(This space will be filled periodically with musings about life on Kandahar Airfield as well as rants and raves about media, writing and other stuff.)

Has anyone calculated how many trees we will save when our military leaves Afghanistan? Here’s one illustration: for months, we have taken our Afghan employees to lunch every day at the military dining facility. We as official escorts (festooned with ugly badges around our necks) signed them at the front door, and the feeding frenzy would start.

Suddenly we were told that we needed a memo allowing them to eat there. So I spent the better part of 24 hours slogging to four separate offices to get signatures and stamps to allow them to do what they had been doing anyway for four months. This process generated one memo and at least five copies, plus a copy for each employee.

In the past month I have blazed paper trails to let the staff leave the base after normal hours, to carry mobile phones to work and to carry flash drives to work, and to get past an Afghan National Army checkpoint (an epic story by itself). I am now starting the process of preparing six-page memos for each employee to renew their access badges.

There are 30,000 people here. Think of all the memos for all those people, and you understand why we are surrounded by a treeless desert.

Omphaloskepsis:

(This is a repeat from my Facebook page). The AP reports that “a hole was torn from the passenger cabin” of a Southwest Airlines flight. Then it adds that “a hole ruptured overhead with a blast.” The hole wasn’t torn “from” anything. And holes don’t rupture; things that rupture develop holes. The noble Associated Press did this. Another sign of the Apocalypse, at least for journalism.

A Taliban night letter goes to Jason Ukman of the Washington Post, who wrote:

So, the memo continues, there will be new guidelines for what is acceptable entertainment when it comes to “MWR,” the military’s acronym for “morale, welfare, and recreation.”

MWR is an abbreviation. An acronym is a word formed by an abbreviation, such as NATO or snafu (look it up).

An order of merit goes to the writer (Andy Katz or AP) responsible for the following line in the ESPN.com report on former NC State star Lorenzo Charles’ death:

“He always made you feel like he was excited to see you,” said Lowe by telephone, who was audibly upset over the death of Charles.

Not “visibly” upset, because he was on the phone. That’s careful writing.

A rather innocuous post from AOL News “Surge Desk” provides an example of how blogs can run off the tracks of journalism.

The report covered the Food and Drug Administration’s concerns about “Tiger Balm,” questioning both its credentials as an over-the-counter pain-killer and the conditions in which the waxy, orange gunk is manufactured. Up to a point, it was a straightforward news story, with background noting that Burmese herbalist Aw Chu Kin gets credit for inventing Tiger Balm in the 1870s.

Then the “contributor” (that designation usually means freelancer) tossed in this last paragraph:

“What would Aw Chu say? Probably that the FDA ought to lighten up. After all, Kin and Co. used actual tiger bones for initial versions of the product. The balm now consists mostly of menthol, camphor and essential oils.”

That can be read two ways. Is the writer saying the FDA “ought to lighten up?” If so, that’s the kind of gratuitous opinion-hawking that fouls what are supposed to be “news” blogs.  A little more effort might have located an authoritative source willing and qualified to make that point.

Or maybe that last paragraph is an attempt to add a note of balance on behalf of the manufacturers. A quote from the company itself would have been better. If the writer tried and got no response, the story should at least note that.

Some blogs provide helpful background and context for complicated issues, and others focus on compelling topics that don’t make onto front pages or newscast rundowns. But others, voluntarily or under orders from their editors, short-circuit the reporting process and insert opinion or speculation into what is supposed to be a news story.

The AOL blog by itself is harmless if incomplete, and the contributor was probably just giving the AOL editors what they wanted. However, it’s just one more example of a troublesome erosion of professional standards that once mandated balance and fairness and eschewed personal opinion in work not clearly identified as such.

Those standards are losing traction as news managers discover that opinion and attitude sell better than facts illuminated by clarifying background and balanced by another point of view. The consequences include polarization and sloganization of public opinion.

And for anyone trying to be an informed citizen, it’s enough to drive you balmy.