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You might have read it in the article "No Joke: Daily Show Viewers Follow Presidential Race, or maybe here (in the Comedy Shows Matter section), or maybe in this transcript from a Bill Moyers interview with John Stewart.

I think Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are on to something. I remember reading a finding that watchers of The Daily Show were more politically aware than a lot of viewers of other major news outlets. I think it was here. Maybe some of these techniques could be adopted for use in the classroom?

"Rock the Vote leans left on every single issue (just look at their issues pages)"

Try as I might, I can't find one. The nearest thing I see to one is the Petition against the Draft on the front page. Given the site is aimed at encouraging the participation of the young in elections, it strikes me that the draft is a pretty good way of getting their attention.

Yea, that's how they tried to spin it, too. But once you consider that about half of the USA's young adults think Bush favors the draft, it becomes obvious that MTV is bringing up this so-called "issue" to scare the younger voters into voting against Bush.

and the youth tend to skew republican at the moment.

Right, because they all really want to get drafted.

Sounds about right.

(When asked who favors the draft)
"But among 18-to-29-year-olds, 51 percent said Bush, and 8 percent said Kerry; 7 percent said both would. Twenty six percent said neither favored the idea, and 8 percent said they did not know. The margin of sampling error for the younger respondents was plus or minus 7 percentage points."

You are saying that to criticize someone, not only do you have to be in the same field as they are, but you also have to be better than them? Otherwise, your criticism isn't "meaningful"?

[Jon Stewart] doesn't do any better of a job at news reporting then them.

Yes, he does. He only has 10 minutes or so, but what he covers in that ten minutes he reports on better than any "real" news channel does in 24 hours. And you know why?

He isn't afraid to show someone is a liar. Bill O'Reilly and others like to throw that term around and call people liars, but Jon Stewart actually shows the goods.

He's honest. I don't think I've ever seen them take someone out of context or try to misrepresent what someone said. They make fun of gaffes and satirize people's positions, but they are intellectually honest (or at least more so than the news channels).

He gives context. When Bush talks about nation building, they run a "debate" between what Bush said in 2000 about not nation building and what he is saying now. That is what the media is supposed to do: they are supposed to provide context, to be our memory, to NOT let things fall into the memory hole.

He is brief. He doesn't have to fill 24 hours so he doesn't try to drag things out and make stories out of nothing. He can't even fit in everything he wants to get to, so he has to cut it down to its very essence.

He filters. I don't have time to listen to everything every Kerry or Bush flack has to say and I certainly don't have time to check if it is true. He incisively cuts to the heart of the issues, offers some biting criticism, or deadpan incredulity that perfectly summarizes the situation.

Viewers of The Daily Show, despite it being a comedic, media satire program whose lead-in is a show about puppets making crank phone calls, are better informed than anyone getting their news from newspapers, network news, or cable news!!! And Jon's point is that that is sad. It is sad that his show, a comedy show satirizing the media, is a better news show than any actual news show. It is proof that the media is not living up to its responsibility of furthering the public debate and the exchange of information. Instead, they are drastically decreasing the signal to noise ratio. In fact, after watching the news, you will be LESS INFORMED!

There is related polling and article that shows Daily Show viewers are more informed than almost any other TV show even accounting for demographics and earnings.

Why Google and the Company's Motto - 'Don't Be Evil' - Are Cool

May 21, 2004 9:00 a.m.
By Derek Powazek, online director of AlterNet.org

SAN FRANCISCO -- As economists and pundits wet themselves with glee over the announcement that internet search engine Google will be filing for an initial public stock offering later this year, you may be asking yourself one very salient question: "So?"

Whether Google's IPO will rain money from the sky or go down as yet another dot bomb remains to be seen. But Google is already an improbable success story with all the Internet-era trimmings.

The little company that was started by Stanford University dropouts Larry Page and Sergey Brin is now the largest and most powerful search engine in a Web dominated by Microsoft and Yahoo. Most amazingly, they did it all without being evil.

"Don't be evil" is the corporate mantra around Google HQ, and their business decisions over the years have proven it. In 1998, when Google started, it was the year of the "portal," when their competitors were all crowding their homepages with so much junk it became hard to even find the search box. Google kept their homepage pristine -- a blank white page with one simple box and two buttons: Google Search and "I'm Feeling Lucky" which, when clicked, takes you directly to the top result for your query. The layout has hardly changed in six years.

When their competitors began mixing paid placement listings with actual search results, Google stayed pure, drawing a clear line between search results and advertising. The rest of the major search engines still make their results pages a morass of paid advertisements and actual search results, supplied by placement payola company Overture. Try a search for "hotel" in the top search engines and you can see just how crowded they are with paid placements. Google is still the best place to get the content you came for, not what marketers want you to see.

Speaking of advertisements, Google was the first major company to pioneer text only advertisements on their pages. While other companies filled their pages with flashing banner ads screaming, "punch the monkey" with epileptic frequency, Google's ads were a breath of fresh, text-based air. And they found that, when you don't annoy the user with flashing graphics, they're actually more likely to click your ad.

As the company's IPO filing proves, Google now makes most of its money from its advertising programs, AdSense and AdWords. AdWords is wonderfully democratic: Anyone can buy an ad that will appear around certain keywords (though the ad is clearly separated from the search results). People who make websites can also sign up to display the Google AdSense ads, and make a pretty penny from clickthroughs, too.

There has been controversy in this department. When webzine Unknown News decided to advertise their "Who would Jesus Bomb?" bumper sticker, the ad was initially rejected by Google because their policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain "language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization," a policy intended to vet hate sites.

After a passionate email exchange with Unknown News, Google relented and the ad went online. Google walks a tough line, legally and ethically. They are, after all, in the business of organizing all the world's information. But at least in this case, when confronted with the truth, they show a willingness to learn from their mistakes.

Outside of advertising, Google's core business is search, and they still do it better than anyone else. Google's search results are created by a complicated secret algorithm called PageRank. What sets Google's PageRank apart from the imitators is that it takes the social aspect of web pages into account.

When Google started, most search engines were simply indexi

Aparently someone didn't see the news.
U.S. Productivity Best In 20 Years
2003 home building best in 25 years
2004 Economic Forecast Best in 20 Years, Conference Board Reports
I first heard this news on CNN which isn't exactly pro-Bush.

Hi!

The fellow who is promoting has a decent idea--albeit not an original one. The concept was promoted in Allentown (an hour south of Wilkes-Barre) almost two years ago. And prompted by some of the same ideas, the local power company (PP&L) developed a subsidiary to locate and light redundant fiber along some of its rights-of-way throughout northeastern Pennsylvania.

Two thoughts:
First, this is just a proposal--and a proposal that heavily depends (I'm sure) on state technology grant funding. Consider the last paragraph of the WNEP article:

Plans for the project will be unveiled to the public Sunday at Genetti Hotel and Conference Center in Wilkes Barre at 3:00 p.m. Greco will also present his plan to Governor Ed Rendell on Monday when he is in town for a private economic summit. He hopes to get a promise of state support for his plan.

Translation: Greco is fishing for a six-figure grant from the Pennsylvania Technology Investment Authority, and is hoping for support from the governor.

Second, just because he's fishing for a big grant doesn't mean that it isn't a bad idea. Several people have criticized this as a "build it and they will come" investment. Yeah, and so was the Interstate System. Which will go down in history as the single most tranformational use of federal government money in the history of our nation. (For fun--ponder the impact of building all those highways on the auto, steel, aluminum, glass, plastic, concrete, paint, and petroleum industries over the years.)

Using state economic development funding to develop IP-based infrastructure makes an enormous amount of sense. Adding another inch to the depth of pavement on a street in Wilkes-Barre isn't going to make a big dent in Luzerne County unemployment. But providing low-cost bandwidth might induce somebody to stay in town, rather than move his business elsewhere--or convince somebody in New York or Philadelphia to decide to locate his business someplace a lot saner (and safer), where costs are a low lower. In a sense, the question to ask isn't why they're doing it--the question should be, why haven't they done anything sooner?