A New Jewish TV Station for Seattle

A television station entirely devoted to Jewish programming is set to hit the airwaves next month. The station, KVEY, will run on channel 180 and can be picked up on a weak signal throughout the Seattle area.

"So it's a weak signal, what do you want from me?" said Ruth Mecklenberg, KVEY's executive producer. "Turn it up if you can't hear. So what if it has a bit of a crackle to it? It's nostalgic. Like talking to your great-aunt Alice across the country in the seventies."

The station will offer a mixture of music, talk, and educational programming. Cooking shows will air every day of the week (except Saturday, when the station will be dark), with highlights including "Schmaltz It Up with Tante Leah" (Tuesdays at 3 p.m.), "Babka with Bubbe" (Thursdays at noon), and a challah-baking tutorial on Fridays beginning at 10 a.m. and interrupting afternoon programs at intervals to cover the bread's rises, shaping, and baking. "That way the home baker can follow along and watch the progress in real time," explained the show's host, Ethel Blixstein.

Other highlights include a game show called "The Biggest Shlimazel" (Wednesdays at 8 p.m.) and a dance competition hosted by DJ Shlomo "the Bear" Shlomovitz and entitled "So You Think You Can Dance the Hora?" (Mondays at 9 p.m.). The full schedule is not yet set.

"What do you mean the schedule isn't set?" said Mrs. Mecklenberg. "It's been all ready for months, what are you talking about? Besides, is it so terrible if we don't have every single program worked out? You think you can do better, go make your own Jewish TV station."

It is unclear whether the Seattle Jewish community will provide a strong enough market to support the station. "Oy, what do we need Jewish TV for?" asked Moshe Friedman, 86, who spoke to a reporter at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island. "You can't even get a decent bagel in this town. They should learn to make bagels instead of wasting time on TV shows." Mr. Friedman walked out of the room, crumpling the paper plate from his bagel with lox shmear and continuing to mutter about bagels.

Others were more upbeat. "I can't wait to finally learn how to make kreplach!" enthused Miriam Rubin, 42, of Wallingford. "I'm still kicking myself that I didn't get my bubbe's recipe before she passed. Hers were the best!" Ms. Rubin paused to consider. "And cholent. I'm dying to make cholent, but it seems so intimidating, you know?"

"I'm telling you, people are beating the door down for KVEY," said Mrs. Mecklenberg. "It'll be the best thing since knish mixes. Do you know how hard I used to work making knishes? You don't want to know how hard."

KVEY launches on Thursday, July 1, at 8 p.m., with the first episode of its weekly reality show, "Who Wants to Marry a Nice Jewish Boy?"

Surfing with Style

Excerpts from the new section on Internet style in the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition (forthcoming on August 1):

8.38 Acronyms. Many weblogs and social networking groups employ acronyms for common expressions, such as LOL, OMG (and its variant ZOMG), etc. No settled style has emerged for rendering acronyms, but Chicago recommends using all capital letters rather than all lowercase (but see 8.39). A mix of capital and lowercase letters should be avoided at all costs.

8.39 Capitalization and lowercase. Whether to use sentence-style capitalization or only lowercase in online discourse is a decision to be made by the individual writer. If lowercase style is chosen, it should be implemented consistently, including for acronyms (cf. 8.38). Always avoid using all capital letters, a style often referred to as "shouting."

8.40 Emphasis. When typing in plain text, where italics are not an option, use asterisks surrounding the emphasized text. The use of multiple asterisks for additional stress is not recommended.

    Mr. Jones said the necklace was *especially* becoming.

8.41 An alternative method. Rendering a word or words in all capital letters is another common method of indicating emphasis. Chicago recommends avoiding this method for long phrases.

    "Chocolate and cilantro should NEVER be combined," he cautioned.

8.42 @ symbol. Users of the social networking tool Twitter employ the "at" symbol (@) before a fellow Twitter user's id to communicate directly with that person and to enable other Twitter users to connect more easily with the person being addressed. There should be no space between the symbol and the user's id.

    @goofus7359

Use of this symbol is becoming prevalent on other platforms, such as on Facebook or in weblog comment threads, but Chicago does not recommend this practice as it serves no practical purpose.

8.43 Abbreviations. Shortened forms of words or the replacement of words by numbers and symbols may be employed in casual contexts. This departure from Chicago's former style reflects the fact that these forms have achieved the status of settled usage. Punctuation is typically dropped in these contexts, and the abbreviated forms are often attached to the previous word.

    Give me ur# i have sthg 4u

BP Apologizes for Apology for Oil Spill

Responding to widespread public outrage over a recent advertising campaign in which it apologized for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, British Petroleum today issued a statement apologizing for the original ads.

"British Petroleum deeply regrets its error in apologizing for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill," said Sandy Logan, a spokesperson for the company. "It has been our goal and desire from the beginning to make amends, and we wanted people to know that. Clearly, we did not express ourselves well, and we would like to extend our sincere apologies to those who were upset or afflicted by our apology." BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, has also told reporters, "This apology was a tragic misstep that never should have happened. We will do everything we can so this never happens again."

The company submitted its original apology in the form of a commercial featuring Hayward that appeared on national television beginning last week, and also ran advertisements in major newspapers. Phrases in the ads such as "We will make this right" caused widespread anger and mockery. Environmentalists and other critics have pointed out that the damage to wildlife and to the livelihoods of fishermen and small-business owners along the Gulf coast is already done. "What are they going to make right?" asked Andrew Benedict, a fisherman in Venice, Louisiana. "Can they bring the fish and the birds back to life?"

"British Petroleum is committed to cleaning up this spill," said Logan. However, "out of consideration for people's feelings, we will try to downplay this commitment as much as possible." If necessary, she added, the company will even fight attempts to hold it financially accountable for the damage, "just so people don't have to see how sorry we are."

In the meantime, Logan said, the company has taken out full-page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, scheduled to run tomorrow. "These ads express 'our sincere apology for the pain and suffering we have caused by apologizing. We have learned from this difficult experience, and we will make this right.' Oops, did that make it into the final version? Excuse me, I have to make some calls."