Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Wednesday, August 17

This Day In History

  • 1863   Federal batteries and ships bombarded Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., harbor during the Civil War.
  • 1790   The location of the capital city of the United States moved from New York City to Philadelphia on this day.
  • 1807   Fulton’s Folly, the "Clermont" (although it wasn’t named at the time), made its first journey. Robert Fulton’s steamboat traveled between Albany, New York and New York City, a 150-mile journey. The trip took 32 hours.
  • 1815   Napoleon arrived at Saint Helena for the beginning of his exile.
  • 1896   A prospecting party discovered gold in Alaska, a finding that touched off the Klondike gold rush.
  • 1943   The Allied conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina.
  • 1945   Indonesian nationalists declared independence from the Netherlands.
  • 1948   Former State Department official Alger Hiss faced his chief accuser, Whittaker Chambers, during a closed-door meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee in New York. Hiss repeated his denial that he'd ever been a Communist agent.
  • 1962   East German border guards shot and mortally wounded 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who had attempted to cross over the Berlin Wall into the western sector.
  • 1969   Hurricane Camille slammed into the Gulf Coast, killing 248 people.
  • 1987   Steffi Graf replaced Martina Navratilova as the number one tennis player in the Women’s International Tennis Association. The 18-year-old had won eight tournaments in 1987, including the French Open.
  • 1987   Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, died at a Berlin hospital near Spandau Prison at age 93, having apparently committed suicide by strangling himself with an electrical cord.
  • 1992   Actor-director Woody Allen admitted being romantically involved with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime companion, actress Mia Farrow.
  • 1993   Allegations of child abuse prompted Los Angeles police to investigate entertainer Michael Jackson. This, after the 13-year-old son of a Beverly Hills dentist told his therapist that Jackson had sexually abused him. Jackson claimed the allegations followed a failed attempt by the dentist to extract 20 million dollars from the singer. No criminal charges were filed against Jackson, but a civil suit was. It was settled out of court in January 1994. Michael Jackson, meanwhile, cancelled or postponed several dates on his "Dangerous" world tour, citing illness or exhaustion.
  • 1998   President Bill Clinton underwent grand jury questioning in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
  • 1998   Russia devalued the ruble.
  • 2000   The Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles nominated Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman for vice president.
  • 2002   Pope John Paul II arrived in Krakow, Poland, for the ninth visit to his native country during his papacy.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1786   Davy Crockett (frontiersman, soldier, defender of the Alamo; killed Mar 6, 1836 at the Alamo)
  • 1882   Samuel Goldwyn (Schmuel Gelbfisz) (movie pioneer: the ‘G’ of MGM; Academy Award-winning producer: The Best Years of Our Lives [1946]; All Quiet on the Western Front; died Jan 31, 1974)
  • 1893   Mae (Mary Jane) West (playwright, actress)
  • 1920   Maureen O’Hara (FitzSimons) (actress)
  • 1929   Francis Gary Powers (pilot: U-2 flight over Soviet Union; CIA agent; killed in helicopter crash Aug 1, 1977)
  • 1943   Robert De Niro (actor: Academy Award-winning actor)
  • 1960   Sean Penn (Academy Award-winning actor)

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Posted by Don Singleton at 12:01 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Inherit the Wind

Ross Douthat wrote in The New Republic Online The appeal of "intelligent design" to the American right is obvious. For religious conservatives, the theory promises to uncover God's fingerprints on the building blocks of life. For conservative intellectuals in general, it offers hope that Darwinism will yet join Marxism and Freudianism in the dustbin of pseudoscience. And for politicians like George W. Bush, there's little to be lost in expressing a skepticism about evolution that's shared by millions.

And indicating his support for including an alternative that involves God, which is consistent with the beliefs of many more millions than the Athiest and Agnostics that prefer the Secular Humanist version of Evolution.
In the long run, though, intelligent design will probably prove a political boon to liberals, and a poisoned chalice for conservatives.
Or at least you hope it will.
Like the evolution wars in the early part of the last century, the design debate offers liberals the opportunity to portray every scientific battle--today, stem-cell research, "therapeutic" cloning, and end-of-life issues; tomorrow, perhaps, large-scale genetic engineering--as a face-off between scientific rigor and religious fundamentalism.
stem-cell research and end-of-life issues have people on both sides of the issue, and it depends on exactly what is being proposed, but if you think that liberals are going to win by pushing cloning (therapeutic or not) and large-scale genetic engineering you must have been smoking those funny cigarettes.
There's already a public perception, nurtured by the media and by scientists themselves, that conservatives oppose the "scientific" position on most bioethical issues. Once intelligent design runs out of steam, leaving its conservative defenders marooned in a dinner-theater version of Inherit the Wind, this liberal advantage is likely to swell considerably.
Don't hold your breath (unless you look good in blue)
And intelligent design will run out of steam--a victim of its own grand ambitions. What began as a critique of Darwinian theory, pointing out aspects of biological life that modification-through-natural-selection has difficulty explaining, is now foolishly proposed as an alternative to Darwinism.
No, it is Darwinism with God, rather than the Secular Humanist / Godless version of Evolution, and I cant believe that anything with God is going to be trumped by the same thing without God.
On this front, intelligent design fails conspicuously--as even defenders like Rick Santorum are beginning to realize--because it can't offer a consistent, coherent, and testable story of how life developed.
How testable is the Secular Humanist version? As Joyce Kilmer said Only God can make a tree
The "design inference" is a philosophical point, not a scientific theory: Even if the existence of a designer is a reasonable inference to draw from the complexity of, say, a bacterial flagellum, one would still need to explain how the flagellum moved from design to actuality.
How does the Secular Huminist think random chance caused it to happen, and how can you prove it? In terms of how it happened in ID, I would assume it was by the same procedure that vegetation was produced. God spoke it. I realize that may seem too simple, but then we do have an awsome God.
And unless George W. Bush imposes intelligent design on American schools by fiat and orders the scientific establishment to recant its support for Darwin, intelligent design will eventually collapse--like other assaults on evolution that failed to offer an alternative--under the weight of its own overreaching.
I don't expect him to order it by fiat. After all, this whole thing came up because of a question GWB was asked. But whether it is taught in American schools or not, you will not be able to convince millions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims that God was not involved in Creation.
If liberals play their cards right, this collapse could provide them with a powerful rhetorical bludgeon. Take the stem-cell debate, where the great questions are moral, not scientific--whether embryonic human life should be created and destroyed to prolong adult human life. Liberals might win that argument on the merits, but it's by no means a sure thing. The conservative embrace of intelligent design, however, reshapes the ideological battlefield. It helps liberals cast the debate as an argument about science, rather than morality, and paint their enemies as a collection of book-burning, Galileo-silencing fanatics.
Which is not unlike the way they are being described in public schools that dont allow prayer, or even the celebration of Christmas.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 6:18 PM 2 comments

Equal pay for women

Newsday reported As a Reagan White House attorney in 1984, John G. Roberts criticized three Republican congresswomen for supporting the "radical" idea of "comparable worth" to create pay equality between men and women.

The radical idea was not equal pay for equal worth, but that someone could accurately compare two radically different jobs and somehow determine they had the same "value" to the employer.
Among the women was Olympia Snowe, now a senator from Maine, and key moderate member of the Senate, who will be voting on Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. "I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept," he wrote. "Their slogan may as well be 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "

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Posted by Don Singleton at 3:38 PM 0 comments

President Bush Pictured Kissing Cindy Sheehan

Blogs for Bush blogged Gee, wonder why she had the picture removed from the family web site and is now only available in a cached Google version.

Read her open letter (scroll down) on the family web site, to President Bush that the picture was removed from.

I tried using the Wayback Machine, but it just shows that the previous page was up there on Oct 10, 2004, and for some reason the page was not indexed by the Wayback Machine
This seems to disprove her new version of her first meeting President Bush. Her current version of what happened when she first met President Bush was that he acted "like it was a party" and kept changing the subject whenever her son came up in conversation. It seems to me (and I'm sure any reasonable person) that if that version was true, this photo of President Bush kissing Cindy Sheehan would never have happened... certainly her original version of the story would have never been made... This picture of Bush kissing her gives credence to the original version, not the post-MoveOn.Org version.

In the original version we see "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith. While meeting with Bush, as well as Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, was an honor, it was almost a tangent benefit of the trip. The Sheehans said they enjoyed meeting the other families of fallen soldiers, sharing stories, contact information, grief and support. For some, grief was still visceral and raw, while for others it had melted into the background of their lives, the pain as common as breathing. Cindy said she saw her reflection in the troubled eyes of each. "It's hard to lose a son," she said. "But we (all) lost a son in the Iraqi war." The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected. For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle. For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again. "That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said. "

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Posted by Don Singleton at 12:45 PM 0 comments

Feedster Top 500

Feedster has posted its Top 500 blogs, and no, I am not on the list, but several blogs I read frequently are, for example

I also saw a number of blogs that I read on a less regular basis than every day, and a number that I may start reading (or at least check out)

While I did not make Feedster's top 500, I do note that as far as Truth Laid Bear is concerned I'm a
Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem, with a current rank of #570 and 344 inbound unique lists and 66 average daily visits.

TTLB and Feedster rank things differently so I am not sure where I would fall on Feedster's list.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 12:17 PM 0 comments

Word Up

Blogger Buzz blogged We've got this new thing. It's a free plug-in for Microsoft Word that works with Blogger. We call it Blogger for Word. Catchy? Maybe. Useful? You bet. With this little number, you can work in Word like you normally do and then save your document as a post to your Blogger blog. Once you install the plug-in and restart Word, some buttons will appear. These buttons allow you to publish, edit, and save as draft from within Word.

This does not sound that good to me, because MS Word generates terrible HTML, but I wonder if this is what Scobleizer is just itching to describe.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 11:39 AM 0 comments

The Case Against Intelligent Design

Jerry Coyne (a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago) wrote in The New Republic Online The Scopes trial of our day--Kitzmiller, et al v. Dover Area School District et al--began innocuously. In the spring of 2004, the district's textbook review committee recommended that a new commercial text replace the outdated biology book. At a school board meeting in June, William Buckingham, the chair of the board's curriculum committee, complained that the proposed replacement book was "laced with Darwinism." After challenging the audience to trace its roots back to a monkey, he suggested that a more suitable textbook would include biblical theories of creation. When asked whether this might offend those of other faiths, Buckingham replied, "This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such."

This is true, however Genesis is also a part of Torah, so teaching the account from Genesis is consistent with Jewish Beliefs as well, and if we look in the Koran (2:29 we see "It is He Who hath created for you all things that are on earth; Moreover His design comprehended the heavens, for He gave order and perfection to the seven firmaments; and of all things He hath perfect knowledge. "
Defending his views a week later, Buckingham reportedly pleaded: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" And he added: "Nowhere in the Constitution does it call for a separation of church and state."
I agree with both points
.... Why all the fuss about a seemingly inoffensive statement? Who could possibly object to students "keep[ing] an open mind" and examining a respectable-sounding alternative to evolution? Isn't science about testing theories against each other? The furor makes sense only in light of the tortuous history of creationism in America. Since it arose after World War I, Christianfundamentalist creationism has undergone its own evolution, taking on newer forms after absorbing repeated blows from the courts. "Intelligent design," as I will show, is merely the latest incarnation of the biblical creationism espoused by William Jennings Bryan in Dayton. Far from a respectable scientific alternative to evolution, it is a clever attempt to sneak religion, cloaked in the guise of science, into the public schools.
What is there about religion that causes you so much fear?
.... Intelligent design, or ID, is the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions. ID comes in two parts. The first is a simple critique of evolutionary theory, to the effect that Darwinism, as an explanation of the origin, the development, and the diversity of life, is fatally flawed. The second is the assertion that the major features of life are best understood as the result of creation by a supernatural intelligent designer.
Darwinism is flawed. There are no fossils or other scientific proof of any of the jumps from one species to another, and ID does provide for a possible explanation to that flaw.
.... Thus scientists speak of "atomic theory" and "gravitational theory" as explanations for the properties of matter and the mutual attraction of physical bodies. It makes as little sense to doubt the factuality of evolution as to doubt the factuality of gravity.
Gravity certainly exists, just as we exist. The physists have proof for much of gravitational theory. Can the theory of evolution prove that we were created as Darwin says, and not as Genesis says, or not by an Intelligent Designer using evolution as one of His tools in creating us?
.... Our appendix is the vestigial remnant of an intestinal pouch used to ferment the hard-to-digest plant diets of our ancestors. (Orangutans and grazing animals have a large hollow appendix instead of the tiny, wormlike one that we possess.) An appendix is simply a bad thing to have. It is certainly not the product of intelligent design: how many humans died of appendicitis before surgery was invented?
Can you prove it was not created by an Intelligent Designer to serve some other useful purpose, but could it not have evolved into the tiny, wormlike one that we now possess? Is evolution always for the good?
.... IDers work at secular institutions rather than at Bible schools. IDers work, speak, and write like trained academics; they do not come off as barely repressed evangelists. Their ranks include Phillip Johnson, the most prominent spokesperson for ID, and a retired professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley; Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University; William Dembski, a mathematician-philosopher and the director of the Center for Theology and Science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Jonathan Wells, who has a doctorate in biology from Berkeley.
And yet you till disparage their findings.
.... Of Pandas and People is a textbook designed as an antidote to the evolution segment of high school biology classes. It was first published in 1989. By repackaging and updating a subset of traditional young-earth creationist arguments while avoiding taking a stand on any issues that might divide creationists (such as the age of the Earth), it marked the beginning of the modern intelligentdesign movement. By presenting the case for ID, it is supposedly designed to give students a "balanced perspective" on evolution. Although the second edition of Pandas is now twelve years old (a third edition, called Design of Life, is in the works), it accurately presents to students the major arguments for ID. Pandas carefully avoids mentioning God (except under aliases such as "intelligent designer," "master iantellect," and so on); but a little digging reveals the book's deep religious roots.
What is there to fear in deep religious roots. As you indicated, it carefully avoids mentioning God, for those that somehow fear using that word in school.
.... Pandas also makes much of the supposed absence of transitional forms: the "missing" links between major forms of life that, according to evolutionary theory, must have existed as common ancestors. Their absence, claim creationists, is a major embarrassment for evolutionary biology. Phillip Johnson's influential book Darwin on Trial, which appeared in 1993, particularly emphasizes these gaps, which, IDers believe, reflect the designer's creation of major forms ex nihilo. And there are indeed some animals, such as bats, that appear in the fossil record suddenly, without obvious ancestors. Yet in most cases these gaps are certainly due to the imperfection of the fossil record. (Most organisms do not get buried in aquatic sediments, which is a prerequisite for fossilization.) And species that are soft-bodied or have fragile bones, such as bats, degrade before they can fossilize. Paleontologists estimate that we have fossils representing only about one in a thousand of all the species that ever lived.
So if we take the total number of species, and divide it by one thousand, that still is a sizeable number which should mean we should have some examples of animals in transition from one species to another, and yet we have none. Perhaps the theory is faulty. In which case why should it be taught in school, to the exclusion of other theories, such as ID?
.... Why would the designer give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes?
Maybe that designer included that enzyme, but evolution caused it to be disabled?

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Posted by Don Singleton at 11:15 AM 0 comments

Justice Sunday II

The Evangelical Outpost did a LiveBlog Feed of Justice Sunday II Here are few interesting items and comments:

  • 7:18pm -- Do politics and local churches go together? Yes, says Ted Haggard, there is nothing that we believe that does not affect public policy. Haggard encourages Christians to get more involved in politics, learning the skills needed to run for public office if necessary. All it takes is a God intoxicated generation to influence a people, Haggard says, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • 7:06pm -- Out-of-control judges are the biggest threat facing America today, says Phyllis Schlafly. She refers to them as “supremacists” because they put the courts as supreme over the legislature and executive branch. Those who say they want an independent court, she claims, really want a court independent of the Constitution. Schlafly claims that the Supreme Court rulings should not be considered the law of the land, placed even higher even than the Constitution. It’s hard to argue with that point.
  • 6:05pm -- Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, opens the ceremony, repeating a great line he used earlier in the press conference: "We do not claim the right to speak for every American. But we do claim the right to speak."
  • Comment by Boonton Judges are not supposed to be legislators. There's a reason the founders did not make them directly elected positions (in fact, the founders didn't even make Senators directly elected...that came later). Time for the intellectuals of the right to file for the intellectual equilivant of chapter 7 bankruptcy protection before Bush's 'reforms' make it harder for them yet!

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Posted by Don Singleton at 10:14 AM 0 comments

The Holy Scientist

Winds of Change has a FANTASTIC post on religion and science. I encourage everyone to reat the entire post. Here is just one excerpt, about Dr. Mordecai Haffkine, a Jewish bacteriologist:

"The next year, 1889, Haffkine was invited to Paris to continue his research at the world-renowned Pasteur Institute. The day after his arrival, he was nailing something to the doorpost of his laboratory when Dr. Louis Pasteur stopped by to welcome him and asked him why he had begun renovating his laboratory so soon. Haffkine answered that it was a mezuzah, a quotation from the Torah that is nailed to the doorpost of a Jew’s living quarters or workplace.

"But in a laboratory, Dr. Haffkine? In a place of science?" Dr. Pasteur asked.

Dr. Haffkine answered, "Particularly in a place where we search for truth and need God's guidance in the quest."

"Particularly in a place where we search for truth" - because science is, at its core, about The Habit of Truth.

"...and need God's guidance in the quest."
To a believing Jew who saw Hashem as the prime mover and master of all Creation, and who commands his faithful to lift up the sick, how could it possibly be otherwise?

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Posted by Don Singleton at 9:45 AM 0 comments

Humorous Survey

Danny Carlton blogged about a very humorous survey at The Nose on Your Face

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Posted by Don Singleton at 9:20 AM 1 comments

Tulsa about to be a two daily town again

Meeciteewurkor blogged I emailed Charles Biggs of The Tulsa Beacon yesterday to let him know about the meeciteewurkor poll currently up in the sidebar. I thought he might find it interesting.
He emailed me back today with his response and said that the ongoing results were encouraging.
He also mentioned that they “were working” on becoming a daily paper.
I await that day with anticipation. I am proud to say that while not being very informed on the issues, at least I am not misinformed. Man, I rarely read the Whilrd, and almost never watch the news on TV. Where do I get my news? The internet and the great collection of blogs we have here in Tulsa. You can also find another form of these Tulsa Blogs here at blogdigger. The blogdigger site also has a feed which you can get for your news reader. Here’s the rss feed link. If you are interested in subscribing to the Tulsa Beacon, you can subscribe online here. You can also buy single issues at your nearest QuikTrip.

This is really great news. Even if the Tulsa World Whilrd tried to print the truth, it would still be the truth from one publisher's perspective, and a city of Tulsa's size really needs at least two daily papers.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 9:06 AM 0 comments

Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq

NYT reported Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year. "Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated?" "Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't tell us!"

Ms. Goudreau's newspaper, like most dailies in America, relies largely on The Associated Press for its coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally forwarded the e-mail message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of The A.P., asking if there was a way to check these assertions and to put them into context. Like many other journalists, Mr. Silverman had also received a copy of the message.

And when he got it, did he figure out a way to check out those assertions and put them in context, and then did he post that story in the AP?
Ms. Goudreau's query prompted an unusual discussion last month in New York at a regular meeting of editors whose newspapers are members of The Associated Press. Some editors expressed concern that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.
Something bloggers have been complaining about for a long time.
"The bottom-line question was, people wanted to know if we're making progress in Iraq," Ms. Goudreau said, and the A.P. articles were not helping to answer that question. "It was uncomfortable questioning The A.P., knowing that Iraq is such a dangerous place," she said. "But there's a perception that we're not telling the whole story."
More than a preception.
Mr. Silverman said in an interview that he was aware of that perception. "Other editors said they get calls from readers who are hearing stories from returning troops of the good things they have accomplished while there, and readers find that at odds with the generally gloomy portrayal in the papers of what's going on in Iraq," he said. Mr. Silverman said the editors were asking for help in making sense of the situation. "I was glad to have that discussion with the editors because they have to deal with the perception that the media is emphasizing the negative," he said.
Are you going to help them deal with the situation by providing some good news stories, or just by telling them how to distort the situation.
"We're there to report the good and the bad and we try to give due weight to everything going on," he said. "It is unfortunate that the explosions and shootings and fatalities and injuries on some days seem to dominate the news."
Maybe that is because those are the only stories AP provides.
Suki Dardarian, deputy managing editor of The Seattle Times and vice president of the board of the Associated Press Managing Editors, said that the discussion was "a pretty healthy one." "One of the things the editors felt was that as much context as you can bring, the better," Ms. Dardarian said. "They wanted them to get beyond the breaking news to 'What does this mean?' " She also said that as Mr. Silverman and Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.'s executive editor, responded to the concerns, the editors realized that some questions were impossible to answer. For example, she said, the editors understood that it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day or how many schools were built.
Why is that? You can call the hospitals or schools to verify what happened, or the government officials in each city. You can't telephone dead soldiers.
Mr. Silverman said the wire service was covering Iraq "as accurately as we can" while "also trying to keep our people out of harm's way." "The main obstacle we face," he said, "is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report. It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel," which is home to most of the press corps. The hotel was struck by a tank shell in 2003, killing two journalists.
How can you count the number of dead soldiers, while cowering in your hotel room, and not be able to make a few phone calls to government officials.
Iraq remains the most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least 13 media workers have been killed in Iraq so far this year, bringing the total to 50 since the war began in 2003. Postwar Iraq is fraught with risks for reporters: Banditry, gunfire and bombings are common," the committee's Web site says. "Insurgents have added a new threat by systematically targeting foreigners, including journalists, and Iraqis who work for them."
If it is too scary for your reporters, tell them to come home and let others with a backbone take their place.
Mr. Silverman said The A.P. had already decided before the meeting that it would have Robert H. Reid, an A.P. correspondent at large who has reported frequently from Iraq, write an overview every 10 days.
Unfortunately he has a new job, and hence probably will not be able to continue his series, but Arthur Chrenkoff has been doing good news stories like this one in the Wall Street Journal for a long time.
Mr. Silverman also said the wire service would make more effort to flag articles that look beyond the breaking news. As it turned out, he said, most of the information in the anonymous e-mail message had been reported by The A.P., but the details had been buried in articles or the articles had been overlooked.
Then run the articles again.
Before the meeting, The A.P. collected three articles by reporters for other news organizations who were embedded with American troops and sent them out over the wire to provide "more voice." Mr. Silverman said he wanted to do more of that but the opportunities were limited because there are only three dozen embedded journalists now, compared with 700 when the war began more than two years ago. Ms. Goudreau, for one, found the discussion useful. By the end, she said, editors were acknowledging that even in their own hometowns, "we're more likely to focus on people who are killed than on the positive news out of a school."

Rob @Wizbang blogged I'm glad that they're having this discussion, but the "its to dangerous to leave the bunker [read: hotel - ed.]" excuse is bunk. Covering good news like the rebuilding of schools and infrastructure and the re-establishment of embassies (I hadn't even heard that one) isn't any more dangerous than covering IED attacks and convoy ambushes.

The fact that the media isn't covering the good news is a combination of a "if it bleeds it leads" approach to reporting and a pervasive anti-war bias. Because they could be covering the good news, if they really wanted to.

Jeff Jarvis blogged Well, it’s good they’re asking … a bit late in the party of public perception, but at least they’re asking. I also would have been curious to hear the same questions asked of papers, including The Times, that have their reporters in Iraq. One thing they can do is turn soldiers and bloggers there into contributors. No, they’re not journalists. Yes, they have a viewpoint (what human doesn’t). But they have eyes and ears where the American news organizations do not.

Scott @PowerLine blogged St. Paul Pioneer Press associate editorial page editor Mark Yost chastised his Fourth Estate colleagues in a column last month for presenting a skewed picture of events in Iraq: "Why they hate us." The reaction to Yost's column exposed the epidemic of thin skin among those who love to dish it out; he was more or less invited to leave the trade.

Yesterday Mary Katharine Ham told the story at Townhall in a terrific column: "Knight-Ridder: Closer to the fight than the Marines." Reader Mark Pittard also directs us to yesterday's New York Times story by Katharine Q. Seelye: "Editors ponder how to present a broad picture of Iraq." Add these two items to the internal Pioneer Press memo that we posted here and you might begin to think that Mark Yost is owed an apology.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 8:41 AM 1 comments

Babies Caught Up in 'No-Fly' Confusion

Yahoo News reported Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's "no-fly list." It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed. Ingrid Sanden's 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving. "I completely understand the war on terrorism, and I completely understand people wanting to be safe when they fly," Sanden said. "But focusing the target a little bit is probably a better use of resources."

This is absolute stupidity. News Flash to Security Staff: Terrorists are usually middle eastern males 18 to 30 years old. You should also take a careful look at middle eastern females, and perhaps some middle eastern males in the 15-18 age range, and perhaps some non-middle eastern males, but 1 year old babies, or even toddlers, and 80 year old ladies, are pretty safe. Use your head for something other than to hold your hat.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 7:52 AM 0 comments

Fishing where the fish are

Fortune reported Julie Roehm has more than $2 billion to spend this year, and the way she's been spending it worries executives at News Corp., the Washington Post Co., and virtually every other media company on the planet. As Chrysler's director of marketing communications, Roehm, 34, oversees a budget that Advertising Age ranks as the sixth-largest pool of ad dollars in the nation. She decides how many minutes of the carmaker's commercials appear on networks and cable channels nationwide and how many pages of its ads turn up in magazines like this one and newspapers such as USA Today. Here's the scary part: Roehm rarely misses a chance to talk about how delighted she is with online advertising. Last year she spent 10% of the budget online; this year she is allotting closer to 18%; next year, she says, she will allocate more than 20%. Do the math: In 2006 roughly $400 million of Chrysler's money that used to go into TV, newspaper, and magazine ads will be spent on the Internet. Says Roehm: "I hate to sound like such a marketing geek, but we like to fish where the fish are."

She has a very valid point. Newspaper and magazine circulation is dropping, and people are spending much more time online, and Julie is smart enough to realize this, and is beginning to target more and more of Chrysler's advertising buget to try to reach people where they spend their time, i.e. online.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 7:41 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 16

This Day In History

  • 1777   American forces won the Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington, Vt.
  • 1812   Detroit fell to British and Indian forces in the War of 1812.
  • 1829   The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, arrived in Boston to be exhibited to the Western world.
  • 1858   A telegraphed message from Britain's Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan was transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable.
  • 1861   President Abraham Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
  • 1948   Baseball legend Babe Ruth died in New York City at age 53
  • 1954   Sports Illustrated was first published by Time Inc.
  • 1956   Adlai E. Stevenson was nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
  • 1960   Britain granted independence to Cyprus.
  • 1987   Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed while trying to take off from a Detroit airport, killing 156 people; the sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl.
  • 1987   Thousands of people worldwide began a two-day celebration of the ''harmonic convergence,'' which heralded what believers called the start of a new, purer age of humankind.
  • 1988   Vice President George Bush tapped Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to be his running mate.
  • 1999   Vladimir Putin won confirmation (by the Russian parliament) as Russia’s fifth prime minister since early 1998. He had been appointed by Boris Yeltsin on Aug 9.
  • 2000   Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles nominated Al Gore for president.
  • 2002   Terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal was found shot to death in Baghdad, Iraq.
  • 2003   A car driven by U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow ran a stop sign on a rural road in South Dakota and collided with a motorcyclist, who died in the accident.
  • 2003   Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda, died in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia; he was believed to have been 80.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1894   George Meany (labor leader: president of American Federation of Labor [1952-1979]; merged the AFL with Congress of Industrial Organizations [CIO]; died Jan 10, 1980)
  • 1913   Menachem Begin (6th Prime Minister of Israel: signed peace treaty w/Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat [1979]; died Mar 9, 1992)
  • 1925   Fess Parker (actor: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett)
  • 1930   Frank Gifford (College/Pro Football Hall of Famer)
  • 1932   Eydie Gorme (Edith Gormezano) (Grammy Award-winning singer)
  • 1935   Julie Newmar (Newmeyer) (actress: Batman)
  • 1938   Robert Culp (actor: I Spy)
  • 1946   Lesley Ann Warren (actress)
  • 1953   Kathie Lee Gifford (Kathryn Lee Epstein) (talk show host: Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee; singer; married to Frank Gifford)
  • 1958   Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) (singer)
  • 1960   Timothy Hutton (actor: Taps)

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Posted by Don Singleton at 12:01 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 15, 2005

You can't trust AP

Memorandum indicates that AP said "Iraq Leaders Agree on Draft Constitution"

and bloggers responded to that news:

Dr. Steven Taylor blogged AP story that states Iraq Leaders Agree on Draft Constitution

Iraqi politicians agreed Monday on a draft constitution but decided to put off two key issues — women’s rights and whether Kurds might someday secede — so the document could be submitted to parliament by a midnight deadline, two Shiite officials said.
Interesting.

I can certainly see why secession rights would be a problem. Federalism is one thing, the legal right to secede is wholly another.

The fact that women’s rights are a sticking point is telling about the state of political Islam in the region. Further, it underscored the degree to which the rights of women in a given location to be treated as fully human beings along with men are a key indicator of political development.

I look forward to seeing what is contained in the document.

But then the AP link was changed to be Iraqi Parliament OKs Constitution Delay Iraq's parliament agreed to a seven-day extension for leaders to complete a draft constitution, after politicians failed to meet a midnight Monday deadline for agreement on the charter. Parliament adjourned after voting to extend the deadline until Aug. 22, acting on a request from Kurdish leaders for more time.

Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish framers of the charter had reached a tentative deal late Monday, resolving issues ranging from oil revenues to the country's name but putting off decision on the most contentious questions — including federalism, women's rights, the role of Islam and possible Kurdish autonomy.
I can see how these are sticky problems, and I hope that in the next week they will come to an agreement on them.
Efforts to meet the Aug. 15 deadline showed how determined Iraqis are to maintain political momentum under intense U.S. pressure, but their failure to compromise was a clear sign that their sharp political divisions are far from over.
But the important thing is that they are still talking, and have not picked up guns to back their position.
"We should not be hasty regarding the issues and the constitution should not be born crippled," Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, said after the vote. "We are keen to have an early constitution, but the constitution should be completed in all of its items in a proper manner that appeals to all components of the Iraqi people so that the whole people interact with the whole constitution."

It was unclear if negotiators would reopen issues already resolved or focus only on those yet undecided. Meeting the Monday deadline would have been a victory for the Bush administration, which had made clear in recent weeks that it was pushing for a constitution by then — even if some issues were left undecided.
They certainly wanted a decision, but I think it is good that the Iraqi are taking another week.
Television cameras were at the ready as parliament convened late Monday to consider any final, undecided constitutional issues and debate the entire charter. In a sign of Washington's close involvement in the process, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, was in the hall as parliament gathered. He wore a broad grin, apparently anticipating a vote on the charter.

Moments before, however, Kurdish minister Barhem Saleh aid on Al-Arabiyah TV that Iraqis could not reach a complete agreement on the constitution and would seek a 7-10 day extension for negotiations to continue. "If we don't reach an agreement," he said, "then the National Assembly will be dissolved, and we will call for general elections for a new National Assembly."
I am not sure what that would accomplish, but Iif it happens, I would bet that the Sunnis will not be stupid enough to boycott the election this time.
If agreement on a constitution is reached, however, Iraqis will vote around Oct. 15 to accept or reject the charter, leading to more elections in December for the country's first new government under the new constitution.

One key sticking point was Kurdish demands for the right of self-determination. Kurds had suggested language giving them eight years within a unified Iraq and after that the right to secede. Shiites told them they should decide now whether they want to stay within Iraq. Sunnis rejected even the broad, general concept of federalism codified in the constitution at this time.
I understand where the Kurds are coming from, but I think this would be a mistake. Rather they should push for clauses to prevent Sunnis and Shiites from affecting their local rules. Something like a strong states rights clause in our government.
"I think that the seven days will be enough to agree on all the details regarding the federalism," Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, a Shiite and national security adviser told Al-Arabiya, "Democracy cannot be achieved in Iraq unless federalism is implemented, because Iraq has many ethnicities."
And all ethnicities need to be protected.
The issue of women's rights was just as complicated and undecided, falling under Shiite demands that Islam be the main source of legislation. That could affect the civil code, because Islamic law, or sharia, women might not receive the same share of inheritance and cannot initiate divorce.
I think the Shiites are making a mistake. Right now they have a majority, but would they really want to be ruled by Sharia law decided by a Sunni cleric. And would a Sunni really like to be ruled by Sharia law decided by a Shiite cleric. I think they would be must better off with a secular government and judiciary, but with strong protection against governmental control over religion.
In contrast, officials had said that agreements were reached on issues such as distribution of the country's oil revenues, the country's name and the issue of whether Iraqis could hold dual citizenship. But even those issues remained unclear late Monday. For example, officials have said they were deciding on either the Republic of Iraq or Federal Republic of Iraq, and had ruled out the idea of putting any Islamic reference in the country's name.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 4:40 PM 0 comments

RSS in the news

Scobleizer blogged Dwight Silverman, in Houston Chronicle's TechBlog: What's wrong with RSS. Read the comments there. That's where RSS needs to go next.

Steve Rubel links to a Nielsen/NetRatings study that points out that blog readers are not RSS readers. The benefits are there, but only highly passionate readers can see them (among influentials RSS usage is far higher -- which is what gives it its power -- at all the conferences I've spoken at this year usage is about 80%). It's far more productive to read a set of blogs and Web sites in an RSS aggregator than in a Web browser. But, it's not for everyone. If you don't visit more than 10 sites a day I don't think you're gonna be able to see the utility of RSS.

Blogging, though, gets us close -- because it increases the number of sites everyone wants to keep up on. What happens when everyone in your family has a Flickr site and a blog? How many people are in your family? At my wedding there were more than 50 family members and I don't think that's atypical. If you're trying to keep up to date on 50 people email and Web just doesn't cut it. Will you really want to visit your brother's site every few days just to see if he's posted a new picture of his kids?

I think this is somewhat misleading. I use Live Bookmarks in Firefox to see the titles of blog posts, to see whether or not I want to read those posts, but I am not using a software-based news aggregators (feed aggregation software) or a web-based newsreaders (feed aggregating Web site), so had been included in the survey, none of the five choices provided would have fit my usage.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 4:09 PM 2 comments

Muslim Only Pool Rules

Michelle Malkin blogged The ACLU and other civil libertarians don't seem to mind if a public swimming pool sets aside time for the exclusive use of Muslims. But they'll scream holy hell if a city swimming pool enforces a dress code that requires everyone, including Muslims, to wear a swimsuit.

I hate to think what they would do if a public swimming pool set aside time for the exclusive use of Christians.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 3:49 PM 0 comments

Purple Heart Boulevard

NYT reported Soldiers called it the "Street of Death" and "Purple Heart Boulevard," a three-mile-long residential corridor in central Baghdad that had become a shooting gallery for insurgents. In 2004 alone, Haifa Street, once a coveted address for the middle class, was the bloody venue for more than 400 attacks on American and Iraqi security forces. Many residents on the most troubled blocks fled their homes, some of which were promptly commandeered as rebel sniper roosts. An American-Iraqi military campaign begun last year to retake the street seemed to bear fruit as insurgents were captured, killed or driven from the area. On Feb. 6, the American command handed over a cut of north-central Baghdad, including Haifa Street, to the First Brigade, Sixth Division, of the Iraqi Army. This transfer made the First Brigade the first - and only - Iraqi Army unit to control its own battle space, and put it on the leading edge of the Bush administration's plan to have Iraqi forces take responsibility for the country's security. The good news for American officials, in a war where territorial gains have been elusive, is that the Iraqi troops have not lost ground on Haifa Street. Since the First Brigade took control, there have been only three insurgent attacks along the street, and those came in the first three weeks, commanders say.

This is very good news, as it indicates the Iraqi army can begin to take over the responsibility for their own protection. And the amazing thing is that this report was printed in the New York Times.
Though the pacification of the area began last year under American auspices - and it is possible that the insurgents simply moved their operations elsewhere - soldiers and residents contend that the sustained peace is attributable in large part to the community's acceptance of a homegrown security force; in contrast, many residents regarded the American soldiers as interlopers and invaders.
Aha. I see the NYT has reverted to its normal reporting
"We feel the difference between the two forces," said Alaa Khadem, 41, the owner of a small store on Haifa Street. On a recent afternoon, the sun and heat had turned his store into an oven and he was standing out front seeking a forgiving breeze. He said that the American forces would rumble down Haifa Street with their enormous firepower and threats of death, while their Iraqi counterparts have adopted a more sensitive and effective approach. "The Iraqi forces have the power of listening and communicating," he said.
That is fine with the Americans. They would love to see Iraqi forces take over everywhere: listen, communicate, and control everywhere.
For much of last year, he recalled, the violence on the street prevented him from shopping for goods to stock his shelves, and restricted his opening hours. Now, he said, "I can open my shop and use the best hours of the day." Pro-Iraqi Army graffiti has begun to appear on walls once adorned only with anti-American slogans. Residents now socialize outside their buildings and say they feel safer walking along the street. People who fled their apartments have started to trickle back, and pedestrian and vehicular traffic, while still thin compared with other major thoroughfares, is slowly returning.
This is still good news. We don't want to stay there forever.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 10:54 AM 0 comments

Gingrich Points to the Future

WaPo reports Former House speaker Newt Gingrich gave a PowerPoint presentation to an enthusiastic group of Republican staffers at the Capitol last week that he billed as a blueprint for turning the party's "present, temporary partisan majority" into a "21st century governing majority." Gingrich's handouts also provide an early peek at how he might pursue the Republican nomination for president.

I would be interested in seeing that PowerPoing presentation and that handout. Gingrich did a very good job with his Contract For America, and if he can pull off another blueprint for 2006/2008 we should be in very good shape.
Gingrich, whose current book is titled "Winning the Future," called for "cheerful persistence" and urged Republicans to be "cheerfully funny about our opponents." He said conservatives need to be "relentlessly repetitive, because we are educating those who agree with us against the hidden values of the left." "Speed, cleverness and shallowness are advantages for the Left," Gingrich, who stayed around to field a flurry of admiring questions, asserted on page 58 of his presentation. "They dominate the elite news media so they will always be able to launch new attacks, have their allies in the bureaucracy create new leaks and focus on analysis that hides their values." He added, "Our core pattern should be 'there is a BIG difference and it is a fact. . . .' We must then take such key facts to immediately illustrate a large vision; we cannot remain in arguments at the detail level." Last week, an American Research Group poll of likely voters in New Hampshire's Republican primary put Gingrich in second, with 14 percent, after Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who drew 39 percent.

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Posted by Don Singleton at 10:19 AM 0 comments
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