News at the hip? Thumbs down.

CliffNotes have traditionally been a guide to help students understand complex works while others, especially teachers and professors, often think they allow students to avoid reading assigned materials, this is similar to the way I feel about receiving and interpreting the news on my mobile device.

I have been a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) aka Blackberry user for nearly a year now and I love it. Receiving and writing emails from my phone has been beneficial when I don't have access to a computer and the ability to scour the internet has settled many disagreements between my friends and I. All and all I have been thankful to have such a device in my pocket because I truly think it makes my life a little easier, and for that I am thankful.

When I was asked by my instructor to go and get the news on my mobile phone I was pretty excited because I figured it would be easier than scouring my RSS for updates and happenings around the world.

Boy, was I wrong.

I first tried to go to news sites (Google and Yahoo) and set up a text or email notification system that would keep me informed without having to turn on my computer. I encountered two major problems after I set up this "service".

1. My inbox was flooded with news stories. So many stories that I couldn't focus on one, let alone one issue that I selected when setting up the news alerts. This was annoying because I was spending more time sifting through which news stories I thought were relevant than the time I would spend reading stories that I already knew were relevant on my RSS, which was also easier to set up.

2. Reading the stories on my phone is chore. Since I have the Blackberry the page that I see on my screen is quite small and only shows about a paragraph of reporting. Scrolling back and forth is not only distracting, but for someone that sometimes needs to read things twice to fully understand what is being said, frustrating, to say the least.

I will continue to use my PDA for checking my email and texting with friends, but I found that trying to read, and better yet understanding the full context of the news stories quite difficult. I think that trying to stay properly informed using only only a PDA or mobile phone would be like reading the Cliffnotes version of the news, you might get the idea, but you're never going to fully understand the context of the story. I would advise anyone to set up an RSS over receiving mobile updates.

O'Reilly Declares War

Outspoken conservative Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has declared war on the New York Times after what he called, "a vicious piece of propaganda," written by Times Editorial Page Director Andrew Rosenthal.

Rosenthal's piece titled, "The Nativists are Restless" published on January 31st, aimed at O'Reilly and other "harsh" Republicans who Rosenthal believes have been continuing a relentless campaign against immigrants who are now being exposed that the Republican tide has gone out.

The war of words started last week when the National Press Club, a Washington group that speaks for the future of the Republican Party reported that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft. The group released a report, "arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes."

Marcus Epstein, Executive Director at the American Cause is another one of the "extremists" and is responsible for putting together the conference in question, wrote today on Vdare.com, “My analysis made very modest claims. I merely reported, in their own words, the stated positions on immigration of the Republican and Democratic candidates in each seat the GOP lost.”

"This is nonsense, of course," wrote Rosenthal, "Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latino-bashing in opinion surveys and at the polls." Rosenthal believes that this sect of the Republican party is racist and white-supremacist, "Google the words “Bill O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male power structure” for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of “the far left” (including The Times) as racially traitorous."

O'Reilly responded harshly to these accusations on his program last night, "I could post that Andrew Rosenthal completely distorted Bill O'Reilly's view on illegal immigration, because Rosenthal is a dishonest far-left zealot who uses hateful tactics, like implying people with whom he disagrees are racist. I could post that, and then you could Google "Rosenthal" and "illegal immigration" and it would be there -- uncensored. Now if Rosenthal doesn't know that, he's stupid. If he does know it, then he's dishonest and intentionally misleading Times readers.”

Crooksandliars.com, a progressive website, supports the Rosenthalian ideology about right wing racism and immigration, the website heralds the editorial piece as "superb".

Check out O'Reilly debunk the calims made by Rosenthal here.