cut on the bias

Happy Halloween!

Haydon and Molly Katherine with pumpkins carved by their mom Traci

A book to die for

Have you ever seen a coffin go by?
If you did, you’re the next to die.
They wrap you up in a bloody sheet
Throw you down ‘bout six feet deep.
The bugs crawl in
The bugs crawl out
The bugs play peeky boo on your snout
Your head falls off
Your tummy turns green
Stuff comes out like whipping cream
You spread it on a piece of bread
And that’s what you eat when you are dead!

Halloween is the perfect time for a childhood chant about the horrors of death, a topic few of us find comfortable. The thoughts of flesh turning green, insects burrowing deeply inside, the indignities that our physical being goes through after our spirit has fled – we turn from those, yet spend billions on horror movies and Halloween costumes, slowing to see a bad wreck, sending shows like Forensic Files, CSI and others high in the Nielsen ratings. It is a ghoulish fascination that makes us cover our eyes with our hands – but make sure to open our fingers so we can still see what’s happening.

The science of death – especially time of death – threads through all those fascinations, asking and trying to answer important questions: What qualifies as death – brain death? Cessation of body functions? How long has this person been dead? What killed him, was she left in this position, did she die before she was dumped? The answers are not as set as you may think, as Jessica Snyder Sachs details in her riveting 2001 book, Corpse – Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death.

The book opens with a horrible multiple murder, and the question of who did it. The subsequent trial, a battle of medical experts, sets up the premise of the book: The science of determining time of death is advanced, but not infallible. The first chapter deals with the history of forensic pathology – the official name of the science of death – starting with descriptions from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians of two “body clocks” we still use today. Sachs defines them: rigor mortis, or postmortem stiffening, and algor mortis, body cooling. But the knowledge of the ancients didn’t stop there – the first known forensic handbook was written in 1247 China by Hsi Yuan Chi Lu. Sachs handles a tremendous range of science and time with a deft hand, moving quickly through the history with enough detail to set the stage for the advances of modern science without bogging down the reader. And that is a hallmark of this book – precision in detail coupled with a conversational tone that draws a reader in.

The rest of the book will enthrall anyone who’s ever curled up with a Kay Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell, or watched old reruns of Quincy. Sachs explores the value of lividity vs body temperature as a means of determining time of death. She introduces Bill Bass, the University of Tennessee anthropologist who started and runs an outdoor death research facility known colloquially as The Body Farm, after a Scarpetta novel of the same name – bodies donated to the school are placed in different positions on the scrap of land, and researchers record how being burned or placed in a car or covered with brush affects their decomposition. She covers the activities of a cadre of death researchers including entomologists, who toss out pig carcasses and monitor the insect activity on them as they rot. Her language is always accessible, no mean feat given the scientific nature of her topic, and her imagery is compelling, as this excerpt (pg. 176) shows:

…as the tiny first-instar larvae of blow flies and flesh flies mature into chunkier second and third instars, as they settle down to the serious work of devouring a human corpse, they can turn into something else entirely. They can swarm. The resulting activity becomes not so much that of individual maggots, but that of an all-consuming pack. The teeming mass churns and roils within the cadaver, with thousands of maggots diving for food, then rolling to the surface for air and plunging down again. The maggot mass becomes an ecosystem unto itself. It becomes the source of the ghoulish steam that has risen from cold battlefields since the beginning of man’s inhumanity to man. The resulting heat – whether from the friction of their roiling movements or the combined chemical spark of ten thousand tiny, flesh-filled guts – can sustain larval growth even in subfreezing weather.”

The book is full of such scenes which, coupled with the personality sketches of the main characters in modern forensics, makes what could be a dry scientific tome interesting and – dare I say – lively. And those of us schooled on television shows and mystery novels have much to learn. Determining time of death is far from an exact science, and the scientists exploring it find their conclusions challenged at every turn. Yes, the victim had a hamburger and French fries for dinner – they’re right there! In his stomach! – but was it from yesterday, or the day before? Placement of the body, time of the year, cause of death, surrounding environment – all can confuse a straightforward rendering based on digestion. So what about insect infestation? Surely that would be less susceptible – but was the body tucked inside a freezer for a time before being dumped where the maggots could do their grisly work? Did a frost descend that night, was the body treated with chemicals? Each time scientists find a definitive method, it doesn’t take long for its cutting edge to blur with exceptions – and Sachs meticulously chronicles each permutation.

This book is not for the faint of stomach, but if science or mysteries, medicine or history consistently draw your interest, then Corpse is a book to die for.

(Cross-posted on Blogcritics)

As always, he's younger

Happy first blogiversary to Theosebes, my brother Alan's excellent blog. He's got great posts, as always, so check it out.

Don't know much about economics

When it comes to economics, I'm a good quilter. Which is to say, I make no pretense to any expertise or even baseline knowledge. I'm off doing something else entirely. So when I hear news like this, my immediate reaction is, "YAY! Um, what does it mean?"

Fortunately, there are lots of people in the blogosphere who not only are experts in economics, but write about it in interesting, cogent ways. Scary, I know. I was first drawn into this post by Victor at Dead Parrot Society, which is about both economics and a political coming of age. He linked to Daniel Drezner, who in turn linked to all sorts of people including - naturally - Megan McArdle. So I highly recommend all of them.

Excuse me, now, I have some sewing to do.

This is a bad thing

We've been hearing about military personnel returned stateside for injuries or illnesses who have not been getting adequate medical care.

Here's another article, this time about Ft. Knox, KY.

I want to know more about this. We need to be taking care of our military people.

Calfornia shaking and burning

California isn't just burning, but it's having earthquakes too.

Small ones, but still...

Isn't that more than enough?

[Link via Drudge]

Chief Wiggles officially recognized

The US Central Command has issued a press release about Chief Wiggles.

I think that's very cool. And of course you know that he was on MSNBC's Scarborough Country this week.

At least some of the good things are getting out there.

[Cent Com link via Chuck]

Help me think

As a happy part of my transition into an almost-full-time-student again, I'm getting a laptop (dude, she's gettin' a Dell!). The ordering for same will occur next week. So... suggestions of what I need? I'm totally not in the loop about gigs and bytes and bits and hertzes. I know generally that more is better, but I don't want to hand over piles of money just to kill a mite with a sledgehammer.

So here's what I want to do with my new toy:

First and foremost, this will be a work computer for my dissertation. I will haul it about, and I will use Word, Excel, some type of database for tracking my content analysis, possibly a statistical package like SPSS if my dissertation committee forces me to do statistics (ew). I will be recording lots of data ("lots" meaning "100s of article summaries and notes"), and will need to have several windows open at one time.

Secondary use - some writing and design work, using Word, Pagemaker or Publisher, and Photoshop.

Writing/presenting lectures for my classes - using Word and Powerpoint.

Internet - but you knew that. I want wireless capability, to use at home and also to plug into whatever happy place has it free (think "Starbucks", think "campus library", think "B&N").

Networking - I have a desktop that I will keep operational at home too. Is there any reason at all to network the two? It's not like there's someone else to use the other one while I'm at one.

Some games - I want to get a couple of cool games, but they won't be the type where you have a joystick and rapid-fire commands going on. I don't do rapid-fire, except when I'm talking. I am not wired for hyperspeed. Except for talking. Did I mention I talk fast?

Grow-ability - I want a computer that is going to handle everything I'm going to need for at least three years. Yes, I know, but I'm not cutting edge like a lot of you. My almost 4-year-old desktop still provides most of what I need, except (obviously) portability.

And now for some random questions: Do I need a hard case for it? Do I need a backup battery? Do I need Windows XP? What about the CD drive - I know I need rewritable, but what's all this 4X 2X this and that?

I was playing around on Dell's website the other day and had a system costing $4700 in no time at all. I think that's probably a bit (ok, a lot) much. But I'd be willing to go up to about $3000 if it really would make a difference in achieving some of my goals - like having more than one window open when I'm using a big program.

I'm also considering getting an MP3 player, but I'm even more useless there - I don't even know what questions to ask.

And finally, I'm getting a new cell phone and system, will be T-Mobile I know, but what about the phone? I'm sorely tempted by the camera phones, but... are they worth the cost?

What say you, oh mighty techno ones?

Britney's full of bull

Newsweek's Lorraine Ali zings Britney in this month's mag; even the photo caption is a jab:

Britney's new album is crisp and impressively produced. The only thing missing is a singer

Oooouch. The whole article is pretty devastating, painting Spears as a clueless, sweet all-American girl who hasn't the depth or brain power to get that she's now a slut. I've never listened to her music, never watched one of her videos, only saw her dance on the Pepsi commercial. I have no brief for Britney, and actually agree with the general conclusions, but that article is a major slice 'n dice.

And of course what most interested me was some little obscure point in passing. While talking about the shoot for the Esquire cover, where she bares her butt (Spears: "I wouldn’t want my kid, at 21, to be dressing like that.”), she said this:

“I did feel kind of weird after those photos,” says Spears, sounding sheepish for the first time during the interview. “I was in a moment. I had, like, eight Red Bulls and said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ ..."

And I thought... what's a Red Bull? It sounds like a beer or a type of drugs, but would she talk about that to a Newsweek reporter? So I did a web search and... well, ouch again! It's an energy drink that's supposed to give you a boost of many things, not just caffeine, but it's a standout in that category: A can of Mountain Dew has 55mg of caffeine; regular Pepsi has 35; Jolt has 71; and Red Bull has 80. So Spears drinking 8 Red Bulls is like her drinking almost 20 Pepsis. Can you say major caffeine buzz?

And yes, it's about the same as coffee, less than espresso or drip coffee. But how many of you drink six espressos straight? or five cups of drip coffee? Or, for that matter, pop three Vivarin at one time?

I guess I'm more horrified because I know how I am with caffeine. One Pepsi after noon and I can't sleep well that night. I'd say a couple of Red Bulls and I'd have a buzz that would have someone thinking I was on speed, given that sans caffeine I'm already inclined to buzz-y moments. Eight Red Bulls? I'd be way past the peel-me-off-the-ceiling stage and well into suspicions-of-psychotic-state.

Yes, yes, I know. She's probably built a tolerance to a degree. But even she associated her behavior at Esquire with the Red Bulls. I have a suggestion:

Let's take away Britney's Red Bulls. I think the world would thank us for it.

Sometimes the smoke is just a stinkbomb

Ryan at Dead Parrot Society tracks a news tidbit about the White House website through the liberal blogs and onto sites that actually had real information.

It's a nice little look at framing and selection bias. And those are things the right isn't exactly innocent of themselves.

I have the plague!

And I'm happy about it.

A new left-wing think tank — the Center for American Progress (search) — unveiled itself Tuesday as the Democratic vaccine to what center supporters say is a plague of conservatism now dominating America.

Yippee! Finally a boutique disease I can support.

"We think the debate has been unbalanced in the country," center president John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, told Fox News.

Only because the leftists are unbalanced. Conservatives are plumb, as always.

"The conservative movement has really built up an infrastructure of not just ideas, but the ability to kind of get out there and do the kind of hard communications work to sell to the American public," he added.

It helps to, you know, be right about ideas. Good product sells better. Maybe you should retool?

The center made its debut sponsoring a conference along with the Century Foundation (search), which has been around since 1919. Among the headliners was Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark.

Oh, he's someone to rally around! Keep it up - I'd love for Bush to face off with Clark.

Clark, who is almost as new to the presidential trail as the center is to Washington, explained why both decided they had to get into the act.

"Going forward, we will need new labels and new ideas. Many of them will be created right here at the Center for American Progress," Clark said from New Hampshire in a speech beamed into the conference via satellite.

So you are retooling! Let me guess - it will be mostly either new facades for old failed ideas, or new ideas even further to the left. Oooooo.... I'm scared!

But conservatives say labels won't stick when they have nothing on which to back themselves up.

I kind of get the point here, but this is a journalist glitch - hard to figure out what's being said because the writing is so poor. So we'll move on.

Think tanks earn their credibility by being able "to deliver accurate timely information" to policy and lawmakers that will help them "understand where they may be going wrong and hopefully allow them to go in the right directions on a whole range of very important policies," said Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation (search).

Uh oh - problems already. "Accurate"? If they have to be accurate they'll be a right-headed think tank inside of a month.

"[Credibility] is something that this think tank can't just assume is going to come its way by some kind of virtue of entitlement. You have to earn that," Franc said.

The Dems never get this. Entitlement is their mantra and political mainstay; it's how they get most of their votes. What's a Dem without entitlements? A Republican who's finger slipped in the voting booth. Sounds like the new think tank is wanting to catch on the coattails of that fabulously successful new startup, liberal talk radio.

Podesta said his group is in the business of "thinking through those new ideas, doing the long-term policy analysis," but it also plans to focus its attention on explaining to the public through direct communications "where we think conservative policies are taking the country off in the wrong direction."

I'd be happy if they tried to explain it, because I certainly haven't been able to see it.

Podesta insists that conservative institutions like the Heritage Foundation don't have better ideas, but are merely better at marketing. He said he is confident his center can take over the marketplace of ideas with notable innovations such as a big media staff that will push the center's thoughts onto the Internet, television and radio.

Um, John... (knock knock knock) JOHN!!! (pounding) You already have that - it's called "the mainstream media, Hollywood and fatcat rich Dem politicos". Except for the radio. That's free and egalitarian. Which is why the right does so well.

Of course, having substance instead of flashy media campaigns might be useful too. Just a thought.

"We don't have a war room, but we do have a communications platform. We've got a lot of terrific talented people who's job it is in the end to get that product, that analysis, that critique — get it out there to the American public," Podesta said.

Who will yawn and turn on FoxNews.

But Franc said so far the center has proven to be "all war room and no think tank.

"You don't start off a think tank with focus groups and a spin team before you figure out what you stand for. You have to. Think tanks begin with an idea, or a set of ideas, with a mission to advance coherent ideas in Washington," he said.

Wait! Wait! I said this already! I should be in a think tank. How many ways can we say this? "All flash and no photo". "All froth and no beer". "All whipped cream and no pie". "All kiss and no committment".

That should be my advertisement for the Dem agenda - a photo of some Dem politico with a label, "All monopoly and no clue".

Many Americans say they believe the media are already skewing left of center, and Washington doesn't suffer a shortage of liberal-leaning thinkers perched inside established halls of research.

Which begs the question: Why do they need yet more of the same? Could it be gasp that their ideas are wanting?!

The real challenge for liberals and Democrats, then, may not be getting their voices heard, but getting control of the White House and Congress, which most frequently frame the discussions.

As long as Republicans control both, Democrats say, few places exist in Washington for their ideas or marketing strategy to take hold.

Of course it's about regaining power. As for that last paragraph - I say, without the least edge of hyperbole or irreverence - thank God.

Meryl, Joe, Charles - call your office

Little Green Footballs, Yourish.com and Winds of Change have been front and center in addressing the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Vocal and vociferous, they've railed against the wickedness of suicide bombings and offered ideas for solutions.

Guys, you just missed the point.

You needed Danny DeVito to carry your message!

I'm anticipating peace in, oh... three weeks, tops.

Keeping an eye on MoveOn

I signed up for MoveOn.org as a ringer, and get their emails daily. Periodically I'll post some of them here, so you can keep up with what they're doing. Right now, it's putting together ads against Bush:

Dear MoveOn member,

Today, MoveOn.org Voter Fund is launching Bush in 30 Seconds, a political TV ad contest to help us find the most creative, clear and memorable ideas for ads that tell the truth about George Bush's policies. You don't have to be trained in the art of filmaking to participate, you just need to be ready, willing, and able to turn your clever ideas into a real 30 second ad. We want to run ads that are of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Joining us in this effort is a great panel of celebrity judges, including Jack Black, Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Gus Van Sant, Michael Stipe, Margaret Cho, and Moby (there's a full list on the site below). MoveOn members will pick 15 finalists; the panelists will pick the winning ad and help generate some good press coverage for it.

The prize? Just in case getting your work seen by our judges and thousands on our web site isn't enough, we'll put the winning ad on TV during the week of Bush's State of the Union Address. All 15 finalists will also be featured in an email to the MoveOn membership. The ad doesn't need to have TV production values -- it's the idea that counts. We'll reshoot the winning ad if we need to in order to air it.

Last week, we launched a fundraising campaign to to take the truth about George Bush's policies to voters in battleground states. The response has been phenomenal -- over $2.3 million of our $10 million goal came in in under three days. Your contributions will help us get our first ads on the air in swing states in a matter of days. Now we need your help to ensure that the campaign is truly creative.

Interested in making a 30-second spot for Bush in 30 Seconds? Check out the website below for more details. Know someone who might be willing and able to make a great ad? Please pass this message on.

You can learn more about the contest and get the complete guidelines at:

http://www.bushin30seconds.org/

If you have an idea for an ad, but not the time or the equipment to shoot it, you can post your ideas on our discussion board at:

http://www.bushin30seconds.org/ideaswap.html

Willing to help spread the word? Download the poster at the link below, print up a bunch of copies, and post it where likely participants might see it.

http://www.bushin30seconds.org/poster.pdf

$25 donation by $25 donation, MoveOn members are changing the political landscape. We're reminding the political establishment of the immense power of people working together. But even more powerful than our money are our ideas. The next "Daisy" ad is out here somewhere. Please help us find it.

Good luck and have fun!

Sincerely,
--Carrie, Eli, Joan, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn.org Team
October 28th, 2003

How Farkish is that? These people know how to plug into the Internet generation. Bush et al would do well to take a byte from their eBook.

Let's do a mini-version here. In comments, put your idea for an ad about the truth of the Dems - any prez candidate, or the parts of their agenda that you find most risible. We'll vote and I'll send the results to the Bush camp.

I'm pondering my entry.

How long before we glass over Syria?

Here's a headline you like to see first thing in the morning:

Car Bomb Kills Six in Fallujah

A suicide bomber blew up a car near a police station in the flashpoint Iraqi town of Fallujah on Tuesday, killing himself and four civilians, police said. The attack came a day after suicide bombers killed 35 people at the Red Cross headquarters and at three police stations in the Iraqi capital.

The Palestinians have tutored well the murderous filth of the Middle East, haven't they?

The style of attacks and reports that at least one of the attackers was from Syria suggested the latest violence was the work of foreign fighters in Iraq, a U.S. general said.

All they know how to do is kill and maim and beat and torture. What of value do these people bring to the world? Nothing that I can see. To call them animals is to disparage animals.

I really struggle with trying not to hate these people. By "hate", I don't mean "dislike what they do intensely". I abhor their behaviors completely, and I find them wholly without conscience, morals or mercy. The people in this country who support them in any way I find contemptible. What I mean by "hate" is that feeling that makes me want to bring a Sodom & Gomorrah-like destruction to their entire countries - just drop bombs until it's glassed over. And send their US supporters over there before the bombs start falling.

To be honest with you, I don't know that such an action wouldn't be morally defensible. I think I could make a strong moral argument for it, in an ultimate, apocalyptic way. But I know there are thousands if not millions of people in those countries - led by wicked people, suffused with an evil ideology - who want nothing more than to live peaceful lives, earning a living, watching their children grow up happy and healthy, and worshipping as they think is right without killing everyone who disagrees with them. And I want those people to have that life. I just wish they had clear enough vision to see the evil in their own and excise it.

Can we Marshall Plan the entire Middle East? Please?!

Please, PLEASE have a clue!

As most of you know, I'm moving to Alabama. Of course my bosses know this, and recently they put an ad in the newspaper advertising my position, with the intelligent intent of getting someone in here I can train before I leave. The ad has actually run twice, and released a flood of resumes. A lot of them I haven't seen, but the ones I have seen....

...well....

HAVE A CLUE, PEOPLE!

If your work history began with busing tables at McDonald's, moved up through driving a delivery truck for Pepsi and currently you're a lobster fisherman in Maine... why do you think a grant writing position is a good fit for you? And if it would be - that possibility always exists, a lot of writers go the circuitous route - how do you expect me to see that in your resume if you don't TELL ME where it is?

And what's with these goals for your employment future, lovingly detailed on your resume, that have nothing to do with this position's tasks and responsibilities?

Are people really that clueless?

Or do they not care?

Are they scatter-shot applying so they can keep getting unemployment?

I thought "how to do a resume" was so deeply embedded in the American psyche by now that a kindergartener could do a good one for getting into first grade. You know, things like, "Your resume should detail experiences that are at the very least within shouting distance of the position you're applying for", and "A two page resume in 9 pt type will always be tossed, even if you are Dick Cheney looking for a position as CEO, because no one will read it to find out that it is Dick Cheney". And another thing. If you're applying for oh, say, A WRITING JOB!!!, do you think you could take the time to run your resume through spell check?

Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so.

In the interests of pumping up the wave of employment in our burgeoning economy, let me give you my suggestions on this.

Susanna's Resume Recommendations

- Keep your resume on a diskette or your computer. Revise it for every position you apply for, so it highlights what in the jobs you've done before relates to the one you're seeking now.

- Don't tell me about every cup of coffee you made in your other jobs. I don't care.

- SPELL CHECK!! EVERYTHING!! INCLUDING THE ENVELOPE!!

- The cover letter can be as important as the resume. That's where you explain why your particular collection of experience makes you uniquely qualified for the position you want. That's especially important if your resume isn't at first glance full of pertinent job experience.

- Did I mention SPELL! CHECK! ?

- If at all possible, contact the company and find out what specific person to address the letter to. Have the person who tells you the name to both spell it out and pronounce it clearly. Write it down phonetically in case you ever have to talk to that person. Do it with every contact.

- Don't be flowery in your language. I'm not going to be convinced by superlatives if the substance isn't there. Make statements of competence and then back them up with allusions to the experience detailed on your resume.

- SPELL! CHECK!

- If you don't take the time to customize your approach to me, I don't think you care very much about working for me.

That's all. Probably much more to say. But I feel better now.

The effects of media bias?

I've not followed the nomination of Justice Janice Brown to the federal bench, except for the background noise on blogs and the conservative radio I listen to, which all give the impression that she is very qualified and being trashed by the Dems because she's a conservative. And at least one website devoted to black issues openly uses stereotypical black caricatures to denigrate both Brown and Clarence Thomas. It's not pretty.

This weekend I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a black woman with a social science PhD, religiously conservative but socially liberal. I mentioned Brown, and how annoyed I was that she was being trashed. My friend said, oh, but I hear she's not qualified at all. She's actually poorly qualified and is just being put forward because she's a token conservative black nominee for the Bush Administration.

Neither of us have sought out information on Brown, have not made it a project to research her record or to track down media coverage from various perspectives and tease out the truth. So our viewpoints are really a result of our standing political views as informed by our preferred media sources - the ones we pay attention to on a regular basis. I think Brown is being very unfairly treated, to put it mildly; my friend thinks the media is just revealing the very real inadequacies of a poorly qualified candidate.

I read conservative blogs, Fox News and The National Review for a lot of my news, and listen to conservative talk radio almost all day every weekday.

My friend listens almost exclusively to... NPR.

Now you tell me. Is there media bias?

For a bit more information on Brown, from folks I consider reasonable and not flamingly partisan, check out Eugene Volokh's thoughts on the cartoon on The Black Commentator website, and a take-down by David Bernstein of a NY Times editorial.

Maybe I should send my friend some links.

Early scoop on 2004 election

Still a year out, and it's already getting hot out there in the presidential campaign. Just after the Dem debate in Detroit, John Hawkins has come out with the definitive symposium on the 2004 Election. Don't miss it! His panelists:

-- Mike Hendrix from Cold Fury
-- Daniel Drezner, who is a monthly contributor to The New Republic Online & who was an unpaid foreign policy advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign
-- Steve Martinovich, the editor and chief of Enter Stage Right
-- Bryan Preston from JunkYardBlog

Go forth and be enlightened.

Three fine things together

I thought this was a pretty good summary of what's important in life:

Haydon and Molly Katherine on a marker with Alabama's state motto

shhhhh.....

go marlins!

(i have to say it quietly... i live too close to nyc)

(it must be very very cool to be josh beckett about right now)

(or his parents)

(very)

About blogging journalists by a blogging journalist

The spread of blogs into mainstream media outlets continues apace, and Ryan Pitts of Dead Parrot Society chronicles how it's working in this article for J-Lab.

And in case you didn't know, Ryan is... well, I'll just let J-Lab remind you:

Ryan Pitts is an online producer at spokesmanreview.com, and also writes about media and blogging. He maintains a personal blog at www.deadparrots.net.

And an excellent personal blog it is too.

Thumping the melon(head)

Mike at Cold Fury takes down John Cougar Melonheadcamp's* leftist drivel. JCM is so lame that it feels like Mike didn't even work up a good sweat in this slice 'n dice extravaganza. You can leave the Rolaids in the drawer.

(And don't forget to click on "Main" to go to Mike's main page, where he's all scary for Halloween.)

Yes, I know it's Mellencamp

Blogs as collateral damage in terrorist attack

Know how you've not been able to get some big blogs off and on recently? Instapundit, A Small Victory, Tim Blair? Michelle has the goods, and it's even made it in Newsday:

Law enforcement officials are probing a "significant" series of computer attacks launched in the last week, including one that took down some of the most popular web logs, or "blogs," on the Internet, an AT&T spokesman said yesterday.

But the best-known of the affected sites, including Glenn Reynolds' "Instapundit" and the Long Island-based "Command Post," apparently weren't the intended victims of the so-called denial of service" attacks.

But those sites were taken out when unknown hackers went after an obscure Web site belonging to a group called Internet Haganah, which tries to get service providers to boot terror-connected Web sites off the Internet, according to Annette Howard, co-owner of Haganah's ISP, Hosting Matters.

Kind of brings the war to your computer room, doesn't it? And it makes me want to contribute - or at least link - to Internet Haganah:

The head of Internet Haganah, Aaron Weisburd, said yesterday that he believed the incident aimed at his group was directed by hackers associated with Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early '90s. Until he was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Riyadh last June, he maintained a network of Web sites for recruiting, fund-raising and communications.

Weisburd said he shut down more than 20 Web sites controlled by al-Ayyeri, and 299 sites altogether. "It's really a straightforward process. When they sign up for a Web site, no one knows who they are. We call up their service provider and say 'You're hosting a discussion on how to build a better bomb belt.' Generally they're pretty decent and take the site down."

In response, al-Ayyeri issued a cyber-fatwa, or religious edict, about a year ago, Weisburd said, urging his technically proficient users to try to shut down "Al Haganah." They've tried, off-and-on since then, to block his service, Weisburd said, discussed how to do it on various bulletin boards and succeeded last week. Since then, mirror sites he set up have also been attacked.

It might not hit us like the soldiers in Iraq, but we are on one of the front lines in this war. And we'd do well to remember it.

Stream of consciousness

You know I like to provide you with the latest in psychological research. Well, whoever developed the research that resulted in this finding truly knows men. Probably far too well. It frightens me to think what they may know about women.

Click on MORE to find out (warning: It's bathroom humor. But clean.).

Hey, it's Friday. If I want to post about urinals, I will!

[Another link from Alan, who's quite prolific (and knows my predilection for bathroom humor). Good thing for me that he doesn't post this kind of stuff.]

Strict constructionist

Scalia on strict interpretation of the Constitution, judicial activism and gay sex.

Discuss.

[Link courtesy of reader Alan Cornett, who also runs Theosebes.]

Pizza bomber update

Apparently the pizza bomber case was featured last night on The John Walsh Show, an offshoot of America's Most Wanted that, well, I don't understand the reason for. At any rate, here's the latest:

Brian Wells may have known his killer, but misjudged how dangerous he was.

That's the opinion of the FBI, which also told producers of "The John Walsh Show" that the person who "oversaw" the design and implementation of the bank robbery and bombing of Brian Wells is still out there and poses a serious threat to the community — especially to people closest to him.

FBI officials made the statements to staff members of the television talk show host last Friday, five days before a show addressing the Wells bombing case aired Wednesday on national TV...

Rudge said the FBI office in Erie is still working the case exclusively, and members of a multiagency task force set up to investigate the events surrounding the day of the bank robbery and bombing, Aug. 28, are still following leads that continue to come in through a toll-free tip line set up a few days after the bombing...

The FBI goes on to describe the person they are looking for as someone who mistrusts others and views them — "particularly during this time of stress" — as a liability.

"This person is a manipulator who enjoys controlling people and situations," the statement reads. "He watches the media in order to monitor the investigation and adjusts his behavior."

The official FBI release actually identified Wells as a victim, so even if he was knowingly involved it was tangentially and not as a planner. Interesting. The focus of the investigation seems to still be in the Erie area, so apparently they think the person responsible is there and going about his business as usual.

Do you think they'll ever find him?

The myth of the partial-birth-abortion myth

William Saletan in Slate says partial birth abortion is not a birth:

I'm no fan of second-trimester abortions. They're horrible, and if you can avoid having one, you should. They can be particularly disturbing when they're done by extracting the fetus intact, in a manner that looks like birth. But they aren't births.

Why not? Saletan explains:

That's just false. This procedure doesn't take place anywhere near the appointed hour of birth. If you paid close attention to the Senate debate, you might have noticed the part where Santorum said the procedure was performed "at least 20 weeks, and in many cases, 21, 22, 23, 24 weeks [into pregnancy], and in rarer cases, beyond that." He didn't clarify how many of these abortions took place past the 20th week. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks. In 1992, the Supreme Court mentioned that viability could "sometimes" occur at 23 or 24 weeks. Santorum described a 1-pound fetus as "a fully formed baby," noting that while it was only at 20 weeks gestation, it had a complete set of features and extremities.

We'll ignore that medical technology has advanced tremendously in 11 years, and what seemed impossible in 1992 is often routine today. We'll just go with what Saletan then has to say about how many fetuses are viable at one pound of birth weight, which he seems to agree is common at 20 weeks:

...according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the survival rate for babies born weighing 500 grams or less—that's 1 pound, 1 ounce or less—is 14 percent.

So Saletan is admitting that 14% of 1 pound, 20-month-old fetuses are babies, can survive and grow up to be a Slate columnist. How many does that translate to? Here is a listing of numbers of abortions in the US from 1970 through 1996. According to the same site - Baptists For Life, obviously a pro-life site - in 1986 9,030 abortions were performed in the 21st week or later. Using the CDC numbers, there were 1,328,112 abortions total in 1986, so late-term abortions formed 0.68% of them. Given that overall abortion numbers have remained relatively stable for two decades, it seems reasonable to use the same percentage on the 1997 year: that translates into 8,065 late term abortions in 1997. Using Saletan's 14% statistic from the National Center for Health Statistics - and again assuming that 20 weeks gestation = 1 lb birth weight - that means that 1,129 babies would have been born alive and survived had they not been killed in the course of the abortion.

My high school had 1100 students.

The police department where I work has about 1100 employees, sworn and non-sworn combined.

The largest passenger airplane proposed for commercial flight is in the design stages at Airbus. It will hold 555 passengers.

Why don't we get Saletan to fill up two of them with babies, and then crash it into the ground? Every year. Shouldn't take more than a weekend.

We could call it "Reality Sucks, but Hey - That's Life - or Not".

Saletan skewers himself with his own data. And he isn't honest enough to even see it.

Note to rock stars ranting about politics: Don't quit your day job

Here's a great essay on why rockers need to (and mostly do) stick to their guitars, by WaPo music critic David Segal, writing a review of a new book called, "We All Want to Change the World". A sampling:

The reality is that most artists keep at least three bodyguards between themselves and any agenda more complicated than hanging on to fame. Why? Economically speaking, ignoring politics makes sense. The vast majority of rockers--more than 90 percent--are lucky if their careers last three albums, which means they'd be foolish to spend any of their goodwill trying to convince fans to buy something other than their new CD.

Segal hits the Dixie Twits a glancing blow, and points out that even in the 1960s political stew rock didn't provide much rhetorical meat. And I'm now going to start saving my pennies to buy The Complete Works of the Doors:

"I think the only vehicle for political change is going to vote,"says Ray Manzarak, former keyboardist for the Doors. "I don't see how rock can affect the propositions on the ballot, or the list of candidates in the national election."

He's so smart he's scary. I bet he spells better than Babs, too.

Suicide bombings - an acceptable means of protest?

Richard Wolin has a disturbing but excellent essay on suicide bombing in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It addresses both the 9/11 attacks and the Palestinian attacks in Israel, framed with a discussion on a book by philosopher Ted Honderich that could be perceived as an apologetic for the tactic. The article isn't tightly focused, so you may have to work to stay with it in a few places, but it's something you should really read from start to finish. I'm a strong supporter of Israel's right to exist, and I have never really been able to understand the logic behind those who think suicide bombings are not just acceptable but admirable. Wolin explains, without in any way condoning, the view from the other side, and places current events in the context of history and international law.

I found this particularly thought-provoking:

The military or strategic gains that have accrued from the suicide bombings seem negligible. All evidence points to the fact that their overall effect has been to bolster the political power of Israeli hard-liners -- a regrettable outcome for Palestinians and Israelis alike... From the standpoint of a constructive and equitable resolution of Palestinian-Israeli territorial disputes, the terrorist actions have been flatly counterproductive.

The complete lack of proven instrumentality in the attacks has been part of what convinced me that not only are the attacks abhorent on their face, but they're not even being done for the stated purpose. It's lashing out in hate, and that is a problem that cuts so deep that any peaceful resolution seems unlikely.

Any time I get a chance, I ask people who know more than me what they think about resolutions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This past weekend a friend of mine was playing hostess to two of her cousins from Israel. Both women - sisters Miriam and Ruth - are in their 50s, daughters of a Jewish couple who emigrated from the US to the land where Israel is before it was formed as a country in 1948. Between them they have five children, all of whom have served in the Israeli military. They don't live in the areas where the majority of the attacks have occurred, but as they said, that doesn't mean they're safe. Ruth lives in a kibbutz; Miriam in their childhood homeplace. They said they avoid crowded places when they can, because those are more often targets. They don't ride the buses much, but their children (all adults) do, and they worry. They were both smart, warm, interesting women who live around the chaos of their country with an equinimity I could only admire.

I asked them, what do you think about the chances for peace? What needs to happen, will it happen? Ruth shook her head in an expression of frustration. Miriam said, I think making two countries is the answer. But the hard-liners on both sides won't let it happen.

When I read Wolin's essay, I thought, he agrees with Miriam.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become so much more than a border dispute between two peoples. It is a lightning rod for currents of disagreement in many contexts, religious, political, historical, philosophical, economic. So many on both sides of the issue have chosen sides as a means of advancing their own agendas. That is a huge burden for any issue to carry, and so difficult to resolve when the solutions must stand proxy for the resolution of so many other ideas and hopes. And it's tragic that innocent people continue to lose their lives while the world wrangles over their fate.

UPDATE: Bill Bennett and Seth Leibsohn indicate in The National Review that Palestinian terrorism did have instrumentality in the 1970s and 80s - it gained Arafat world attention and UN legitimacy. Charming.

UPDATE II: Big Arm Woman adds some pithy observations to the discussion.

[Wolin link via Arts & Letters Daily]

On being a girl

I'm having a down day, a stare-at-the-wall kind of day, so what did I do to make myself feel better?

Shoe-shopped online.

I'm such a girl.

Wanna see my options? Here's a few of them:

Boots. Boots. Flats. Mules. Slip-ons.

Of course what I really want are these:

Manolo Blahnik's Orientalia Pearl Mule

And some little part of me really really likes these and these and even these.

I've been longing for a pair of these too.

So many choices.

I feel better already.

(That's it for today, folks. I promise to do better tomorrow. But it just isn't in me today.)

Update on the state of the Arab states

This article is interesting:

Women need rights' guarantee to enjoy peace: Queen Rania

AMMAN: Women need legislation that guarantees their rights before they can enjoy peace, Queen Rania told a gathering of female lawmakers yesterday. "The absence of war does not necessarily mean security and peace for the woman," Rania said.

"To enjoy peace, the society should provide her with the necessary laws and legislation to guarantee her rights." She said the laws should not contradict the education and religion of the society.

Some 200 women from 30 countries -- including Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, Turkey and several Arab countries -- were meeting at the 4th Euro-Mediterranean Forum of Women Parliamentarians.

Additional information comes from "(t)he Arab Human Development Report 2003, written by Arab experts and academics... commissioned and launched by the United Nations Development Program in Amman". Here's a section on report co-author Clovis Maksoud:

Arabs want to participate in decision making, not "remain marginalized and frustrated," said Maksoud, who was born in Lebanon and lives in America.

If this continues, there will be a "real explosion." The report said following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, some countries adopted extreme security measures and policies as part of the "war on terrorism." Such policies "exceeded their original goals" and eroded "civil and political liberties in many countries," particularly America, resulting in poor welfare being provided for Arabs and Muslims living, studying or travelling abroad.

Cultural and educational exchanges between the Middle East and the West were interrupted or cut. The number of Arab students attending US colleges fell by about 30 percent between 1999 and 2002.

That number of Arab students needs to be parsed for details - how much of that 30 percent were ostensibly students but not really attending universities with the goal of getting an education? (Unless, of course, you count flight schools.) And someone needs to define what "poor welfare being provided for Arabs and Muslims" means.

Here are a few more interesting details:

* Women can run for election in Bahrain and six women, including a Christian, are appointed to parliament's upper house. Female lawmakers serve in Egypt and Syria and two women were elected this month to Oman's advisory council. Kuwait has an elected parliament, but women can't vote or run for office. Its Cabinet decided this month to let women vote and be elected to Kuwait's local council.

* The Arab region has 18 computers per 1,000 people, compared to the global average of 78.3 per 1,000 persons. Only 1.6 percent of Arabs have Internet access, compared with 79 percent in America.

* The report cited an "Arab brain drain," where roughly 25 percent of 300,000 Arab university first-degree graduates in 1995-96 have immigrated, while 15,000 Arab doctors did likewise between 1998-2000.

Looks like it's a good news/bad news scenario. So to help their progress I suggest we fund a Voice of America-like effort to teach everyone in the world to read English, and then get them online. Sound like a plan?

And no, I'm not serious about teaching everyone English and indoctrinating them with American ideologies. Although I also don't think it's a bad idea. As long as the ideology we teach is mine and not Paul Krugman's. :D

Triangulating

(Be warned - this post gets increasingly rant-ish as it progresses. I finally tweaked it into some semblance of coherence, but the tone just built during the writing and I decided to leave it as is.)

One of the joys of the blogosphere and the accessibility of major media online is the ability to track stories and reactions to them through several iterations and fact- or philosophy-checking. This morning is a very good example.

It all started with Paul Krugman. Yes, I know. Glenn Reynolds is my source for all three of these links, by the way. First I read about Krugman calling Don Luskin a "stalker" on Hannity & Colmes, which brought Luskin into full voice explaining what really happened. That led to this great post by David Hogberg about Krugman's apologia for anti-Semitic remarks made by Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad. Next came a column by philosophy and law professor Keith Burgess-Jackson about the definition of hatred, and the evidence that Krugman actively and obsessively hates George W. Bush.

One reason many liberals dislike or even hate Bush is that not only is his religion openly acknowledged, but it actually - wait for it - guides his policy decisions. That isn't to say he gets phone calls from God every morning, but his philosophies and priorities are founded on his belief in God and in the Bible as God's roadmap. The same kind of anger is being vented on General Boykin, who spoke out in churches about his religious beliefs and how they affected his approach to his work as a military commander. He didn't use anti-Muslim stereotypes, or ugly language. He didn't denigrate Muslims as a people at all - he said that he thinks Christianity is superior to Islam (no shock there, if he didn't then he'd be a Muslim). The stew over this has gotten so bad that Fareed Zakaria is calling for him to be fired. And yet his comments are nothing to the venom spewed by Mahathir Mohamad, which Krugman defends as a necessary part of Mahathir's domestic diplomacy:

"The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." So said Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, at an Islamic summit meeting last week. The White House promptly denounced his "hate-filled remarks."

Indeed, those remarks were inexcusable. But they were also calculated — for Mr. Mahathir is a cagey politician, who is neither ignorant nor foolish. And to understand why he made those remarks is to realize how badly things are going for U.S. foreign policy...

So what's with the anti-Semitism? Almost surely it's part of Mr. Mahathir's domestic balancing act, something I learned about the last time he talked like this, during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

Krugman says Mahathir's words are "inexcusable" and then spends nine paragraphs excusing them. That is acceptable on the left, to excuse bigotry as bad or worse than the bigotry that led to lynchings in the old South, bigotry that today actively seeks to kill Jews wherever they can be cornered, because that bigotry is expressed by a group dedicated to hating the US. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And who is my enemy? The United States under George W. Bush. So we'll go after a general who exemplifies the kind of faith Bush espouses (which is to say, one that guides your life). Here's Hugh Hewitt on the story behind the story - where did the information on Boykin come from, and how did it wind up in the LA Times?

From Hewitt's 10:05 a.m. post yesterday:

Howard Kurtz writes about the Boykin controversy in the Washington Post today. The Tribune Company needs to obtain and make available the transcripts that William Arkin relied upon and to fully disclose how the story came to be given first to NBC and then run as "news" by the Los Angeles TImes.

And then at 2 p.m.:

My producer has talked with William Arkin twice today. In the first call Arkin curtly refused my latest request for the transcripts on which he based his story about General Boykin's "jihad.". He told my poducer that I had misquoted him, and hung up. Upon being informed of this, I instructed my producer to call a second time to extend Arkin an invitation to appear on today's show. Arkin declined and stated that I was attempting to create a controversy where there wasn't one, and he didn't want any part of it.

This is absurd, and Arkin hasn't been misquoted. Earlier today I received a request for a copy of my interview with Arkin from Fox News and gladly provided it. The fact remains that Arkin is hiding the transcripts on which he based his story, and hoping the media moves on before anyone forces the disclosure of those transcripts or obtains them from other sources. He wanted a hit-and-run on General Boykin, with not too much attention paid to his methods.

Arkin's dodging of a simple request for the transcripts --which he agreed to last Thursday-- is a huge giveaway, but whether Howard Kurtz's or Fox News' interest will flush the transcripts out remains to be seen. I hope the details emerge before the Los Angeles Times looks up from its trench and can examine the issue ahead of a third party.

Then Hewitt challenges Zakaria:

I await condemnation by Zakaria of the Malaysian Prime Minister or other speakers of the harsh words routinely reported by LGF from a variety of sources. General Boykin gave his personal statements of faith in private settings and the mob has set upon him --because it is easy for elite opinion to demonstrate their high-mindedness by attacking evangelical Christians, and especially safe to do so when the target is a military man.

And finally, this morning, Hewitt links to an attack on Christianity's central premise - that God is the One God, the only true God:

The Boston Globe's James Carroll broadens the attack on General Boykin into an attack on any religion with a claim to exclusive truth, arguing that "Boykin has it wrong -- but so do legions of his fellow believers, from the Vatican to those revival tents to the Oval Office. The general's offense was to speak aloud the implication of a still broadly held theology."

Carroll continues: "But that theology is dangerous now. A respectful religious pluralism is no longer just a liberal hope but an urgent precondition of justice and peace. In the 21rst century, exclusivist religion, no matter how 'mainstream' and no matter how muted the anathemas that follow from its absolutes, is a sure way to religious war."

[mini-rant]
And which of you would say that Christianity as a religion isn't under attack? Quite frankly, all religion that isn't "pluralistic" - which means accepting the belief that spirituality is a human trait of reaching for higher meaning, and has no basis in objective truth, thus one "god" is as good as another - is under attack. So let me be very blunt about this: Any person who does not believe that the God of the Bible is the one true God, and is not the same as the Muslim god, is not a Christian. Full stop. Because to believe otherwise is to disagree with the Bible itself, and if you disagree with the Bible then you are self-evidently not a believer. I don't see what's hard about that.

Does that mean that I hate - or even dislike - people who don't believe in the Bible? No, and anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that's true. Does that mean I wouldn't vote for someone who isn't a Bible believer? No. Does that mean I in any way want anything but the best for non-Bible believers in general or Muslims in particular? Absolutely not. And I wouldn't have much respect for the religion of any Muslim who didn't think my beliefs are wrong. Some things are mutually exclusive by definition and efforts to make them otherwise end their distinctiveness. It isn't the belief in one god that makes a religion hateful; it is belief that your religion condones or even demands the subjugation or death of non-believers that makes it hateful. And that is not Christianity nor, according to many Muslims, is that the heart of Islam (although one would be forgiven for having some doubts in that quarter).[/mini-rant]

It's all quite tangled and yet very illuminating, this Gordian knot of information, fact and slight of hand. Krugman's apologetics for a bigot and paranoia about a critic are allowed to slide at the nation's Newspaper Of Record. Meanwhile, a man expressing his religious views is vilified by the left while the origins of the story are hidden by the media. And Christianity's central premise is lambasted by a major (NY Times-owned) newspaper (more on that in longer rant in MORE). It's a charming world we live in, where good is called bad, and bad good.

Here's a little more from Carroll, in case you missed it:

It was unfashionable of him to speak aloud the implications of his ''abiding faith,'' but exclusivist claims made for Jesus Christ by most Christians, from Vatican corridors to evangelical revival tents, implicitly insult the religion of others. When Catholics speak of ''salvation'' only through Jesus, or when Protestants limit ''justification'' to faith in Jesus, aspersions are cast on the entire non-Christian world.

Let me repeat: If you don't make exclusivist claims for Christ, then you aren't a Christian by Biblical standards. What Carroll is trying here is nothing less than restructuring Christianity.

People try to edit the Bible all the time, and twist it to say what they want to believe. I'd be the first to say that studying the Bible and understanding it is a life-long task, and one that couldn't be completed even in a Methuselah-length life. But many things about it are pretty straightforward and self-evident, and one of the most prominent of these is that God Himself says He is the One God, and belief in that is foundational to being a follower. This "pluralist" view is malarkey and deeply anti-Biblical. And for Carroll to implicitly say that everyone who believes that God is the One God is a slippery step away from bloody religious war is, in my judgment, libelous to the point of being actionable.

And before andy and his companions haul out their, "But Christians did this and Christians did that", etc., first, Christians today are under the New Testament so actions by God's people in the Old Testament are not acceptable comparisons to today. Second, religion is very powerful and there will always be people who are driven by power rather than truth or ideology - and the same is true of any philosophy, religious or secular. The very very most that non-religious people can claim is that atheists or agnostics haven't done much more killing than the religious; they can't claim any higher moral ground. The Catholics may have the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but the atheists are ideological brothers (religiously thinking) with Lenin and Stalin. Does that mean that atheists today espouse the views of Lenin and Stalin, and admire their murderous ways? I'd say most do not.

There's a lot more to say about Carroll's viewpoints, but I'm trying not to preach a sermon again. Suffice to say that it's shocking that such an indictment is printed in a major newspaper today, saying things much worse about Christianity than Boykin said about Islam. That's today's left. What an ugly world they live in. And I pray - literally - that they never gain the upper hand in this country, or it will cease to be anything worth saving.

Huzzah! to copy editors

Reading Friday's Lileks just now reminded me of something I fail to say often enough. As is obvious from my post earlier today, I get disgusted with the media frequently. But that's because I have expectations of greatness, and I'm disappointed when they repeatedly fail, like all humans, to get there. The truth is the core of journalism is sound, the concept is crucial, and the majority of journalists work their butts off and do a decent job.

This particular post is in honor of copy editors.

Have you ever seen a chef go about his duties? Slicing fat from a steak, chopping those onions so fast no one has time to cry, crafting a radish into a rose so lovely you want to dip it in gold and give it to Mom for Mother's Day? That's a copy editor at work, taking the good and making it excellent. I worked with a range of them while a journalist, and the best ones are so good it almost makes you cry not to have them supervising every word of yours. Lileks has one, as he describes in this bit about the Current Difficulties of General Boykin:

My Strib editor, Bill, has an exquisitely tuned BS detector; he finds stuff that’s wrong in AP copy. The idea that a Pentagon official would call for “jihad” would set off a carillon in his head, and he’d ask, quite nicely: is that really what the guy said?

Copy desk is the last line of defense. In my last Newhouse column, for example, I said something about Amazonian lemurs; my editor informed me that copy desk had checked, and they don’t have lemurs. How about substituting another critter? I was stunned.

“Without copy desk,” I said, “life itself would be impossible.”

The moment a writer ceases to respect the desk is the moment he starts to screw his head into his own navel. Rule of the business: The worse the writing, the more untouchable the writer.

No paean to editors would be complete without mentioning Max Perkins, who edited, among others, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Book editors don't just order authors about, and get them published. They take what you have and make it better. There's nothing I've written that wouldn't have been much better for the attentions of a good editor. And the same is true of Stephen King.

Copy editors at newspapers are, in my judgment, one of the most skilled yet least honored of the journalism profession. Watching them work is like seeing that chef with his knife flashing - a thing of beauty and awe. Of course they're not always top notch (I once had an editor who gutted a metaphor without stitching it back together, leaving the article a bloody mess). But when they're good....

We in the blogosphere pride ourselves often on not having editors, which we tell ourselves means we're spontaneous, and raw, edgy and uncensored. All that's true. But it also means we have more errors, and the beauty of our prose is not fully revealed. A good editor is a person to be treasured. I hope you all, some day, get to work with one. It will change how you see your writing.

Graphic representation

This man starved himself for 44 days:

This woman is an icon of beauty:

Who has sharper cheekbones?

National Media Sophistication Update

We're the best, but maybe they're not so bad

Remember last week when I poked at the national media over their arrogance about the regional media not having the cohones or sophistication to interview the president like The National Media would? Just a quick reminder:

...some in the national media say the White House strategy amounts to shopping for softer questioning. "It's much more often the case in doing local or regional interviews that reporters come to the interview at least a bit star-struck, at least a bit less prepared for how to focus the interview on questions and answers in the public interest and a bit more willing to accept what the White House position is on matters of controversy," said Mark Halperin, ABC News political director. Halperin said he intends no slight to regional reporters but that Bush is "more sophisticated" about avoiding the national media "than anybody who has ever held the job."

Now, on to the transcript from yesterday's Reliable Sources on CNN, with Howard Kurtz as host, where some National Media admit that The Locals didn't do so badly after all:

KURTZ: The president may view us as a filter, but national news organizations provide something of a reality check, and the reality in Iraq, unfortunately, continues to be troubling.

Well, joining me now is Dana Milbank, White House correspondent for "The Washington Post." And still with us, former CNN Washington bureau chief, Frank Sesno, also a former White House correspondent. Dana Milbank, the president decides to bypass the White House press corps and take his message to regional TV reporters. Were your feelings hurt?

DANA MILBANK, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I am deeply offended. The interesting thing, Howie, is that there was so much buildup and so much protest about this, that the regional reporters were being used as stooges, that if you actually tuned into these regional reporters' broadcast, they were asking the tougher questions than we were. They were cynical in their presentation. The president making an obvious naked effort to get around and put out some pollyannish fluff. It was really something that we wouldn't even do.

KURTZ: So, why is there still a perception that local and regional reporters are not as smart and not as sophisticated as the people who camp out in Washington?

SESNO: Well, it's not that they're not as smart or not as sophisticated, but they're not as involved in the inside-the-Beltway chit-chat and process. You know, the White House and others have said for a long time, and not unjustifiably, that here in Washington, we focus on who's up, who's down, horse race, nasty questions coming at you, try to do gotcha questions, and there's something to that, because it actually means something.

In America, with real people and correspondents and anchors who live closer to them, I think they're going to get questions that are broader in scope perhaps, and allow the president to go over the head of these process-prone folks.

Note first that Dana Milbank is "deeply offended". Welllll... I've been "deeply offended" by a lot of the national media coverage for a long time, and Dana doesn't seem particularly perturbed by that. Then note what Milbank sees as evidence that the regional media weren't "stooges": "They were cynical in their presentation." That's right. Cynicism in presentation is evidence of quality and truth. Therefore, you should believe everything I say about the national media because, believe me, it's usually presented with quite a bit of cynicism.

So as it turns out, The National Media was wrong about whether The Locals would drool, fawn and softball the prez. But notice this little objection from Frank Sesno:

In America, with real people and correspondents and anchors who live closer to them, I think they're going to get questions that are broader in scope perhaps, and allow the president to go over the head of these process-prone folks.

You see, it's a bad thing that "real people" and the "anchors who live closer to them" (an astonishing admission, by that way, that The National Media are clueless about "real people") ask questions "broader in scope" than the "who's up, who's down, horse race, nasty questions coming at you, try to do gotcha questions" that "actually means something". I couldn't have written a more scathing condemnation than these panelists give themselves, meaning to cover themselves in glory. And Sesno has something else interesting to say:

...this is not new. You know, I mean, John Kennedy discovered he could hold a news conference and be charming and be humorous and take responsibility when he was in trouble, and it worked with the American people...

Hmmm... you mean to say, JFK, the Icon Of Democrat Presidents, also went to the "real people" and didn't play hardball with the media? Shocking!

We were wrong about the facts, but not the intent! We're psychic!

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds and his minions find that The National Media isn't exactly as On Top Of Things as they like to portray:

The columnist, Tom Brazaitis of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, then falls back on the "but Bush implied it!" defense. Except that, as he's just admitted, Bush didn't imply it, but expressly disclaimed it.

What the "Bush implied it" claim really amounts to is an astonishing admission that the corps of journalists and pundits who cover national politics, and who pride themselves on their sophistication in doing so, got the story wrong

What's more, they got it wrong in the face of explicit statements from the President, and others.

That's far more humiliating than any retraction. It's an admission of outright professional incompetence. These guys claim to be able to get to the truth when the President is lying. Meanwhile, they can't even get to the truth when he's explicitly telling the truth. How pathetic is that?

Read the whole post, which includes the columnist's direct admission that he got it wrong, and then his nice little 180 spin to deconstruct it into "but he meant to!"

Everyone has filters, dear, except for me and thee, dear, and even thee has a little one, dear.

Finally, on a related but separate point - the use of filters to determine news, and how that affects what's shown. First, Milbank says:

It's really the president who is putting the filter on news.

Now here's Kurtz's response and Milbank answering:

KURTZ: But you're looking at it the other way around. You're saying you're giving a fair and balanced -- forgive the phrase -- report, and the president is filtering the news.

MILBANK: Well, of course. I mean, that's what -- everybody is a filter. Look, I mean, if we presented every fact that is seen out there, our paper would be thousands of pages long each day. So, of course, we have to sort through the facts. It's the president's job to filter the news with the best possible spin for him. That's not interesting or new. The fact is we have to balance that with all of the other...

And then Sesno agrees:

Everybody chooses their filters. They choose their own comfort level, and they choose, you know, where they're going to go with it.

So the president filters, of course he does, but the media does too and how do they construct that filter? On what basis do they determine that their filtering and framing are not skewed by their personal beliefs and biases? There is an implicit attitude that the media, using anecdotal evidence and operating on a "it's news" imperative, are nonetheless at least fair and at most objective. Look at this:

KURTZ: But particularly for television, Frank Sesno, because how do you show, how do you visualize that the electricity is staying on longer and the streets are cleaner, when obviously the dramatic footage is about today's attacks?

SESNO: Well, that's not hard to do, Howie. I mean, you can go out and you can look at the telephone poles and the lights that are on, and you can talk to people if things are changing. The problem is if you turn the lights on, on Monday, is it still a story on Thursday? And the fact of the matter is that if a bunch of -- if troops are attacked on Monday and they're attacked again on Thursday, it's news both days.

And that shows a different kind of bias - not one really of liberal or conservative ideologies, but rather of the news cycle imperative. Events are news more than static conditions. So you get this:

Monday: Lights are on! Soldiers are killed! Tuesday: Soldiers attacked! Wednesday: Schools opened! Soldiers attacked! Thursday: Soldiers attacked! Friday: Soldiers attacked!

So what do you take away from that? Fighting is what's most important, what is most serious. Nevermind that the lights are still on, schools continue to open, areas become safer, life becomes more normal. The news imperative says, report what's new and what will draw readers/viewers. It's not a new school opening, it's someone attacked. That's a news bias.

Think about all these things the next time The National Media present themselves as Sophisticated And Fair Purveyors Of What You Need To Know.

Don't ask, don't tell

Theosebes links and comments on the brouhaha over a US Lt. General talking to prayer groups abo