Slashdot Mirror

Since Greg Mankiw believes uninformed is worse than not at all, I wonder what he would make of GOP efforts to intentionally dis-inform prospective voters.

"Then, in 1991, under pressure to reign in massive budget deficits, lawmakers passed (and President George H.W. Bush signed) a law that revolutionized the way the patent office does business. Borrowing ideas then in vogue among private sector consultants and CEOs to "reengineer" organizations to make them more "customer-driven," Congress instructed the patent office, which had always been funded from government revenues, to now pay its own way through fees charged to applicants, and to make the process of winning a patent easier on them."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/050 6.roth.html

CC.

In the words of William A. Niskanen:
"It's not that unified governments love to purchase bombers, but, rather, that they tend to draw us into war. This may sound improbable at first, but consider this: In 200 years of U.S. history, every one of our conflicts involving more than a week of ground combat has been initiated by a unified government. Each of the four major American wars during the 20th century, for example--World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War--was initiated by a Democratic president with the support of a Democratic Congress. The current war in Iraq, initiated by a Republican president and backed by a Republican Congress, is consistent with this pattern. It also stands as the only use of military force involving more than a week of ground combat that has been initiated by a Republican president in over a century. Divided government appears to be an important constraint on American participation in war. "
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/061 0.niskanen.html#Byline

"Vint Cerf: I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."

"My mind is made up because of the facts."
Well then, lets see some of your data to backup that statement. As I've stated earlier, I've included links, that you glibly avoid discussing, to support my point. You simply make a statement as if it's a fact without proof. Here is another link to support the fact of media consolidation. Lets look at what media consolidation is, it is when more and more media outlets, whether they are television, radio, newspaper, etc;, are owned and controlled by a smaller and smaller group of corporations. If you had been paying attention for the last ten years, you would already have known this. Obviously your too busy playing WOW or watching Survivor... I don't know which is worse. Here is an article by Ted Turner where he discusses the folly and danger of media consolidation, terming it a "Loss of democratic debate". Remember when you said media consolidation had nothing to do with Democracy?

"they'll tell you what you want to hear"? That's merely media being responsive to the public interest.
I disagree strongly. "Responsive to the public interest."? Give me a break. Good journalism is supposed to make people question and think, not blindly accept as the dittohead's do. Also, the vast majority of talk radio is spouting this type of right wing jingoistic krap (theres that word again), and guess who owns the stations that play them? Thats right, Clear Channel, Cox, and the rest of the consolidaters. The only real place to find voices of dissent or questioning is on public or "free" radio, those stations not controlled by corporations.

"and I probably watch "Democracy Now" (something that would not exist if "media concentration" claims were true) more than Fox News."
I find that hard to believe, because if you did watch or listen to Democracy Now then you wouldn't have the "world is flat" opinion about media consolidation that you have. Check this link for details. I dare you.

"The studies get "tilted" into meaninglessness when those who make the claim that there is media concentration basically fake their case by not counting most of the media voices. So EASY to make a case that there are too few voices when you arbitrarily toss out most of the voices from being counted."
Thats a good one. You are using that methodology now. As I stated earlier, you are taking the tack that the Bush administration takes when a scientific study comes up they disagree with. They simply dismiss it because they don't like how the data came out. Thats what you are doing here. The internet is full of examples and proof of this. The fact that you argue the point makes me think that you're either:
A) A corporate shill getting paid to post this krap on /.
OR
B) Someone too scared of the truth to research anything, knowing they won't like what they find.
Which is it?
Also, what specifically do you mean by "voices"? Being vague and rhetorical are the weapons of politicians, why don't you run for office?

"The ability to purchase media outlets is part of freedom of the press, not a favor to be granted by the FCC."
The Freedom of the press has nothing to do with creating media monopolies. When a single company owns more media outlets in a given market it gains unfair advantage. You may have trouble understanding this concept... Perhaps you should read up on American history, particulary the beginning of the 20th century during Theodore Roosevelts period. Do you know what a VNR is? That is essentially "fake news" that PR firms create to push a specific point of view of product. These VNR's are then played on local news stations and the average viewer assumes they are "real news" pieces by real journalist

This is really the best confirmation data we have. DPRK says they set off a nuke. Even if a nuke had fizzled, it would've been bigger than the 550T explosion the seismometers felt. From here, "A geology professor at Yale, Jeffrey Park, emails to tell me that the updated Richter magnitude for the North Korea event is 3.5, which he calls "mighty small for a crude nuke." And that's true: it suggests a very small yield. But the odd thing is that it's actually harder to build a 1 kiloton weapon than a 5 or 10 kiloton weapon, and it's unlikely North Korea has the expertise to do this."

So, nobody's really sure what to believe right now, and eventually it'll just fall to consensus on the data we already have.

The best place to hear about the debate's over at ArmsControlWonk. New radionucliotide data, insider info from some well-placed anonymous sources, and insights into the scientific cultures within dictatorships paints an interesting picture.

Yay, more nuclear! Then we have depleted uranium and uranium mining tailings to worry about! And a mountain full of waste we'll figure out how to use someday. Thanks, but count me out.

Instead of funding more dirty power plants, we could fund conservation & clean power and do just as well. As California has recently proven, we can cut back our power usage quite easily if we just do it

If the Saudi claims are debunked sufficiently to affect the general consensus, there will be a panic that will send prices through the roof. Let us hope the worst does not happen.

The problem is that DCI has been retained by telecom companies (specifically AT&T) in the past, and the opinions published on their Tech Central Station astroturf site closely tracked AT&T's. Why would Google hire a company with a track record of working hard for the other side?

DCI is a full spectrum political consulting, PR, and telemarketing firm; while some of the work it has done certainly has been "astroturfing", a lot of it seems to be routine political consulting and marketing.

They sure are. As they put it themselves "Whatever the issue, whatever the target--elected officials, regulators or public opinion--you need reliable third party allies to advocate your cause. We can help you recruit credible coalition partners and engage them for maximum impact. It's what we do best." The services they provide include:

• Astroturfing (see links in story)
• Push-polling
• Telemarketing (as you mentioned)
• Grass-tops (their term, not mine, but I can guess)
• Fake blog and video production (see links in story)
• Journo-Lobbyists
• Spamming (see previous links)
• Junk mail (dead tree spam) (their original line)
• and employment services

What they don't seem to do is anything legitimate, or at least non-slimy. Got any examples you'd like to share?

--MarkusQ

DCI is a full spectrum political consulting, PR, and telemarketing firm; while some of the work it has done certainly has been "astroturfing", a lot of it seems to be routine political consulting and marketing.

They sure are. As they put it themselves "Whatever the issue, whatever the target--elected officials, regulators or public opinion--you need reliable third party allies to advocate your cause. We can help you recruit credible coalition partners and engage them for maximum impact. It's what we do best." The services they provide include:

• Astroturfing (see links in story)
• Push-polling
• Telemarketing (as you mentioned)
• Grass-tops (their term, not mine, but I can guess)
• Fake blog and video production (see links in story)
• Journo-Lobbyists
• Spamming (see previous links)
• Junk mail (dead tree spam) (their original line)
• and employment services

What they don't seem to do is anything legitimate, or at least non-slimy. Got any examples you'd like to share?

--MarkusQ

While we're at it, can someone please
Repeal
all
SECRET
LAWS!?

You've got to be kidding! In theory, the readers, and by extension the posters, of /. are better educated than the run-of-the-mill sheep in this country, but I really doubt that now. Does anyone actually read stories like this, this, or this.

People, let's start using that grey matter for once. Yes, there are definitely people who would want to blow up planes, and yes, there are ways that it could be done. The War on Moisture isn't going to make anyone safer. Beyond the huge inconvenience and expense factor (read Schneier's Wired essay (I posted the link to his blog rather than the Wired article due to updates), a simple question of proportion should come in here. According to the US government's own statistics, fewer than 2,000 people were killed WORLDWIDE in 2004 by terrorists. Even if you add in the thousands of people killed on 9/11, you're still talking about 10,000 people, tops. Compare that to the number of people killed each year in car crashes (38,000 US fatalities in 2004), malaria (1,000,000 to 3,000,000 per year worldwide, mostly in Africa), or heart disease (276 out of ever 100,000 people in the US in 1996, or 22,800 in New York City alone). In fact, if the statistics are right, more people are hit by lightning each year (1 person out of every 600,000 per year, or 10,000 worldwide) than are killed by terrorists.

So, are you going to stop driving your car? Stop smoking/drinking? Stop taking romantic walks in the rain? (ok, so maybe not a good one on /.) Think of all the lives that would be saved if the billions of dollars that are being spent protecting us from push-up bras and shampoo were spent on finding a cure for malaria, or tuburculosis, or lung cancer, or AIDS.

Bah, the world is filled with nothing but sheep.

Meet the Press How James Glassman reinvented journalism--as lobbying.

You aren't the only one. To quote from Gregg Easterbrook (probably best known to the slashdot crowd for his 5...4...3...2..1.. goodbye columbia article: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/800 4.easterbrook-fulltext.html)

One of my problems with Battlestar Galactica is that the men and women in the show are depicted as so astonishingly across-the-board stupid, it's tempting to root for the robots. The military officers are stupid; the politicians are stupid; the civilians are stupid. In the pilot, we learn that the entire defense network of the human society could be deactivated by one single numeric code. The evil robots, called Cylons, obtain the code, transmit it, and instantly all the human society's military equipment shuts off. Planets are left defenseless as the Cylons bombard them with nuclear bombs; numerous powerful battlestars are shown hanging in space helpless, their engines and weapons shut off, as the Cylons smash them. (The Galactica escapes via plot contrivance.) Now if you were an advanced society capable of building gigantic faster-than-light outer-space battleships, would you design them so that one single numeric code renders them all totally useless at the same time? Plus the numeric code that instantly shuts off every military device in the entire human society has been entrusted to a psychologically unstable computer scientist, who accidentally gives it to the Cylons. Halfway through the first season, the computer scientist became vice-president of the survivors' government, and everyone -- including military intelligence -- is so astonishingly stupid as to never realize that since scientist was the only one who had the code, he must have been the one to give it to the Cylons.

Next, the show has premise problems that appears unsolvable. One aspect of the premise is that there are no other intelligent beings in this part of the galaxy -- just the beleaguered humans and the malevolent Cylons. This means there are no aliens to meet in various episodes, no alien societies to depict. True, it must be hard at this point to come up with new alien ideas for sci-fi. You can imagine the scriptwriters' conference: "Okay, how about they find a planet where people can only speak when the sun is out?" The other premise problem is that the Cylons are depicted as having become so powerful, Galactica cannot hope to defeat them. If the characters can't overcome the Cylons and can't meet interesting aliens, to create dramatic tension the scriptwriters are forced to have the humans fighting each other, which is what happens. Almost every episode concerns internecine fighting inside the human fleet: plots, mutinies, martial law, claims of treason, everything but people accusing each other of witchcraft. Galactica story lines have become so similar that I have trouble telling whether an episode is new or a repeat.

Honestly, I don't understand how a conservative government can increase the size of government this much, and ask for internet regulations, I mean it does not follow the philosophy at all. Am I the only libertarian here?

Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

Three examples--FEMA, Medicare, and Iraq-- should be sufficient to make this point.

The other author, Carter writes for the Tech Central Science Foundation, which is owned by a DC lobbying firm which received $95K from ExxonMobil.

Real scientists publish in scientific journals. Be ashamed that you can't tell the difference between scientists and "scientific pundits" and a corporate agenda from a scientific agenda.

When you can find scientific journal cites for Carter's junk science, I'll listen to you.

1133 21st St NW Suite M100 c/o Ralph R Brown Washington, DC 20036 Phone: 202-546-4242 Tech Central Science Foundation was formed in late November 2002 (Form 990). The Foundation appears to be a funding arm of the free-market news site, TechCentralStation.com.

ExxonMobil gave the Foundation $95,000 in 2003 for "Climate Change Support." According to Guidestar.org, a nonprofit research tool, the Foundation had 2003 income of $150,000 and $110,903 in assets. The Foundation commissioned a study by Charles River Associates alleging that the costs of the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2003 would be a minimum of $350 annually per household through 2010, rising to $530 per household by 2020, and could rise to as high as $1,300 per year per household. Related information: Tech Central Station was launched in 1999 as "a cross between a journal of Internet opinion and a cyber think tank open to the public" (TCS news release). According to Washington Monthly, TCS is published by the DCI Group, 'a prominent Washington public affairs firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called 'Astroturf' organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot." TCS shares office space, staff and ownership with DCI Group. ('Meet the Press' Washington Monthly, December 2003. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/031 2.confessore.html) Corporate funders of Tech Central Station include AT&T, Avue Technologies, The Coca-Cola Company, General Motors Corporation, Intel, McDonalds, Merck, Microsoft, Nasdaq, PhRMA, and Qualcomm (Tech Central Station website).

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.

In those times when "truth" is a common subject in movies and television, I think Colbert just said the truth about what's going on: Bush ignoring global warning, being not so intellectually focus, Bush's harder control on the media (journalist get fired by the news channel when they say something patriotic... and what does patriotic means? patriotic = act the way the president want you to behave)... even though, the control of the media by the American has always been there (as in many countries... it's a lot better than in countries with dictator, but there's still a lot more media control in the united states than in most democratic countries. Also, it is true that the USA is very religious... Consequence: religious leaders influence politic and the president try to get religious leaders' votes... and that's not I would call "separation of the church and the states"!

Here's how it works: journalists report the news... if the government don't like what they hear, they will give indirect penalties to the CEO of the news corporation... then the CEO will have to fire the journalists for being inappropriate. If the news corporation resist, all the other news corporations (who are scared of penalties) will say how unpatriotic that news corporation is and the latter will eventually have to conform to the others.

Watch "V for Vendetta" movie... You'll understand what's happening to USA.

Bush is a "doomsday" politician with high economic (which is good) and military (which can be scary) interest.

So... Start wars = Get votes and get popular = More money for the USA and for his family.

The problem is not being republican... It is being for Bush. Voting conservative doesn't mean WAR. Voting for Bush means to go WAR. Liberals and conservatives might go to war or not for some reason. We should rather link the military orientation to the leaders rather than the political party.

Go see the statistics about Bush's popularity: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_B ush_Approval_May_2004.jpg

No comments.

Even though, I think what Colbert say is the cold hard cruel truth... It must be very humiliating for the president to be there watching some insulting person. I empathize with the president in the situation. Colbert is cruel... Humiliating... That's the same technique that was used by the Bush's "concentration camp"! So he's not better than Bush in that way.

Colbert is funny. His show has very high ratings and checks on the internet, people love him and the speech he made (although media hate him now!). People who were attacked by him (including the Washing Post) will say he's not funny.

Final note: Colbert said the cruel truth, but it must been very humiliating for the president and the media people. It was very inappropriate, but at the same time it's a wake up call for the president and the media.

Sure, Genisis has God taking away their legs. All that was lacking was the proof. It's no coincidence the proof is the Sacrum now is it? Dummm, deee dummb dumb!

You can also prove the Sun is smaller than a quarter by holding the quarter up in the sky and blocking your view of the Sun entirely! This trick should be good for the quarter of US citizens who think the Sun revolves around the Earth. Ironically, things are worse in Japan, but the Catholic Church is on the case! The two fifths of US citizens who have no curiosity are probably beyond redemption.

The world is weird but consistent. People are more so because they are not but they do not know it and do not care.

"it takes, on average, 10 years and 1 billion dollars to get a new drug approved in the U.S. ..."

This is simply incorrect. It is likely that this statistic is referring to the time it takes for a drug company to develop and gain approval for a new drug. According to Washington Monthly in May 2000, at that time the FDA approval process was taking about a year, and had decreased from about 2.5 years after so-called "fast track" procedures were implemented in the 90s: (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/00 05.pomper.html)

"If you are arguing that the FDA plays down risks in order to allow buisnesses to sell dangerous products, that is just not true."

I am, and I am by no means alone. For evidence and opinions on this side of the question, you might want to check out:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6520630/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pres cription/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A313 5-2004Dec15.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1126/p02s01-uspo.htm l

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2004/11/23/MNGSPA04NI1.DTL

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050205/bob10 .asp

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/15/60II/mai n674293.shtml

Since they started dumping money into political campaigns and hired their own lobbying group about ten years ago Microsoft has become one of the most generous contributors to politicians in the country:


LXer: How Microsoft wastes its money on anything but software
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/55497/index.h tml


Election 2004: How to Excel in DC
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0438/040922_news _microsoft.php


A Bug in Windows GOP (Seattle Weekly)
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0522/050601_news _microsoft.php


Microsoft And The G.O.P.: Antitrust Insurance?
http://www.time.com/time/reports/gatesbook/lobbyin g.html


Microsoft's lobbying efforts eclipse Enron
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-835267.html


Redmond | Feature Article: Following Microsoft's Money
http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?Editori alsID=440


News Alert 9/6/01: Microsoft
http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/alertv6_26.as p


Commentary: It's Back to Charm School for Microsoft
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_45/b3654183.ht m


"The Think Tank As Flack" by David Callahan
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/991 1.callahan.think.html

In fact, a quick Google search throws up a long list of articles from TNR, The Atlantic, and Slate.com, etc., following a similar theme. This guy has been chipping away on this line for a long time now...

I am not a lawyer but I am pretty sure that CA law does not protect client confidentiality in cases where the client is planning an overtly criminal act. But that does not mean that disclosure to the press is necessarily protected.

It seems somewhat unlikely that this trial is going to result in a guilty verdict unless the court prevents the defense from presenting their case that the accused believed that he was protecting the election to the jury.

What it does mean is that there is going to be a lot of intense scrutiny of Diebold's voting machines and a lot of internal Diebold correspondence is going to come out in court.

At this point Diebold paranoia is mostly on the left in the US, but as I was arguing in my blog this morning it is only a matter of time before the right begins to become equally suspicious. Whether justified or not there is going to be someone who cries foul. I really do not think it is at all likely that Diebold would be part of any electoral conspiracy, even if the CEO is a Republican I'll bet most of his engineers are liberals and libertarians.

The key discovery here is that a voting system has to be auditable, not just secure. Diebold's ATMs only need to be secure. The bank knows how much cash is put into them each day and how much is withdrawn. The machine itself is not the sole trusted component in the audit loop. That is not the case with the voting machine designs.

Just look at the campaign contributions from the last few election cycles. Most major businesses & their leaders would give heavily to both parties.

They own both parties, less a few hardcore partisans and maybe a couple idealists.

Actually, the trend is opposite, what you suggest. This "give money to both parties" strategy was the modus operandi pre-1994. But Tom Delay, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich and others specifically set out to undermine the status quo with the K Street project, which seeks to get Republicans hired at (and Democrats fired from) lobbying firms, and punish those that try to play both sides. The result is that corporate giving to Republicans has steadily grown relative to that given to Democrats.

Jack Abramoff is the epitome of this. His clients generally radically reduced their giving to Democrats as soon as they signed on with his firm.

Generally large fireballs are associated with explosions, which this seemed to be. More specifically, the shuttle was wrenched off course suddenly by the disintegrating and burning fuel tank (i.e. the exploding (or as others will be sure to point out to me-rapidly burning) part). While the crew cabin survived and plummeted to the ocean at more than 200 mph. It has been heavily rumored that buried in a secret safe in NASA is a tape recording from one of the astronauts (who had a recorder running during takeoff in his pocket) muttering the Lord's prayer during the descent.

There is sufficent evidence that the bodies of the astronauts were put in barrels on the back of a flatbed when brought ashore as to not raise any suspicion

Pieces of Challenger still occasionally wash up on the beach, with a large wing portion showing up on the beach in the late nineties. Pieces of the wreckage of the shuttle are "entombed" in a missile silo on Cape Canaveral.

There is this very prescient article written while the shuttles were being built. He also wrote an excellent followup after Columbia. Personally, I thought Challenger was a "one-off" and that things had been fixed, but I lost all faith in the space agency (and its subsequent funding for the expensive shuttles).

There never been an exact cost released by NASA for what it takes to launch a shuttle, but I'm quite sure that it is very much more than the 500 million they said before the Columbia disaster. Some say more than a billion dollars.

Which I believe would be the cost to build a decent Hubble replacement and launch on an unmanned rocket. Food for thought.

You do realize that the US as a whole has grown wealthier, not poorer, right?

The Ultra-rich have accumulated more wealth, yes, this is true .

News stories have been done on the vanishing middle class :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A342 35-2004Sep19.html

The Stock Market correction of 2000 and then 9-11, was more massive then I think you
can imagine, it bankrupted most of the major airlines in the US .

Just now we have risen to the point we were at before 9-11, aka
the same spot we were at after the DOT COM crash .

Lay offs were literally in the millions .

Do you understand " MILLIONS "

They like to make like it has "recovered", but all that has really happened is
a shell game . It's all bullshit, just like Enron, Global Crossing, MCI, Ad naseum .

Greenspan knows this, thus his warning on a housing bubble .

Excerpt: ( 4 paragraphs up from the last )

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/040 4.wallace-wells.html

That job fell to Greenspan: Finally, on Feb. 24, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, he came clean about the risks of the housing market, in a speech reminiscent of his 1996 warning about "irrational exuberance" in the stock market. In his familiar, glum posture, his bald head slouching low over the table, he warned that the GSEs weren't just unstable, but also posed a "systemic risk" to the economy of the United States. He suggested debt caps, to reduce Fannie and Freddie's role in the market, and urged stricter regulation.

These EXACT tactics have played out before, but we refuse to look back to 1929 .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression#Caus es_of_the_Great_Depression

They want to maximize the profit, raise the stock price, lower overhead ...Ad naseum .

I go back to the simplicity method .

If anyone can do any job here for less, then no citizen will be doing the job if the
bottomline is all to consider .

corporate funded slums to house the visa workers, because they aren't even paid enough to
afford the housing that the citizens have to pay for .

Read this woman's story :

http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/108/ sha020404.htm

Ex-MislTech

Maintain Purity of Thought. dontlookatherknockers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4682533.stm http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/031129/2 003112904.html http://www.partydomain.co.uk/d-commerce/product899 .html http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/050 7.cannon.html

This is against the law. I have put references to the relevant statute below the fold; the brief version is: the law forbids warrantless surveillance of US citizens, and it provides procedures to be followed in emergencies that do not leave enough time for federal agents to get a warrant. If the NY Times report is correct, the government did not follow these procedures. It therefore acted illegally.

Bush's order is arguably unconstitutional as well: it seems to violate the fourth amendment, and it certainly violates the requirement (Article II, sec. 3) that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

The ad told the story of a guy who collected a $500,000 jury verdict after he was injured using a lawnmower as a hedge clipper. The agency later conceded that it had no factual basis for the story, but that didn't keep it from circulating widely in the media and in conservative political speeches.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/041 0.mencimer.html

(Think about that for a minute - even if you were to try to cut a hedge with a lawn mower, how could you hold it such that it would be your thumbs which were injured?) A quick Nexis search confirmed the story to have been a fabrication.
http://thestoppedclock.blogspot.com/2004_10_10_the stoppedclock_archive.html

In a well-wnitten opinion piece in the July/August 2004 Washington Monthly titled "My Beef With Big Media", Ted Turner argues for the break-up of media conglomerates. He makes the case that they not only stifle innovation, they are also frighteningly bad for democracy. To my mind, Turner's argument is the best so far against these conglomerates. He has also been perhaps the most strident critic of CNN's devolution into an infotainment channel over the past few years, and it's worth noting that he may have axes to grind due to his strenuous opposition to the acquisition of Time Warner by AOL, but his arguments are no less valid for all that.

I've read of using classical music to ward off the unwanted teen crowd at convenience stores. It seems a bit more humane and appropriately selective - in that it can serve as a cultural experience for those who don't mind it, and one might think those people would be more socially acceptable than those who loathe classical music.

actually its +3 informative so far. heh,

sorry I dont have any lefty blog posts to link to off hand, but you could probably find something at TPM, Matt Yglesias, or Kevin Drum if you look. I dont read a lot of lefty blogs myself, but I've heard mostly pretty good things on those guys. I've seen a lot of different points of view over the past few days in the blogosphere. I tend to take the view somewhat similar to wretchard at belmont, that this is not intifadam its economic and social, but looking to the future, the radical islamists would be fools not to try to capitalize off of a large muslim and north african population rioting in a western nation.

Kevin Drum responded to this about a week ago.

PZ Meyers also has a pretty good response:

Kurzweil cheats. The most obvious flaw is the way he lumps multiple events together as one to keep the distribution linear. For example, one "event" is "Genus Homo, Homo erectus, specialized stone tools", and another is "Printing, experimental method" and "Writing, wheel". If those were treated as separate events, they would have inserted major downward deflections in his chart a million years ago, and about 500 to a few thousand years ago.

...not only is the chart an artificial and perhaps even conscious attempt to fit the data to a predetermined conclusion, but what it actually represents is the proximity of the familiar. We are much more aware of innovations in our current time and environment, and the farther back we look, the blurrier the distinctions get. We may think it's a grand step forward to have these fancy cell phones that don't tie you to a cord coming from the wall, but there was also a time when people thought it was radical to be using this new bow & arrow thingie, instead of the good ol' atlatl. We just lump that prior event into a "flinging pointy things" category and don't think much of it. When Kurzweil reifies biases that way, he gets garbage, like this graph, out.

Read sample of their "journalism" here:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/070505Q.html
Read about Mr. Glassman here:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/031 2.confessore.html

The present article is all noise too - which University? Which research supports author's observations? What about other universities? And, if any students were his seniors, wasn't it only him having problems? Etc, etc.

but a single launch vehicle is a lot less costly than shuttle maintenance and I don't think it's worth it launching either to 'maintain' a satelite that costs a fraction of that mission. Take a look at this article:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/800 4.easterbrook-fulltext.html

Even though it had been written before the Columbia and Challenger disasters, its author was able to foresee many of shuttle's current problems.

Instead of having 5,000,000 individual "sites" (blogs) commenting on the same subject-of-the-day and expecting people to come to them, they should be sharing their comments (unless they're so utterly different and unique and special or whatever) in community forums like Slashdot. Can you imagine if, rather than reading a page under an article on slashdot to get everyone's thoughts on it - you had to visit each of the poster's websites, look for today's date and then read their thoughts on it?
You have a very narrow view of blogs. There are plenty of blogs out there that have active communities. Here's one:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

At the time of this posting, there are 130 comments on the most recent blog entry. The only thing that's missing is threading, but the technology exists for that:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-32,GGLG:en&q=blog+thread ed+comments

See, for many people blogs aren't just about throwing their comments into the web and hoping that somebody likes them -- it's about actually creating an environment for discussion of thoughts that are pressing to them, rather than letting others dictate the terms of the discussion.

For some people, that just means asking their families to read their blogs, and for others it's an attempt to create an actual "community". Either way, the potential for real meaningful interaction certainly does exist in blogs. What TBL is talking about is filtering through the large number of amateur, careless, incomplete and otherwise failed blogs to locate those that have that potential.

The article Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty (written in 1980) makes the point that the shuttle design was a kludge from the start, not because the engineers weren't smart enough, but because of typical constraints of politics and money.

The article also has a great quote pointing out how hard it is to build a reusable cargo vehicle for space:

To truly grasp the challenge of building a space shuttle, think about its flight. The ship includes a 60-by-15-foot open space, narrow wings, and a large cabin where men must be provided that delicately slender range of temperatures and pressures they can endure. During ascent, the shuttle must withstand 3 Gs of stress--inertial drag equivalent to three times its own weight. While all five engines are screaming, there will be acoustic vibrations reaching 167 decibels, enough to kill an unprotected person. In orbit, the shuttle will drift through -250F. vacuum, what engineers call the "cold soak." It's cold enough to embrittle and shatter most materials. During reentry, the ship's skin goes from cold soak to 2,700F., hot enough to transform many metals into Silly Putty. Then the shuttle must glide along, under control, at speeds up to Mach 25, three times faster than any other piloted aircraft has ever flown. After reentry, it cascades through the air without power; finally thunking down onto the runway at 220 m.p.h. The like-sized DC-9 lands, with power, at 130 m.p.h. Rockets are throwaway contraptions in part so that no one piece ever has to endure such a wild variety of conditions. The shuttle's design goal is to take this nightmare ride 100 times.

Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde

Everthing has an element of risk. But in this case the empirical odds of total destruction are 56:1, better that russian roulette but only by an order of magnitude. If the use of the shuttle is justified for the specific task by all means do so. But if a Russian space capsule is up to the task use that. If heavy lift is what is needed, a big unmanned launch vehicle should be used.

At present, the primary justification for shuttle missions is to justify the shuttle. Only a fraction of the time and effort on board the ISS is spent on anything but maintaining the ISS and determining the effects of extended stays in space by the crew.

Greg Easterbrook wrote and article in 1980 which is remarkably salient now: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/800 4.easterbrook-fulltext.html

The best thing that advocates of the space program especially the manned space program can do is realize that the Shuttle!=The Space Progam.

We have to admit that the Shuttle was the lowball approach to implementing a reusable manned spacecraft using mid-70's technology. The design was full of horrible compromises and hopelessly oversold. We have three left, and no more will be built.

Secondly, with the current constraint of flights to ISS the Shuttle has no commercial or military importance.

If we want a space program to compete with China and India much less Russia, we need to make the replacement of the Shuttle a first priority, using a variety of vehicles, most unmanned, some manned. The technologies must be innovative and practical. NASA must focus on directly relating thse new vehicles to tangible applications for the public.

The public wants desparately to support the space program, they love Space Ship 1, the Mars Rovers, GPS and Satellite TV. But when faced with nothing but incredibly dangerous commutes to low earth orbit, their support wanes to nothing.

Vouchers sound like a good idea, but what you'll really get is:

A) dilution of good private schools - enough parents will be interested in their children's education (or at least in making their children better positionted to get good jobs later on), but won't know much more than that "private schools are better." As you just pointed out, the main reason private schools tend to be better is that they can select their students. With vouchers, they will start becoming "diluted" with students they wouldn't select on their own. And they'd darned well better not deny students with vouchers. Just as public schools have to accept everyone, private schools should be made to accept anyone who wants to if they're going to start getting public funding. I realize vouchers aren't direct public funding, but as far as I'm concerned, the principle is the same. The whole point of vouchers is to provide "choice," but if the "better" schools get to deny everyone anyway, what's the point?

B) no way to verify results. Private and parochial schools will not be held to any scrutiny or standard measure. I think standardized testing is an unfortunate fetish of our society, but if we really think it works, I will demand that all schools receiving vouchers be held to the same standards and measurements as public schools, even if that continues to be standardized testing.

C) a great increase in religious school enrollment. This is what people will really end up using vouhers for; it's largely the religious ed. community that tends to push for them. This is demonstrated here.

I think a rational solution to poor public education would be not to just shunt students off to private schools but to diagnose the problem with the existing system and propose solutions to it. I think that's also what any reality-based Democrat would want to do. Why phase out the existing system if it's performing poorly when there's 1) no reason to suspect the existing system can't be fixed and can't perform better, and 2) every reason to expect that phasing it out and replacing it with voucher-funded private schools will ultimately result in education that is just as bad?

Without doing much research into any already-existing attempts to diagnose the ailments of the public school system, I would think a Democratic solution to the problem would probably include, at the very least, reforming measurements of performance so that they actually encourage good teaching instead of just encouraging teachers to inflate grades and pass students who should really fail. I would also expect it to focus on reinforcing basic skill requirements like math, grammar, etc. The "three R's" as they're known.

Your own diagnosis (the "free rider" problem) invites a very simple fix, rather than the complex, additional government bureaucracy (why do libertarians support this?) that would obviously need to be created for voucher programs. What simple fix? Well, removing the free riders by keeping them back and failing them. Alternatively, or additionally, create advanced opportunities (like extra AP classes or something) for the students who actually care. For people who think it'll do too much damage to fail people and hold them back, the real problem there is that students who perform poorly will have no job prospects and have difficulty supporting themselves. It seems to me that that presents an obvious solution (or attempt at one): acknowledge that humans exist with much diversity, and some are just going to be brighter than others. Be truly compassionate and address the dimmer side of humanity by providing them direct assistance in finding occupations that will suit them. Make it very clear to the people who need it most that they do have opportunities to support themselves and their families. I'm not saying give them jobs (I'm not a socialist, heaven forbid), I'm saying, very openly steer the lower end of the education spec

More funding is exactly what will help many poorly-performing schools in lower economic areas. The question is, what type of funding? I would say

1) resources (books, facilities, etc.)

2) programs to improve the community's perception of education (especially in many poor communities, education is seen as pointless and "not worth it"; why bother studying when you can make more money faster selling drugs, etc. - sorry for the stereotype, just trying to make a basic point. Any sort of endeavor to highlight the importance of a good education, and make sure that people who feel they have no opportunity for escaping their lot in life are aware of the real opportunities they have, will go a long way towards increasing student and family participation, and therefore increase school performance)

3) teacher training (help teachers do their jobs better, instead of punishing those who don't)

4) teacher pay (note how I list this after all the others. once the others are in place, make sure the people who do these difficult jobs, especially those who work in the most run-down schools, are compensated appropriately. please, no comments about unions. if you feel teachers are already compensated appropriately, fine, then focus on previous 3 items)

Aside from funding, I would also start to ignore the increasing fetish for standardized testing. As far as I can tell, it seems that the more standardized testing they do, the less apt the students become. It makes teachers' jobs difficult, too, because they have to focus on making sure their students can pass all the tests in order to keep their jobs, rather than focusing on actually getting their students to learn.

One other issue: vouchers. Stupid idea. Where it's been done, it seems it just ups enrollment at religious schools, and little verification is done that the performance of the schools is any good.

If we truly believe that standardized testing is a good measure of school performance, then if my money is going to start paying for kids to go to private school, those schools had better be held to the same standards as other publicly funded schools.

Besides, it seems to me that private schools tend to be viewed as "better" because they get to cherry-pick their students, while public schools have to accept everyone. Once vouchers are in place, private schools will just become diluted and useless.

Microsoft is strictly amateur hour.

This is hardly true. Even years ago, a CCIA report (submitted to the court during the MS antitrust case -- admittedly CCIA is/was a critic of MS) called Microsoft's political influence "in many ways unprecedented in modern political history." One Seattle based study/article placed Microsoft as the number three corporate political donor. Nor can one discount the effect of policy groups, think tanks, and industry groups financed by the corporation but not accounted for in lobbying and political contributions.

There have been a number of shareholder efforts attempting to get MS to either prohibit unregulated soft money contributions or publish policies for such spending. Here for example.

Anyway, this is a tiny bit of the info that's out there. Just possibly, Microsoft is more than an amateur in political influence.

Yup. And when you go to the hydrogen pump, who are you going to fill up from?

That's right - Mobil, Shell, BP, etc etc.

They are not oil companies any more, but energy companies. They know the writing's on the wall, and they have plans to stick around.

BTW: this is a quick interesting take on the state of oil.

I think this whole blog thing is getting way out of hand. Who cares that much about someone else life? Most people can't even care for themselves...why should you be worrying about checking out the latest cell phone picture with a story about how the line at McDonalds is too long. Gimme a break.

You're reading the wrong blogs. Here's a few:

http://defensetech.org/
http://www.back-to-iraq.com/
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.juancole.com/
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

But you obviously see something far more sinister than has ever happened in this country.

Here's a list of the topics they would've been working on:

* Recommendation for 400 MHz bands
* RLAN in the 5 GHz band
* Recommendation on harmonized frequencies for property protection
* Revision to Recommendation PCC.II/REC. 67 (XIX-01) on Low Power Radiocommunication devices,
* Radio frequency identification devices (RFID)
* Broadband Power Line Communications (BPL)
* Refarming of 700 MHz band
* Answer to Market questionnaire on IMT 2000 and systems beyond
* Results of the video conference on wireless broadband

History will be written by the winners. They'll be no trace of the dirty liberal hands that gave $250 to the Kerry campaign on these obscure telecommunication standards.

The Bush administation's genious is in it's recognition that all our problems, on all levels, are caused by liberal influence. Did you lose the signal on your wireless LAN moments ago? It's a little known fact that when this happens it's probably because of liberal influence.

Here are some more examples:

* Rebuilding Iraq : It's a well known fact that development specialists are mostly liberals. Which is why the Coalition Provisional Authority was wisely staffed almost entirely by young people with absolutely no relevant experience. What one and only one qualification they did all have in common, which no liberal could ever have, was they had all once sent a resume to conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.

* The CIA : Why couldn't we find WMD in Iraq? Because the CIA is full of liberals. "'Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda.' said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House."

Sadly, you don't hear about this because of the liberal media. I didn't do it mommy, liberals did it.

Perhaps you should spend more time reading the article and less time dismissing it?

One of the prospective attendees was rejected for a personal $250 donation to the Democratic Party.

I don't hold out much hope, since you apparently didn't make it to the third paragraph of a three paragraph article, but you should read up on the K Street Project to see that, in fact, things are different now.

This is good for the Republicans, if not the republic.

That Deep Throat wasn't caught (or revealed) is a testament to a) the critical importance of the situation and b) the skill with which it was accomplished.

by the way, it's been said that his/her identity will become public soon

The Endangered Species list serves a useful purpose if you believe that life itself is a value. The utility principle behind its doppelganger is a lot more questionable, which makes it potentially offensive (since the original is nothing but serious).

Personally, I don't find species extinction a humorous matter at all, even if the species in question aren't sapient. I just don't find oblivion amusing.

This is akin to creating a website dedicated to "emancipating slave hard drives from their masters," parodying American abolitionism from the 19th century. It's crushing a serious matter that emotionally affects others, and which others have put great energy into effecting, down to nothing, just to be the butt of a silly joke. I don't like it.

This reference to the slave/master controversy was entirely appropriate.