these concrete difficulties create. “Recession Anxiety…” discusses the real issue, interestingly using people who aren’t economically hit by the recession.

Tuesday, April 7
When I read the international article on the L’Aquila earthquake, I was expecting to see a quote from Prime Minister Berlusconi featured by Time as quote of the day: ~“families made homeless by the earthquake ought to regard it as a weekend camping trip.” I didn’t see it in the NYTs. Assuming they were aware of that public quotation, the exclusion of it in the story says something about focusing on the angle of a story even if that means leaving out more sensational information.
The article on Bloomberg’s push-polling tactics and the responses the NYTs got from his team really shows how gross hypocrisy becomes once spin tactics are put into play. First Bloomberg’s team denies push-polling, then when confronted with the specific push-polling instance says that it is not in fact push-polling since the negative information about an opponent is accurate, without however admitting that they were responsible for the push-poll.

Monday April 6
Times had the kind of article that immediately dominates full attention – a front page story on a neuroscience breakthrough that’s every bit as much of an ethical and practical question as cloning was about nine years ago. SUNY scientists, including an apostate from Columbia, have found a way to delete memory in rats. In humans, they say applications could include kicking addiction and forgetting traumatizing memories. They also foresee discovering a method for improving memory comparable to using steroids or gene-doping, with the same moral issues attached.