News and/or Media
Washington Post Inadvertently quotes Brian, Jeff
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006OK, here’s what happened: Jeff Porten writes this post, in which he links to this WaPo article. I respond with this post, also linking to the same WaPo article.
The Washington Post has a feature on their website called “Who’s Blogging?” which is powered by Technorati. A link to my post shows up as the first of three blogs in the banner ad that appears with the article (see picture). If you click on the “Full List of Blogs” link, you get this page, which includes both my post and Jeff’s.
At a very minimum, this is very cool. To the uninformed observer, though, the whole thing looks a little like Jeff and I were contacted by the WaPo and asked to comment on the article, which of course, isn’t the case. In any case, I won’t return the check if they decide to send me one.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs, News and/or Media | 1 Comment »
More Evidence that 1 in 3 Americans is Completely Clueless
Friday, August 18th, 2006In this post, I marvelled at the fact that 1 in 3 Americans thought our government was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks and could also not name the year the attacks occurred. And now, here is even more evidence that just about one third of us are off the deep end:
So, here’s what I suggest: Look around the room. If you see two other people that aren’t crazy, well, you know….
Categories: News and/or Media | 4 Comments »
Poll Results: 1 in 3 Americans is Completely Clueless
Thursday, August 10th, 2006Recently, John Scalzi expressed his disbelief about a poll showing that 36% of Americans believe our government was somehow involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Now, there’s this:
SOME 30 per cent of Americans cannot say in what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington took place, according to a poll published in the Washington Post newspaper.
All I can say is I hope these are roughly the same group of people.
The article goes on to point out that 95% could remember the month and date of the attacks. Thank God for small favors…
Is there any way we could potentially tag these people and prevent them from responding to polls in the future? After that, we can talk about voting rights…
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The New York Times Gives Condi a Headache
Thursday, July 27th, 2006Condi Rice met yesterday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to try and mediate the armed conflict raging between Israel and Hezbollah (and, by extension, Lebanon).
Last night, Jon Stewart of the always-funny Daily Show ran this rather unflattering picture of Condi, and compared her facial expression on what he called the “Condi-meter” to determine how badly things were going with her negotiations. It was very funny and, in my opinion, entirely appropriate. He used an awkward picture of a public official to make light of a very serious situation, and a good time was had by all.
Then, this morning, I see this picture on the front page of the New York Times, alongside the headline CEASE-FIRE TALKS STALL AS FIGHTING RAGES ON 2 FRONTS. This time, it’s not as funny, and certainly not as appropriate, unless Condi was making that gesture in response to a question like “How are things going?” which strikes me as highly unlikely.
A much more likely scenario is that this was just one of those unfortunate moments we all have that happened to get caught on film. When Jon Stewart takes advantage of it for comedic purposes, it’s well played. When the New York Times takes advantage of it for dramatic effect, it’s at best misleading.
To drive home the point, here’s another picture from the same press conference that I found on the web from another news outlet covering the same story. Judging solely from the picture, things look to be in much better shape here, don’t they?
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President Bush – Founding Member – Upsilon Sigma Alpha?
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006During the G8 Summit, President Bush and Tony Blair had a brief conversation during which, unbeknownst to them, the microphone in front of them was on. Bush said to Blair, “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.” The media and the blogosphere jumped all over the comment, not based on the implications to Syria or Hezbollah, but based on the fact that the President used the word “shit.” Interestingly, the British press basically ignored the profanity, but got all bent out of shape over the way the Bush caught Blair’s attention: “Yo, Blair!”
Detractors of the President saw a golden opportunity to paint him as an immature frat-boy, but the general reaction of most people was lukewarm. If anything, people seemed refreshed by this rarely seen, unrehearsed reaction of a politician to troubling world events.
Daily Kos took the meme one step further, by pulling some screen captures from another meeting, in which President Bush walked into the room, put his hands on (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel’s shoulders and gave her a faux-massage. Kos called it a “frat-boy prank” and said that Merkel was “not amused.” Many of his commentors called it groping, a violation of her space, sexual harassment, etc.
Ironically enough, the LA Times reported on the incident as well, and said this:
Entering the meeting room, as relayed by a Russian television camera, Bush headed directly behind the chancellor, reached out and, placing both hands on the collar of her gold jacket, gave her a short massage just below the neck.
She smiled.
Kos responded with:
I don’t know about you, but it does not look to me like she is smiling.”
The video is here. If this kind of story offends you, I urge you to watch the video. Chancellor Merkel puts her hands up in the air, as if Bush caught her by surprise and then, right at the end of the video, turns and smiles at the President as he walks out of the room. Here’s the screen capture that Kos didn’t include (apologies for the quality, I don’t have access to Photoshop right now. Watch the video itself for a better look):
In my opinion, the two are obviously friends, and both had a good laugh at a meaningless incident that neither would remember unless they saw the video. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings | 3 Comments »
Missed me again (again)
Sunday, July 9th, 2006
So I’m back from Chicago, and now the target du jour is the PATH Trains, or possibly the Holland Tunnel. As per usual, we count on the terrorists to be just a little bit dumb:
New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly said the men believed that bombing the train tunnels under the Hudson River would unleash massive flooding in lower Manhattan, home to Wall Street and the World Trade Center site.
Now, I’m no engineer, but correct me if I’m wrong here: both of the above mentioned tunnels are built under the bedrock beneath the Hudson river. If a bomb were to explode in either of them, the odds are pretty good we wouldn’t even have water in the tunnel. But even if the bomb were powerful enough to penetrate the bedrock and flood the tunnel, how exactly does the water rise above its current level to flood lower Manhattan? If I’m thinking about this correctly, the only water Manhattan gets on it is from the (considerable) splash.
Not to make light of this, of course. Thousands could be killed (depending on the time of day, etc.) As for disruption, knocking out the PATH trains would just make the NJTransit commuter trains more crowded (as was the case in the weeks just after 9/11). Knocking out the Holland tunnel would be worse – the commuter trains would be more crowded, the ferries would come back into use (as was also the case after 9/11), but traffic through the Lincoln tunnel (the other tunnel going from NJ to Manhattan) would be prohibitive. They’d probably reinstitute the “two or more people per car in the tunnel” rules they had after 9/11 as well. This is just whining at this point, but man – am I glad those days were over…
Some other thoughts:
— The FBI seems to be on a roll, no?
A sudden rash of plot foilings right before the midterm elections? The cynical mind would suggest that these are minor incidents that are being trumped up as major threats to make the administration look good. I take a slightly different view (but only slightly different). My guess is these are serious threats, but the FBI and/or the administration is getting just a little sick of hearing that all of their warnings are nothing more than fear mongering, so they decided to publicize a few of their successes.
— Both this plot and the Sears Tower plot were “aspirational” but not “operational.”
This makes them less of a threat, but also harder to find. I also think it’s important to note that while neither had access to weapons, both believed they were in contact with Al Qaeda about procuring the necessary funding/weapons. One wonders how efficient Al Qaeda is about finding these people, and if they’re more efficient than our network of informants are…
— You’ll notice that no one is complaining about our pre-emptive actions against folks who were not (yet) a national security threat.
— The Tunnels plot was foiled by decoding messages found in Internet Chat Rooms.
This isn’t one of those data mining programs we’ve been reading about, but it does highlight the importance of electronic surveillance.
— You’ll also notice that no one is complaining about the government secretly lurking in those chat rooms and listening in on the conversations of people who haven’t done enough to justify a search warrant.
— If someone bombs the PATH tunnels tomorrow, will they accuse Bush of knowing about it & doing nothing? Probably. The administration would point to the arrests reported yesterday, the critics would point to the fact that security is not being beefed up in these areas, the NYPD would point to all the efforts already under way (plainclothes cops, the toll-free “TIPS” line for commuters to call, additional security cameras, national guard in the major stations, etc.). I forget who said it, but I think it’s true: if there is another attack, we won’t have the several month “grace period” of nationalism before the political bickering starts like we did last time. Just goes to show, absolutely anything can become normal.
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Missed me again…
Friday, June 23rd, 2006I was on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center on 2/26/93 when the first bomb went off, and I was in 195 Broadway about two years later when some nutcase tried to blow up the subway with a mayonaise jar filled with gasoline. So it comes as no surprise that two weeks after my first visit to the Sears Tower, a group of terrorists got caught discussing a plan to blow it up. Not that I’m taking any of this personally or anything…
Apparently, these guys had “aspirations, but not the means” to pull off such an attack. They were caught when they approached an FBI informant who they thought was an AL Qaeda operative.
A few thoughts:
1) These guys weren’t necessarily all that dangerous (although they could have been if they had actually reached Al Qaeda), but we slam our intelligence agencies when they screw up, so it’s good to see them get a pat on the back when they nail something cold.
2) For those who believe privacy concerns have gone out the window, I believe this is the first time in history that an FBI director took time to explicitly state that “whenever we undertake an operation like this, we would not do it without the approval of a judge. We’ve got search warrants and arrest warrants and the like.” This is also a good thing.
3) This was the top story in the New York Post and the Daily News this morning, but it wasn’t even on the front page of the New York Times.
Even now (4:15PM, EDT), it’s only the number two story, behind (another) scare story about (another) secret program to collect data about American citizens (this time, financial data). These stories, which are so full of news cataloging that they’re starting to look like they come from a template, are becoming more and more obscure and less and less relevant to the issue of privacy they supposedly address.
Of course, various Democratic congressmen and an ACLU official blindly condemmed the program as “abuse of power” and the like, while showing little or no knowledge of what the SWIFT network actually is. The Times, amazingly, did so little research on it, that it doesn’t even seem to know that it’s an acronym (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), and keeps spelling it in proper case (“Swift”).
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Reuters vs. AP – How Bad Will Hurricane Season Be?
Monday, May 22nd, 2006The National Hurricane Center issued its predictions for the 2006 Hurricane season today. Here’s what the Associated Press said (bold text is the headline):
Hurricane Center Predicts Calmer Season
A hectic, above-normal tropical storm season could produce between four and six major hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico this year, but conditions don’t appear ripe for a repeat of 2005’s record activity, the National Hurricane Center predicted Monday.
There will be up to 16 named storms, the center predicted, which would be significantly less than last year’s record 27. Still, people in coastal regions should prepare for the possibility of major storms, said Max Mayfield, the National Hurricane Center director.
OK, not too bad. But here’s what Reuters said:
US predicts active hurricane season
The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season will be very active, with up to 10 hurricanes, although not as busy as record-breaking 2005, when Hurricane Katrina and several monster storms slammed into the United States, the U.S. government’s top climate agency said on Monday.
The 2005 hurricane season spawned an unprecedented 28 tropical storms, of which 15 became hurricanes.
Woah….
I assume both reporters went to the same briefing, so it’s amazing that these two stories came out so differently. First, there’s the headlines, which give the reader totally opposite impressions. Then, there’s the details: AP says 16 named storms, 4-6 majors. Reuters says they called for up to 10 hurricanes, although the article later explains that only 4-6 of the 10 are predicted to be Category 3 or higher and hence, “major.” You’ve got to read these pretty carefully, I guess. And finally, there’s the history – AP says there were 27 named storms last year, Reuters says there were 28. If memory serves, I think Reuters is correct, because I think I remember them having to use “Alpha” and “Beta” after the 26 names ran out. I could be wrong on that, though. Of coruse, I’m not a staff reporter at a major wire service. Sheesh!
On top of all that, there’s this little nuggest (from Reuters):
NOAA had predicted 12 to 15 tropical storms [in 2005], of which it said seven to nine would be hurricanes [actual number was 15]. Seven of last year’s hurricanes were considered “major,” while NOAA had predicted only three to five would reach that level.
So whatever it was they said today, odds are it’s probably wrong anyway.
At least the sloppy reporting wasn’t about anything important…
Categories: News and/or Media | 7 Comments »
Some Folks Will Never Learn…
Saturday, April 22nd, 2006Apparently, a few teenagers in Kansas decided they would celebrate the anniversary of the Columbine shootings by killing a bunch of their classmates. The plot was foiled because one of them talked about it in a MySpace.com post. A fellow student read the post and notified the police, who arrested the would-be murderers, and found guns and knives in their bedrooms.
I heard about this yesterday in the waiting room of a doctor’s office (they had CNN running on a TV in the room). An older couple was sitting behind me and when the story ran, she turned to her husband and said, “See? The Internet causes all sorts of trouble.”
All she heard was “kids planning to kill classmates” and “Internet.” Some folks will never learn…
Categories: News and/or Media | 2 Comments »
Blogging about Britney
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006I dont’ spend a lot of time reading about, let alone blogging about Britney Spears, but this story bothered me when it first came out, and this seems to be its resolution. Basically, a paparazzi approached her car while she was sitting in it waiting for her bodyguard to get her some coffee with her son on her lap. She got scared, and drove away, without first taking the time to strap the baby in (and without giving the paparazzi a chance to do something sinister, like ram the car in order to make her get out, so he could take her picture). At the time, I thought they should just leave her alone, as there is a huge difference between driving around all day with your baby in your lap (BAD), and driving away from a potential threat & then putting your baby in the car seat (GOOD).
At any rate, it got into the press, so I assume the authorities had to investigate it or answer questions about why they didn’t. Their conclusion?
The spokesman, Sgt. Ken Cheurn, declined to discuss what prompted the DCFS house call, saying, “It was their investigation.” But he said the matter was settled at the time of the visit and called the incident “a big nothing.”
Damn straight…
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