My august contribution to the national debate

This blog will never be a place for raucous political debate, so this is the question of the hour:

When will health care become healthcare in the AP Stylebook?

Correction: That was my August contribution to the national debate.

Chevrolet Volt: The Inside Story

Say what you will about waiting rooms and aging magazines, but recently while buying a couple of tires I was intrigued by a Motor Trend story on the much-discussed Chevy Volt.

"Chevrolet Volt - The Inside Story" is an excerpt from Why GM Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon by William J. Holstein.

Chevy calls the Volt "an electric car that drives up to 40 miles/day without gas or environmentally harmful emissions."

Others describe the car as "a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle" and "an extended-range electric vehicle."

Here's how GM describes the Volt in "Chevrolet Volt Expects 230 mpg in City Driving," an Aug. 11, 2009, news release posted at http://media.gm.com/:

The Chevrolet Volt uses grid electricity as its primary source of energy to propel the car. There are two modes of operation: Electric and Extended-Range. In electric mode, the Volt will not use gasoline or produce tailpipe emissions when driving. During this primary mode of operation, the Volt is powered by electrical energy stored in its 16 kWh lithium-ion battery pack.

When the battery reaches a minimum state of charge, the Volt automatically switches to Extended-Range mode. In this secondary mode of operation, an engine-generator produces electricity to power the vehicle. The energy stored in the battery supplements the engine-generator when additional power is needed during heavy accelerations or on steep inclines.

GM says the Volt's battery pack will provide a maximum range of 40 miles. Then the car's engine-generator — GMspeak for a small gasoline engine — recharges the battery to provide the rest of the car's maximum 300-miles range.

The gasoline engine never applies power to the wheels.

Also from the news release: "According to U.S. Department of Transportation data, nearly eight of 10 Americans commute fewer than 40 miles a day http://tinyurl.com/U-S-DOTStudy."

I'm neither a true believer nor a reflexive doubter, but it'll be hard to ignore the Volt given the potential it offers GM and the rest of us.

Will this vehicle be a game-changer or a disappointment?

Time will tell, but I'll be watching with interest.

"You are what you eat" is so 19th and 20th century

You are what you eat — the phrase — has been around for almost 200 years.

Some believe its meaning originated hundreds of years before that.

But now the operative phrase, we're told, is "You are how you eat."

Gulp.

Food-ology.com founder Juliet A. Boghossian's promise?

Pierce beneath the outer layer of best behavior.
Food-ology® links food habits to personality traits and ultimately, behavioral tendencies. You are HOW you eat®

D'oh!

And Boghossian's gaining traction.

In an Aug. 11 Yahoo! HotJobs article, Hiring Tricks That Job Seekers Must Know, we learn that recruiters and hiring managers are watching your manners — and other actions — to gauge whether you measure up to their standards.

They mind your manners.

Many recruiters use meals as a screening tool. "I know a recruiter who passed over a candidate because of the way they cut their meat during a lunch interview," says Varelas. (The candidate cut his meat all at once, not one piece at a time.) Juliet Boghossian, a behavioral food expert and columnist for Food-ology.com, teaches execs what they can learn by the way someone eats.

"By observing an individual's eating style or food habits, you can quickly reveal their character or judgment capacity, among many other behavioral facets," she says.

Take care to mind your p's and q's.

Wired.com's new style guide is on the back burner

Searching yesterday for an up-to-date new media style guide, I found a couple of April 2008 stories reporting that Wired.com had one in the works.

But those two reports — Wired plots a new style for Web journalists and A Style Guide for a New Media — were the only things I found.

Even Wired.com had nothing to report.

I contacted editor-in-chief Evan Hansen last night and received a rapid response via e-mail:

"this project was back burnered following some layoffs last year. we have no current ETA for a release at this time."

So, for now, I guess, we'll be sticking with The Associated Press Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, common sense and the style sheet of our favorite organization, publication or client.

And we'll be waiting to see if and when Wired.com reboots its effort.

Are you doing your part for the human race?

Please shoulder your share of this weighty burden.

"If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech."

— W. Somerset Maugham, 1874–1965, English dramatist & novelist, The Painted Veil (1925)

Today's best headline?

Wags, media types and promoters of pugilism everywhere are salivating over U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign to challenge Texas Gov. Rick Perry for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Now The Dallas Morning News fields a strong candidate in the race for today's best headline.

In an Aug. 19 (page 2A) story "from staff reports," The News reports the Perry campaign's flying a banner over a Hutchison rally Tuesday in Dallas and references a higher power, announcing:

"Tax return demand comes from above"

Snicker!

The story includes a David Woo photo of the banner, which reads "KAY COME CLEAN-RELEASE YOUR TAXES!"

The cutline:

"As Kay Bailey Hutchison held a rally in Dallas on Tuesday, a plane hired by Rick Perry's campaign flew a banner challenging her to release her tax returns. A Hutchison aide said her 2007 returns would be released within a week."

This campaign should be a doozy.

Expect the media coverage to be historic, folkloric and — dare we hope? — sophomoric.

Credit for that ever-so-apt description goes to Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click & Clack, The Tappet Brothers) of NPR's Car Talk.

That Stephen Leacock was ever so witty.

The "Quotes of the Day" gadget on my Google home page served up an item that led me to this tasty morsel from Canadian writer, economist and humourist Stephen Leacock (1869–1944):

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it."

Richard A. Solomon's response?

"Oh, Stephen, you wag. How terribly, terribly droll."

Snail mail: still alive and kicking in PR pitches?

Don't reject snail mail when you launch your media pitches, Dallas Morning News health care business reporter Jason Roberson advises.

One of three panelists at the Aug. 13 Dallas PRSA meeting, Roberson told members and guests that, in this age of nonstop texts, tweets, blog posts and e-mails, he enjoys receiving tangible pitches and, yes, he reads them.

Yep, Jason's a fan of non-virtual reality. Messages displayed on the processed fibers of dead trees. Stuff he can tear open and hold.

So, when the time is right, try to make your message stand out from the crowd by shipping it old school.

The U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS or the courier service of your choice will thank you.

And so might your client.

Tweet, tweet Twittersphere

Everyone's heard of the blogosphere.

Today someone at the PRSA Dallas monthly meeting mentioned the Twittersphere.

The word's been around, but it was new to me.

Great neologism. Pretty cool new word, too.

I smiled when I heard Twittersphere.

What relevant word or term can you contribute to enlighten or amuse?