The Other Chip

DANIA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith died of an accidental overdose of a sleeping medication and at least eight other prescription drugs, and she had recently had a bacterial infection from injecting drugs into her buttocks, authorities said Monday.

Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper said Smith died of "combined drug intoxication" with the sleeping medication chloral hydrate as the major factor.

She had been taking a lengthy list of medications, including methadone for pain and valium, but those drugs were at therapeutic levels, he said. A bacterial infection from injecting medication in her buttocks and the flu contributed to her death, according to the report.

Chloral hydrate is a sedative used to treat insomnia and alcohol withdrawal, relieve anxiety and ease post-surgery pain. The drug is rarely prescribed and is known to be fatal if combined with certain other drugs -- including the sedative Lorazepam, which the autopsy showed she was taking, said Dr. Chip Walls, a forensic toxicologist for the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami.  "It's very toxic if you mix it with any other central nervous system depressant drugs," Walls said. "You could get profound sedation leading up to coma and respiratory arrest."

 

I guess we're not shocked at this news today, but it's still surprising to find out what doctors think really killed her.   Guess she didn't tell her doctor or her pharmacist about all her medications.

 

Happy President's Day, everyone!

 

Today's a good day to ask this question.  Who was the best U.S. President of all time?  I suppose I could give you more help in defining what "best U.S. President" means, but I'll leave that up to you.

 

To start the conversation, I'll point you to a great page on Wikipedia that's all about lists and polls ranking the Presidents in various ways, and at various times.  Here's the link:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_
of_United_States_Presidents

 

I don't disagree with the common notion that Lincoln did more for this country as President than any other man.  Washington a close second.  But neither is my favorite President.

 

I'm a Harry Truman fan.  I just listened to David McCullough's terrific Truman biography (on CD).  The book's been out for a decade or so, and it's a great read. 

 

Truman may have been as ill-equipped for the job politically-speaking as anyone who has ever held the office.  As far as qualifications go, he would rank with Franklin Pierce (an unknown dark-horse from a small and out-of-the-way state who won the 1852 Democratic nomination on the 49th ballot) and Gerald Ford (who before 1974 had never run for election outside of his Congressional district).

 

Truman wasn't flashy; in fact, the word often used to describe him is "simple" -- or "plain".  But he was smart, he had great principles and he stuck to them.  Having to follow a giant like FDR and still carve out a legacy of his own is one of the most remarkable achievements of his life.

 

I pulled this quote from Wikipedia's entry on Truman:  "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

This is a big deal for people around Grapevine Lake. Groundbreaking ceremonies were today for a new hi-rise hotel and condo resort project on the northshore of the lake, in Flower Mound. This will be a good rival for the hugely-successful Gaylord Texan, on the south shore of the lake. Here's an artist's rendition:


For those of us who live in Flower Mound, it will be nice to see some dirt turned in the Lakeside part of town, which has some of the nicest (but emptiest streets) in North Texas.

We've had a few people tell us they're getting "Runtime Errors" when they try to access the blogs.  This has come up only in the past couple of weeks.  If you're having trouble accessing these pages, and if you're getting a Windows pop-up box that calls out "Runtime Error", here's what our developers are telling us to do:

Go to Microsoft.com and search for "Support".  Download this driver and install this on your system.

Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows XP
(KB925454)

I think this link will get you there: 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa
milyid=8B321744-B55E-4696-8B2C-B1D31672DA06&displaylang
=en

If you have your Windows XP (or Vista) system set for Automatic Windows updates, then you should have this patch already on your system, and that may be why so many of you aren't  seeing this problem.

 

 

We had a TOTAL blast this week producing the ALL ACCESS: Behind the Scenes newscast Wednesday night, and we can't wait to do it again.  Right now, the plan is to do another ALL ACCESS during Good Day in a couple of weeks, but I don't have specific details to announce yet.

For those of you who weren't watching Wednesday night, we had a triple-cast going of sorts.  There was the regular 9pm newscast on FOX 4.  Meantime, on our website, you could watch a live webcast with Steve Noviello going around showing you all the behind-the-scenes things that go into putting on a newscast.  Further, several FOX 4 staffers (including our on-air anchors) joined about 600 of you in a live chat.  It was a lot to keep up with, but it was fun.

If you didn't get to see ALL ACCESS: Behind the Scenes, do a "site search" above for the keywords "All Access".  You'll get right to a story that has the video clips attached.  (It's also on our DFW Diversions page.)

Several of you have already posted your feedback for All Access on these blogs.  If you haven't, feel free to tell us what you think, so we can make the next one better!

I'm beat, and I think I'm ready to sleep for 3 or 4 days straight.

I know some of you love our winter coverage, and some of you would just as soon see your regular favorite FOX programs. Either way, we appreciate your feedback. I spent most of my week managing the hundreds of school, business and church closings that we had to put on the air.

Winter storms are good for business though. People watch a lot of TV, and increasingly they turn to the web for the news they need. Here's how the week of winter weather affected the myFOXdfw.com blog site.

Since last Saturday morning, we've had 800 people sign up for new blogs. That's our biggest rush of new bloggers since we launched the blogs back in July. We've had more than 1,000 new blog posts, and 5,000 comments posted too. So if you haven't visited us lately, come back to myFOXdfw.com to see what your neighbors are saying.

We're going to bring back an old favorite today. The best blog in each category will get front-page exposure for the rest of the day, and into tomorrow too! And post your pictures too. It's easy to upload them into your own myFOXdfw.com photo album, and if you have just a wee bit of HTML skills, you can embed a photo into your blog text, just like many of your neighbors have learned to do this week.

We're glad you're with us! Have fun, and stay safe this weekend. I'm going to hole up with my fireplace for a couple of days.

We've got some great bloggers here, and if you look around, you'll find people trying to help other people out. Turns out, one of our loyal bloggers LambChopSushi has written a short primer on how to put photos directly into your blog, using PhotoBucket.

Check out LambChopSushi's blog, and you'll see how she's embedded photos and video clips for you to see and enjoy. For the time being, you can get to her blog on the featured News blogs list.

You can also use photos you upload directly into your myFOXdfw.com photo album. Just follow the instructions on this site to upload photos into your own album. Once the photos have been approved, you can then right-click on a particular photo, then left-click Properties for that photo.

When a little box appears, highlight the URL of that photo with your mouse, and then control-C to copy that URL code. You'll use the IMG SRC tag, and your code will look something like this. You'll paste (control-V) your URL in between the quotation marks.

(IMG SRC="http://mymedia.myfoxdfw.com/media01/Avatar/00000/5
0/00/A~NT56338_med.jpg")

The only difference is that you substitute angle-brackets < and > for the parentheses for the string above. And of course you'll substitute your own URL-string for what I wrote above. Otherwise you'll get my picture instead of the one you want.

By the way, if you use insert a photo to your blog and it's so wide that it messes up the layout of the page, add this to the end of your tag: width=400, so it would look something like this:

(IMG SRC="http://mymedia.myfoxdfw.com/yourphotohere.jpg width=400")

Remember to substitute your own URL and remember to change the ( and ) into < and >.

We're talking about that in our live segment this morning on Good Day Saturday. As soon as we get off the air, I'll write up a quick how-to for those of you who don't know how to do it. So watch this space, OK?

We in the news media get accused of crying wolf for winter weather, and so far you haven't seen much, right? But neither Ron Jackson nor I can remember the last time we had such a weather set up for an ICE STORM. We've had snow issues and sleet storms in recent years, but when was the last time we had a really bad ice storm.

I remember the New Years 1980 ice storm - the worst I've ever been through.

What can you do today?

Go back to our myfoxdfw.com homepage, and check out the safety tips. Think now -- does your family have what it needs to be safe in your home for 2 days? What if you lose power? Do you have batteries and non-perishable food?

And remember, if you get stuck (or even if you're not), blog about what's going on in your community. Are the roads clear? What are people doing right now in your neighborhood. We're here 24 hours a day!

Stay safe and have fun!

Thank you for making 2006 such a success in our new community. I wish you peace, love and all the best for 2007.

Good Saturday morning to each of you! Here's what I'll be talking about on our live blog segment at 9:45 this morning on Good Day Saturday.

First, our blog-friend Sensitivity_Training has already discovered this and blogged about it, but late last night the guys at FOX made some small changes to our website. One of those changes affects our Community pages. At the very top of all our myFOX website pages, you'll now see a tab labeled Blogs, replacing the old tab that used to say Community. Nothing else is changing for now on our blog site now, though big improvements for this site are on tap for the first couple of months in 2007.

Why make the label change? I think most people are savvy to blogs now, and so the term is more familiar. Plus "blogs" is a more descriptive, more accurate, more specific term than "community", which can mean a lot of things if you're not familiar with our site.

Now on to something else we'll talk about today.

I mentioned on my blog last week how we'd love all our bloggers (and that means YOU!) to be reporters in your own areas. Post your own news here on our blog site. We call it "hyperlocal" news. It could be a big breaking news story, like a 5-alarm fire, and perhaps you know information about the story you'd like to share with the thousands of people on this site. Or it could be something small, affecting only a few of your neighbors, like a lost dog in your neighborhood, or a nearby traffic hazard. Another good example on our blog site are the weather photos posted yesterday by chrispix. He shot some very pretty photos of fog in Rowlett yesterday morning.

So here's my challenge for you this morning. Post a blog that tells us all what's going on right now in your neighborhood or in your hometown or at your workplace or on your commute. If it's news to you, you've probably heard the slogan, it's news to us!

When you post your story, start your blog-post title with "Hyperlocal News:" and then add a specific title. For instance, here's a good title: "Hyperlocal News: Road Construction on 114". Or another: "Hyperlocal News: New Restaurant in Garland". Or something like that.

Tell us what's going on where you live!

I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings in the prior post. I wasn't knocking either of the two blog posts regarding shopping (or not) at Sears. I was only pointing out the irony in the conflict between them, and perhaps clumsily trying to make a broader point that I won't change shopping habits based on any reason that doesn't have to do directly with the basics of any economic decision: price, quality, convenience, etc.

I agree with the commenter who said there is sometimes good information to be found in chain e-mails. But I always do check snopes.com before passing any of that information on, particularly with regard to potential news stories here at FOX 4.

With all that said, let me offer you my LEAST favorite chain e-mail. We've gotten this chain sent to our Viewers Voice e-mail box viewersvoice@kdfwfox4.com at least 100 times. The e-mail is only half true at best. I'll copy the e-mail here, and then write my standard reply below.

===

Subject: Fw: Denzel Washington

Don't know whether you heard about this but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, Texas (BAMC) the other day. This is where soldiers that have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the States, especially burn victims. They have buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base but as you can imagine, they are almost completely filled most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his check book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it

The question I have is why does Alec Baldwin, Madonna, Sean Penn and other Hollywood types make front page news with their anti-everything America crap and this doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the base newspaper in San Antonio.

===

My reply:

This story is only half true. Check out this link at snopes.com for the real story.

By the way, FOX 4 did cover this story the day Denzel visited the base, which was back in December 2004. But we only told the part of the story that was true.

===

Thank goodness for Snopes.com!

Looking at the blogs today, I see two conflicting blogs about Sears posted just a few hours apart from each other.

Yesterday, "mykidzatm" reprinted parts of a chain e-mail that tells people to shop at Sears because they're supporting their employees who are reservists called up to fight the war. Click here for the link.

Last night, "dolphinchic" posted a chain e-mail telling people NOT to shop at Sears because the company is buying commercials on a cable TV network programmed for gay/lesbian viewers. Click here for the link.

My head is spinning, but thankfully I never let a single issue dictate whether I'm going to do business with a company. Sears is a huge company, and they market to the masses -- that means everyone in the community.

I don't normally shop Sears, but if they had the best of what I was looking for, at the best price, I'd be there in a minute, no matter what any chain e-mail told me to do. Likewise, I wouldn't necessarily decide to shop them just because I supported one thing they did that I liked.

By the way, we get a lot of viewer e-mails here at FOX 4, and we appreciate every one of them. But if you want to pass along a chain e-mail, you might check it out first at snopes.com to see if it's true.

One of the biggest trends in the news biz these days is called hyperlocal journalism. It's the ability to give big-time coverage to even the smallest of news stories.

Here's some examples of hyperlocal news that affects you:

1) Lost dogs and cats in your neighborhood
2) Garage sales coming up
3) Crime alerts
4) Your favorite local restaurants or other joints
5) Dangerous traffic intersections or local road construction

Next week on Good Day Saturday (9:45am on FOX 4), I'll be talking more about Hyperlocal Journalism, and how you can make news for us and for your neighbors, right here on our blog site.

For now, here's your assignment. Sign up for your own free blog (if you haven't done so already), write a paragraph or more on what's new in your neighborhood, or on your street. Big deal, little deal, there's room for every story on myFOXdfw.com.

Post photos too! You've seen the new myFOXdfw.com "News Station - Weather Nation" promos. We want to make your best weather photos a star.

Here are some cool tools to make your blogs better:

1) How to add a hyperlink to your blog:

The best bloggers will use hyperlinks to point their readers to other great stuff on the web. It's easy to add a link to your blog.

Here's an example. Check out this link. -->

Check out the world's greatest news website.

How did I do it? You just have to know the code. Here's an example, but read the paragraph immediately below.

[A HREF="http://www.myfoxdfw.com"]Check out this link.[/a]

This is the code, but I had to change a couple of key characters in order to display it for you. When you see a square-bracket [ or ] in the example above, replace it with an angle bracket < or >. So, you'll replace the 2 left [ with a left <. You'll replace the 2 right ] with a right >.

You can post links in any blog post, but you cannot post links in the comments you leave on other people's blogs.

Here's another link --> to a good resource that will help you learn more about links.

2) Did you know you can subscribe to another blogger's blog, so you can keep up with what that blogger is writing about? Look for the links at the bottom-right of each blogger's home page. Click on the e-mail link to get an e-mail every time that blogger writes a new post. Or, if you use RSS (and you should be using RSS), there's a way to monitor blogs that way too.

These are a couple of cool tools to make your blogging more fun for yourself and useful for your readers.

Keep on blogging, and please be nice to each other on this board.