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how come all the climatologists predicting global warming based on man's CO2 emission failed to predict that temperatures would remain steady and fall slightly after 1998

Perhaps because they hadn't included that El Nina of 1997/8 raised temperatures before declining slightly? Eleven of the warmest years recorded were in the past 13 years.

Oh yeah, what is the relationship between the temperature rise on other planets circling our sun and that of Earth?

"Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data."

Falcon

Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.

Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.

Anyway. From Realclimate:

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.

Maybe these people need to talk with someone who has actually been enslaved before they claim they were treated the same way.

Reminds me of this:

http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008046.php

March 10, 2003

HERE'S A HEARTWARMING STORY:

        KAKUMA, Kenya -- The engines rumbled and the red sand swirled as the cargo plane roared onto the dirt airstrip. One by one, the dazed and impoverished refugees climbed from the belly of the plane into this desolate wind-swept camp.

        They are members of Africa's lost tribe, the Somali Bantu, who were stolen from the shores of Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania and carried on Arab slave ships to Somalia two centuries ago. They were enslaved and persecuted until Somalia's civil war scattered them to refugee camps in the 1990's. . . .

        Over the next two years, nearly all of the Somali Bantu refugees in Kenya -- about 12,000 people -- are to be flown to the United States. This is one of the largest refugee groups to receive blanket permission for resettlement since the mid-1990's, State Department officials say. . . .

        In Somalia, the lighter-skinned majority rejected the Bantu, for their slave origins and dark skin and wide features. Even after they were freed from bondage, the Bantu were denied meaningful political representation and rights to land ownership. During the Somali civil war, they were disproportionately victims of rapes and killings.

I think it's going to be quite an adjustment for them, and no doubt there are people (nearly all non-Bantu) who are outraged that their traditional ways are going to have to change in the process. I suspect, though, that they'll do better here than they would in, say, France.

The New York Times, however, can't help but make a hash of the story by including this passage:

        The refugees watch snippets of American life on videos in class, and they marvel at the images of supermarkets filled with peppers and tomatoes and of tall buildings that reach for the clouds. But they know little about racism, poverty, the bone-chilling cold or the cities that will be chosen for them by refugee resettlement agencies.

They know little about racism or poverty? Read your own freakin' story -- they've been enslaved because of their skin color, and they're living in refugee camps ! They're encountering running water and flush toilets for the first time! Jeezus. To a certain class of writer, "racism and poverty" can only exist in America, and have no meaning anywhere else.

posted at 07:16 AM by Glenn Reynolds

Here is another short legal analysis that explains the issue a little and cites some case law. Instapundit is a law professor.

The people who are saying this is unconstitutional because it is "ex post facto" are two things:

1. Not lawyers and
2. Incorrect.

Plus, consider that our military during times of peace consists of volunteers. They're citizens, and people just as you are. You really think most of the armed forces are going to unload their stuff on their own people, because they're ordered to do so?

I don't worry about a military dictatorship in this country. But a Police State is another thing.

Police officers have already demonstrated a willingness to kill civilians over trivial matters, and then rationalize it afterwards. The prosecutors that are supposed to oversee the police do not hold them accountable for their crimes.

Radley Balko has been doing a marvelous job of researching and reporting about this.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476

http://www.theagitator.com/category/paramilitary-police-raids/

http://www.theagitator.com/category/police-professionalism/

http://www.reason.com/staff/hitandrun/143.html (scroll down)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193652,00.html

See also

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4203345.html

http://instapundit.com/archives2/2006/11/post_685.php

http://justiceforsal.com/

http://joelrosenberg.livejournal.com/

I don't know if things have always been this bad and if a communication medium like the internet is making it easer to report and read about these atrocities, or if things are genuinely getting worse. Probably both.

But it's telling that those who believe we currently live under a fascist regime are also proponents of gun control ( http://www.reason.com/news/show/117833.html ). I'm sure it's not fascism they oppose, as long as their guy (or gal) is in power.

Agreed.
I also assume that any Anonymous source is really a sock puppet for the journalist.

Which is why I have such a hard time with Shield Laws that give journalists the "right" to not reveal their "sources".
1) Who is to say who is a journalist?
Do they have to write for a MSM outlet? Can they be a blogger? How about a some guy who writes for an independent paper?
Why should "journalists" have more free speech rights than the rest of us?

2) If they are shielded from any responsibility in making up sources, what is to stop them from running rampant with this?
Given the Rueters Photoshopping the Dan Rather forgery, etc. etc. (really I should catalog all of them sometime), I have ZERO trust in what the media reports. Journalism is about the narrative, not the facts.
Afterall they are called "journalists" not "reporters"

-----------------
A mini-quote on business reporting. The reporting you would think would be most about the facts.
CHRISTMAS RETAIL SALES UP, BUT BY A MODEST 3.6% -- but online sales were up 22.4%. The New York Times calls those numbers "bleak," a term that's more accurately used in reference to its stock prices . . . .

Related post here. It's all about the narrative.

UPDATE: Reader, and hedge-fund manager, George Zachar emails:

        Investors now have to gauge not only the reality of economic data, but its predictable willful misrepresentation by the press. We therefore have to speculate not only on underlying conditions, but on the effectiveness of the effort to scupper Main Street confidence.

        On another matter, tech unfriendliness is a big driver in NYC commercial real estate, and the conversion of many older buildings into residential lofts.

Yeah, the press reports have consequences besides their intended one, of swinging the elections.

UPDATE: Reader Eric West emails:

        The same schmuck, Michael Barbaro, wrote a similar story in 2005. He also wrote a story back in September of his year trying to say back to school sales only looked good, but really weren't:

        Why do we care what the some schmuck at the New York Times writes anymore, anyway?

        It's like reading something Andrew Sullivan writes and instead of saying, "Sullivan thinks....." we write, "The Blogosphere today announced that...."

        Bologne. We need to get out of the habit of saying, "The New York Times....." and giving backing to these folks. Instead, we should say, "Michael Barbaro wrote....." and treat him just like we'd treat anyone in the blogosphere.

Good point. Why let people hide behind institutions? And, of course, Barbaro's other retail coverage has sometimes been a bit tendentious.

Glenn Reynolds has been one of the president's principle cheerleaders for years, rah-rah-rahing for the gutted FISA amendment that basically allowed the government to do whatever it damn well wanted. Now he's publicly worried about state accountability? What a jackass and a hypocrite.

This article is a dupe. Here's what I said about Shawn last time:
===
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/212243
  Low-tech Inventions That Help Change Lives
arbitraryaardvark (845916) on Thursday October 11, @07:41PM (#20947701)
(http://vark.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 12, @03:26AM)
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/10/65276 [wired.com]
A MacGyver for the Third World
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/612856202/in/set-72157600466239024/ [flickr.com]
flickr
http://instapundit.com/archives2/010388.php [instapundit.com]
instapundit is blogging the conference
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,33/ [aidg.org]
some blog
Shawn Frayne is the founder of Haddock Invention LLC and its recent spin-off company, Humdinger Wind Energy, LLC. The mission of these companies is two-fold. First, to create technologies that can address long-standing problems in developing countries; and second, to leverage the novel aspects of those inventions through licensing deals in capital-rich nations such as the U.S., thereby generating a self-supporting revenue stream for the projects.

His work has so far focused in the fields of solar water disinfection, inflatable packaging, food preservation, charcoal-production, and wind power generation, with several products successfully licensed or sold. It was during his time as a student in MIT's D-Lab that Shawn first became convinced that the key inventions of the next century won't necessarily be born in wealthy countries. Rather, the new industries of the coming years will be founded on breakthrough technologies invented in Haiti or Zambia or Guatemala, where the hardest problems in the world will yield the greatest inventions.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
even more :More about Shawn at MIT by arbitraryaardvark (Score:4)
Starting Score: 1 point
Moderation +2
    100% Interesting
Extra 'Interesting' Modifier 0 (Edit)
Karma-Bonus Modifier +1 (Edit)
Total Score: 4

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/10/65276
A MacGyver for the Third World
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/612856202/in/set-72157600466239024/
flickr
http://instapundit.com/archives2/010388.php
instapundit is blogging the conference
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,33/
some blog
Shawn Frayne is the founder of Haddock Invention LLC and its recent spin-off company, Humdinger Wind Energy, LLC. The mission of these companies is two-fold. First, to create technologies that can address long-standing problems in developing countries; and second, to leverage the novel aspects of those inventions through licensing deals in capital-rich nations such as the U.S., thereby generating a self-supporting revenue stream for the projects.

His work has so far focused in the fields of solar water disinfection, inflatable packaging, food preservation, charcoal-production, and wind power generation, with several products successfully licensed or sold. It was during his time as a student in MIT's D-Lab that Shawn first became convinced that the key inventions of the next century won't necessarily be born in wealthy countries. Rather, the new industries of the coming years will be founded on breakthrough technologies invented in Haiti or Zambia or Guatemala, where the hardest problems in the world will yield the greatest inventions.

Actually according to some researchers (mainly Sudhir Venkatesh, who's heavily quoted in Freakonomics ), most drug-gang members make far sub-minimum wage -- they'd make more money working at McDonalds, if that was the goal. And your chances of getting killed while dealing much higher than they are in Iraq (1 in 2000 as opposed to allegedly 1 in 4 if you're dealing crack, although the latter sounds a little high). The best explanation I've heard for gang activity is psychological; it's a prestige job, one you do for respect and a lack of attractive alternatives, not one you do for money.

While an Army private doesn't get paid hugely well, they don't do horribly either, particularly when you consider that their salary is almost entirely "take-home pay" (they're not paying for food/rent/healthcare). Plus, it's just not that easy to spend money when you're deployed, which is also when you make the most bonus pay (and get some decent tax breaks -- in an unusual show of decency by the government, combat pay is tax free). Although the pay-per-hour isn't great, it's not unusual to come back from deployment with a sizable amount of savings.

Is soldiering as profitable a career as borrowing money to get a business degree and working for a corporation? Not nearly. But it's not as bad as it's sometimes made out to be, if that's what you really want to do. The problem with the military right now is that they've basically tapped out the supply of 'risk junkies' who actually want to do the job, and have started to deploy people who are only in the service because they thought it was an easy way to get a college education (and who had no real interest in being in the military outside of that). IMO, this is why there are far worse morale problems in the Army than in the Marines -- the Marines were always fairly clear in their recruiting what you were signing up to do, and drew people who actually want to do 'crazy Marine shit;' the Army (until recently) was billing itself as a disaster-relief and college scholarship program, leading to accusations of a bait-and-switch.

By 2009, Steve Ballmer will be ordering chairs by the truckload.

"In related news, Microsoft has announced plans for its 'Phune', expected to be released in the Spring of 2011."

Hating people is bad, m'kay?

But it's perfectly righteous to assassinate atomic scientists, religious leaders and invade countries on very dubious pretexts. All you have to do is mention "democracy", "freedom" and "rule of law" in every second sentence and you're golden.

http://www.instapundit.com/archives2/2007/02/post_ 2521.php

"We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians' toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq."

I know, it's a bit of a shock, I actually used that damn dirty word 'liberal', not once, but twice when mentioning some of the history of the GOP. Thanks to 20 years of 'water-carrying' 'conservatives', many seem to believe that it's a dirty word, which one can use to describe people you are suppose to hate.

Please, don't try your tired old 'blame Clinton act', it's been 10 years (and he was acquitted).

As to whether the wiretapping is illegal ... it looks like he's got lawyers who thought it was legal enough ... it may have to go all the way to SCOTUS to be resolved. I make no claims regarding any lies to Congress - I said I think He believed that what he was doing was in the Nation's interest and will continue that I think that GWB believed that his actions were within the law. I also believe he was wrong, but no court has yet decided these issues ... except the court of public opinions, and even there the court seems to be divided.

First of all, that's not my solution, it's the political solution currently being worked on by Congress. If we cut of spending for the troops outright, Bush will almost certainly leave them there until they run out of bullets. Do you want to see that happen? I don't.

Rather than quote back the unexpected vitriol of the next two paragraphs, I'll just give you my plan for success in Iraq - send every soldier/sailor/airman/marine from the US, plus every one now stationed in "allied" countries starting with those pulling their own troops out, and conduct a MUCH larger version of the "big push" that IS achieving success in the Bagdhad area. Then get the troops out and let the Iraqis figure out their own problems. We couldn't force democracy on Occupied Germany after defeating them, we had to lead them to it AFTER they decided they wanted it, so why does everybody think we can do so in a country with no history or desire for such?

Your last line makes your own position pretty clear ... maybe you should start getting your news from a wider circle of sources as well.

        "Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household," the HUI economists said.

        If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said. . . .

        The median income of African American households was about 70 percent of the median for all U.S. households while Swedish households earned 68 percent of the overall U.S. median level.

        This meant that Swedes stood "below groups which in the Swedish debate are usually regarded as poor and losers in the American economy," Bergstrom and Gidehag said.

        Between 1980 and 1999, the gross income of Sweden's poorest households increased by just over six percent while the poorest in the United States enjoyed a three times higher increase, HUI said.

        Hi,
        I read your post about Sweden and would like to add some statistics. Sorry for the bad English, but I've never used these terms in English. Prepensioned means people who are pensioned before they are supposed to because of illnesses (or because they can't get jobs).

        Sweden is the sickest nation in the world. At least according to statistics and costs for healthinsurances. In reality I would guess that Swedes are among the healthiest populations in the history of mankind. But the rise in costs for healthinsurances are staggering. Longterm notification of illnesses have tripled since 1997. One in six of Swedes of working age are listed longterm sick or prepensioned. That's about 800 000 yearjobs in a population of 9 million. The cost is 10 billion dollars per year. The wellfare state has turned into an illfare state.

http://instapundit.com/archives/030693.php

June 01, 2006

RFK, JR. GETS A BAD REVIEW FROM DAN RIEHL: "NPR debunked it a week ago before it was even published."

Meanwhile, Don Surber comments: "Real journalism would have at least also looked at Wisconsin, where multiple-state voting likely cost Bush a state."

UPDATE: Armed Liberal notes that even Mother Jones is ahead of RFK, jr. When you're peddling conspiracy theories that have already been busted by NPR and Mother Jones, well . . . .

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY: The Administration's recent moves to prosecute record labels for antitrust violation and to prosecute some media tycoons for illegal trips to Cuba are likely to be just the beginning. Look at it from the Bush Administration's point of view: (1) record companies and movies studios are almost certainly guilty of price fixing and other antitrust violations; (2) it's well established that the both industries are marketing allegedly "mature" items to underage teens; (3) both industries engage in byzantine accounting that makes them highly likely to be violating some tax law or other; (4) they're also screwing their artists (an entertainment lawyer I know says that when he exercises the audit clause he insists on in contracts, he always finds a lot of money they "forgot" to pay the artist, and never any mistakes in the artist's favor); and, most importantly (5) these are industries that hate Republicans, bad-mouth Bush, and give a lot of money to Democrats. Plus, if Bush is subtle enough he can do this in a way that drives a wedge between studios and labels on the one hand, and artists on the other, thus dividing a crucial Democratic constituency. Finally, young people don't like the labels and studios anymore because of their thuggish behavior with regard to Napster, DVDs, etc., and older voters don't like them because of their products -- and both groups are important for Bush. True, these companies own a lot of major news media organizations -- but the major media already don't like Bush, so he has little to lose there.

Posted 8/17/2001 01:38:25 PM by Glenn Reynolds

http://www.instapundit.com/oldarchives/2001_09_02_ instapundit_archive.html

MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE RECORD INDUSTRY: The record companies have been installing copy-protection schemes on CDs that keep them from playing at all on computer CD drives, don't let them be ripped into MP3 format, etc. Now a consumer has filed a lawsuit (click here to see the complaint) against them. This isn't some fancy-pants claim based on the DMCA, where the entertainment industry has managed to rig the ground rules in its favor, but a straightforward suit for fraud & deceptive advertising, as well as invasion of privacy (the proprietary format that you can copy these to returns identifiable consumer information to the company). Apparently the record companies -- correctly assuming that no one in his/her right mind would buy this stuff if it were clear what was going on -- didn't include any warning on the packaging.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING of what is likely to be a long and ugly period of litigation for the entertainment industries. Expect more lawsuits over price-fixing, payola-based racketeering suits, consumer fraud suits, etc. There are also likely to be federal investigations of the sort music industry insiders have been demanding for a while, now that the Clinton administration isn't protecting the industry anymore. (Expect the Bush Justice Department to show far less consideration to these big Democratic donors than Clinton's did).

THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IS MASSIVELY UNPOPULAR with nearly everyone now. Older people and conservatives think it produces immoral crap. Younger people -- be

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY: The Administration's recent moves to prosecute record labels for antitrust violation and to prosecute some media tycoons for illegal trips to Cuba are likely to be just the beginning. Look at it from the Bush Administration's point of view: (1) record companies and movies studios are almost certainly guilty of price fixing and other antitrust violations; (2) it's well established that the both industries are marketing allegedly "mature" items to underage teens; (3) both industries engage in byzantine accounting that makes them highly likely to be violating some tax law or other; (4) they're also screwing their artists (an entertainment lawyer I know says that when he exercises the audit clause he insists on in contracts, he always finds a lot of money they "forgot" to pay the artist, and never any mistakes in the artist's favor); and, most importantly (5) these are industries that hate Republicans, bad-mouth Bush, and give a lot of money to Democrats. Plus, if Bush is subtle enough he can do this in a way that drives a wedge between studios and labels on the one hand, and artists on the other, thus dividing a crucial Democratic constituency. Finally, young people don't like the labels and studios anymore because of their thuggish behavior with regard to Napster, DVDs, etc., and older voters don't like them because of their products -- and both groups are important for Bush. True, these companies own a lot of major news media organizations -- but the major media already don't like Bush, so he has little to lose there.

Posted 8/17/2001 01:38:25 PM by Glenn Reynolds

http://www.instapundit.com/oldarchives/2001_09_02_ instapundit_archive.html

MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE RECORD INDUSTRY: The record companies have been installing copy-protection schemes on CDs that keep them from playing at all on computer CD drives, don't let them be ripped into MP3 format, etc. Now a consumer has filed a lawsuit (click here to see the complaint) against them. This isn't some fancy-pants claim based on the DMCA, where the entertainment industry has managed to rig the ground rules in its favor, but a straightforward suit for fraud & deceptive advertising, as well as invasion of privacy (the proprietary format that you can copy these to returns identifiable consumer information to the company). Apparently the record companies -- correctly assuming that no one in his/her right mind would buy this stuff if it were clear what was going on -- didn't include any warning on the packaging.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING of what is likely to be a long and ugly period of litigation for the entertainment industries. Expect more lawsuits over price-fixing, payola-based racketeering suits, consumer fraud suits, etc. There are also likely to be federal investigations of the sort music industry insiders have been demanding for a while, now that the Clinton administration isn't protecting the industry anymore. (Expect the Bush Justice Department to show far less consideration to these big Democratic donors than Clinton's did).

THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IS MASSIVELY UNPOPULAR with nearly everyone now. Older people and conservatives think it produces immoral crap. Younger people -- be

All those people were dismissed as unserious Saddam-loving anti-American hippies who thought it was 1968 again, and just had to hop on the bus and realize that the ghosts of Vietnam had finally been laid to rest. Y'know, again. I suppose by heaping more ghosts on top of them. The kind of bullshit that famed "libertarian" Glenn Reynolds was saying back in 2003. And yet, for some reason, nobody's suddenly said "gee, maybe the people banging the wardrums were the fundamentally unserious ones". For some reason, they're still marginalized and ignored, despite having right.

It's enough to make you spit, you know.

At least when I read Instapundit or Daily Kos, they openly acknowledge their biases. The New York Times still pretends they're objective, when anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi can tell they're not. Maybe that's why their stock prices continues to decline, even outpassing the declines in other newspaper stocks.

I now await the usual Slashdot downmodding of non-liberal political posts.

Crow T. Trollbot

But also for other special interest groups we're supposed to like.

It's nice to see that somebody else finally noticed. Glenn Reynolds was writing about this problem back in 2002:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,42050,00.html

Recycling is supposed to be a good thing, so you'd think that media organizations would be proud when they do it. But in fact, they tend to keep it quiet.

I'm not talking about aluminum cans here, but about the tendency of media organizations to turn press releases and written-to-order opinion pieces into apparently objective accounts. This happens all the time, partly because of media laziness, and partly because of ingenuity on the part of the various advocacy groups that depend on media coverage to advance their agendas and promote their fundraising campaigns.

The first part of this formula, media laziness, was demonstrated by journalism students here at the University of Tennessee a few years ago. They produced a fake press release for a non-existent student group opposed to political correctness and sent it to various news organizations. Some ran the item; some even embellished the report of an event that never happened with additional details that weren't in the phony press release. None called the contact number (which was genuine) or did anything else to check its validity. Yet when they were exposed, their response was to call the experiment "unethical."

http://instapundit.com/archives/021755.php

News stories, to a degree seldom appreciated by the general public, are often the product of press releases generated by trade associations and interest groups. Often those releases are converted into news stories by the simple expedient of placing a reporter's byline on top. Television news stories (especially those appearing on local stations) are often supplied fully produced, with blank spots left for the local news reporter to insert commentary that makes the story appear his or her own. Opinion columns are often "placed" by businesses or interest groups to support a particular point of view -- often, they are even written by those groups and then run with the byline of distinguished individuals, or even regular commentators, who have barely read the piece, much less written it. Indeed, the Sasso "attack video" was something of this sort, for the journalists who broke the Biden/Kinnock story did not at first disclose their source.

Most readers and viewers have small appreciation of how little of what they see on television or read in newspapers and magazines is original with the reporters, editors, and producers involved. Yet in fact news organizations are highly dependent on predigested information from public relations firms, government officials, and advocacy groups, information that is often passed on to their readers and viewers with no indication that it is not original. That problem is not new, but it has gotten worse in recent years. . . .

Although a "video news release" is still more expensive to produce than a standard paper press release, they have become much more common. According to a recent poll, seventy-five percent of TV news directors reported using video news releases at least once per day.

And CBS did the same thing for Rep. Jefferson in May. It's called a mistake.

October 19, 2006

BIG LAYOFFS AT NBC, to the tune of $750 million in cost cuts.

Plus, plunging profits at the New York Times. No wonder the Big Media are acting as if the economy is in dreadful shape. For them, it is.

posted at 04:02 PM by Glenn Reynolds

It's good enough for him, but not his own people. This guy is a menace. He's neither stupid nor insane and is in fact the closest thing the region has ever seen to a leader who could fill in the shoes of a Middle Eastern Hitler. Read some of Mike Wallace's comments about him after an interview with him, if you think he is such a joke.

Glenn Greenwald? Master of sock puppetry and a certifiable net.kook.

http://instapundit.com/archives/031632.php
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/003902.htm l

Some day, I'll be able to make an entire sentence of a single word:

Heh.

The idea that Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda is, and always had been, a Bush lie.

          http://instapundit.com/archives/026895.php

          http://instapundit.com/archives/016030.php

The idea that Iraq had a WMD program is, and always has been, a Bush lie.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

The only thing that Clinton lied about was having sex, which he didn't actually have.

          http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml

Big Bother is watching you.

          http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html

Violating the privacy of bank customers is a Bush plot

          http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml

Exploiting terrorism for political purposes is something that the previous president didn't do (since his only failings were sexual).

          http://reason.com/9507/VIPedit.jul.shtml

I say to you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

            http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/050595-spe ech-by-president-at-michigan-state.htm

We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate our government.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-29/pm/transcr ipt.html

But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City.

          http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/060195-spe ech-by-president-at-billings-mt-town-hall-meeting. htm

I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

          http://reason.com/Strossen.shtml

The idea that Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda is, and always had been, a Bush lie.

          http://instapundit.com/archives/026895.php

          http://instapundit.com/archives/016030.php

The idea that Iraq had a WMD program is, and always has been, a Bush lie.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

The only thing that Clinton lied about was having sex, which he didn't actually have.

          http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml

Big Bother is watching you.

          http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html

Violating the privacy of bank customers is a Bush plot

          http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml

Exploiting terrorism for political purposes is something that the previous president didn't do (since his only failings were sexual).

          http://reason.com/9507/VIPedit.jul.shtml

I say to you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

            http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/050595-spe ech-by-president-at-michigan-state.htm

We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate our government.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-29/pm/transcr ipt.html

But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City.

          http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/060195-spe ech-by-president-at-billings-mt-town-hall-meeting. htm

I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

          http://reason.com/Strossen.shtml

Just passing along this comment I saw on Instapundit:
What has not been stressed is that SWIFT is not used for individuals. It is used for processing money transfers, stock transfers and bond transfers from companies, governments, banks, insurance companies and NGO's. What we essentially had on file was the holdings for almost all our clients and the clearance data for these transactions dating back for years. We had to keep all this on file to satisfy all the governmental regulations on taxations, etc.

U.S. cyberspace chief warns of 'digital Pearl Harbor'

December 8, 2000
Web posted at: 1:52 PM EST (1852 GMT)

REDMOND, Washington (AP) -- The nation's top cyberspace official Friday called on the next president to shore up the government's computer security to prevent a "digital Pearl Harbor."

"What this presidential election year showed is that statistically improbable events can occur," Richard Clarke of the National Security Council said at a Microsoft-organized conference.

"It may be improbable that cyberspace can be seriously disrupted, it may be improbable that a war in cyberspace can occur, but it could happen."

On coming to office, the next president will find that several nations have created information-warfare units, Clarke said.

"These organizations are creating technology to bring down computer networks. Some are doing reconnaissance today on our networks, mapping them," he said.

Clarke, appointed by President Clinton as the first national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism, spoke at the SafeNet 2000 summit, which brought together computer experts to discuss ways of improving Internet security and privacy.

Clarke said the next president should appoint a government-wide chief information officer, with authority to oversee all the government's computer security, and whose appointment would need confirmation from Congress.

He also said the Clinton administration is creating a scholarship program to increase the number of government computer security experts. Students who study computer security would receive $25,000 a year in return for each year they agree to work for the government.

Another way to improve security throughout the Internet is to create secure lines of communication between the technology industry and the government, Clarke said. That way, they could share information about hackers and viruses without worrying about the public learning about it.

Clarke said the plan would require an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act.

Others at the conference expressed the same notion. Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, said that a nonprofit organization of 18 companies would be created early next year to share information.

"You'll want to have the ability to share high-level intelligence on an anonymous basis, without believing it's going to show up in an AP article the next day," Miller said.

U.S. cyberspace chief warns of 'digital Pearl Harbor'

December 8, 2000
Web posted at: 1:52 PM EST (1852 GMT)

REDMOND, Washington (AP) -- The nation's top cyberspace official Friday called on the next president to shore up the government's computer security to prevent a "digital Pearl Harbor."

"What this presidential election year showed is that statistically improbable events can occur," Richard Clarke of the National Security Council said at a Microsoft-organized conference.

"It may be improbable that cyberspace can be seriously disrupted, it may be improbable that a war in cyberspace can occur, but it could happen."

On coming to office, the next president will find that several nations have created information-warfare units, Clarke said.

"These organizations are creating technology to bring down computer networks. Some are doing reconnaissance today on our networks, mapping them," he said.

Clarke, appointed by President Clinton as the first national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism, spoke at the SafeNet 2000 summit, which brought together computer experts to discuss ways of improving Internet security and privacy.

Clarke said the next president should appoint a government-wide chief information officer, with authority to oversee all the government's computer security, and whose appointment would need confirmation from Congress.

He also said the Clinton administration is creating a scholarship program to increase the number of government computer security experts. Students who study computer security would receive $25,000 a year in return for each year they agree to work for the government.

Another way to improve security throughout the Internet is to create secure lines of communication between the technology industry and the government, Clarke said. That way, they could share information about hackers and viruses without worrying about the public learning about it.

Clarke said the plan would require an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act.

Others at the conference expressed the same notion. Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, said that a nonprofit organization of 18 companies would be created early next year to share information.

"You'll want to have the ability to share high-level intelligence on an anonymous basis, without believing it's going to show up in an AP article the next day," Miller said.

Well, you're right of course, but what do you suggest?

Every time I go to the airport, it *really* irks me that I'm being held up, and searched, and inconvenienced generally, just so the *tiniest* chance that I might be a terrorist can be addressed.

Meanwhile, Yale University welcomes Rahmatullah Hashemi with open arms.

But any attempt to narrow the focus to PROBABLE terrorists is derided by some (including on /.) as "racial profiling."

So, it's back to exposing my socks and underwear to bored bureaucrats, I guess.

There is a Swedish law that I am very, very fond of. In sweden...

I don't mean to brag about my country

Sweden: Poorer than Mississippi, but with more crime.

I would ask if they would do the same if the FBI came knocking on their door asking for customer information without a warrant, but waving the ill-named USA PATRIOT Act around. "Terrorism!" "Security reasons!" "Other buzzword that makes it sound like you aren't a true red-blooded American if you don't comply!" This whole thing really pisses me off. Congress is more than willing to tear down trade barriers with China, allow some corporations to run sweat shops over there, while criticising the tech companies for doing something similar.

So what are your feelings on gun control?

In addition to what you said, it really pisses me off that there are people who loudly complain about the abuses of the PATRIOT ACT, yet are more than willing to look the other way when such abuses are used against law-abiding gun owners (see http://www.instapundit.com/archives/005290.php and http://instapundit.com/archives/006525.php for examples).

What if Google or Yahoo were ordered by the FBI or BATFE to turn over records for certain gun related searches? How many people here would approve?

I would ask if they would do the same if the FBI came knocking on their door asking for customer information without a warrant, but waving the ill-named USA PATRIOT Act around. "Terrorism!" "Security reasons!" "Other buzzword that makes it sound like you aren't a true red-blooded American if you don't comply!" This whole thing really pisses me off. Congress is more than willing to tear down trade barriers with China, allow some corporations to run sweat shops over there, while criticising the tech companies for doing something similar.

So what are your feelings on gun control?

In addition to what you said, it really pisses me off that there are people who loudly complain about the abuses of the PATRIOT ACT, yet are more than willing to look the other way when such abuses are used against law-abiding gun owners (see http://www.instapundit.com/archives/005290.php and http://instapundit.com/archives/006525.php for examples).

What if Google or Yahoo were ordered by the FBI or BATFE to turn over records for certain gun related searches? How many people here would approve?

We Begin:

published a number of cartoons depicting Mohammed in ways that can only have been meant to express contempt.

The cartoons themselves are here:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/02/mohammed_cartoons_ published_in.php

They are the lamest bits of "contempt" westerners have ever seen.

Compare these images to the image "Piss Christ" (a crucifix in a jar of the "artists" urine)

http://instapundit.com/archives/028348.php

and then recall the non-issue it became.

To a moslem depicting the profet is totally forbidden, apparently, which the newspaper in question certainly knew;

Completely, proveably false!

Links to Pictures of the Big Mo thru history:

http://instapundit.com/archives/028427.php

also see:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007934

So, to sum it up: Denmark is festering in xenophobia and inflamed rhetoric; a newspaper decides to try to cash in on stirring up the shit and behave a spoiled brat; instead of being mature and apologize, the West is spiteful. Whatever one may think of the moslem world, this is simply not an honourable way to behave.

First of all, we should all be making a careful distinction between Islamo-Facists and "moslems".

I personally am an escapee from communist eastern europe, so I understand quite well that not all eastern europeans were communists.

Second of all, some of the cartoons created by the I-F are here:

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm

The thoughtfull reader can compare and contrast them with the cartoons of the Big Mo and decide who is stirring shit.

The reaction of the Islamo-Facist element fits in perfectly with this cartoon

http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com/2006/01/isla m-is-poopy_21.html

Note: Cartoon is being pathetically censored by blogger.

We Begin:

published a number of cartoons depicting Mohammed in ways that can only have been meant to express contempt.

The cartoons themselves are here:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/02/mohammed_cartoons_ published_in.php

They are the lamest bits of "contempt" westerners have ever seen.

Compare these images to the image "Piss Christ" (a crucifix in a jar of the "artists" urine)

http://instapundit.com/archives/028348.php

and then recall the non-issue it became.

To a moslem depicting the profet is totally forbidden, apparently, which the newspaper in question certainly knew;

Completely, proveably false!

Links to Pictures of the Big Mo thru history:

http://instapundit.com/archives/028427.php

also see:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007934

So, to sum it up: Denmark is festering in xenophobia and inflamed rhetoric; a newspaper decides to try to cash in on stirring up the shit and behave a spoiled brat; instead of being mature and apologize, the West is spiteful. Whatever one may think of the moslem world, this is simply not an honourable way to behave.

First of all, we should all be making a careful distinction between Islamo-Facists and "moslems".

I personally am an escapee from communist eastern europe, so I understand quite well that not all eastern europeans were communists.

Second of all, some of the cartoons created by the I-F are here:

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm

The thoughtfull reader can compare and contrast them with the cartoons of the Big Mo and decide who is stirring shit.

The reaction of the Islamo-Facist element fits in perfectly with this cartoon

http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com/2006/01/isla m-is-poopy_21.html

Note: Cartoon is being pathetically censored by blogger.

Bill Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches in 1994:

In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrantless searches in highly violent public housing projects.

On December 20th Glenn Reynolds noted this CATO Institute Report published back in 1997:

The Clinton administration has repeatedly attempted to play down the significance of the warrant clause. In fact, President Clinton has asserted the power to conduct warrantless searches, warrantless drug testing of public school students, and warrantless wiretapping...

As I've noted elsewhere, it's OK to argue for more intellectual diversity on faculties, and it's okay to complain about faculty members who bully students with different views. But the UCLA effort sloppily confuses the two and winds up looking like a blacklist, blowing its credibility in the process.

To answer your question, I'm making fun of... well, both, I guess.

In terms of their politics, I'm making fun of their insistance that the whole group is supposed to represent a broad cross-section of political views, when their left-most blogger is Glenn Reynolds, a guy who weighed in on the issue of torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces by claiming that Dems should just keep quiet about it, or they'll just make the whole thing worse.

In terms of their business model, I'm just wondering when they're going to wond up with a sock puppet for a mascot.

In any case, I didn't mean to suggest that this was a topic unworthy of discussion, or that you shouldn't have submitted the story. I'm just suggesting that the proper category may have been "It's Funny. Laugh."

Here's a topic page with links to mostly right wing blog posts about the riots. Also, I recommend reading Jim Dunnigan In France, It's Not Jihad, and Never Has Been who's usually fairly insightful. And of course a link to my favorite blogger, Instapundit and finally The Belmont Club has a few posts about it, just scroll down.

one of the reasons is unemployment. France's national unemployment is around 8 or 10%. If you look only at young 20 somethings, then the unemployment is almost double that, and if you look at young 20 something immigrants, then its double that or so, almost 40% I think. Another reason I've heard are drug dealers and such criminals using the violence to keep the cops out of their turf. As of right now there is little suggesting islamic or jihadi influence as a cause of the riots. However I would bet that al qaeda and other radical islamic organizations are taking notice of the riots and planning. Here's a topic page with links to mostly right wing blog posts about the riots. Also, I recommend reading Jim Dunnigan In France, It's Not Jihad, and Never Has Been who's usually fairly insightful. And of course a link to my favorite blogger, Instapundit

Revered? Irreverant is more his style. Authoritative? He's pretty authoritative on early versions on Excel and on running a small business and staying afloat. Interestingness (or lameness) is subjective and you are entitled to your opinion, but I dare say the reason the reason people link to him is because they do find him interesting.

And oh, about that 'lame blog entries' dig? A lot of people like blogs because they reveal a lot about the person. They sure make for more entertaining reading than PR pap, Unix man pages and the typical low S/N mailing list. Sure, you get angst-ridden teenagers, but you also get law professors, call girls, people who run their own small business, SGML and XML gurus. On message boards like Slashdot, though, you get dupes and the same old tired arguments about Open Source and Digital Freedoms and (bonus!) Slashdot commenters complaining about how lame other people are. Oh the irony.

I guess you haven't heard about these popular blogs:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
http://instapundit.com/

Scientific analysis http://instapundit.com/archives/011803.php does not support your statement. According to the CDC, there is "insufficient evidence" that bans, waiting periods and other gun control laws reduce crime rates.

I think Firefox usage is quite a bit higher than people think. A lot of blogs contain public Sitemeter information that includes browser share. For sites like Instapundit, Daily Kos, or Red State Firefox usage is anywhere from 25-40% of total browsers. My own site has IE just under 50%, Firefox with 35-40%, and Safari hovering around 10% depending on the time of the survey.

Granted, blog readers tend to be somewhat more ahead of the curve than Joe or Jane Sixpack, but they're also indicative of where the market will be a few years down the road. The problem IE and Microsoft faces is that while they have a very high marketshare, their mindshare sucks - everyone uses Microsoft products but only those who take return trips to the Kool Aid bowl particularly like doing it. When an alternative like Firefox comes along that doesn't take a CS degree to use, people start switching, and the stats on more technically-oriented sites bear that out.

        U.S. scientists and their supporters tend to assume biomedical research is threatened by know-nothings on religious crusades. But as the Canadian law illustrates, the long-term threat to genetic research comes less from the religious right than from the secular left. Canada's law forbids all sorts of genetic manipulations, many of them currently theoretical. It's a crime, for instance, to alter inheritable genes.

        And the law has provisions the fabled religious right never even talks about. It's a crime to pay a surrogate mother or to make or accept payment for arranging a surrogate. It's a crime to pay egg or sperm donors anything more than "receipted expenses," like taxi fares. Since eggs are used not just in fertility treatments but in research, this prohibition stifles both.

        Meanwhile, in backward, intolerant America objections to embryonic stem-cell research and therapeutic cloning are less politically persuasive than they were a few years ago. With the support of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Congress is close to a veto-proof majority to expand federal subsidies for embryonic stem-cell research. Many conservative leaders are uncomfortable opposing potentially lifesaving research.

        Given today's political climate, what do you think will happen in the field of reproductive medicine?

        G: Well, let me put it this way. If the environment today existed when IVF was started in 1978, we never would have had IVF. In the first two pregnancies with IVF, one was ectopic and one was a miscarriage. Our government would have stopped us right there. But IVF has resulted in a technology that is mainstream. Like IVF, the technologies we're working on now are to help people with serious medical problems--not to create Frankensteins.

        Would science be better off with Democrats in the White House?

        G: I don't know. I just don't know. Democrats think you're not smart enough to make your own decisions. They think they need to protect you from evil scientists. They will regulate everything that could possibly happen. Republicans, on the other hand, think regulation isn't good, except when it comes to decisions people make in their bedrooms. Then it's absolutely required.

ONE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE TITLED NOBILITY was its immunity from some legal rules laid on the commoners; that's why such titles were an important boon that the King could bestow on favorites. Reading this statement by Richard Lugar on the proposed journalists' shield law, which probably won't cover bloggers, I wonder if we're getting into the same territory:

In other remarks about the legislation at IAPA's 61st General Assembly, Lugar acknowledged that the legislation could amount to a "privilege" for reporters over other Americans.

"I think, very frankly, you can make a case that this is a special boon for reporters, and certainly for their role in freedom of the press," he said. "At the end of the day what we will come out with says there is something privileged about being a reporter, and being able to report on something without being thrown into jail."

I think that such special privileges are a bad idea, as I've said here before. But to the extent that they apply only to Registered Official Journalists (as the story suggests is the intent) rather than to the activity of reporting, I think that they're also deeply troubling. The government is bestowing a special privilege on the press. Will it, like the King, expect loyalty in return?

why would the EU and the UN want to grab control, when that control right now is only being used for laissez faire? Because they want to /stop/ the laissez faire!

China wants to take down Tibetan and Falun Gong sites. Germany wants to ban neonazis from the internet. The arab nations would want to kick off Israel until it "fulfils its international obligations". Etc etc. This is nothing less than an attempt to stuff the information genie back into its bottle.

At all costs, they must be prevented from claiming the spurious moral high ground! Confront them with the question: what would you change? And, why not go through process at ICANN? What would you want to do, that they would refuse? And why?

Why isn't the current president ordering vaccinations for everyone? The technology of making flu vaccines is pretty routine, even if the flue is alleged to be unusually lethal. Instead, President Bush is talking about imposing martial law and using the military to quarantine those portions of the country where the bird flu strikes.

But that requires thought and work. It's easier to repeat the fear mongering of the left wing blogs than to think for oneself.