Full title:
You Never Get a Seventh Chance to Make a First Impression: An Awkward History of Our Space Transmissions
Reminds me of a t-shirt I once saw.
Anyway, not just a good title, but a good post, also!
(h/t: Gerry Canavan)
Monday, March 07, 2011
"An Awkward History of Our Space Transmissions"
Microsoft begs you to stop using their products
Well, at least one of them: Internet Explorer 6.
Some interesting (depressing) stats: Worldwide, 12% of the world is still using IE6, as of Feb 2011.
However, one advanced nation is down to 2.9%, and leads the world on this measure of intelligence. USA! USA! USA!
(Except for Germany (2.9%), Portugal (2.4%), and the Czech Republic (1.4%), which don't count, because they're Old Europe. Oh, and except for Brazil (2.9%), Colombia (2.8%), Denmark (1.6%), Sweden (1.3%), Norway (0.7%), and Finland (0.7%), which also don't count, because socialism.)
<bush>
YOU FORGOT POLAND.
</bush>
Oh, yeah. 1.4%.
In all seriousness, if you're still using IE6, your machine is almost certainly pwned, and is likely part of a botnet, helping to send out spam and to do other nasty things, without your knowledge. So please. Be a good netizen and stop using IE6.
Not that I ever thought they did, but ...
... let's give Graham Cluley a round of applause for a blog post title that's hard to resist!
Stripping girls don't guarantee secure passwords
Pretty good name for a computer security geek, too.
WSJ "news" standards slipping again
Document the atrocities! Shoutout to Jack Stuef for catching the BS.
Not that I'm in any hurry, Newt, but ...
... SOME are wondering whether this latest week-long stretch of "I'm going to announce my candidacy for realz any day now" might indicate something else of a more sordid nature. (If being more sordid than running for president as a Republican is possible, I mean.) Certainly the transcript from the latest Hannity Job you received has a bit of a stench to it.
In Comments under the previous Newt item, for example, TC expresses this feeling that you'll never actually declare, and that you'll keep hope (?) alive for as long as possible, all to keep those "donations" rolling in. I find it hard to believe that a skilled grifter such as yourself would go for the quick killing when the money's been rolling in nicely for years. However, TC recommended the following bit from Maddow, which, I have to say, surprised even a cynic like me.
Thanks to David Neiwert for the best two of the above words.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Three Follow-ups
As it happens, this week's On The Media had among its segments three that elaborate upon items that caught my eye this past week: an update on the effort to discover which Republican Senator put the anonymous hold on the Whistleblower Protection Act, speculation about why there is no Fox News in Canada, and a new website looking to detect churnalism.
As usual, the whole show is well worth listening to, but if you like, the three segments are broken out and embedded below.
1. An Update On Who Killed The Bill (about 1 min):
2. Lying is Illegal in Canada('s news broadcasts) (about 4 min):
3. Churning Out PR (about 7 min):
PZ Myers has read David Brooks's new book
Here is a slight hint as to what he thought about it:
(h/t: DougJ and @TomLevenson)
[Added] An intro post to the review on his blog.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Wingnut Fight!
"He rips me off and spins the information, often injecting lies into the truth,"
Says Alex Jones.
About Glenn Beck.
You want evidence? We got evidence.
(h/t: @Peschko, RT by @azjayhawk47 | x-posted)
Friday, March 04, 2011
Newt Gingrich unable to fake sincerity
Have you heard about that fabulous new website, Newt Explore 2012? (This is the "explore" website, not the exploratory committee website, due to shadiness.) Anyway, did you wonder about the crowd in the background? Looked a little young and diverse for a bunch of people supposedly looking up and smiling at the Newt, didn't it?
Behold:
And now those kids on the Tumblr are running with it!
You think the Republicans will ever figure out how this series of tubes works?
(h/t: Betty Cracker/Rumproast)
Line of the Day: 2011-03-04
Guess who this is about.
... he's Sarah Palin without enthusiastic supporters but with a marital record worse than John Edwards.
-- Jonathan Bernstein
Hint:
"This is what Democracy looks like"
WISCONSIN
A short film. Shot entirely on the top of State Street at The Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin - 2.21.11
As much as I hate to applaud something that leans on stereotypes ...
... this is a good rant.
Thanks for the link, Twin. And the reminder.
Reminder? Yes.
Once upon a time, Ed joined Instaputz. And for a while, he was nice enough to ping us Instaputz readers when he had posted something new at Gin and Tacos. Then he stopped doing that, even as he continues contributing to Instaputz, and I for some reason never thought to go over to G&T to see if that blog was still running.
That oversight has since been corrected. G&T has been added to the feed reader and the blogroll. The About page has been revisited. That is a good About page.
I will also commend to your attention something I'd not noticed before:
Statement of political philosophy
This post should be useful when preparing your formal complaints of ideological bias, the argument of last resort in post-Nixon political discourse.
Click that clicky.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Remember when we were told "Don't worry about Murdoch buying the WSJ?"
That there would be a "firewall" between the news and opinion sections?
Check this.
Seems the WSJ and NBC did a poll about attitudes in Wisconsin, in light of recent events. Eric Boehlert reports:
... here's the NBC News headline for an article about the same polling results:
NBC/WSJ poll: 62% against stripping public employees' bargaining rights
And in the WSJ?
... the first and only mention of the union polling results came in the 23rd paragraph of a 24-paragraph article.
FoxNewspaper.
[Added] Lemieux's take on the same polling results:
A Reminder
1)Nobody really cares about the deficit, and 2)the major New Deal/Great Society federal programs are extremely popular. If only the Democratic political leadership could immerse themselves in these enduring facts…
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Exorcise this
If his train-wreck Obama rebuttal speech didn't kill Jindal's political future, wife charity scam might http://nyti.ms/hqtpZD
Let's have a look.
Louisiana’s biggest corporate players, many with long agendas before the state government, are restricted in making campaign contributions to Gov. Bobby Jindal. But they can give whatever they like to the foundation set up by his wife months after he took office.
AT&T, which needed Mr. Jindal, a Republican, to sign off on legislation allowing the company to sell cable television services without having to negotiate with individual parishes, has pledged at least $250,000 to the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children.
Marathon Oil, which last year won approval from the Jindal administration to increase the amount of oil it can refine at its Louisiana plant, also committed to a $250,000 donation. And the military contractor Northrop Grumman, which got state officials to help set up an airplane maintenance facility at a former Air Force base, promised $10,000 to the charity.
The foundation has collected nearly $1 million in previously unreported pledges from major oil companies, insurers and other corporations in Louisiana with high-stakes regulatory issues, according to a review by The New York Times.
[...]
Dow Chemical, which has pledged $100,000 to the foundation, is the largest petrochemical company in Louisiana and has had numerous interactions with state officials during the Jindal administration, including an investigation into a July 2009 spill at its St. Charles Parish plant that forced the evacuation of area homes. The state in December 2009 proposed fining the company and its Union Carbide subsidiary for allowing the release of a toxic pollutant and failing to quickly notify state authorities of the leak, but so far no fine has been assessed.
Alon USA, an Israeli oil company that has pledged $250,000 to the Jindal Foundation, last year sought permit changes that would allow it to discharge more pollutants at its Krotz Springs refinery. In 2009, state environmental officials also eased requirements for the company to check for spills of oil, ammonia or other contaminants in waterways to twice a month, instead of twice a week, records show.
[...]
Several of the charity’s major donors are large state contractors, like Acadian Ambulance, or D&J Construction, which alone has received $67.6 million in contracts since 2009, mostly for highways, said a separate report on the foundation being issued this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Both companies have pledged at least $10,000 to the foundation.
The story is laced with sputtering denials from everyone you might expect.
(x-posted)
Update on Whistleblower Protection
Remember this, from back in early January?
"The breeding ground for all of that corruption is secrecy."
Here's a story that probably went under your radar. I know it did mine. It seems that the Whistleblower Protection Act, which would finally have ensured real legal rights to federal employees who dare to speak up about the bad stuff they see on the job, which had virtually unanimous support in both houses of Congress, was killed by … an anonymous hold, placed by a lone Senator.
Yes. "Virtually" here means "everyone except that one cowardly Senator." Who we don't know for sure is a Republican, but I know how I'm betting.
That post went on to offer a segment from On The Media featuring Tom Devine, Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project, and then finished thus:
In case you missed it at the end of that clip, GAP is now asking for help, in conjunction with OTM, in determining who the anonymous Senator is.
Through the efforts of OTM listeners, we're now down to five Senators who won't give an answer: David Vitter (R-LA), James Risch (R-ID), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). If one of those is a Senator of yours, you may wish to pitch in on the effort to get them to make a statement.
Also, for your listening pleasure, here is Bob Garfield, co-host of OTM, as a guest on the Leonard Lopate show, yesterday (via):
The whole thing is about 37 minutes long. The whistleblower discussion is the main topic, and it's at the start. Stay tuned at the end to hear Bob's take on Glenn Beck, the sale of the HuffPo, etc.
If you'd rather, you can download an MP3 at the above link.
Bow down to our superiors to the North!
Did you ever wonder why FoxNews and hate radio haven't gotten a foothold in Canada?
Perhaps it has something to do with "a regulation that bans the broadcast of false or misleading news."
Don't get me started
(My suggestion that we reject all applicants claiming to be “passionate” about their plans was rejected, but with obvious reluctance.)
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Honest politicians stay bought
Almost as an aside, buried in a story about the House passing a stop-gap spending measure to keep the government running for another couple of weeks:
Ahead of the final vote, Democrats offered a motion that would have ended subsidies to oil companies. The measure failed on a 176-to-249 vote, with all but 13 Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting “no”.
Fiscal responsibility for thee but not for me.
More fallout from the Anonymous hack of HBGary
Dems push for Congressional investigation of HBGary Federal
Embattled HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr quit his job yesterday as the prospect of a Congressional investigation loomed. A dozen Democrats in Congress asked various Republican committee chairs to launch probes of HBGary Federal's idea for a "reconnaissance cell" targeting pro-union organizers.
HBGary Federal was hacked last month by Anonymous after Aaron Barr believed he had unmasked much of the group's leadership—and Barr's entire cache of corporate e-mails was made public. Those messages revealed that Barr had joined up with two other security firms, Palantir and Berico, to pitch the powerhouse DC law firm of Hunton & Williams on an idea to go after union-backed websites who opposed the US Chamber of Commerce. The scheme, if adopted, would have cost the Chamber up to $2 million a month.
The three companies called themselves Team Themis, and instead of providing simple "business intelligence," they had a few other ideas …
The rest.
Al Franken Interviewed, Regarding Net Neutrality
Interview (text) of our favorite senator on this crucial issue. Additional links offered, as well.
(h/t: Threat Level)
[Added] It will probably come as no surprise to you that the Republicans are dead set against Net Neutrality. They like the already powerful getting additional advantages, and they're all about denying access to everyone else. Because they believe in Free Markets™.
Huckabee Jumps Into the Birther Ring
Former Republican governor and current FoxNews employee Mike Huckabee is burping up the company Kool-Aid:
During a radio appearance yesterday, Mike Huckabee repeatedly falsely claimed that President Obama grew up in Kenya. After questioning Obama's purported secrecy about the birth certificate, Malzberg asked Huckabee if "we deserve to know more about this man." Huckabee responded, "I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough."
Speaking on WOR's The Steve Malzberg Show, Huckabee -- a Fox News host and potential presidential candidate -- said that "one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American ... his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British are a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather."
Of course ...
Contrary to Huckabee's claims, Obama did not grow up in Kenya. Obama spends significant portions of his book Dreams From My Father describing his first visit to Kenya in the late 1980s.
And ...
The BBC noted in a 2008 article that "Barack Obama has never lived in Kenya and he has visited the country just three times."
Additionally, Obama did not grow up "with a Kenyan father and grandfather." Indeed, Dreams From My Father is largely about Obama's struggles with the absence of his father. The AP noted in 2006 that Obama "was mostly raised in Hawaii and did not know his Kenyan father well."
(pic. source | x-posted)
Deep Thought
Is the real reason for the repositioning of US warships near Libya to ensure that all those bit.ly URLs will keep working?
(?)
Frank Rich Leaving NY Times for NY Mag
A new gig, starting in June. Sounds like he might be blogging, as part of it.
This opens up space on the NYT op-page for the hiring of Doghouse Riley and Roy Edroso.
(h/t: David Kurtz)
Churnalism Detector
This, from Ed Yong, seems like a good idea:
Behold Churnalism.com – the Media Standards Trust’s new engine for discovering PR-based shoddy journalism, with commentary from the Guardian
The idea is you paste a hunk of text into the box, and the Churnalism engine tells you if it's from a press release. At the moment, however, it only compares "with articles in UK national press and BBC." Be nice if they could add the US.
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