WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF

A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may be on Friday:

Lines at Hooters Inner Harbor Restaurant spilled out the door as Keith Urban performed on a floating stage in place of Ravens’ home opener.

•  DISASTER IN DENVER:  BRONCOS DESTROY RAVENS IN SEASON OPENER AS HOOTERS OVERFLOWS

Hooters at the Inner Harbor had a line out the door from 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday as country singer Keith Urban soothed Ravens fans, whose home opener was moved to Denver because of a scheduling conflict. But it wasn’t enough to keep quarterback Peyton Manning from tying an NFL passing record and the Broncos from scoring the most points ever allowed by the Baltimore team with a 49-27 win. The Orioles won though, 3-1.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun | Washington Post

•  MARYLAND CASINOS BRING IN $71 MILLION IN AUGUST

Maryland’s four casinos raked in $71 million in August, nearly three-quarters of it from the largest casino on the East Coast, Maryland Live! The Arundel Mills hotspot brought in $53 million for the month, $20 million more than in August 2012.

Read More at:  WBAL-TV Channel 11

•  BALTIMORE POLS SEEK $3 MINIMUM WAGE HIKE

Raising Maryland’s minimum wage by nearly $3 an hour will be Baltimore’s top issue at next year’s General Assembly session, the chairman of the city delegation said at a news conference Thursday at City Hall.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun

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Cable TV plans give viewers more choices than they need.

Would anyone buy a full course meal at lunchtime
if all they wanted was a bowl of soup & crackers?
 
By David Maril
 
New cable stations and networks are being created all the time.

Fox is adding a sports channel. ESPN keeps expanding its empire as its competition grows and is concerned enough to have even brought the unstable Keith Olbermann back to boost ratings.

Al Jazeera America has been launched, adding to the intensity of the 24-hour cable news mentality.

The commercials permeate the TV airwaves fast and furiously promoting the advantages of having cable or satellite service.

All promise digital clarity and hundreds of channel choices.

There’s one big option missing, however. None of the pay television services allow you the privilege to order only what you want. You are restricted to selecting from an assortment of programming packages with flashy and misleading names like premium, gold, platinum, expanded basic and economy.

The cable and satellite providers advertise low monthly fees to get you to sign up. However, those basic packages have a lot of stations but few of the popular selections many of us want. Once you begin examining the stations included in these economy packages, the realization is that you will also have to pay for many offerings you don’t want just to receive the one channel or two you are seeking.

Read more »

 
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may be on Friday:
 

Mississippi riverboat Delta Queen at Paducah, Kentucky

The Liberty Belle, which operated in Philadelphia before being drydocked in Baltimore, was auctioned off Thursday in Canton by Alex Cooper Auctioneers.

Read More at:  Maryland Daily Record

•  U.S. MILITARY HAS DEEP DOUBTS ABOUT AMERICAN STRIKE ON SYRIA; BRITAIN DEMURS

The generals are questioning the impact and wisdom of American intervention in Syria, as the British Parliament tells P.M. David Cameron: no go. Meanwhile the New York Times is reporting that President Obama plans to move ahead with a limited strike anyway.

Read More at:  Washington Post | Wall Street Journal | New York Times

•  ACCUSER’S CREDIBILITY QUESTIONED IN NAVAL ACADEMY SEX ASSAULT CASE

Defense attorneys for three Naval Academy football players accused of sexually assaulting a female midshipman last year while she was passed out at an Annapolis party raised questions Thursday about her credibility and motives.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun

•  BALTIMORE POLICE GET $500K IN GRANTS TO REDUCE DNA PROCESSING BACKLOG

Maryland U.S. Senators Barbara A. Mikulski and Ben Cardin announced the windfall.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun

Read more »

Typical email sent by columnist, with response by computer-age VoB editor.

Name abbreviation equals
poor communication
in the extreme

‘I.P.’ WRITTEN FOR VoB BY ‘D’
 
By David Maril
 
The more sophisticated we become with communication technology the more primitive and impersonal our messaging seems to be.

Emailing and texting have grown into the preferred way of communicating among people often just sitting just a few feet apart.  Now, fueled by the obsession of texting, while driving or doing something else that should require full attention, a style of typing-shorthand is replacing the written word.

Critics from older generations have been complaining for years that kids today no longer learn how to write anything out by hand or finish a complete sentence. Pens, pencils and paper have become obsolete.

But the shift is more drastic than that. It’s to the point where few words even need to be spelled out anymore. In the interest of speed and haste, everything is a candidate for abbreviation.

It started with cutting down on the letters in words. Now, even names are shortened.

An amazing number of emailers sign their messages just using the first letter of their first names. On any given day, you can hear from T., W., S., C., J. or even A. If you receive a thank-you message from L., you may also get a  “tks” — for thanks — if lucky.

Granted, this letter-for-names trend had been introduced by characters on popular television shows. Years back,  the Baltimore-based “Homicide: Life On the Street” character Al Giardello (played by Yaphet Kotto) was called “G”.  On “CSI: Miami” David Caruso’s Horatio Caine was “H.”

One problem, of course, is that you may know several people who have first names that begin with the same letter.

OK, maybe it’s too much to ask people to spend time actually writing out their names. But would it be too much, or too time-consuming, to use two or three initials? Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear from a computer-age JFK or FDR?

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Little League baseball players are 12 years old and younger.

PRESSURE  ON  PREPUBESCENT  ATHLETES,
EXPLOITATION BY CORPORATIONS & TV
IS UNHEALTHY  AND  UNCALLED FOR

‘Winning is the only thing’
is  being  taught  to  kids
at way too young an age
 
By David Maril
 
Nothing epitomizes the dog days of August more than the arrival of the Little League Baseball World Series, one of the most unworthy national — make that International — sports events of the year.

And the funny thing is over the years famous big-time national sportscasters, such as Brent Musburger, known derisively by many fans as Gushburger, continually sing the praises of how wonderful and American it is having 12-year-old kids in clean, snappy baseball uniforms playing under pressure in a 40,000-seat stadium at South Williamsport, Pa.

ESPN and ABC have televised the Little League World Series games for years. And the list of baseball announcers who have broadcast these games is quite impressive. Baltimore Orioles’ voices Gary Thorne and Jim Palmer have done Little League duty over the years. Other well-known announcers include Al Michaels and the late Jim McKay and Curt Gowdy.

It’s amazing in these days of so much concern about participation, everyone playing and not putting too much pressure on young athletes, the Little League World Series seems above criticism.

Oh, occasionally there will be controversy or insinuations about a pitcher or key player being older than officially listed. Back in 2001, the series was  scandalized when it was discovered Bronx, N.Y. pitcher Danny Almonte was 14 instead of 12.  Almonte’s team was forced to forfeit its third-place finish.

In most years anytime there is a dominating pitcher who looks mature for his age, insinuations are made about inefficient registration procedures and teams getting away with using players who are too old and having an unfair advantage.

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