A nice musical detail from the film, Inception.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know that a grainy recording of Edith Piaf singing “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” is used as a cue for the dreamers. You also know that while dreaming, time slows down.

With that in mind, it turns out that the throbbing musical sting we hear throughout the movie is that original piece of music… slowed down.

In the opening segment (embedded below), I spoke with a group of high school students from San Francisco about how they think about health: what are they concerned about? Who do they trust for info? How would they raise a healthy teen?

With the help of partner stations and freelance reporters, I also collected answers to the same questions from teens across California, and built an embeddable Flash interactive to showcase their responses. I think the content turned out well. Hopefully, we can use the module as a template for further projects.

When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.

Here’s a cool visual cut-up to go along with Burroughs’ “Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups.” In the recording, Burroughs explains the theory behind his method of rearranging text to make new meaning (or perhaps expose hidden meanings) out of the text. Burroughs finishes with an early example of audio cut-ups, produced by British artist Brion Gysin.

It’s cool to see artists from different eras interacting with each other and exploring the same concepts using vastly different technologies.

From the announcement:

The PASS Awards (Prevention for a Safer Society) is the only national recognition of print and broadcast journalists, TV news and feature reporters, producers, writers, and those in film and literature who try to focus America’s attention on our criminal justice, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems in a thoughtful and considered manner.

The show was produced live from San Francisco General Hospital, and featured interviews that I recorded with host Scott Shafer at San Quentin State Prison. The first hour focused on inmate health care, and the second hour focused on juvenile justice and mental health.

Hour One: Inmate Health Care

Hour Two: Juvenile Justice and Mental Health

enjoy your Friday.

I had the fortune of producing the radio news on KQED this morning. We had two reporters in D.C. who called in to give us a feel for what it was like on the ground.

This first piece of audio is this morning’s The California Report. Scott Shafer called in from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, as thousands of people streamed into the area for the inauguration ceremony.

And here is part of the 6:30am Northern California news break, with this morning’s host, Sarah Varney, speaking with reporter Tamara Keith, who was also on location in D.C.

These reports aired a couple of hours before the ceremony, so there wasn’t much in the way of hard news to report. But it was fun to get a sense for the anxious atmosphere.

UPDATE: Check out this series of photos of the inauguration from around the world.

I was there in mid-February, while the new pups were weaning, and took some photos.

Use the arrows or thumbnails to navigate the images. Mouse over a photo to hear audio.

(In response, my family has subsequently promised Kate a wonderful waterboarding experience for the holidays…)

I put together a narration of the experience with a couple photos, below.

Enjoy.

Since 1996, the FCC has continued on its course of deregulating media ownership. In 2003, the agency attempted its most dramatic deregulation yet, allowing cross-media ownership. That is, owning broadcast and print media within the same local market. But after a federal court struck down many of the deregulations (and the Supreme Court refused to hear multiple appeals), the FCC was told to revisit its reasoning behind relaxing its media ownership rules.

Now, the FCC appears to be ready to try this again. Chairman Kevin J. Martin has announced that he wants a vote on cross-media deregulation in the next two months.

The last time the FCC tried this, it was flooded with 3,000,000 public comments against the rule change, it went ahead with it anyway and a federal court threw out the new rules.

What will happen this time?

More on:
FCC’s new plans for deregulation here.
Promethius Radio Group (anti-deregulation activist group that won its case against the FCC’s 2003 rules) here.
Hey, I wrote a paper about the FCC and the public interest in grad school! It’s right here.

More on:
Justice Department says no to net neutrality here.
Federal Court rules Patriot Act statute unconstitutional here.
No peaches for the Treasurer here.
Southwest Airlines fashion police here.
Airline sacrifices goat here.