Obama Allows For Oil Drilling

The oil drilling platform "Gail," run by Venoco, Inc., operates off the coast of California near Santa Barbara. (AP)

President Obama unveils a controversial new plan to expand offshore drilling for oil and gas. We speak with Shawn Tully, an editor at Fortune magazine, about what the plan means politically and economically.

States Must Now Make Health Care Reform A Reality

It’s now up to states to implement health care reform. Among the first items on the agenda: implementing a “high risk pool” to cover people who have been rejected by insurance companies. In Oregon, the state has to figure out how to coordinate the new federal high risk pool with the state’s existing one. The state is also considering expanding health care to include some type of public option plan, where the government would be a health insurance provider. We speak with John Fairhall, senior editor at Kaiser Health News, and Barney Speight, director of purchasing for the Oregon Health Authority.

Serbia Remains Divided Nearly Two Decades After Civil War

Liberal Democratic Party leader Cedomir Jovanovic speaks during a parliament session in Belgrade, Serbia yesterday (AP)

Tomorrow marks the 18th anniversary of the start of Bosnia’s devastating civil war in which 100,000 people died. Yesterday the Serbian government condemned the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, one of the worst atrocities of the conflict. Peace has returned but deep ethnic divisions remain. The BBC’s Balkans correspondent Mark Lowen reports from Bosnia.

Take A Spin On Chatroulette

We look at what’s being shown on the webcam-shuffling site, Chatroulette. It launched in November with a few visitors, but last month, 30 million people logged on. Teenagers are especially drawn to it, and that has internet safety experts worried, since many of the people who pop up are engaged in graphic sexual activities. Sharon Maxwell, an adolescent psychologist, offers advice to parents and children about the site.

Watch musician Ben Folds riff on Chatroulette, and learn about sites to protect children.

Rockers Remember An Escape From Bellevue

Chris Campion and Bill Janovitz grew up together on Long Island. But their personal and professional lives took very different paths. In the early 90s Bill formed the popular rock band Buffalo Tom, while Chris, who had his own band The Knockout Drops, descended into an oblivion of alcohol and drugs. He details that story in his memoir “Escape from Bellevue: A Memoir of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Recovery, and Redemption.” The book is now out in paperback.

[Youtube.com]

Music From The Show

Kar Kar Madison, “Boubacar Traore”

Tito Puente, “Royal T”

Led Zeppelin, “Fool in the Rain”

The Wee Trio, “Flint”

The Lickets, “Meat City”

Steely Dan, “Glamour Profession”

Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water”

The Knockout Drops, “Pilot Light”

http://chatroulette.com Kathy Phillips

My husband heard about chat roulette.com on NPR and we’ve tried it out a number of times. We’re in our 50′s and have no interest in the graphic sexual stuff. However, if you keep clicking past the trash I’ve had a number of fun and interesting conversations with people around the world. I spoke to an American who was living & working (with his wife) in Kuwait since 2004. They were getting ready to come back to the states. We had a nice conversation about what it was like to live in Kuwait (boring-he works long hours as a IT guy. Then I met 3 young girls in their college dorm in Taiwan. Their English wasn’t great but we had great fun talking. Then there was the French guy in a wheelchair who was very nice. Sometimes I’ll pick up my camera and show them a picture of my house or open the blinds and let them look outside in the neighborhood. One Norweigan guy was excited about all the green and trees – he let me look out his window at all the snow. The American guy from Kuwait actually thanked me for being “nice & normal”. We laughed about all the masturbation going on. I find that most of the non-Americans are just interested in meeting new people. It seems like the young guys masturbating are all young Americans – go figure. I normally write “shame on you” before clicking next. One young girl told my husband “you’re too old to be on the internet!” He replied “you’re too young to be seeing some of the stuff on this web-site”. Her reply – “touche’”.

I really enjoy meeting and talking to people in far away places and countries. But it is discouraging to have to wade through all the graphic sex to find someone interesting to talk to!
mcjk

Re: Chatroulete.com;
Just as in the days of imageless chatrooms, you can fake your appearance in Chatroulette as well. There are a lot of methods and pieces of software that let you change what your camera will show, so you can say- set your Chatroulette image to a child instead of showing the 3 teenage boys behind the computer instead. You can grab a clip from youtube of a person at a computer, and set that instead. So, Robin, when you saw what you thought was a 6 year old, it may have actually been someone displaying a picture of a child, when it really was some teenage boy that wanted to use that facade to insult people and curse at them under the guise of a child- because they think its funny.
Chatroulette really was the video version of sites like omegle.com, where users can chat with people from all over the world, without a webcam.
On another note, its not fair to put Chatroulette down as a porn site, just because some losers are displaying their twig and berries, or inappropriate images. Creeps are everywhere, you just have to ignore them, or next them on Chatroulette. But I do agree that it isn;t acceptable for children. You are correct that people think the internet is a consequence free world, and its a worldwide cultural problem. At this point in time, Chatroulette can’t screen the creeps that are prevalent on it, leaving Chatroulette to those that are ready to take the risks necessary in order to enjoy the fun of connecting globally.