Robert Niles

to Robert Niles.

Robert Niles' work in online journalism has been called "pathbreaking" by noted columnist Dan Gillmor. Robert's "Accident Watch" feature on ThemeParkInsider.com won the 2001 Online Journalism Award for Service Journalism, presented by the Online News Association and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. It was the first example of a "crowdsourced" online report, built on reader-contributed content, to win a major journalism award.

Robert is a native of Los Angeles, and today lives in nearby Pasadena, California. He graduated from Northwestern University, where he majored in the school's program in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences, as well as in Political Science. He also holds a master's degree in journalism from Indiana University.

Along the way, Robert has worked as a Pirate of the Caribbean and Tom Sawyer Island raft driver (at Walt Disney World) as well as for the (Bloomington, Indiana) Herald-Times, the Omaha World-Herald, the Rocky Mountain News, the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California.

Today, Robert runs SensibleTalk.com, ThemeParkInsider.com and (with his wife, Laurie) Violinist.com.

You know the solution you just thought of to a long-standing problem is probably the right one if... it makes you feel like a complete idiot for not thinking of something so obvious long, long before.
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The 21 drinking age was a stupid idea and it is past time for it to go.

Dozens of U.S. college and university presidents have signed a letter urging a public debate over lowering the nation's drinking age to 18. Let's make that debate swift, though. Millions of Americans already have spoken on the worth of the drinking age law.

By breaking it.
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I had to share a quote from Annette Haddad's story in this morning's Los Angeles Times on July home sales and prices in Southern California.

The quote, a paraphrase really, comes from homebuyer Dale Smet of Santa Clarita. Haddad writes: "Smet, who works in marketing for Southern California Gas Co., said he carefully conserved an equity line of credit during the boom years, which he tapped to pay $300,000 cash last month for two foreclosed condos near his house."

What the heck does that even mean? Let's dissect it, after the jump.
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Every time I try to read a story on Yahoo! News this morning, and error window pops up:

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One thing's been bugging me about the John McCain ad that I see every time I turn on the Olympics. It's the line that says Barack Obama is "for "higher taxes and more government spending, so, fewer jobs."

How does higher taxes and more government spending automatically lead to fewer jobs? Let's break down that claim, forgetting what Obama actually does and does not propose, for a moment.
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Late last week I got another political flyer in the mail, this one with a full-page photo of a sack of groceries under the tag "Don't Let Sacramento Politicians Remove Products From Your Grocery Bag"

Open it up, and its a pitch to call legislators asking them to vote no on S.B. 1713, which would ban the use of something called "BPA," which the flyer says is "a material that's been safely used for 50 years in food packaging and a wide variety of plastic products like reusable water and baby bottles."

Curious, I hit the Internet and did a little Googling.

"BPA" is actually Bisphenol A, a chemical that's been the subject of much recent scientific research. The flyer said that "rigorous scientific reviews in the United States, Europe and Japan have all concluded that these products are safe for use."

Umm... no. The U.S. National Institutes of Health last year expressed [huge PDF file] "some concern for neural and behavioral effects" of BPA upon infants and children. Some research suggests that BPA can disrupts the body's hormones, especially in children, leading to an earlier onset of puberty among girls and lower testosterone levels in boys.
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What they say:

"You can't find a better product."

What they mean, after the jump.
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