—‘NY Times’ Retracts John Roberts Memo Story (Editor & Publisher) So the paper publishes false information, in a story about a memo critiquing a court case involving a newspaper that published false information. The court case ruled that a newspaper could only be found libelous if the paper published the false information with actual malice.…
WASHINGTON, DC—Congress scrapped the open-source, open-edit, online version of the Constitution Monday, only two months after it went live. “The idea seemed to dovetail perfectly with our tradition of democratic participation,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said. “But when so-called ‘contributors’ began loading it down with profanity, pornography, ASCII art, and mandatory-assault-rifle-ownership amendments, we thought…
—Austrian national anthem ‘sexist’ (BBC) Should that caption read “Austrian schoolchildren are taught the national anthem during solar eclipses”? I can’t imagine why else they might be wearing those goggles. I don’t mean to make light of the subject. I’ve written a handout on gender-neutral language, and in my American Lit class, we discussed the ritualistic…
Sheehan moved to New Orleans in 2004 to take a year off from the University of California at Berkeley, where administrators had temporarily suspended the stem-cell research program in which he was enrolled in hopes of helping to combat his younger sister Ruth’s spinal meningitis. Friends report that his public spirit continued in the Big…
Political Cartoon Prompts Racist Accusations against Student Paper (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Exhibit A: Political cartoon, edited. Funny? Exhibit B: Political cartoon, original version. Funny? Exhibit C: Editorial. Exhibit D: The controversy, in context. Exhibit E: Debate, in situ. Exhibit F: Your thoughts? Similar:AI-generated essays are nothing to worry about (opinion)After reviewing 22 AI essays I asked…
I can’t write about my work. Why? Because it is coming out in tomorrow’s edition. I can’t write about my personal life. Why? Because I’ve already given away -way- too much. I can’t give my opinion about current events. Why? Because I’m supposed to be this objective journalist. I’ve reached a point in my blogger…
The statistical tests for uncovering job discrimination assume that men are not innately different from women, blacks from whites, older people from younger people, homosexuals from heterosexuals, Latinos from Anglos, in ways that can legitimately affect employment decisions. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 assumes that women are no different from men in…
—Bus-ted! Update (Junkyard Blog) This satellite photo shows some 255 unused buses in a flooded New Orleans lot. (Found via Instapundit.) The photo — found, I presume, via Google Earth, and mailed to a weblog by a reader — depicts an unused escape route for some 15,000 New Orleans citizens. The blog, which defends George Bush…
“I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” Henderson affirms. “It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence,…
Disregarding third-party candidates, Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan found that towns that offered Fox by 2000 increased their vote share for the Republican presidential candidate by 6 percentage points (to 54 percent, from 48 percent) from 1996 to 2000, while those that did not offer Fox increased theirs by an even larger 7 percentage points (to…
The PoMos are right: Narratives don’t get built out of facts. Narratives tell us which facts matter. Within a narrative, it’s important that journalistic reports be accurate. But accuracy is not enough to bring about intelligibility or to tear down an existing intelligibility. —David Weinberger —Jay Rosen’s New Lessons (Joho the Blog) A great take on…
Insane, right? I mean, let’s say our friend John has his Bonebiter (one of countless powerful weapons in WoW) and a man steals it somehow. Should the thief be convicted of a crime and punished in the real world? Did you snort with laughter at that question? Why? The victim worked many hours to “earn”…
E.D. Nixon, then a leader of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, had been waiting for a test case to challenge bus segregation and vowed to help Colvin after her father posted bail. But then came the second-guessing: Colvin‘s father mowed lawns; her mother was a maid. Churchgoing people, but they lived in King Hill,…
Taken on its own merits, the Shuttle gives the impression of a vehicle designed to be launched repeatedly to near-Earth orbit, tended by five to seven passengers with little concern for their personal safety, and requiring extravagant care and preparation before each flight, with an almost fetishistic emphasis on reuse. Clearly this primitive space plane…
In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war…. The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington’s desire to intimidate…
Terrorist cells in Baghdad are in mourning for suicide bomber Ahmed al-Khalaf, 19, who was killed by a car bomb Monday, 200 yards from an Iraqi police station, his intended target. Suicide Bomber Killed En Route By Car Bomb Sources within the insurgency said al-Khalaf was “on his way to becoming a glorious martyr” when…
At a time when newsgathering techniques are under increasing scrutiny, big business tries to intimidate news organizations by filing lawsuits based on novel tort theories ranging from fraud to breach of duty of loyalty, courts order journalists to jail for refusing to disclose confidential sources, and government officials are finding new ways to close down…
An American journalist and author was found dead after being shot three times in the chest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a U.S. embassy official said on Wednesday. Steven Vincent’s death came four days after an opinion piece he wrote criticizing the rise of Shi’ite Islamist fundamentalism in Basra was published in The…
I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn’t accurate. But that isn’t the case. Mark accurately reported that there are 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees in a health-care program that is costing Georgia taxpayers nearly $10 million a year. Shouldn’t we talk about that? —Randy Hammer…
Dear Sen. Clinton: I’m writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious “Grand Theft Auto” series. I’d like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility…