Reading Recommendations: 2007-01-13

• Unveiled Threats: A Bush appointee's crude gambit on detainees' legal rights

  A WaPo editorial, responding to "Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs." Stimson had done a radio interview the day before, urging businesses to drop associations with law firms involved in representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
  
  Thanks to Kevin Drum for the link.
  
  

• Shifting the Terms of Debate: How Big Business Covered Up Global Warming

  First of a seven-part set of articles by Aaron Swartz (links at bottom of each page to continue). The entire set is not about global warming. It appears to have been renamed, and was earlier called "Shifting the Terms of Debate: Right-Wing Think Tanks in Action." The entire set of articles is not really just about that, either. Evidently, this is sort of an organic thing, which Swartz has added to several times. A bit of a piecemeal approach, with plenty of interesting parts.
  
  Update 2007-01-18: Aaron straightens me out, in the Comments.
  
  

• Surge and destroy: Bush's escalation folly

  Scott Rosenberg's article is the best response to a supremely dumb idea that I have yet read. (NB: This was written well before Bush's latest speech, and many others have since published similar points of view. Blame me for not posting this link earlier.)
  
  

• Rock of Ages, Ages of Rocks

  Steve Benen brings us up to date on another front in the war on science. Turns out the age of the Grand Canyon is now classified. I am not making this up. Well, I may be exaggerating slightly -- I have equated de jure with de facto.
  
  

• The mousetrap

  Remember that great book, Innumeracy? Here's something else from John Allen Paulos, published in The Guardian on 8 September 2005: a clever refutation of creationism Intelligent Design.
  
  More Paulos articles, on a range of topics, can be found at his web site. ABC news also has an archive of his "Who's Counting" columns. He's good.
  
  

• Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists

  Following a link from another Paulos article, I came across this gem by Tom Owad. Owad carried out a slightly tongue-in-cheek experiment in data mining and wrote up his procedure and results. The result is both fascinating and creepy. Among other things, it's a great illustration of the problem of false positives that Paulos warns about in his article. There's a bit of geekery in Owad's article, which I enjoyed, but if murky-looking Linux commands are not to your taste, just skip over them. You'll still find it easy to follow his approach and get his points.
  
  In an ideal world, all members of Congress would be required to read these two articles, and then immediately afterwards, reconsider the Patriot Act. In the meantime, I call on all of us, in an act of civil disobedience, to salt our wishlists with terms tempting to the NSA.