chattr +a -V

We owe a debt of gratitude to the troops in Iraq, American, British, Australian, Polish and all the rest, for their contribution to yesterday's election. I know some fellows who've been over there, and the next time I see them, I'll let them know how I appreciate what they've done. The Iraqis' releasing their pent up desire for controlling their own lives was only possible because of the hard work of our Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy. Their mission was to fortify, not undermine, the beginnings of a civil society, and it deserves to be said 'Mission accomplished.'

Gospel Procession at St. Nicholas (requires Quicktime).

HT to to Fr Bryce Sibley.

Keith Devens links to Things to say when you're losing a technical argument.

Number 64 is

There is no hope for the widow's son, Boaz.

Am I thinking too much, over analyzing? Boaz took the childless widow Ruth as his wife, and Boaz became the kinsman-redeemer, and they had a son Obed, father of Jesse, who was father of David....

The latest AT&T suitor is SBC, the New York Times reports:

SBC Communications, the second-largest regional phone company in the nation, is in talks to buy AT&T for more than $16 billion, according to executives close to the negotiations.

A deal, if reached, would be the final chapter in the 120-year history of AT&T, the first technological giant of the modern age and the original model for telecommunications companies worldwide. A deal would be a reunion of sorts, putting back together some of the largest pieces of the Ma Bell telephone monopoly, which was broken up in 1984.

Back in 2003, BellSouth thought twice about buying AT&T.

The saga which began with the 'Hush-A-Phone', the 'Carterfone' and 'Above 890' (Microwave Communications, Inc., now known as MCI) reaches towards denouement.

Hush-A-Phone and Carterfone allowed consumers to attach third-party devices to their AT&T equipment. Above 890 opened up frequencies above 890 MHz for point-to-point private carrier communications. (MCI was the first to enter that market.)

When AT&T lost its Yellow Pages business, and later had to divest the 'Baby Bells', a long slide began. Now, one of the Baby Bells might be buying its mother.

After the 1984 decision, restrictions hampered AT&T's ability to respond to changing market conditions, but its institutional culture was probably as much to blame. My first personal computer was an AT&T 6300 Plus, sold after the company bought Olivetti (which, along with the NCR purchase, was one of U.S. News & World Report's 10 Big business blunders).

Broadcasters have seen a similar effect of new competitors: cable and the internet cut into ABC's, NBC's and CBS's viewership:

A major Nielsen ratings milestone in the broadcast-vs.-cable wars was set during the 2003-04 season, which also was marked by a controversy involving the provider of the numbers that drive the television business, Nielsen Media Research.

The aggregate household share of the top 60-plus basic cable outlets topped that of the broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, UPN, the WB Network and Pax TV) for the first time. By the end of the season, basic cable accounted for an average of a 49.8 share of viewing in the United States television households, compared with a 47.2 share for the broadcasters.

(Source: Cable leveling TV's playing field.)

	Viewership		Adults 18-49*
	Viewer average	Change from 2002-03	Rating/Share	Change from 2002-03
CBS	13.1	+4%	3.9/11	+3%
NBC	11.0	-5%	4.2/12	-7%
Fox	9.7	-2%	4.1/11	-5%
ABC	9.0	-10%	3.2/9	-16%
WB	3.6	-11%	1.6/5	-24%
UPN	3.4	-4%	1.4/4	-13%
Audience figures in millions. * Rating/share figures for WB and UPN are for adults 18-34. Source: Nielsen Media Research

(Source: 2003-04 primetime wrap.)

NETWORK PRIMETIME AVERAGES
WEEK OF 01/17/05 - 01/23/05

WEEKLY RATING
6.4/10		10.3/16		7.0/11		7.1/11		2.1/3		2.0/3
SEASON-TO-DATE RATING
6.7/11		8.5/14		5.5/9		6.7/11		2.3/4		2.3/4

See This Week's Ratings

DAILY Overnight Rankings CABLE SERIES  01/17/05 - 01/23/05 SPORTS PROGRAMS  01/03/05 - 01/09/05

SEASON-TO-DATE  09/20/04 - 01/23/05 SYNDICATED SERIES  01/03/05 - 01/09/05

© 2003 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. The Information contained herein is the copyrighted property of Nielsen Media Research, Inc. Unauthorized use of this copyrighted material is expressly prohibited. All Rights Reserved.

(Source: Zap2It, Jan 27, 2005.)

While satellite communications like Iridium launched never took off, VoIP from companies like Vonage are the new threat to Baby Bells, Sprint and MCI.

Cable, especially Fox, will continue to pressure the big three broadcasters, but only MSNBC, a bit player in cable, has a blogger with a show, Keith Olbermann (Bloggermann).

How soon before CNN or Fox tries a blogger show?

IBM and General Motors successfully 're-invented' themselves when personal computers and cheap Japanese imports undercut their product lines. AT&T didn't. The broadcast media big three won't get replaced by blogs, as Jack Shafer points out, and as Ed Morrissey, Joe Carter and Stirling Newberry with his talk of pipes, all admit, but some historical context beyond the Sony Porta-Pak would be helpful. 'History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,' as Mark Twain is supposed to have said.

Jonathan Rauch was on Hugh Hewitt's radio show this evening, streamed from various stations. Hewitt had printed one paragraph from Rauch's article in the January/February issue of The Atlantic (you have to pay to read the entire article), and he kept Rauch on for an extended discussion. Until the blog entry and interview, I don't know whether I had even heard of Rauch.

Now Hewitt is calling for blogs to discuss the single paragraph, which I include below. There's no transcript of the show, which is a real shame, since Rauch and Hewitt did explore what Rauch meant by his association of pro-lifers with the words 'insurgents and provocateurs'.

The paragraph Hewitt reproduces is not one available from The Atlantic for free. I got the impression from the show that Hewitt had read the entire article, putting his listeners at a big disadvantage.

It's a shame that there's no transcript available, since printing one paragraph without a link making the entire context available, is an invitation to folks constructing all sorts of commentaries, the major part of which are only opportunities for people to expound on their own views, not analyses of what Rauch meant: half blind hit-and-run blogging. Towards the end of his discussion with Rauch, Hewitt argued that if Rauch meant something besides 'scratch a pro-lifer and you find an abortion clinic car bomber' (my words, not Hewitt's or Rauch's), then Rauch owes a duty to put in print how that's not what he meant.

A similar argument can be directed at Hewitt: if you call for commentary on the one paragraph, and the entire article isn't available without paying for it, you owe a duty to post a transcript of the conversation you had with Rauch, to supply the context for the paragraph and Rauch's own words of explanation and interpretation.

Here's the paragraph:

"On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero's welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around."

Rauch engages in a counter-factual conditional relation: 'a conditional relation in which the form of expression of the antecedent and consequent marks them as imagined, nonfactual states or events' (emphasis supplied) when he writes 'it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left.'

Is it fair to wonder whether some pro-lifers, if they were shut out from political parties, would resort to violence? Maybe it is unfair, but it's not absurd to think it would be possible. Maybe using the words 'insurgents and provocateurs' is provocative, but asking people to opine on 'what [they say] about the author, The Atlantic, and the left's understanding of the Christian culture in America in 2005' is, well, to speak neutrally, unreasonable.

If Rauch intended to provoke anger, as well he might, then the use of the terms is typical of some bloggers on the left and the right: aggressive, 'macho' writing. I disagree with Rauch if he's implying that many pro-lifers would resort to violence and I also disagree with Rauch when he says the anti-war protestors rioted in the late 1960s because they were shut out from political parties. From personal experience of college at that time, the demonstrations and riots were because students knew they'd be drafted after graduation. Once Nixon ended the draft, the vast majority of demonstrations and violence ended. Not all of it, but the vast majority.

The personal threat, the personal danger, was gone.

Maybe Rauch has prejudices against pro-lifers, but it is not fair or reasonable to conclude he does, based on one paragraph.

Rauch doesn't seem to have a blog. Hewitt has one, but it has neither a comments feature nor trackbacks, which makes not for discussion, but each blogger posting conversations with himself on his own blog.

If Hewitt brings a guest on for another conversation like today's, I hope he chooses someone whose entire article being discussed, is available.

Hugh Hewitt is an attorney. He might know what the term is for what a grand jury hands up when it fails to return an indictment. Many years ago, I was told by an attorney that it's called an ignoramus. I'm afraid that's what many bloggers taking the bait and commenting on the one paragraph will show themselves to be.

This post's title comes from Mortimer Adler's How To Read a Book, of course.

UPDATE: Hewitt now has the entire article from The Atlantic on his site, along with a short response by Rauch to the blogs linked. Maybe I'll have more later.

Before Limbaugh, before sports and call in shows, before 'A Prairie Home Companion', there was Jean Shepherd. Broadcasting six nights a week on WOR in New York City (I listened when the show came on at 10:15), Shep spent 45 minutes Mondays through Fridays and two hours Saturdays spinning tales of growing up in Hammond, Indiana, life in New York, serving in the Signal Corps during World War II, girls, cars, working at the steel mill, playing the kazoo, and you'd laugh so hard you'd have to bury your face in the pillow. Nearly every show began and ended with Eduard Strauss' Bahn Frei polka. Ever since then, I've been partial to radio for entertainment.

The Shep Archives is a huge free library of his WOR shows, with some interviews and miscellany.

He wrote a couple of books, and while he writes about the same characters and events that he talked about, the printed word didn't carry the same expressiveness as the radio shows did. Shep was at his best ad libbing, with a spontaneity (as in this one for download or listening) completely missing from Garrison Keillor's scripted shows. His television production 'A Christmas Story' (forever remembered as 'You'll shoot your eye out, kid'), since it was visual and verbal, left too little to the imagination. There are different recorded versions. An early version is here for download or for listening here. You have to wait until he finishes some other stories first.

Download the 'Great Indiana Blizzard' or listen here. I'm making my way through the collection.

Chinese scientists report that Mt Everest may be diminishing in height.

'Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. ... '

What comes to mind: ironic, amusing, ridiculous. Reported on Threadwatch: Today google launched video.google.com.

But the last entry on googleblog is from Jan 17: the 'nofollow' posting.

For now, About Google Video explains that what's in the data is 'the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day ... [closed captioned text indexed] since late December 2004.'

Last week, Pres Bush used a phrase in his inaugural speech which James Meek in the Guardian claims came from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed.

Meek and people repeating his claim have ripped Bush's phrase from the context in the speech and ripped the Dostoevsky quote (if he was in fact quoting Dostoevsky) from the novel's context.

The immediate context in the speech is '[by our actions] in the great liberating tradition of this nation ... we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men'.

The Possessed is much, much more, than a novel about terrorists in a small Russian village trying to bring down the Tsarist regime, as James Meek claims. That's like saying Moby Dick is about 19th century New England sea men.

The Corner mentions James Billington's book With Fire in the Minds of Men. Meek is ignorant of, or ignores, the book, yet Billington has been known all over the world as the Librarian of Congress for nearly 20 years.

Here's another Meek howler:

The novel belongs to a period in Dostoevsky's life which the White House might find attractive, after he had been sent by the Tsar to a kind of Russian Guantanamo and emerged a deeply religious conservative.

Dostoevsky was sent to Siberia in 1849 and released in 1854. He wrote The Possessed in 1872, 18 years after his release from prison, and

• after The House of the Dead (1861),
• after Notes From the Underground (1864),
• after Crime and Punishment (1865-1866),
• and after The Idiot (1868).

(Sources: Dostoevsky and Time, a timeline of his life and works and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881).)

The only major works after The Possessed were A Raw Youth and The Brothers Karamazov.

The context in the speech.

I don't know what speech writer inserted the phrase Bush used, and whether the speech writer had in mind Billington or Dostoevsky. I haven't been able to find anything on the 'net naming the speech writer and neither have my searches turned up anything about the phrase except pure speculation, some of it wild use of cut-and-paste without any familiarity with Billington, Dostoevsky or The Possessed, only a simplistic recitation of one event in the book, and no analysis of the book's theme. We simply don't know the provenance of the phrase in the speech.

First, here is the Bush speech paragraph containing the phrase:

'From all of you, I have asked patience in the hard task of securing America, which you have granted in good measure. Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.'

It's clear that Bush is saying that America's efforts at liberating foreign peoples have lit a fire in the minds of men. Only snarky interpretations and prejudices could twist what Bush means to say. You may not agree with what he says, but this context has nothing whatsoever to do with Russian villages terrorized by nihilists: the words happen to be identical, but the context proves that their meaning is very different.

Meek's attempt to tie the speech to The Possessed is absurd.

The context in The Possessed.

First, the title may equally be translated as The Demons or The Devils, since it is demonic forces, the ideas 'possessing' the nihilists, which are explicitly a large part of the novel's theme: it is not the individuals who are committing atrocities and seeking destruction of Russian society who are truly responsible. Dostoevsky expresses the idea clearly when Alyosha, in The Brothers Karamazov, says to Ivan, his brother

"It was not you who killed father . . . You've accused yourself and confessed to yourself that you and you alone are the murderer. But it was not you who killed him, you are mistaken, the murderer was not you, do you hear, it was not you! God has sent me to tell you that."

Ivan himself didn't murder his father, and the nihilists aren't bent on destroying Russian society: they are possessed just as the man in Luke 8:26-39 is possessed: the demons flee from him at Jesus' command and enter the Gadarene swine. The nihilists are not drunk on ideology, they are not insane, they are demonically possessed, and the novel's message is that only repentance can save the nihilists and save Russia. Sofya Matveyevna, taking care the ill Stephan Trofimovich at the end of The Possessed, quotes the verses from Luke, and Stephan says:

A great number of ideas keep coming into my mind now. You see, that's exactly like our Russia, those devils that come out of the sick man and enter into the swine. They are all the sores, all the foul contagions, all the impurities, all the devils great and small that have multiplied in that great invalid, our beloved Russia, in the course of ages and ages. Oui, cette Russie que j'aimais tou jours. But a great idea and a great Will will encompass it from on high, as with that lunatic possessed of devils . . . and all those devils will come forth, all the impurity, all the rottenness that was putrefying on the surface . . . and they will beg of themselves to enter into swine; and indeed maybe they have entered into them already! They are we, we and those . . . and Petrusha and les autres avec lui . . . and I perhaps at the head of them, and we shall cast ourselves down, possessed and raving, from the rocks into the sea, and we shall all be drowned— and a good thing too, for that is all we are fit for. But the sick man will be healed and 'will sit at the feet of Jesus,' and all will look upon him with astonishment. . . . My dear, vous comprendrez apres, but now it excites me very much. . . . Vous comprendrez apres. Nous comprendrons ensemble.

Up on Newsforge today: Sun to announce open source DTrace on Tuesday, referencing the Computer Reseller News leak, that this coming Tuesday, Sun Microsystems is releasing the source code for its DTrace utility.

This is outstanding news. Sun's DTrace allows admins to diagnose running systems in real time, scripting the utility's 30,000 data monitoring points to show information on disk I/O activity, file opens, disk accesses, disk head seek distance by process, process activity snooping (by UID, for example), live reporting on shell input and output, printing keystroke activity in inbound ssh sessions, snooping inbound TCP connections, setuid calls and lots of other cool stuff. This is detailed drilling down that used to take hours pouring over output without any certainty you'd be able to pinpoint what's causing problems.

The BigAdmin DTrace page is here. The usenet announcement was Introducing DTrace by Bryan Cantrill, a year ago November.

You know awk, you can whip up DTrace scripts.

OpenSolaris.org will be a community news, discussion and support site.

It looks as if Sun will be open sourcing Trusted Containers and the Zettabyte (self-repairing for data integrity and pooled partitions re-sizeable on the fly) File System later this year.

From Zmarties:

Google appears to have silently raised the number of words it permits in its search query from 10 to 32 words.

This is great news - whilst the casual user wont notice the difference, the power searcher was often hitting this limit. Now it's possible to do much more targeted searches, using the - operator much more to exclude words you know are of no interest. There's a whole bunch of other applications that benefit from raising the limit, and plenty of partial workarounds that are now redundant - a Google search shows many of them.

The support for the new limit is somewhat patchy :-

Found through threadwatch linking to Google Blogscoped. Zmarties credited researchbuzz for the find.

An African American should talk like that? Why does it remind me of Jack Benny?

Sen Biden wants Dr Rice to say to Pres Bush 'Yes, boss, we made a mistake' or 'Hey, boss, it's not going that well. Hey, boss, read a little history.'

David Wharton, at A Little Urbanity points out problems in the assumptions Michio Kaku makes in the his Jan 20 Wall Street Journal editorial. Dr Kaku is contemplating the time when entropy has reached its maximum, and all the universe 'will consist of dead neutron stars, black holes, and nuclear debris. Intelligent life will be huddled next to the dying embers of fading black holds [sic], like the homeless next to small bonfires.'

'The End of the World As We Know It' asks of what concern to materialists is the possibility, or certainty, that the universe will 'run down' and no energy be available for useful work. That's a good question, and I don't know how Dr Kaku would answer.

That question isn't why I'm typing this. I want to look at the future Dr Kaku describes.

I think the only work of Kaku's I've picked up happens to be one I'm reading now, Einstein's Cosmos, because this is the centenary of his four papers and doctoral dissertation. Dr Kaku writes well, holding my attention with illustrative anecdotes from his life and events of the times. The book is obviously aimed at a popular audience, since there's no discussion of the mathematics of the 1905 papers. Probably there's only one equation in it's 200+ pages, and while he includes the 'There once was a young lady named Bright ... limerick, he doesn't include the one beginning 'There once was a fencer named Fisk ...'. You will find Alexander Pope's epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton. It's a shame there's no index.

That's enough about Dr Kaku. What will happen when entropy has reached its maximum? Is there some way to massively decrease the net amount of entropy in the universe?

Isaac Asimov wrote a short story about that very conundrum, and it's on the 'net here: The Last Question. It was the only story of his ever made the subject of a sermon, he said. Go and read it.

Last Oct 1, Steven Manganello, a lifelong Red Sox fan, got hit by a cab. He lapsed in to a coma, and even after coming out of it, he had little short-term memory.

His brother Anthony kept feeding him playoff and Series updates, but Steve couldn't hold on to the news:

When the Sox dropped those first three to the Yanks, Anthony even lied, pretending they were winning. Anything to keep his brother going. When Steven heard the "good" news, he'd squeeze his brother's hand -- it was all he could do. A few minutes later, as Anthony puts it, "He'd be on vacation again."

...

It wasn't until he flew home to California in November that his brain started to work again. By Thanksgiving, Steven was well enough to fully grasp two things: "Holy crap, I almost died!" and "Holy crap, the Red Sox won the World Series!"

Oh, yeah, Branca pitched to one batter in the ninth.

HT to the Baseball Crank.

Because it looks as if they're digging their way to China. Lowe's? Home Depot? BuyBlue.org doesn't list either company.

Take a look at Grossman's cartoon.

From Atrios.

How would Bush rephrase 'With malice toward none ...'?

(Lincoln was assassinated a month later, a few days after General Lee's surrender.)

Winds of Change prints a Maryland Free Soil Party ticket from the 1848 election. Many years ago, someone told me that back then, political parties printed and distributed the tickets, with only their candidates' names on them, no one else. Here's the image, from the Smithsonian's article on Paper Ballots:

Ballot, Free Soil ticket
Maryland Free Soil party ticket, 1848

The Smithsonian has other interesting images at the link.

Before the Civil War 'only Kentucky and Virginia were electing by voice vote. Kentucky, which had had the paper ballot from 1792 to 1799, was the last state to abandon voice voting.' Ballot from the Encyclopedia Americana. Interesting that they abandoned paper ballots after seven years and had voice voting for another seven decades.

'Party-tickets' were used after the Civil War, and the first State to adopt the 'Australian' ballot, printed by the government, with all candidates listed, was Massachusetts, in 1888. It was the Progressive Movement which eliminated ballots printed and distributed by parties, which also involved the government is ballot access questions, leading to our time's petition signature campaigns and litigation by Ralph Nader, the Libertarian Party and other minor parties. Richard Winger is usually cited as the authority on ballot access. His web site is Ballot Access News.

Hokey smoke! Instapundit links to the Zero Boss and 3martini, with the latest danger: SpongeBob SquarePants.

So that's why I never liked the Commies: all those Moose and Squirrel cartoon shows. Pure propaganda.

A thunder of jets in an open sky ... a streak of grey ... and a cheerful 'Hi!' ... now, where is my Kirwood derby?

Andre Breton, quoting Rimbaud, in his speech 'What is surrealism?':

Rimbaud say: "Jamais je ne travaillerai, ô flots de feu!" and also: "La main à plume vaut la main à charrue. Quel siècle à mains! Je n'aurai jamais ma main!" [Never will I work, O torrents of flame! The hand that writes is worth the hand that ploughs! What a century of hands! I will never lift my hand!]

And so we have

• a '"day of mourning" in front of the entrance to the Hannaford supermarket on Route 9W in Kingston [NY] ... [where] Members of the singing group Voices for Peace will attend, as well as members of the anti-war group Women in Black. Artwork protesting the ongoing war in Iraq will be displayed.
• at the inauguration, the Rhythm Workers Union, ... banging on steel drums and dancing in mud-caked boots
• a more profound and subtle message: 'Turn Your Back On Bush', and 'Not One Damn Dime' (Ann Althouse calls it 'lame' and quotes Snopes: 'one of the least effective forms of symbolic protest one could devise: it literally proposes that people do nothing, and doing nothing generates little, if any, publicity or news coverage'), whose participants 'will not spend any money today and also will not go to work.' They're coming by bus all the way from Madison, Wisconsin.
• BushBlackOut.com, which calls for folks to '[black] out your website or blog for the day and displaying a short message of protest'. (HT to Blogs for Bush)
• a recent coordinating meeting ... got bogged down in making a decision about whether the group had the power to make decisions.

  "We just go with the flow," antiwar activist Jose J. Rodriguez of Alexandria announced in the middle of the two-hour meeting, undaunted. "We're like water going downhill. They can't stop us."

Quite a relevant simile, a torrent of water sweeping everything before itself. Poetic actually, as in asinine.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin mentions the Backbone Campaign, and philly.com has this detail:

A group of activists under the banner of The Backbone Campaign plans on Friday to deliver a 70-foot puppet of a human spine to the Democratic National Committee, urging stronger opposition to the GOP.

This is the headquarters Terry McAuliffe built, the man who proudly said

[I] will leave a legacy behind of a 21st century party with a brand new state of the art national headquarters, a new 175 million name data file, an organization that is debt free for the first time in decades, a 10 million name e mail list -- up from 70,000 when I became chairman and five times as many small donors as when I started.

Got that Joe?

I hope there will be photos of this Backbone Campaign event. When I search google news for Backbone Campaign the closest item returned is Building The Next Paul Wellstone.

Will they drop it off? Will it be papier mache? Symbolism works best if it is original and subtle, though.

Back in November 2004, Joe Trippi wondered how the Democrats went from controlling the House, the Senate and the Presidency in 1994, to losing the House and Senate in that year's elections, and losing the Presidency in 2000. He said it was because 'they're doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. That's the definition of insanity.' (Trippi was cited in Howard Dean seeks to rally demoralized Democrats, Common Dreams News Center and hundreds of other sites.)

I've heard others attribute the Democrats' inability to understand red staters, the GOP victory, the respect many Americans had for Ronald Reagan and the television ratings for his funeral, to the same insanity: looking at things over and over but never changing your views.

Fine, as far as it goes. But why keep repeating those mistakes? What keeps them from learning? What's the attraction?

They're intelligent, right? They approach things scientifically, right? After all, Ted Rall says '[b]y any objective standard, you had to be spectacularly stupid to support Bush.' (No, Steve Sailer crunched the numbers and found that in 2002 the GOP attracted 58% of college grads, and in 2004 Bush and Kerry essentially tied for college grads' support.)

OK ... so Kerry voters weren't more educated than Bush voters. But ... everyone knows Kerry himself was more intelligent that W, right? Howell Raines told us that in 'The "Dumb" Factor' in the Washington Post. Wrong again: the New York Times ( Secret Weapon for Bush?) quoted Linda Gottfredson, 'an I.Q. expert at the University of Delaware', that Sailer's article was 'a creditable analysis' and that 'she was not surprised at the results or that so many people had assumed that Mr. Kerry was smarter. "People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can't understand," Professor Gottfredson said'.

So, what explains the Democrats' persistence in these failed tactics?

Magic: practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature.

What explains the Kerry supporters' persistent belief in myths? Superstition: an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear.

Democrats: someone's 'put a spell on you'.

Look around: fewer young people vote than other groups, so the youth vote, afraid of a military draft, will carry us to victory (it only prevented Kerry from losing Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio); the electorate wants a tough, belligerent leader, so let's run a Viet Nam war protestor who voted against major weapons systems and who passes the Global Test.

Only if someone thinks incantations, rituals, charms or panaceas are effective, could convince themselves Kerry was the more attractive candidate. Their thoughts and wishes must exert some form of control over the world.

Trippi's nostrums:

• Stop being 'moderate, moderate, moderate' ( he calls this the Democratic Leadership Council's 'mantra' [interesting choice of words]).
• Stop running to the middle, ignoring the base.
• Build a base of small donors.
• Build state and local parties (by moving even farther to the left? this is becoming incoherent, like Kerry).
• Build up labor unions (whose main growth has been from government employees: Trippi wants more of them?).
• Voluntarily restrict candidates' spending (when Kerry tied Bush in spending).
• Develop bold ideas and to challenge people to sacrifice for the common good. (Tripe.)

Certum est, quia impossibile est. [Tertullian].

Dr Elizabeth Behrman, chair of the Physics Department at Wichita State University read my post at Physics chair: Stop Making Up Reasons to Hate Jews and Israelis [non-gedanken scientific method], and emailed me the original article as submitted to the Wichita Eagle. The Eagle ran it Jan 13 2005 at My View: Stop Making Up Reasons To Hate Jews and Israelis.

She generously granted me permission to post her original article with her introductory and concluding remarks:

The title the Eagle gave to my op-ed was somewhat provocative, and not really reflective of my intent. I prefer my original (doesn't every author?) which was "A Tale of Two Newspapers." My original also noted that CWN had retracted and apologized; this (along with several of my best phrases) was cut. Actually I would appreciate it if someone with a blog would please post my original, so that I could get cricized for what I actually said rather than what the Eagle printed. Here it is (in case you would like to):

****************************my original ************************

A Tale of Two Newspapers

Let me tell you a story. As we all know, a couple of weeks ago an earthquake and tsunami devastated several countries around the Indian Ocean. Tens of thousands were killed; the need for aid was immediate. The next day, Catholic World News published an English version of a Vatican newspaper's story under the headline, "L'Osservatore raps Israel for declining disaster relief." According to CWN, Israel had refused to send aid to the stricken in Sri Lanka because Israel is a nation that "is too often preoccupied with making war" and that Israel needs a "radical and dramatic change of perspective."

The thing is, though, it's not true. And in fact, L'Osservatore Romano didn't say that at all. When protests were made, L'Osservatore indignantly answered that in the original Italian, the story had said that Israel had immediately offered aid, but that the government of Sri Lanka had refused to accept help for its people from the evil Zionists. The castigation in the original story was in fact of the government of Sri Lanka. And the version of events in the original story was, in fact, correct; Sri Lanka did refuse Israel's help. CWN has now published a corrected version and apologized for the error.

So why had CWN reported the story backwards? It could, I suppose, be true that CWN had assigned to translate this story someone whose Italian was good enough to get most of the words but bad enough to have missed the entire point of the story. Alas, far more probable is that the responsible person at CWN felt that reporting the facts would obscure a larger "truth:" that Jews in general, and Israelis in particular, are essentially wicked people.

I hope everyone is now gasping in moral outrage, but, alas, I know many are not. I know it has lately become fashionable to hate Israel, mostly for imaginary sins of just this ilk. And like any adopted attitude, hatred feeds itself: the hater looks for justification, and where there is none tends to manufacture what he cannot find, until the "fact" that Israel is wicked becomes something that "everyone knows."

Let us not justify hatred with lies. That is unworthy of any of us. And let us all try to be suspicious of fashionable ideologies. If they really are true, there will be supporting evidence, evidence that does not need to be manufactured, evidence that holds up in open inquiry, under proper scholarly standards. This is the way science is done; it seems to me that it teaches us all a useful lesson thereby.

*************************************************

Note that I do not blame CWN, only the "responsible person" at CWN, who, apparently, is blamed by them as well (at least, s/he no longer works there.) It is certainly possible, as I say, that it was a simple error. But doesn't it seem improbable that this person could have translated all the castigatory language correctly, and only misunderstood to whom it was being applied? And there have been so very very very many of these errors with respect to Israel in the past few years (see the websites of Honest Reporting, or CAMERA, for multitudinous examples) that it really does begin to look like people's persuading themselves of a lie.

There is still another possibility that I didn't mention: It could also, I suppose, be simple maliciousness; I prefer not to believe that of my fellow human beings unless I have to, though.

New RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman confirmed today that 'soft Republicans' will be targeted in upcoming elections 'deepening our base by turning out additional conservatives and Republicans, while also broadening our appeal to swing voters' (RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman Remarks to RNC Winter Meeting), reported at RNC Chair Unveils 'Durable Majority' Plan.

'We can deepen the GOP by identifying and turning out Americans who vote for President but miss off year elections ...'

...

'We should take nothing for granted, and continuously assess the best ways to find and register new voters, ID and mobilize Republicans who don't always vote, persuade independents and discerning Democrats, and turnout our supporters.'

Ron Fournier's article doesn't quite get the point, as he writes:

'Activists in both parties are watching to see whether Bush will continue to push a conservative agenda or move to the political center. Mehlman seemed to suggest that Bush didn't need to make a choice, that he would appeal to a wide spectrum of voters.'

It's not a choice between wide spectrum/move to the center or conservative agenda. The GOP's effort is to motivate the 'marginal voter' ('marginal', as in the effort needed to turn out one more voter, see the Wikipedia definition, or Marginal Utility at the William King Server, and many other places on the 'net, google "Austrian economics" or "Ludwig von Mises" "margin") to vote Republican and to stay Republican.

Again, this is working the Long Tail, 'squeezing millions from ... niche markets at the shallow end' of the pool potential voters.

Mehlman's remarks were almost certainly cleared by the White House or in line with Bush's thinking, so I hope this remark indicates what might be on the docket once the Social Security battle is over:

We can bring new African American faces and voices into our party when we debate whether faith based organizations should have a seat at the table and whether public schools need to be more accountable and parents need more choices.

Does Mehlman see school choice as a wedge to move African American voters? He ought not be so narrow minded. Parents all through America can be wooed with wider, more attainable options for their children's education.

An education ownership society by Katie (Newmark?) at A Constrained Vision and Apply 'ownership society' to government schools by Terence Jeffrey at townhall.com are the most recent ones to express this idea and argue for this strategy.

ABC News: Fair and Balanced at Powerline linked to Absolutely Disgraceful at S.A. Express-News Watch, which revealed ABC News' soliciting information about Iraqi War military funerals scheduled for Inauguration Day. ABC was looking for 'whether the family might be willing to talk to ABC News'.

The page at ABC News is gone. S.A. Express-News Watch posted at 3:22 PM today, Powerline at 04:48 PM.

This is called 'getting inside the other guy's decision loop': collect and analyze information, apply continuous pressure on weak points, determine what he's planning and act with speed before he can execute his plan. google OODA, "Col. John Boyd" or "Energy-Maneuverability Theory" (with the quotes, of course).

UPDATE 00: Captain Ed supposedly saved the page which ABC News removed, but I can't get his site to load.

UPDATE 01: Here is Captain Ed's saved copy, and he discusses ABC News in ABC News: Too Lazy To Hide The Bias (page loads now).

[:r standard.snowstorm.cliche00] Residents of [:r cities.list] Raleigh, C.a.r.y and surrounding communities are brushing their cars off after being battered by the [:r ordinal.number.list] first snowstorm of the Winter, just in time for the [:r morning.evening] evening commute. By 2:30 pm, temperatures had dropped to 25 degrees, with a windchill of 17, causing officials to issue warnings to residents to protect themselves with multiple layers of warm clothing. When the storm ends, predictions are for an accumulation of from [:r snow.depth.ranges] a trace to two inches.

[:r standard.driving.cliche00] Motorists were advised to stay off highways as snow whipped by winds gusting to [:r windspeed] 10 mph caused hazardous conditions. The AAA reminded drivers [:r AAA.driving.in.snow.quote] "Drive carefully. Tap your brakes. Turn into skids. If police pull you over, toss your empties."

[:r standard.airport.cliche00] Most flights out of RDU International Airport were on hold as the day began under a white blanket.

[:r standard.airport.cliche01] The terminal was an empty shell as airlines [:r flight.verb.list] cancelled flights in and out for much of the day.

[:r standard.school.cliche] Blowing snow and [:r windspeed.adjective.list] insignificant winds led to cancelled classes at Wake County schools. School busses transport 59,000 county students daily. In Raleigh and surrounding Triangle communities clearing crews worked [:r adverb.list] lethargically throughout the day to keep up.

[:r standard.supermarket.cliche00] Shoppers thronged area supermarkets, where store managers reported runs on bread, bottled water, cigarettes, beer, Buffalo wings, and salted snacks. Many shelves emptied early in the day.

[:r optional.oldfolks.homeless.paragraph] Residents of senior housing complexes will be bussed to schools and other emergency shelters in case of power outages. Homeless shelters were near capacity.

[:r pets.in.snow.cliche]

[:r tomorrows.forecast]

The jogging path around Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC, is deserted Wednesday afternoon as residents huddled indoors in protection against wind-driven snow.

Spent some time this morning going through the nanoblogger script (which runs this blog), and supporting files to get Haloscan commenting and inbound trackbacks to work.

DJ Drummond wonders 'what sort of blog-influenced enterprise will take the spotlight next?' (Blogs and Identity - I), and of course we have the Greensboro News-Record trying to remake itself. Editor John Robinson blogged last Thursday ( An experiment can be a revolution, too about the paper's plans, just one example) and pointed out Mark Tosczak's article about the strategy in the Triad's Business Journal.

There's been good discussion in places like Jay Rosen's PressThink and Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc., of these developments. You could spend hours clicking through links at NCBlogs.com.

Bureaucratic and profit-motivated organizations, just like families and individuals, have a hard time making changes, whether they're threatened or out of danger. The Catholic Church, General Motors and AT&T all faced or face major reforms, the first currently and many, many times in the past. The last two faced the necessity for change when GM lost larger and larger market shares and with AT&T, first by the Baby Bell spinoffs and long distance competition, and lately with cellulars and VoIP.

How newspapers and other media respond and how well they metamorphize faced with the blogs', distributed journalism and open source journalism challenge, and not just politics and podcasting, will make our world very different in five or ten years, than it is now. How many of us remember the Vega and Chevette, and a time when you couldn't connect a modem to a phone line or had one choice for local and long distance service? Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis or Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling?

Patrick Ruffini says there's a 'grassroots juggernaut gearing up for battle on behalf of [Bush's] legislative agenda', pointing to what Ken Mehlman, the soon-to-be Republican National Committee chairman, says in Mort Kondracke's article on Real Clear Politics ('GOP Will Deploy Bush's '04 Army To Sway Congress'):

Mehlman sees mainly opportunities in the challenges: to exercise and build the party and to win support from all-important constituencies like young people and Hispanics.

"There's a tremendous opportunity for synergy in what we do for the next two years," Mehlman said in an interview. "I think the Republican Party can be a big force in helping pass the agenda. And by doing that, we help build the party."

...

The RNC will provide "research, rapid response, grassroots organization, surrogates - all the things you saw on the campaign" for key agenda items, especially Social Security, judicial appointments and tax reform.

Mehlman wouldn't discuss specific tactics, but it's not hard to imagine Bush-Cheney precinct organizers working phones and their computers to generate avalanches of mail to Members of Congress, while every Democratic blast against Bush proposals is answered within minutes in e-mails to the media, as happened during the campaign.

Exercising and building the party tie in well with one of thing focussed on during the campaign: motivating, not only activists, but 'soft Republicans'. Half of the campaign's spending targeted them.

Mehlman has to keep working the activists and the 'soft Republicans' they motivated to vote, because the lists are getting stale: lots of Americans move frequently. The activists and former soft Republicans, I expect Mehlman is thinking, need to be firmed up, given a feeling of commitment to the party and a habit of supporting Republicans, so the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented in 2006 and 2008. Keeping your brand in front of them is one way to do that. Giving them feedback and having them participate is another. So get the word out and have them do something they view as important: they do something important == they are important, and them give them a reward.

Assume it's Social Security reform Mehlman's considering, you look to young 'uns, in age and in having gone to the polls to vote GOP. There's where the datamining of the Long Tail Mehlman did in 2004, will pay off this year, 2006 and 2008.

For 2005's Social Security fight, Mehlman could be planning another dry run for 2006 and 2008, just as 2004 built on the successful 72 hour and 96 hour blitzes from 2001 and 2002.

Who in the House and Senate might get targeted? Josh Marshall's done some of the research.

He calls them the Fainthearted Faction, and the list is here. Listing only those up for re-election in 2006, and putting aside some like Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN, 9th), since he's on first glance invulnerable, we have:

• Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL, 2nd)
• Rep. Robert "Bud" Cramer (D-AL, 5th)
• Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI, 3rd)
• Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN, 7th)
• Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO, 4th)
• Rep. John Tanner (D-TN, 8th)
• Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS, 4th)
• Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)

Marshall also lists these Representatives and Senators in his 'Conscience Caucus', those opposed to Bush's Social Security reform:

• Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV, 2nd)
• Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE)
• Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO, 8th)
• Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA, 8th)
• Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT, 2nd)
• Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
• Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

In a later post, I'll look at the the Congressional Districts of these Members and Senators.Some of my thoughts on this are in The Long Tail, nanoeconomics and the 2004 political campaign.

Lord Carnarvon's anxious question and Howard Carter's breathless reply 'struck dumb with amazement', on viewing Tutankhamun's tomb after some 3,500 years.

the candle flame [flickers], but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Scientists have discovered new ways to read 1,800 charred manuscript scrolls already found in the ruins of the so-called Villa of Papyri at Herculaneum, a city that, like neighbouring Pompeii, was buried in volcanic matter when Vesuvius erupted in AD79.

Scholars are convinced that many more scrolls lie awaiting discovery there, among which are probably lost books by great authors such as Aristotle and Livy.

...

The huge Villa of the Papyri, which belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, extended for 250 yards along the shore. "It must be possible that a family capable of owning such a villa also possessed a copy of Livy's History of Rome, of which more than 100 of the original 142 books are missing," says the writer Robert Harris, author of the best-seller Pompeii.

"It appears that slaves had been trying to carry crates of books to safety when they were overwhelmed by the eruption," he says. "There may be lost plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, or even the lost dialogues of Aristotle."

...

One reason for thinking that lost works by Aristotle lie beneath the volcanic layers is that the hundreds of papyri already studied almost certainly belonged to Philodemus (110-35BC), a philosopher engaged in opposing Aristotle's poetic theory.

The Herculaneum Society meeting gasped like spectators at a firework display when Nigel Wilson, of Lincoln College, Oxford, showed a slide of a blackened roll of papyrus on which no writing could be seen, and then showed what it looked like after multi-spectral digital imaging had been used on it. Clear lines of ancient Greek script appeared, like invisible ink held before the fire.

The article sets forth some of the arguments pro and con for immediate excavation. (Nice that the Daily Telegraph still uses BC and AD.)

HT to January 17, 2005: In Search of Lost Aristotle Manuscripts at Pompeii at Rare Book News.

Glenn Reynolds posts part of an email from Tim Blair:

Apparently my site has been hacked -- all posts and archives removed, etc. Not sure yet if anything can be recovered.

Worse, I'm currently unable to post (password details have been corrupted) so would appreciate if any or all of you could alert readers.

Posted on Instapundit at 09:23 AM Jan 17 2005.

timblair.net's ip address (63.247.141.221) is on hostingmatters.com netblock, running PHP 4.3.10 on Apache 1.3.3 with some modules.

timblair.net also runs pMachine.

Hugh Hewitt wants '[a] long and well-publicized spell in federal prison', but crackers have been getting long terms for a while now

• Computer Crime - Arrests and Convictions [cases between 1989 and 2000]
• Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS), Computer Intrusion Cases, from the Federal Department of Justice

Recently, there have been nine year and seven years prison terms meted out.

Tim Blair's last post is today at 11:44 pm, in Australia [Brisbane?]. Current local time there is 8:53 AM, Tue Jan 18.

Instapundit reports Blair is back on line.

Here come the warm jets at Boing Boing:

[JetBlue] will now offer a a dedicated in-flight digital video channel consisting entirely of an optic and sonic tranquilizer called Skies. "The Colorcalm channel on JetBlue, which will be available free of charge, consists of continuous, soothing, multi-colored skies spanning a full spectrum of 36 PANTONE shades set to classical music."

From Seoul's Dong-A Ilbo today comes news the the North is beginning to allow factories and corporations to set prices for their goods and services, rather than by centralized control:

[O]n January 14 at the factory and corporate accounting manager meeting held at provincial offices nationwide, it was announced that "management" reforms will be enforced and concrete details will be publicized later on.

According to informed sources, this reform will include the following: removal of state-ruled prices and introduction of company sales by market prices; removal of state planning in production and sales and entrust to corporate judgment; settlements through banks without exception and regular payments of taxes; autonomously decided piece rates by corporations.

Currently North Korea has maintained double prices for one object, a state-ruled price at the state-owned store and a market price at the market.

...

The education of scientists, engineers and laborers, and the development of new technology, which is currently undertaken by the government, will be entrusted to the factories and corporations.

Another source communicated, "They will let factories and corporations attract foreign capital and establish joint-venture companies or earn money by commerce according to their capabilities."

North Korea Removes State-Ruled Prices.

Stories have been coming out from the DPRK that political changes are occurring and more are on the way:

• Dec 15: New agent of change in N. Korea: cellphones [Christian Science Monitor]
• Dec 23: Tremors that may signal political earthquake in North Korea [The Guardian, UK]
• Dec 24: U.S. Scholar Says North Will Crumble Within A Year [Chosun Ilbo, Seoul, ROK]
• Dec 26: "Signs of Internal Breakdown in North Korea's Regime" [Dong-A Ilbo, Seoul, ROK]
• Dec.26: Japanese Spy Agency Reports Cracks in North Korean System, [Chosun Ilbo, Seoul, ROK]
• Jan 2: Rumors of North Korea's collapse premature, [Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh]

Of course, price calculation is impossible in a closed economy with no private property, no freedom of trade and no freedom of association. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, by Ludwig von Mises, is the 'classical' exposition of this), but decades can pass between a regime beginning to free prices and political freedom emerges. (cf. Hungary, and the PRC). Interesting, though, that fifteen years ago, the Central and East European regime changes had just about been accomplished.

UPDATE: Kommentariat mentions the videos allegedly from inside a DPRK prison, and defaced portraits of Kim Jong Il, linking to scribbling on Kim Jong Il for the defacements at oranckay and Prison Video from North Korea at One Free Korea.

There's been much discussion on blogs after CBS Report file has been modifed[sic]! Cut and Paste now prohibited!, by Seth Finkelstein, which notes tht some pdf attributes are set to 'no' on the latest version of the Thornburgh-Boccardi report. The old version of the report is unavailable on CBS's server(s).

I had downloaded a copy of the report the day it went up on CBS's servers, and it lives in my ~/Documents directory.

I just downloaded the latest version of the report from here.

Opening the new file with xpdf, I can copy and paste text (more accurately, swipe and paste).

No need to fiddle with attribute, so-called 'security' settings (sneering quote marks intentional) with Adobe Acrobat. As expected, when you open the new file version with the Linux version of Acrobat (I'm at version 5.0 here), copy (swipe) and paste doesn't work.

NASA TV, carrying the European Space Agency update, reports that Cassini received data from the Huygens probe on Titan's surface. Cassini will relay the data to Earth. Next ESA/NASATV webcast is at 1600 CET, 10:00 am EST.

From space.com's live coverage:

8:35 a.m. EST: Huygens mission controllers report that the probe landed somewhere between 1:45 p.m. and 1:46 p.m. local time in Darmstadt, Germany (CET), that's somewhere between 7:45 a.m. and 7:46 a.m. EST.

The probe is apparently on Titan's surface and still going strong, mission managers said.

8:00 a.m. EST: The first Huygens news briefing post-Titan descent has concluded.

ESA mission managers said Huygens' carrier signal, the only signal researchers expected to detect from Earth, has also been detected by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The signal has been blaring strong for two hours now, researchers said.

Mission manager Jean-Pierre Lebreton said that four optical telescopes around the world were trained on Titan during Huygens' descent. One telescope was unable to observe the event due to poor weather, while the other three failed to detect any sign of a reentry fireball, he added.

The first real telemetry from Huygens should reach Earth around 10:21 a.m. EST (1521 GMT), though it will be 4:21 p.m. local time at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. The first science data is anticipated to arrive by 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT), mission controllers said.

7:45 a.m. EST: At least one instrument aboard Huygens is taking data. A Doppler instrument designed to track wind patterns on Titan is apparently working, Jean-Pierre Lebreton, Huygens mission manager, said during the press conference.

NEW YORK -- March 10, 2005 -- His final broadcast last night behind us, retired CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather greeted reporters today with bitter, angry words, words of defeat, seeming to almost dare those present to challenge his accomplishments and legacy, a legacy now clouded by scandal.

Rather, still feeling the sting of last September's 60 Minutes II story based on what are now acknowledged by all informed analysts as concocted documents, once again took on the persona of the man he was once most famous for exposing: Richard M. Nixon, disgraced former President of the United States.

At one point, Rather seemed to choke on his words when questioned about his role in the discredited affair, blurting out 'I am not ...' before turning away and leaving through the curtain behind him. ...

Why should Rather retire? Why should CBS News president Andrew Heyward be asked to resign?

No, I'm not saying that there wouldn't be anything to type or gripe about if they left. They now serve a purpose: an example, a form, an illustration, and concrete, visible models are much more useful than memories or abstractions. They are a provocation, an incitement, an indignity.

Nixon taught the American people a very valuable lesson, the opposite of what I heard in high school civics classes: we are not the government. Doubt and mistrust are healthy, American biases against it, and we should not be denied the lesson of mistrust and suspicion of CBS and its ilk, by forgetting the manifestation of their agenda.

Boy, that opinion article title could've been better phrased.

Dr Elizabeth Behrman, chair of the physics department at Wichita State University, Kansas, writes in the Wichita Eagle, about the dust up over an erroneous article which appeared through Catholic World News on December 28 or 29 last.

The background: after the Boxing Day / Indian Ocean tsunami, Israel offered aid to Sri Lanka: Israeli Defense Force medical personnel along with material disaster assistance. Sri Lanka accepted the material, but didn't want IDF members entering their country.

L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, printed an article, in Italian, criticizing Sri Lanka.

Some poor soul at Catholic World News mistranslated the Italian, and thought the Vatican was criticizing Israel for refusing aid to Sri Lanka. The erroneous CWN article is only available in google's cache, but CWN quickly saw the mistake, and the corrected article is at Vatican paper raps Sri Lanka on Israeli aid (correction).

Phew.

Now Dr Behrman, who's doing research in some interesting fields, publishes an op-ed in the Wichita Eagle ripping CWN for the original article.

Domenico Bettinelli is the managing editor for CWN, and he has a blog, so he blogged on this trash today in A regrettable error, an over-the-top response:

[Dr Behrman] accuses CWN of intentionally fomenting hatred for Israel because of an anti-Semitic ideology. [quote from Dr Behrman follows]

So why had CWN reported the story backward? It could be that CWN had assigned someone to translate this story whose Italian was good enough to get most of the words but bad enough to have missed the entire point of the story. Alas, far more probable is that the responsible person at CWN felt that reporting the facts would obscure a larger "truth": that Jews in general, and Israelis in particular, are essentially wicked people.

How stupid does [Dr] Behrman think we are? By the end of the day, we were deluged with people telling us we had gotten the story wrong; if our intention had been to fool the public, there's no way we could have gotten away with it. Maybe in the old days under the hegemony of the mainstream media that would work (Cf. CBS' Memogate and New York Times' Jayson Blair), but in the Internet/blogger-age it isn't going to work.

...

I find it striking that after raising the possibility that the error could have been caused by incompetence-- which, I'm afraid, is the truth-- Elizabeth Behrman goes on to offer another completely speculative theory, and proceeds on the assumption that it is true. And this is the scientific approach?

It's a kind of scientific approach: non-empirical, non-mathematical ... it must be a gedanken experiment!

Bettinelli freely admits it was incompetence coupled with short staff at Christmastime and points out that the bumbling translator won't be working for CWN again, and also that the mistake was quickly corrected (I add: and not by running a one sentence notice at the bottom of the foreclosure notices on page D17).

Taking a lesson from the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, I will withhold concluding that it is Dr Behrman who has let biases influence her reasoning; I'll only point out the need for gedanken in gedanken experiments.

Dr Behrman's concluding words are apropos:

[L]et us all try to be suspicious of fashionable ideologies. If they really are true, there will be supporting evidence -- evidence that does not need to be manufactured, evidence that holds up in open inquiry, under proper scholarly standards. This is the way science is done; it seems to me that it teaches us all a useful lesson thereby.

I'm out of touch with current fashions, so I have no idea what she's writing about when she implores us to 'be suspicious of fashionable ideologies.'

I was very tolerant of the idea of being behind the times, having had long opportunities of studying the perfectly ghastly people who were abreast of the times; or the still more pestilent people who were in advance of the times.

G.K. Chesterton

Bettinelli's blog allows comments (registration required). I don't know whether Dr Behrman knows of the blog entry or the opportunity to comment, so I've emailed her.

Huygens set for Titan encounter

The Huygens spacecraft is ready to make history as it heads for its rendezvous with Saturn's smog-shrouded moon Titan.

...

The robotic lab will hit Titan's atmosphere at 0907 GMT. If all goes well, it will be the furthest from Earth a spacecraft has been landed.

Ground controllers may get the first signal from Huygens as early as 1130 GMT, from sensitive radio telescopes which will be listening for the 319kg robotic lab.

NASA/JPL's Huygens descent page says the radio wavicles take 67 minutes to propagate to Earth

This map illustrates the planned imaging coverage for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during the probe's descent toward Titan's surface on Jan. 14, 2005. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe.

First chance for us to receive data is 10:24 am EST.

In this artist rendition, the Huygens probe is about to reach the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

Image by Steven Hobbs (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia).

Another Major Security Hole Revealed by Yahoo and Google: Nick W ran yahoo and google searches and discovered many MySQL servers running without access limited by passwords, which servers' databases can be queried and manipulated through phpmyadmin. Insert, delete, edit tables and data, re-index at your leisure.