The End of the A'Blair
On NPR today someone from TNR mentioned Stephen Glass got as far as he did because they all figured he really was that good. As his pieces became more descriptive, fellow staffers assumed only he grew more gifted with experience. The same might be true for Jayson Blair. So enough with affirmative action finger-pointing. Save it for when it's appropriate, O boys who cry wolf.
Every article I read describes Blair's gift of the gab. He's had friends in high places since his Diamondback days. Check out his resume. He knew how to play most of the game, so he didn't bother learning the rules.
Thursday, May 15, 2003 02:44 p.m.
The Dust Settles
The Amina Lawal case awaits its outcome. However, activist lists (many of which I am a member)are reporting her appeal was denied and she will be stoned to death June 3rd for the "crime" of adultery. Actually, June 3rd is the date of Lawal's appearance at the first of appeal court (of three.) Many predict she will not win the appeal. Political pressure, rather than activist campaigns spreading incorrect information, is the only hope.
2 L33t 2 B 4Gotten
M.O. Thirunarayanan's essay "From Thinkers to Clickers: The World Wide Web and the Transformation of the Essence of Being Human," is get plenty of links from tech bloggers. Listen to this luddite:
The simple printed book is much more conducive to promoting thinking than the sophisticated Web. If a book does not provide all the information that one needs, some of the information has to be deduced and some of it has to be imagined. When people do not get answers to their questions by reading one book, they have to read a second or third book to find the answers. The book is also a slow medium. By the time a person buys, borrows or finds another book that has the answer to a question, he or she also has had the time to think about it more thoroughly and perhaps even refine the question. The time spent in thought will in many instances enable a person to generate an answer to the question that aroused his or her curiosity in the first place.
Maybe for you, but some of us have multi-tracked minds.
Thursday, May 15, 2003 09:07 a.m.
Wait For the Third Lion's Roar
Don't Be A Hero favorite The Skeptic takes on The Bible Code in a new column calling it "nonsense masquerading as science."
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 10:29 a.m.
R.I.P Mix Burn
This poster on Tech Focus says on RIAA politics, "Is it time for another Boston Tea Party?"
J-Walking
Josh, who attended University of Maryland's College of Journalism with Jayson Blair, has this to say (via Zoe):
He had a holier than thou ego with the charisma to get away with it. I strongly disliked him, a contrary feeling to the faculty and staff, who adored Mr. Pulitzer...
Monday, May 12, 2003 01:20 p.m.
Worlds Collide Matthew Borlik has another fun column for City Paper. It's on Michelle Mae's clothed appearance on Playboy online. She was one of several musicians including Caithlin De Marrais and Chan Marshall in their "Sexiest Babe in Indie Rock!" contest. Neko Case won meaning she got asked to bare all as the next centerfold. Case is sexy in a conventional way, but how weird would it to see Cat Power in the raw in Playboy?
There's little doubt that almost every tight sweater-wearing, Buddy Holly glasses-sporting indie-kid has had a crush on Mae, Marshall, or De Marrais at one point in his or her life, but is the same to be expected of the nation's white hat contingent?
No word on whether Case has accepted the offer or not
Monday, May 12, 2003 01:02 p.m.
Totally Amazon
Amazon must have hired a sorority to do its copy. They have a new gimmick where they'll credit you a nickle if you answer an obvious question about the store correctly. The next page says, "You are so accurate!"
And I always thought it was funny when under recommendations, it would say "people who bought this book also bought: clean underwear"
B-E Aggressive!
Reason has a story on an obnoxious perfectionist high school student that's suing for her valedictorian title. This reminds me of something my sister did in her history class, for much less ambitious ends. In addition to a "0," her teacher gives students "demerits" if they do not turn in their assignments. Three demerits result in afterschool detention. Linda's petetion notes that she (a frequent receptient of this penalty) and other students often have jobs and other obligations to attend to after schoool and thus, the teacher should stop this practice
That's right, rather than doing her history homework, my sister is petitioning to remove the penelty of not doing homework. Ahhh, but she learned from the best.
Monday, May 12, 2003 10:36 a.m.
Flushes With Greatness
Today on Tech Dirt a poster links to a controversy over ... iLoo. A London-based designer claims Microsoft "borrowed" his brilliant idea of an internet browser-toilet. But The Onion got there first
TELRIC-BS
I was going to post something about this LA Times piece on the FCC's new plans for telephone competition and then tie it into what I know (little, admittedly) about TELRIC. But I'm tired now, so instead I'll just link you to an article from CEI on TELRIC
The Burden of Proof
My mother thought it was hilarious I left home early last week to attend a "luncheon." I heard her on the phone twice saying, "And Joanne leaves tomorrow to attend a
Conservative Ladies Luncheon." It was at Heritage, and included the highest concentration of impeccable-looking blond women I've ever encountered. Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald was the featured speaker. As many of you know, I consider her book The Burden of Bad Ideas greatly influentual. I was pleased to discover a woman just as quick-witted and strong-willed as she appears in her writing. She came to promote her new book, the no-nonsense titled, Are Cops Racist? Her thesis is basically as she stated, "I'm not advocating racial profiling. I'm saying that cops aren't doing it." She has done her research and provided countless examples bucking the mistaken assumption of racial-profiling: cops pull over black guys just because they're black. Give them a little more credit than that.
To show that the police are stopping “too many” members of a group, you need to know, at a minimum, the rate of lawbreaking among that group—the so-called violator benchmark. Only if the rate of stops or arrests greatly exceeds the rate of criminal behavior should our suspicions be raised (see “The Myth of Racial Profiling,” Spring 2001). But most of the studies that the ACLU and defense attorneys have proffered to show biased behavior by the police only used crude population measures as the benchmark for comparing police activity—arguing, say, that if 24 percent of speeding stops on a particular stretch of highway were of black drivers, in a city or state where blacks make up 19 percent of the population, the police are over-stopping blacks.
Such an analysis is clearly specious, since it fails to say what percentage of speeders are black, but the data required to rebut it were not available.
She gives the example of Raleigh, NC where the percentage of Hispanics pulled over by police exceeds the percentage of Hispanics in the community. As it turns out, Hispanics in Raleigh are in five times more accidents than whites. Further investigation reveals that the large Mexican-immigrant population is known for its alcoholism.
But by far the most frightening mention was that towns such as Pittburg have racial quotas on arrests and this practice is gaining popularity. Crime goes "through the roof" when monthly maximums of minorities arrested are enabled. Who does it harm except the (black) neighbors of these black criminials?
Monday, May 12, 2003 12:23 a.m.
Close Door
I finally finished "The Marx Brother," last week's New Yorker piece on Zizek. Perhaps my favorite note was that he considers the "close door" buttons on elevators evocative of the American spirit. The buttons serve no purpose but to give the presser a "false sense of effective activity." Kind of like the stick-on "Panic" buttons people put on their keyboards in the 80s