professorlarry

My latest Huffington Post article was just published today: Will Bieber Fever Be a Head Cold 20 Years From Now? Here is the article link below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-atkins/will-bieber-fever-be-a-he_b_672241.html

Everyone knows that the newspaper industry is in crisis. Most major newspapers in the U.S. have suffered huge circulation declines during the last 15 years, mostly due to the fact that people can get most newspaper content for free. In the last year or so, newspapers have been engaging in a debate as to whether to set up pay firewalls to charge readers a fee to read all or parts of their newspaper. Many newspaper executives feel that this is the only way that newspapers can survive, while many skeptics believe that readers will not pay for online newspaper content. Would you pay for online newspaper content? Please comment below.

It was recently announced that the Little League World Series will use instant replay for all calls except for balls and strikes. Managers can challenge calls as often as they want, as long as they are correct. I think that this is overkill, especially at the Little League level. I like the policy of the NFL and major tennis tournaments where you get a limited number of challenges. Nonetheless, if Little League can use instant replay, so can Major League Baseball. If replay existed, Detroit’s Armando Galarraga would have had a perfect game against Cleveland earlier this year. What’s your opinion on the use of instant replay in the Little League World Series and in Major League Baseball? Comment below.

It was announced this week that 16 year old pop star Justin Bieber will be writing a memoir about his life and will star in a 3D movie about himself. It’s too soon to tell whether he will be a star when he becomes an adult, but the odds are against him. For every Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Justin Timberlake, there are teen stars who fizzled out—David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, Debbie Gibson, Leif Garrett, Backstreet Boys, Aaron Carter, Hanson, Fabian, Menudo, etc. Bieber seems like he’s fairly grounded and level headed, but the odds of longterm success are still against him. Now he sells out 20,000 seat stadiums to see him lip synch his songs, but there’s a decent chance that 40 years from now Bieber fever will become the sniffles, and he’ll be playing in front of 500 people at free outdoor concerts like Pennypack Park in Philadelphia. After all, David Cassidy, the former Partridge Family teen idol, played a free outdoor concert last year in Bensalem, PA. Do you think that Bieber will have a long successful career, or will he join the long list of former child stars in rehab?

I was just interviewed by a Calgary Radio Show (Mike Blanchard of Calgary Today, 770 AM) on Celebrity Journalism and Lindsay Lohan, a topic that I wrote about last week in the Huffington Post. The interview went pretty well. Here is the show’s website:

http://www.am770chqr.com/Shows/CalgaryToday/Story.aspx?id=1259914

I have an article in today’s Huffington Post on this week’s graphic Time Magazine cover. Here’s the link below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-atkins/itimei-magazine-got-it-ri_b_666727.html

Earlier this week, the Utah Supreme Court overturned the criminal conviction of polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs, ruling that his performing the marriage of a 14 year old girl to her 19 year old cousin did not amount to facilitating a rape. The ruling doesn’t set Jeffs free yet, as prosecutors could decide to retry Jeffs on charges of first degree felony rape as an accomplice. Meanwhile, Texas is trying to extradite Jeffs to try him for his marriages to underage girls in that state. Nonetheless, the reversal of the conviction is bad news for the women and children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), of which Jeffs is president and prophet. Absolving Jeffs would embolden other polygamist leaders to continue to force young girls into illegal marriages. FLDS is a breakaway Mormon sect, and the mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy over a century ago. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of public confusion, and many people continue to associate polygamy with the Mormon church. This could turn out to be a nuisance for Mitt Romney during a 2012 Presidential Campaign. He was able to dodge questions about his faith and the Mormon religion during the 2008 Republican Primaries, but it is bound to pop up again in 2012. It also can’t help that the creators of South Park plan to launch a Broadway musical parodying the Mormon religion. As their prior episodes said, Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. Do you think that Romney’s Mormon affiliation will hurt him in 2012?

It was announced this week that a huge asteroid has a 1 in 1,000 chance of hitting the earth in 2182. The asteroid is over 600 yards wide and could destroy an entire city and cause devastation for hundreds of miles. It seems as though we get these asteroid doomsday scenarios once every five years or so. People have become desensitized to the problem and it’s become fodder for late night comedians. However, this is something that we should take seriously.  Sophisticated asteroid tracking is still in its relative infancy, and it seems inevitable that other asteroid threats will be discovered in the near future. No need to call Bruce Willis yet, but it is a problem that we shouldn’t ignore. Twenty years from now, it’s expected that there will be a close call from an asteroid that should come as close to the earth as our satellites. Anyone out there concerned?

This week’s Time Magazine cover is drawing controversy over whether it is too disturbing for children. It featured a photo of an 18-year-old Afghan woman who had her nose and ears cut off because she fled her abusive in-laws. This debate comes up frequently for news organizations—do they show the 9/11 jumpers, war casualties, car accident scenes, etc.? Some people feel that such photos invade the privacy of the victims and are too disturbing and graphic to show, while others feel that the photos are necessary to convey important stories. What do you think?

It was news that must have had Joey Vento crying in his Cheese Whiz. Yesterday, a federal district court ruled that several key portions of Arizona’s pending immigration law was unenforceable because immigration matters are under sole federal jurisdiction. No doubt, this is only Round 1 in this battle, which is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Both political parties need to find common ground on this issue, but it’s unlikely to happen before the midterm elections in November. The best way to deal with illegal immigration isn’t by building a fence or increasing border security. Instead, the federal government needs to crack down on employers who hire illegal aliens. If the jobs dry up, that would encourage self-deportation, which is much more humane than rounding up people in the middle of the night. What do you think?