Yet another belated tab clearing post

• Economics of Ticket Scalping
• The end of newspapers and the future of newspapers
• A tech support secret handshake

Economics for five year olds

Arnold Kling has a great post on explaining economic development to five year olds, with the hope that journalists understand it. The version he came up with was this

There are lots of people in the world who will give us things that we want, as long as we give them something they want in return. This is called trading. Some of the things we trade are hard to see--they are like nice thoughts. Other people keep thinking up nicer things to trade with us, and we keep thinking up nicer things to trade with them. We keep trading nicer and nicer things. Many years ago, people had not thought up all of these nice things, so they did not have as much to trade as we do. That is why people who lived back then were poor, and we are not.

Now if he'll only do one for deadweight loss.

Kudos to CNN.com

I'm linked from their From the Blogs Section on this story.

A riduculous commentary on America

The most controversial Attourney General in years resigns and the main headline everywhere is an athlete's admission of guilt. WTF?

Meaningless op-eds masquerading as human interest stories

From the CNN.com article: Muslim women: My headscarf is not a threat after telling a story about rudeness at Walmart while wearing a hijab (which they put in quotation marks for some reason).

Such stories are not altogether uncommon for Muslim Americans.

Wow, not altogether uncommon! I guess it's not unlike a problem of variable merit. There's also the annoying use of the term Muslim American (implying ethnicity or nationality) instead of American Muslim.

The rest of the story is of dubious logic and follows the same pattern as all other CNN.com stories about group identity, which is

1. An offensive incident
2. A quote of data after some seemingly arbitrary date
3. Quote from expert
4. Further interview with subject, telling everyone that he/she wants to be different while remaining the same.
   

The in-laws crack the mainstream media!

Actually it's my brother's in-laws, but anyway, they were recently recognized by the Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cobb couple showing soldiers they care

Mary and Ed Ettel spend most weekends in their basement creating care packages for troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Kosovo/Serbia. In 16 months, they have mailed 376 boxes weighing 5,723 pounds and helping 6,365 service members.

The east Cobb couple and about a dozen volunteers packed 16 boxes Saturday with snacks and hygiene items. During summer mailings, they add baby wipes, salty snacks and water bottles. They also put in Beanie Babies, candy and sometimes soccer balls for soldiers to give to the children they meet.

The Ettels get requests for items through a program called AnySoldier.com. Soldiers post items they need on the Web site and volunteers kick into action.
...

How cool!

Bashing the education system

Reading the AJC's education articles are always a source of malicious fun for me. The articles can be tedious, but the forums are always fun. For some reason people like to pretend that if only we could crack down on some group (the parents, the taxpayer, the students) the problem would solve itself. Grammar and spelling tend to leave quickly as well. This one was my favorite

I'm a career educator with more graduate degrees that the detractors of public education.

Let's put it in a sports analogy so the neo-luddites can understand, break the legs of the starting offense of the GA Bulldogs and complain about why thy can't win a championship.

He starts off with a misspelling, and then misuses "Luddite". Luddite is a proper name, and has no sports meaning.

When one thinks about it, it's amazing public education works as well as it does. When you have a system where the producer, the consumer and the financier are all different people, why should it work at all?

One other thing that annoys me is the pejorative refrain of "teaching to the test". Of course, teachers should teach to the test the same way drivers should "drive to the road" and cops should "enforce to the law". That's their job after all.

As I'm in rant mode, I suppose I'll share the other annoying shibboleth of the teaching establishment, which is saying someone is a good student "but doesn't test well" which is like saying someone is very tall, "but doesn't measure well".

Department of horrible statistics

Case in point today, Jay Bookman of the AJC

the influx of good-paying, high-tech jobs has had an enormous impact. Twenty years ago, per capita income in Ireland was 60 percent of the average in the European Union. Today, on a per capita basis, Ireland is the second-richest nation in the EU.

Think of how meaningless that is. Were they already the second richest country per capita? Did they have a meager rate of growth and the rest of Europe went down? Who can tell?

Bookman goes on cite things he approves of (of course) but doesn't anyone edit these things?

Willful blindness in the media

I read the headline of this CNN.com article Ohio lethal injection takes 2 hours, 10 tries and was thinking how tough that guy must be, after all, 10 tries! Then I read

Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man's arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.

The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.

...

Officials said the delay was due to Newton's size -- he weighed 265 pounds. In May 2006, the execution of Joseph Lewis Clark was delayed about 90 minutes because the team could not find a suitable vein. He was a longtime intravenous drug user.

This is ridiculous. Not being able to find veins is quite common in any hospital, nursing home, or drug den. After a prolonged period of being jabbed with needles the veins (quite sensibly) appear to retreat and get much harder to find. A high percentage of body fat will makes it hard as well. It's not like this guy withstood the lethal dose ten times or anything.

This is why everyone should read The Corner.

Local music legends mentioned in the mainstream media

Atlanta based garage rock duo The A-Sides are briefly mentioned in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Two from Slate

• Hitchens on Falwell - a nice vicious hit job, closing with

  It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

• On Generals - An interesting piece on the lack of turnover at the Pentagon due to the Iraq war. Unmentioned is the lack of turnover as a result of 9-11, which should be the larger clue.
  

If Granny had wheels, she'd be a trolley

Starting with this review of a CNN.com Michael Moore's movie "Sicko is Socko". It prattles on and on about the inequalities and suffering that result from illness. All true most likely. Read that and ask yourself, "So What?" Is the same leviathan that brought you the Iraq War (or "Peace" if you prefer) likely to improve matters? Or for that matter, one that couldn't even find a way to discreetly have sex with interns?

The second one is "What if Lincoln Had Survived?", also on CNN.com. If they had the medical technology of today but not the 25th Amendment, what would have happened?

Isn't there some news site that caters to the person who is interested in news?

For far better non-news brain candy, check out this history of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. The perpetrators of that attack, much like the anthrax mailer, were never caught.

Lou Dobbs is the perfect man of the age

By repeating the dumber parts of the conventional wisdom in a solemn tone he continues to be taken seriously. Case in point, his newest CNN.com column (he drags down the whole franchise IMHO) A call to the faithful. It's an adventure in the non sequitur. While lauding the separation of church and state he points to examples of church based groups having opinions on matters of pure politics, i.e. Iraq and immigration.

Neither of those are religious matters. If they were trying to implement Sharia, force church attendance, establish a state religion or mandate that government personnel had to be of a particular sect, or any sect, that would be one thing. But these are either pro/anti war choices, or pro/anti amnesty choices, which have no inherent religious significance. Religious people may care a lot about them of course, but so can a lot of people. He then quotes Romans 13, with

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

In a democracy, the governing authority is the people, and the above verse would seem to encourage public participation in the process. Dobbs would seem to want separation of people and state.

The belated Imus post

I'm not sure whether I said this already in a post or an email, but in any case..

Imus said "Nappy Headed Hos".

The outrage industry sprang into action, because that is their entire job.

The media covered it, because all of the major players were happy to come to them, and news coverage consisted largely of replaying existing footage, or cutting and pasting press releases. This equaled a cheap to produce (in time and dollars) article or news segment, especially compared to the two wars that are going on right now

People liked it because it was widespread and easy to understand. Anyone could shoot his mouth off to anyone else and not get schooled by someone who knew more about the topic. There was also no personal connection to anyone they knew, so no feelings could be hurt.

There is no deep meaning to the "controversy".

Bold new insight

Barack Obama is a lot like Lenny Kravitz. Both have a well defined personal story which makes for an easy story for critics and pundits. They both sound just like vague rehashes of the Kennedy era so they seem familiar to those in the pundit demographic. Both were barely born then, so the talking heads can proclaim them to be "new". Both are of mixed race ancestry so people can feel good about themselves for saying they like them. Both have problems with "authenticity".

Where's my CNN.com column?

Those crazy Germans

I read this fawning article on the future of China in der Spiegel. The go on and on about the benefits of state owned industry, and a central strategy for all of China's economic activity. And not once do they use the term "National Socialism"!

Semantic annoyances

It's annoying that Colin Powell calling Iraq a civil war is news. When there are two wars going on the media decides to make media pronouncements news stories. Pathetic.

More annoying is that the current conflict doesn't bear that many resemblances to a civil war as they are usually defined, and a lot resemblances to a traditional gang war. Come to think of it, that's probably the most useful way to think about it.

Nick was right!

The FoxNews.com website really did take a turn for the ugly and unusable. CNN.com sadly is blighted by the beligerant economic illiteracy of Lou Dobbs, which mars otherwise fine website.

In FoxNews.com defense, they do have periodic columns by Wendy McElroy and Radley Balko. CNN.com has no interesting columns I know of.

Why doesn't the AJC have editors?

This is easily the most poorly written article I've seen in a long time. Granted, its all filler, and contains no new data. And being, the AJC, it mentions diversity (for no obvious reason) at least twice. The bolding defies explanation as well. Some strange passages:

It's no secret in the world of big-time drug trafficking, federal agents say: If you want to be a major player in interstate drug peddling you have to have an operation in metro Atlanta.

Recent multimillion-dollar drug busts suggest that Gwinnett County has become that place in metro Atlanta for these drug cartels.

...
In 2005, Gwinnett's local task force seized a total of $34 million in illegal drugs. Those figures dwarf the amount of drugs seized in surrounding counties. A Cobb County drug task force, for example, seized $9 million in illegal drugs last year.

The words flow like a piano through a blender.

Weakest statement ever

From CNN

With higher gas prices and tax incentives, some hybrid vehicles make economic sense, Edmunds.com says

Wow, some!

A fawning portrayal

I read this article about Fidel Castro in the Toronto Star. I honestly don't know how it could be more sycophantic.

He lives to learn and to put his knowledge in the service of the revolution. For Fidel, revolution is really a work of reason. In his view, revolution, when rigorously adopted, cannot fail to lead humanity towards ever greater justice, towards an ever more perfect social order.
...
His intellect is one of the most broad and complete that can be found. He is an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets. On everything.

Combined with a Herculean physique and extraordinary personal courage, this monumental intellect makes Fidel the giant that he is.

Those who bite the hand that feeds them will lick the boot that kicks them. 47 years of tyranny can be washed away instantly. HT: Tom Palmer.

Annoyances from the New York Times

This time it's about "Men who never marry". It was more patronizing than usual.

Choice Quotes

She speaks from experience. She married her high school boyfriend right after graduation, a 2-week-old baby in arms. But her husband, who never graduated, was unemployed for most of their marriage, and the couple broke up after six years.

Determined to find a man who had better prospects, Ms. Rudolph entered a relationship with a basketball player and had three children with him. It ended when she learned he was married to someone else, a revelation that left her badly shaken.
..
Joe Callender, 47, a retired New York City corrections officer and a father of four, has had long-term relationships with two women but has never married. One obstacle, he admits, has been his own infidelity.
...
Mr. Cunningham, 41, a sanitation worker, seems to defy any theory about why he is single. He has, he said, simply not met the right woman.
...
He is a tall, athletic man with cropped, George Clooney-style hair who projects a kind and upbeat persona; surely a catch to some women in Fort Collins.
...
When he walks in the front door after a weekend trip or a run or a bike ride, he often puts a commemorative baseball cap on his coat rack, and now, about three dozen hats cover the rack, with no apparent space for a purse or a diaper bag.

It's an interesting read. They start from the position that marriage is some inevitability that one must exert great effort to avoid (it's not). They also don't take into consideration the happy loner theory, nor active misanthropy. They all but call women genetically programmed golddiggers.

Things that have vanished from the media

• Bush's approval ratings - these used to be big news, now they're nowhere to be seen. If they had improved the usual retinue of hacks would have been vocal about that.
• Japan - there's very little news this country
• Massacre at Beslan/Chechnya in general - it's just disappeared, no post-mortem investigation, no obvious revenge attacks by the Russians, nada
• Conflict in Kashmir
• Outsourcing to India
• Former VP candidate John Edwards
• Genetically modified foods
• The South Central LA farm where Daryl Hannah was arrested
• UPDATE: Also, Bird Flu
  

Saturday rapid fire

• Make a timeline of your life - it could be cool, but too revealing
• Time Maps
• Top 10 Signs You're Made to be an Entrepreneur 6.

  You spend more time and energy looking for easier, faster, cheaper, more effective ways of accomplishing something than if you just did the task outright.

• Prosopagnosia - The inability to recognize faces. Or the way of the Steve.
• A good wrap up of the Goldstein - Frisch battle by Wendy McElroy. I still find it odd that Fox News employs a Canadian anarchist as a columnist, but she does seem popular there.
• The Agitator's Fox column about Swat Teams and no-knock warrants. It would seem that the best way to fix the problem is to assign liability to Judges who sign errant warrants, though I don't think anyone has suggested that yet.
• A very good post on why the current world situation is NOT World War III.
  

Random thoughts

It's time for the MySpace fad to be replaced by something else.

Real college professors get fooled by fake reality show. I've seen one episode of the show and it doesn't seem that good.

Another Video Blog. I like them better than podcasts.

The most vapid article on CNN.com in quite a while is Tattoo nation -- the U.S. is getting inked.

The results suggest that 24 percent of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that's almost one in four. Two surveys from 2003 suggested just 15 percent to 16 percent of U.S. adults had a tattoo.

"Really, nowadays, the people who don't have them are becoming the unique ones," said Chris Keaton, a tattoo artist and president of the Baltimore Tattoo Museum.

They quote contradictory surveys; then assure us that 24% is close to 25%. Later they have the stats on the survey, which is

The telephone survey on tattoos included 253 women and 247 men and was conducted in 2004. It has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

Which seems to make it a weak basis for drawing strong conclusions.

The photos from last night will be up soon.

A couple of classics

News anchor slips up, in a very funny way. And surprisingly, this page of Emo Phillips quotes.

Quick Round Up

• A cheaper hybrid in the works
• Media format by political affiliation
• Dave Chappelle is quite brazen to be offended that Comedy Central might show some of his unfinished shows. And I would imagine that Chappelle Theory.com is a total crock.
  

Conspiracy thoughts

If I were partial to the intentional fallacy, I would think this:

1. Dick Cheney does his interview with the MSM/Fox the same day that more Abu Ghraib photos come out. The photos don't actually add anything to the case mind you, but they are more fuel on the fire. The Cheney story seems to have trumped the photo story.
2. The whole cartoon controversy is ginned up by the establishment regimes in the middle east as a way to shut out Western influence. By making a mountain out of a molehill via artful use of rent-a-mobs they can freak out the West by seeming totally crazy by Western standards and only a little crazy by Middle Eastern standards. This puts pressure on economic and cultural ties between the two regions, and will do a lot to pressure European governments to limit immigration from the Muslim countries. This keeps Western thought out and lets the weird combination of monarchies and theocracies in power.
   

Quick round up

• An excellent article on Muslim immigrants in Sweden. Maybe we didn't win the cold war. Combine cultural separation with the welfare state and you get some ghastly results. It would be interesting for someone to do an article comparing American Muslims with Europe's. Everything I've seen states rather convincingly that American Muslims are slightly better on all of the social metrics (income, higher education, etc) than native born Americans, whereas Europe's trend very poorly.
• Senator Reid (D-Nevada) linked to Abramoff. We all knew that was coming I suppose. What is it going to take for term limits to make their come back? Maybe after more gains by the Republicans in November (my current prediction). If not, nothing will.
• I am reflexively against anyone who declares that politician x is "playing the ----- card".
• Quote of the moment - Mickey Kaus with "McCain is to pundit shows what lesbians are to Howard Stern."

Pathetic

Apparently CNN expects us to take them seriously when they run a headline of
"Give me an O! U! C! H! -- Cheerleading injuries on the rise". The preceding sentence is on their main page, not the article page.

A cost of story would be the greatest thing for news possible. Not perfect sure, but an improvement.

A good interview

With Markos of the Daily Kos. It seems his personal style is a lot like his writing style.

Via Althouse.

Prediction

While taking a short break from coding I saw the article Leaders urge calm if Williams dies on CNN.com and was stuck by two thing:

1. "Dies"? He is due to be executed by the state, and they use the broadest term possible. A lame and evasive headline.
2. What calamity has been correctly predicted recently? There were warnings of mass anti-semitism after Mel Gibson's movie, warning of 10,000 or more dead after Katrina, an economic recession due to high gas prices and so on. Here's a question: what calamity have the pundits in the media correctly predicted beforehand? They seem to have enough problems predicting the past.
   

Quick round up

• An article from Newsweek which has some interesting stats on American feelings on abortion.
  
• Saudi teacher sentenced to 750(!) lashes for blasphemy. Among other things he was charged with "defending Jews". No one seems to have adopted him as the new Scopes.
• "Ban Asian marriages of cousins, says MP"
  

  The report, commissioned by Ann Cryer, revealed that the Pakistani community accounted for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide.

  ...

  "I think this should be applied to the Asian community. They must look outside the family for husbands and wives for their young people."

  It is estimated that more than 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality. The likelihood of unrelated couples having the same variant genes that cause recessive disorders are estimated to be 100-1. Between first cousins, the odds increase to as much as one in eight.

  55%!?

• This is way cool.
  

Another community radio station

I've long listened to WRFG's bluegrass programming, and complained about it's political programming, seemingly designed to irritate me. They live up to every stereotype of the hard left and it can be painful to listen to.

Then, while googling Michael Sheuer I came across the Weekend Interview Show with Mike Horton. It's part of a shortwave network I've never hear of before.

Anyway, it's an interesting thing. The host is a libertarian of the Lew Rockwell/Anti-War.com school (paleo-libertarian to take it to too fine of a point) and from what I listened to on their site Horton has mostly authors and pundits of a similar mindset.

After listening to the interviews I was left with the feeling that there are still regional differences in world outlook (American regions, I'm not sure why I came away with that).

On the whole it's interesting how people with similar premises can come to differing conclusions and how different premises can come to similar conclusions.

Ah, my upload is done. More thoughts on this later.

Job security inspires low standards all around

I was reading the two education related articles Schools want Beltline voice and Decatur tries to close racial gap in the AJC and was astonished by the poor quality of the writing and thinking. Nothing but one and two sentence paragraphs and no information that couldn't be found on a press release.

Not even wrong

In this article by Joe Conason on Salon. Conason makes so many errors it's best just to point you to the Agitator's take on the matter. I thought Salon was a serious publication. Oh well.

Saturday morning rapid fire

1. A good short history of the Davis Bacon act
2. A longer piece about Edward R Morrow (real name Egbert Roscoe Murrow I found out) and his dealing with Joe McCarthy. Short version - McCarthy bad, but Communist threat real, and the new Clooney movie inaccurately gives credit to Morrow for a lot of other people's work. The article is well worth reading in it's entirety.
3. A fairly brutal piece on Harriet Miers in National Review Online who correctly see that Supreme Court picks are not a zero sum game.

   So, we have reason to fear, will be the case with Miers. And even if she does not become a Blackmun, her record strongly suggests she will be an O’Connor — a split-the-difference judge. As one of her former colleagues has said of her, Miers’s office was the “place where the action stopped and the hand-wringing began.” If she follows that course, we will be left with a Court that retains immense and inappropriate lawmaking power but refuses to make clear laws. The rule of law is based on the making of arguments and the giving of reasons, not on sentiment or group loyalty — which is the basis on which Miers’s defenders want us to support her.

4. We live in strange times when Ann Coultier is correct in direction and degree. In her column "Does this Law Degree Make my Resume Look Fat?" she makes a strong case that against Miers.
   

Similarities

I think I'm the only one to see the similarities between Barack Obama and Paris Hilton, namely they're famous solely because commentators and not reporters talk about them.

This is a correlation of no significance mind you, it is odd though. I think I'll create the term "Media Famous" to describe it.

Get riled up with the AJC!

Naturally I was drawn to Cynthia Tucker and her column "So . . . illegals can work but can't learn?"

Since 2000, Georgia's colleges have employed a sensible policy that recognizes the academic potential of some illegal immigrants without swamping the state treasury. The Board of Regents voted to allow public colleges and universities to admit them if they pay out-of-state tuition rates. But the regents also gave each college president the latitude to waive that higher tuition for a limited number of students. That policy has worked well.

When I took a public finance class (around 1995 or so) at UGA I remember hearing that tuition covered about 20% of the actual cost of college for the average student. Out of state tuition was about two and a half times that of in-state tuition, so even if illegals are paying the out of state rate taxpayers are still picking up part of the bill. They are also displacing legal students who would otherwise be accepted. Also note how government acceptance of illegal activity doesn't faze her at all.

She closes with

But Johnson has described employers who hire undocumented workers as only "part of the problem. If they [illegal immigrants] are here working and not using taxpayer funds, that's not as much of a burden." So, he said, he and his colleagues will take a close look at any proposal to crack down on hiring practices, making sure new laws don't "impose an undue burden" on employers. After all, business executives are a reliable GOP constituency, and they fight any move to curb their access to cheap labor.

Apparently, Georgia's official policy is this: We like illegal immigrants just fine, as long as they work for dirt and stay out of sight. They're welcome to pay state income tax and local sales taxes, but that's where the welcome ends.

Well, yes. You try to maximize the benefits while minimizing the price. How revolutionary. One thing to note, is that the current situation is entirely dependent upon the voluntary behavior of the illegal immigrants. Under the reign of cruel business they still don't have to come here.

About 9 years ago I attended a Future of Freedom Foundation seminar on illegal immigration led by Jacob Hornberger (who, if memory serves was a really nice guy and a class act in general) who suggested that we let them come over to work but deny them all health, social and educational benefits. His prediction was that our kids would work for their kids.

I think that's worth a shot. It's certainly better than the look the other way policy we have now. It would also keep the self selection going in the right direction.

Emo Reporting

The current trend of newscasters morphing into viewer advocates is shameful to behold. Instapundit put it very well in his latest MSNBC column.

Things that currently annoy me

• Ebay is having some sort of malfunction with one of their DNS servers and I can't up a bid on a cool tripod


• This article

  An air purifier helped suck up some of the errant smoke, but not all of it. Newly pregnant, Kump began thinking about a story told to her by a pregnant co-worker at the Tides: After her first visit to her obstetrician, the doctor was convinced that Kump's co-worker was a smoker, when in fact she had never touched a cigarette in her life.
  
  Kump began eyeing those ashtrays more perilously, concerned about her exposure to secondhand smoke and the consequences to her health and that of her unborn child.
  

  It actually uses an unnamed friend of someone as a source, and it uses the phrase "began eyeing those ashtrays more perilously"? Have these people no respect for the English language?
  


• This article "Katrina raises Hillary Clinton's profile" in the Houston Chronicle. It contains 11 paragraphs and 11 sentences.

Annoyances

I was looking at CNN.com today and came across the article "Report: More journalists killed in Iraq than Vietnam". I thought it interesting that CNN wasn't even willing to stand behind a finding of fact, hence they put the "Report:' in the headline.

Then I read the article, relevant quote

Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been killed, RSF said.

The latest casualty was a Reuters Television soundman who was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday, while a cameraman with him was wounded and then detained by U.S. soldiers.

The death toll in Iraq compares with a total of 63 journalists in Vietnam, but which was over a period of 20 years from 1955 to 1975, the Paris-based organization that campaigns to protect journalists said on its Web site.

During the fighting in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995, 49 journalists were killed doing their job, while 57 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed during a civil war in Algeria from 1993 to 1996.

Note the separate but sometimes equal "assistants" in the math. They seem to have the figures available (journalists killed during the Iraq War so far) to do an apples to apples comparison but choose not to do so. Also they artificially limit the "fighting in the former Yugoslavia" to a four year period which strikes me as quite fishy as well.

On the whole shabby work from CNN.

Boaz on PBS

From a good article by Cato's David Boaz

Sometimes the bias is not quite so obvious. Rather than imbalance within each report, the bias is reflected in the choice of topics. A careful listener to NPR would notice a preponderance of reports on racism, sexism, and environmental destruction, but very few reports on the burden of taxes and regulation, or the unconstitutionality of most federal programs, or the way that state and federal governments increasingly abuse the rule of law in going after unpopular defendants such as tobacco companies and Wall Street executives.

Anyone who got all his news from NPR would never know that Americans of all races live longer, healthier, and in more comfort than ever before in history, or that the environment has been getting steadily cleaner.

In the past few weeks, as this issue has been debated, I've noted other examples. Take the long and glowing reviews of two leftist agitprop plays, one written by Robert Reich and performed on Cape Cod and another written by David Hare and performed in Los Angeles. And then there was the effusive report on Pete Seeger, the folksinger who was a member of the Communist Party, complete with a two-hour online concert, to launch the Fourth of July weekend.

The real problem is not liberal bias but the inevitability of bias. Any reporter or editor has to choose what's important. It's impossible to make such decisions without a framework, a perspective, a view of how the world works.

Something else to bean in mind is that by subsiding an "independent media" the government can ensure that while having representation of the left or right in the media, they can make sure that the people they actually fund are lightweights who pose no threat.

Shaking my faith in the role of women in society

Whenever I need to feel smugly superior I read the "Woman to Woman" feature in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where a pretentious left-leaning woman debates a cloying right-leaning woman. Naturally I was interested in this weeks topic Should medical marijuana be legalized?

The left starts out with an irrelevant racial remark, then takes the remark back, taking up about half of her column, and then somehow using up all of her remaining space to issue a strawman attack at religion (why? Who knows), then closes with

While some argue medical marijuana can be addictive, few would contend it has the same dependency risk as the medications hospitals routinely administer for debilitating pain. Conservatives aren't clamoring for hospitals to turn off the morphine drip for dying cancer patients because there?s a heroin problem in the world. But they want to draw a line in the sand over medical marijuana? Please. Show me the logic.

Which is to say..... Well, I'm not sure exactly. Marijuana is being treated differently than heroin, which is not the same thing as marijuana? Is that actually a reason?

And quote frankly, how can she miss the actual strong arguments in favor of legalizing medical marijuana, namely, federalism, wasted government resources, the fact that none of the "dangers" of marijuana apply to say, 60 year old cancer patients, the chilling effect this has on medical research and treatment, the loss of privacy, etc.

That was the logical cesspool that is left-leaning Diane Glass. Then she gets topped by right- leaning Shaunti Feldhahn. She leads with a personal story, then closes with

I suspect that pro-medical marijuana opinions are less about ensuring the availability of treatments unavailable anywhere else, and more about legally getting high.

When I oppose legalizing backyard marijuana, I am not being heartless toward those with chronic conditions who use it to relieve their suffering. By championing other effective, controlled options, I am trying to spare other individuals and the public health the even greater suffering from, yes, that 'slippery slope' that countless of us have experienced firsthand: that marijuana is not a harmless drug and its use can go terribly awry.

To answer her ad hominen attack, I support the legalization of medical marijuana, and I have no interest in getting high, legally or otherwise.

As for her closing paragraph, it so uniformly ridiculous I don't know where to begin. None of the problems associated with marijuana as a "gateway" drug (even if you believe in that as a concept) apply to the people who would take medical marijuana.

What combination of circumstances would have to exist for her statement to be true, accurate and altruistic? You would have to have cancer patients who have no interest in selecting the best treatment for their cancer, who are utterly incapable of differentiating between treatments like Marinol (incidentally, Marinol must be swallowed and kept down for a prolonged period of time, not the easiest thing to do during chemotherapy) and smoked marijuana.

It would also have to be true that outsiders, with no specific knowledge of the medical condition in question would know more about the cancer and the patient than the patient and his/her doctor. They would also have to be more concerned about this patient than the patient himself.

It would also have to be true that the same dangers that exist with marijuana as a "gateway" drug (even if you believe in the concept) apply to a 60 year old woman with breast cancer the same way they apply to 17 year old angst ridden teenagers. And what substance doesn't have the potential to go "terribly awry"?

This turned into quite a little rant.

News of the weird, tragic, sad and evil

Bono Horrified By Attack On Aid Worker - an article about Muslim women in Ethiopia attempting to murder a woman (via stoning) for breast feeding in public. That's bad enough, but notice the headline, it's not "Attack on Aid Worker", it's Bono's reaction to it. Media priorities are nauseating.

PETA employees charged with animal cruelty - an accurate headline, and a very weird story.

That annoying media of ours

I was reading The Model School, Islamic Style recently and had the thought, does the media only interview histrionic pretentious American Muslims?

The article is about a Muslim school outside of Chicago. To Quote

The second order of business is creating what Universal calls an "Islamic environment." The Koran and the sayings of Muhammad are taught two days a week, Arabic three days a week. Grades 2 to 12 break for prayer once a day. Beyond Scripture, a Muslim approach influences the traditional curriculum as well. When teacher Fuzia Jarad's English class read Romeo and Juliet, the girls wanted to know, "Is it love at first sight?" "Yes," the teacher answered. "As Muslims, we don't do that. The difference is lust versus love; appearance versus knowing. Islam protects you from mistakes." For assistant principal Abdallah, who is in charge of discipline, love is a big issue. "I've had students come to me and say, "So and so are in love. Everyone is gossiping about the girl. Her reputation is ruined.'I tell them, 'If you care, show respect and stop the discussions.' Sometimes a girl or boy will tell me about a love letter they've received. It's always a letter. They can't socialize. They don't want the letter. They don't want to get in trouble. The feelings for each other are natural. Islam gives us a way to approach those feelings. Choose your spouse, but don't give your body or soul to someone until you're married."

What's central to the environment is a sense of Muslim family values. That's why Mohammad (Mo) Suleiman sent his daughter Samia, 18, to Universal. "Family means the older have mercy on the younger," says Suleiman, "and the younger respect the older." The students seem to make an effort, but cultural isolation is impossible. "My dad will hear the word love when I play my music, and he'll say that's against our religion," says freshman Ryan Ahmad. "So I'll stop for a week. But then one of my friends will start singing some lyric, and I start up again." When freshman Gulrana Syed watches TV, she tries to stick with family shows but gives in to the temptation to watch Fear Factor. "If swearing starts," she says, "I turn it off and hope God forgives me."

Though the school and the parents want their kids to be successful in America, the ambivalence of many Islamic parents sends mixed signals. The pull of their home country is a constant distraction from fitting into this one. "They are obsessed with foreign politics," says Steve Landek, who has been mayor of Bridgeview since 1999. "I come to talk to them about better sidewalks. They want to know how to run for Congress so they can change America's Israeli policy." Clearly respectful, however, of the economic and cultural contributions of Muslims to the community, he regrets to say 9/11 has set them back. "I still hear comments. I'm not going to repeat them. I'm not going to perpetuate the negative."

and

The students next door sometimes give voice to the commonplace resentment that can be found among Muslims the world over. Assigned by his English teacher to write an essay about his own American Dream, a 15-year-old wrote that the occupied territories should be returned to the Palestinians and "the Jews should be left to suffer." More often, however, Universal's students feel resentment about being stereotyped, both in the media and on the streets. To senior Ali Fadhli, the Fox TV show 24, which had a plot this season about a Muslim terrorist cell, is "obnoxious," he says. "America has moved on to a new enemy. We're treated now like the Russians were during the Cold War." Being teenagers though, perhaps the worst slight of all is being regarded as outsiders. "The students are aware," says Dalila Benameur, head of the social studies department, "that they are perceived as different." Says freshman Gulrana Syed: "It's kind of impossible to blend in wearing a head scarf." Student Ryan Ahmad, whose dad is his toughest music critic, admits, "Americans seem to have more fun. Muslims try to be American, but we don't know how. The cultures are so different." A sense that U.S. life has its own contradictions provides some perspective. Senior Muna Zughayer, noting the use of women as sex objects, says, "I think it's funny people look at us and say we're oppressed!"

So, in other words, they go to lengths to maintain their own culture and traditions, they voluntarily segragate themselves in education, visibly and publicly remove themselves from American mainstream culture, present a monolithic public face, and have strong loyalties to other countries.

Then they wonder why they don't fit in the with the culture they're rejected. You can't be different without being different.

I guess the question is: Does the media deliberately seek out these people and ignore the rest of American Muslims or do they seek out the media. With the exception of finding out the Dave Chappelle was a Muslim (also in Time magazine), I can't remember any other mention of American Muslims where that was a detail and not the focus. One never reads about, say some dentist who invented a new method of flossing, who got the idea on the way to prayers (or something like that). To put it another way, is the only public Muslim someone who is professionally Muslim?

Funny

Nothing is stranger than reading the New York Times discuss NASCAR

For a certain segment of the population, Nascar's raid on American culture -- its logo festoons everything from cellphones to honey jars to post office walls to panties; race coverage, it can seem, has bumped everything else off television; and, most piercingly, Nascar dads now get to pick our presidents -- triggers the kind of fearful trembling the citizens of Gaul felt as the Huns came thundering over the hills. To these people, stock-car racing represents all that's unsavory about red-state America: fossil-fuel bingeing; lust for violence; racial segregation; run-away Republicanism; anti-intellectualism (how much brain matter is required to go fast and turn left, ad infinitum?); the corn-pone memes of God and guns and guts; crass corporatization; Toby Keith anthems; and, of course, exquisitely bad fashion sense. What's more, they simply don't get it. What's the appeal of watching . . . traffic? It's as if ''Hee Haw'' reruns were dominating prime time, and the Republic was slapping its collective knee at Grandpa Jones's ''What's for supper?'' routine. With Nascar's recent purchase of a swath of real estate on Staten Island, where it intends to plop down an 80,000-seat racetrack and retail center for the untapped New York City market, the onslaught seems poised on the brink of full-out conquest. Cover your ears, blue America. The Huns are revving their engines.

It's odd

That no one has discussed the similarities and differences between the current Newsweek fiasco and the Valerie Plame affair. Both were anonymous sources, both were damaging and both were very political.

While I'm waiting

For the hosting data center to "reboot to fix latency they call it", I'll share this link on media self-absobrtion by Claudia Rosette. It's the best article I've read so far about the Newsweek debacle. Money grafs"

But the chief victims to date have been the rioters themselves, some of whom died as the violence escalated. A Washington Post report Monday quoted an Afghan dry-goods salesman, Del Agha, who joined one of the riots, as saying: "We wanted to have a peaceful demonstration, but the demonstration was like a car and some people who are the enemies of Afghanistan took the steering wheel and turned it in the wrong direction."

As recounted in the Arab News, an English-language newspaper based in Saudi Arabia, Afghans angered by the Newsweek story "have lashed out in fury in all directions. The fact that not only government and UN buildings were burned, but even mosques shows the depths of their rage. The same level of public anger has been reported from Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt and many other Muslim countries."

Let's pause right there. We are hearing that Muslims, infuriated by a report of blasphemy, went on violent rampages that resulted in . . . dead Muslims and burned mosques. Meanwhile, not only is Newsweek apologizing and retracting, but the U.S. government is regretting the loss of life.

What's really going on here is two stories. One involves Newsweek and the ups and downs of U.S. journalism. The other involves a swath of the Islamic world in which anger, fueled by years of gross political misrule, is a chronic feature of life--seeking to acquire a target. What produced these particular riots was the intersection of Islamic-world furies and that brand of U.S. self-absorption in which no subject is more fascinating to the American media than any possible misdeeds of the U.S. itself.

One media flaw that this (and every other article I've read) misses is that the media will not acknowledge that there are large parts of the world that are unreachable to them, yet it acts like it's giving you the whole picture. It will not admit ignorance.

While we're awash in celebrity stories, and the white house press pool will devote considerable time to getting their affectations right, we hear very little about the hundreds dead in Uzbekistan, and next to nothing about Darfour. Yet one never sees Peter Jennings saying "we have no Central Asian news tonight because the government won't allow us in. Now J-Lo and P Diddy are back together...."

The two points are not entirely related but I thought I should get them on paper.

Thoughts on the media

First is this article from Virginia Postrel,

Some people say they want "just the facts," and fault reporters for introducing too much analysis. Others complain that stories do just the opposite, treating all sides in a conflict as equally valid. The news-buying public seems to want contradictory things.

But one person's contradiction is another's market niche. Those differences help answer an economic puzzle: if bias is a product flaw, why does it not behave like auto repair rates, declining under competitive pressure?

In a recent paper, "The Market for News," two Harvard economists look at that question. "There's plenty of competition" among news sources, Sendhil Mullainathan, one of the authors, said in an interview. But "the more competition there has been in the last 20 years, the more discussion there has been of bias."

The reason, he and his colleague, Andrei Shleifer, argue, is that consumers care about more than accuracy. "We assume that readers prefer to hear or read news that are more consistent with their beliefs," they write. Bias is not a bug but a feature.

In a competitive news market, they argue, producers can use bias to differentiate their products and stave off price competition. Bias increases consumer loyalty.

I've always though that the media should admit to having a side instead of pretending that they follow some conceptually impossible standard of objectivity.

The other is this very cool map of where all the news is coming from, called Buzztracker.