Miki Report

Miki (our new field spaniel puppy) is now 13 weeks old. He’s visibly larger, and I’d estimate he now wieghs 20 pounds. His shape is also visibly changing — he’s transforming from the chubby little puppy we picked up three weeks ago into an adult male dog. I meant to get some pictures yesterday, but events overtook us. I’ll try again today…

Yesterday evening we had a “first": Miki got into a boisterous play session with our two adult field spaniels. With Lea (our adult female) the play was especially intense; Mo’i (our adult male) mostly tagged along behind. We were watching a movie when this play session began, but we had to pause the movie because of the doggy din — it was loud! All three of the dogs were having a lot of fun, but little Miki was having the time of his life. He zoomed around the room, dove under furniture, yapped his fool head off, and “attacked” the adult dogs head-on, fearlessly. Between his fierce puppy barks and his endless antics, he had the human observers rolling around the floor, laughing their fool heads off. Debbie loved the moments when Miki would catch sight of her (sitting on the floor), and would bound into her lap for a moment of caressing — before he rocketed off after Lea or Mo’i one more time. I particularly enjoyed seeing Lea (who is our oldest dog) leaping and playing like a fantastically agile puppy…

Steyn on the NSA

The always-observant Mark Steyn notes that the lamestream media is (a) quick to criticize the government after a successful terrorist attack, and (b) quick to criticize the government’s attempts to prevent terrorist attacks. He points out that they seem to have two templates ready for instant use:

From “To connect the dots, you have to see the dots” by Mark Steyn:

Template A (note to editors: to be used after every terrorist atrocity): “Angry family members, experts and opposition politicians demand to know why complacent government didn’t connect the dots."

Template B (note to editors: to be used in the run-up to the next terrorist atrocity): “Shocking new report leaked to New York Times for Pulitzer Prize Leak Of The Year Award nomination reveals that paranoid government officials are trying to connect the dots! See pages 3,4,6,7,8, 13-37."

As the Instapundit would say, read the whole thing!

Of course this kind of “reporting” has an effect, and it’s not exactly a subtle one. The majority of Americans get their news from sources using Mr. Steyn’s templates (on all political stories, not just the NSA datamining). Darned few bother to look under any other rocks…

You might well ask what I believe would be the right response from the media in these circumstances. Glad you asked! What they really should do, if they’re positioning themselves as news sources, is to report the facts — without editorializing by omission, without selecting what to investigate by some agenda of their own, and without cherry-picking “facts” to support positions they endorse. Mr. Steyn’s “templates” are, I believe, symptoms of the biased lamestream media.