reconsider...: June 2006

reconsider...

Friday, June 30

don't believe everything you read

before the ny times' latest reveal of tools in the war on terror, the usa today went big with 'domestic eavesdropping' (a term to make it sound as nefarious as possible).
well...those reports weren't exactly right

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees confirm that the National Security Agency has compiled a massive database of domestic phone call records. But some lawmakers also say that cooperation by the nation's telecommunication companies was not as extensive as first reported by USA TODAY on May 11. [emphasis added]

after briefings on the program, lawmakers pliantly ran to the press to give the MSM more classified details. (can they be prosecuted?)

to its (very slight) credit, USA Today retraces how it got it wrong, but hides under cover of some other MSM wrongdoing and government official 'no comments' as a bit of an excuse

of course, now the usa today laments how the program may not be big enough

Other lawmakers who were briefed about the program expressed concerns that gaps in the database could undercut its usefulness in identifying terrorist cells.

still a robust but not complete database can still yield results

¶ - nitish @ 3:22 PM | 0 comments

one business not necessarily like the other

since buying the washington redskins in 1999, daniel snyder's moves greatly increased the value of the team. fresh off that success, snyder looked to repeat the success with six flags amusement parks.

however success in the redskins endeavor has not translated to six flags. while some tweaks brought in coveted free-spending families (a disney-like strategy), the avid teen market is staying away (all due to one person?)

¶ - nitish @ 8:59 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 29

does this mean more or less cheating?

the nba goes with a new ball for next season.
i just wanna see less carrying and travel(l)ing.

regardless, there will still be the same old injuries, same old rhetoric, same old wacky fans

¶ - nitish @ 8:57 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 28

another bad guy down

the blogging brothers at iraq the model have remained hopeful, resolute and perseverant despite trying times.

iraq the model relays good news of the apprehension of the golden dome bombing mastermind--and subsequent murder of a female iraqi reporter.
that bombing remains the most significant attampt to stoke sectarian violence towards a civil war

¶ - nitish @ 4:38 PM | 0 comments

this can't be true

a north korea missile launch appears less imminent than the MSM had us believe.
[bugmenot login for the ny times]

about a week ago, the NYTimes blared on the front page-A1 that the missile was fueled, ready to go, only waiting the word from kim jong-il.
slate's today's papers notes that while the initial story made A1, the correction slipped back to A9.

unfortunately, the ny times gets stories wrong all too regularly: judy miller, jayson blair, any paul krugman editorial, even pictures!

¶ - nitish @ 9:10 AM | 0 comments

Monday, June 26

an interesting ann coulter inteview

love or hate her, ann coulter proves a compelling interview.
otherwise she wouldn't be booked all over the place.
however, after a certain point, the questions focused more on the "why are you so mean?" angle rather than the substance of her arguments.

for an entirely different take, 'online groovers' jambands approaches coulter from a different perspective: her grateful dead fandom.
ann is her usual compelling, self but it's something completely different.

note found via the lucianne.com must-reads

¶ - nitish @ 9:18 AM | 0 comments

new decade, new design

essentially coinciding with its 10 year anniversary, slate unveils a new look.
while the most read-blogged-emailed feature is interesting, the text is alternatingly(!) too big-too small and requires much more scrolling.
i think it will just take some getting used to...

¶ - nitish @ 8:42 AM | 0 comments

Friday, June 23

net neutrality in all its forms

seemingly in response to the network neutrality debate and all the hubbub that surrounds it, south carolina senator jim demint proposes neutrality in search engine results.

The latest amendment to this year's doorstop telecomms legislation, S.2686, was tabled by Jim DeMint (R), and targets search sites which "prioritize or give preferential or discriminatory treatment in the methodology used to determine Internet-search results based on an advertising or other commercial agreement with a third party".

of course, content providers like google and yahoo support traditional 'network neutrality' while, at the same time, giving preferences based on payments.

Who could object to such a proposal? Certainly not Google and Yahoo!, which having gone to Washington DC to argue against network discrimination, can't really be seen fighting for the right to discriminate on a selective basis.
[snip]
The three most popular search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN are principally advertising resellers. So the more pages bearing their advertisements they return, the more likely they are to prosper. It's a commercial conflict of interest that none of the big three have yet to address, let alone resolve.

while i understand the concept of 'network neutrality', i'm not a big fan of government regulating private enterprise (even if there's a monopolistic nature). broadband providers can't 'cripple' service otherwise they would risk losing their customers. so in a sense, it could be self-regulating

¶ - nitish @ 12:21 PM | 0 comments

terrorist enables in MSM unite

similar to the story based on a leak of the classified terrorist surveillance program
[remember, even a scaled down version proved effective]
the NYTimes again reveals a tool in the war on terror [bugmenot login]. by detailing the program

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.
[snip]
Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

doesn't it essentially make the program public knowledge? ...to the terrorists, too
some backlash to the report already hits in conservative outlets like the new york sun (via the ldotters) and NRO's media blog

on a similar note, reuters reported the miami-sears tower terrorist plot with a "terrorist-related" headline with the skeptical quotes (found via lucianne.com)
note: it was later updated with another headline, but a search revealed the square quotes headline
unfortunately, that's par-for-the-course for reuters

¶ - nitish @ 8:45 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 22

one way to reduce emissions

would be underreport them...
somehow this falls outside the kyoto protocol, which never had a chance at ratification nor received much corresponding action aside from PR value.
maybe this explains the global warming elsewhere

¶ - nitish @ 9:10 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 21

for the tv junkie

even i couldn't watch that much tv (found via tv tattle)
$7500 a year works out to $625 a month

¶ - nitish @ 8:41 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 20

katie couric as the new kathie lee

what if (america's favorite child murderer advocate) left and not much happened?
nbc's today show maintained (if not expanded) its ratings lead despite couric's departure (found via tv newser)

futher, advertisers apparently like the post-couric show ~7% more according to upfront markets.

fearful prediction: while dumping [update: an increasingly bitter] dan rather was long overdue, the decision to go with couric as news anchor will backfire for cbs

¶ - nitish @ 3:51 PM | 0 comments

more fake but accurate

despite the impending dismissal of dan rather, the 'fake but accurate' legacy lives on in entertianment media, the antiwar crowd, anti-western groups, certainly the MSM (some of those overlap...)

famously wrong truthout revisits the fake karl rove indictment. most strangely, they seem to be sticking with the story.
skepticism-disbelief-bewilderment appear across the spectrum left to right.

human rights watch appears to take the same 'fake but accurate' approach with the israelis-killed-a-family-at-a-picnic story. despite not being able to contradict israel's investigation, HRW maintains it coulda-woulda-shoulda happened

¶ - nitish @ 9:23 AM | 0 comments

flag burns

at its core, soccer is a simple game. yet, worldwide interest and big money make it not-so-simple.

while watching ghana beat a heavily favored czech team, the celebration prompted a moment of complication.
john pantsil, a player on team ghana who plays on a israeli club team, pulled out an israeli flag during his celebration.

needless to say, this didn't go over well in the muslim world

¶ - nitish @ 8:38 AM | 0 comments

Monday, June 19

10 years is a long time in internet media

slate marks it upcoming 10th anniversary, with a lookback at developments good and bad

¶ - nitish @ 8:27 AM | 0 comments

Friday, June 16

fixing the news

corrections of mistakes by news media types often take the form of hushed under the radar, lame, or just plain late--if at all (although (if you want the)truth(get)out(of here) is technically a blog)

the washington post [bugmenot login] went front page [no image available] with a 'iraqi government offers amnesty to american-killers' story. fortunately--unfortunately for the WaPo--the source was an outgoing aide, not the head iraq maliki.
and somehow, this story did not garner the same front page status (image only applicable today)

¶ - nitish @ 8:47 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 15

sports and superstition

with pittsburgh steeler quarterback ben roethlisberger's release from the hospital, it's time to reflect on the bigger picture: the 'chunky soup curse' which appears to afflict the company's nfl spokesman

Reggie White. Donovan McNabb. Terrell Davis. Kurt Warner. Brian Urlacher. Michael Strahan.
And now Roethlisberger.
Each tasted soup and then tasted ruin.

the article continues with a reference to the 'madden curse' which befalls the video game franchise covers

¶ - nitish @ 3:41 PM | 0 comments

we hardly missed ya

in light of his advocacy of 'fake but accurate' news and the recent broadcast news turnover, dan rather's slo-mo release from cbs remains only a formality

don't expect any mike wallace type tributes on the way out.
they want a nice clean break to make the way for the arrival of america's favorite fan-of-child-murderers katie couric

¶ - nitish @ 9:47 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 14

olbermann is the loser at the office water cooler...

... the one who thinks he's much smarter and funnier than he is...

ny daily news gossip guy lloyd grove reveals some more cattiness from the former espn-msnbc/nbc-fox sports-cnn-abc-(currently) msnbc again media guy (found via tv newser). olbermann expands his typical bitchy comments to fellow msnbc coworkers
[no need to reprint them, you can follow the links]

but my favorite line is olbermann actually believing "I don't answer to anybody"
tell that one to the people who sign your checks...
olbermann has been MIA the last coupla days. it'll be interesting when ('if'? one can hope) he returns

conservative leaning liberal media watchdog newsbusters chimes in: "Keith Olbermann…today’s worst person in the world."

¶ - nitish @ 2:35 PM | 0 comments

i'm not buying it

note: my dislike of ebay stems from its crime-enabling ways and its overall lameness

ebay touts its 200 millionth user, but i question the number. given its biggest markets are United States, Germany, Britain and South Korea have a combined population of ~500 million that's sounds a bit high.
2 outta 5 people have an ebay account?
ebay clarifies that it has 75 million 'active users' which sounds more realistic but still high

¶ - nitish @ 8:44 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 13

matthews on the clock, jun 13th edition

following up on the 'what will heretofore obsessed chris matthews do?' sentiment earlier...
i became a little obsessive myself...how much time would chris devote to rove's essentially being cleared by patrick fitzgerald.

of the 42 minutes of hardball show content (bumpers, teases, don't count)
the ever talkative matthews naturally took up 40% of the talk time himself ~17min
with about 16 'karl rove' minutes...about as many shows devoted to rove's impending doom

other highlights, joe biden giggling about wordplay considering his past and the complete lack of david "Rove will, in fact, be indicted" shuster

note: times courtesy of the helpful multitrack stopwatch

¶ - nitish @ 6:16 PM | 0 comments

taking criticism badly

uwe boll 'specializes' in video game movie adaptations which get savaged on the internet (think a poor man's paul ws anderson).

he's had enough of the criticism...challenging the critics to a boxing match!

To be eligible you must be a critic who has posted on the internet or have written in magazines / newspapers at least two extremely negative articles in the year 2005.
[snip]
Dr. Uwe Boll’s invitation to fight and / or appear in his film is extended to all his harshest critics. Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino are among the most eligible candidates.
The following posters to the IMDb have earned the right to be placed on the list of the most extreme anti-Boll critics and are therefore eligible to enter the contest. Contestants will be chosen to be an extra and physically box Dr. Uwe Boll.

including the "Dr." is a nice touch

incidentally, i wouldn't mind seeing self-important quentin tarantino getting punched in the ring

¶ - nitish @ 3:40 PM | 0 comments

what are obsessed libs to do?

apparently, karl rove won't be indicted with regard to the joe wilson-plame-cia leak-what's it called now? investigation. this is bad news for partisan liberals/democrats who hate him.

the libs have gotten downright giddy about the story. in some instances, these guys jump all over typos, pooh-poohing the correction...sometimes a day late.

the funniest example remains undoubtedly the hilariously wrong truthout.org rove about to be indicted angle which righty blog sweetness & light chronicled

yet again, it'll be interesting to see chris matthews on this one...
update: along with often wrong hardball cohort david shuster:

I am convinced that Karl Rove will, in fact, be indicted
[snip]
Don`t bet on Karl Rove getting out of this.

whoops!

¶ - nitish @ 8:31 AM | 0 comments

Monday, June 12

kimmel help by post-koppel nightline

recently, jimmy kimmel live enjoyed ratings increases.

With a more compatible lead-in, “Live” became the only late-night talk show to deliver a ratings increase among adults 18-49 during May sweeps, jumping 17 percent year to year from a 0.6 rating to a 0.7.

ted koppel's nightline proved very serious stuff, thus not necessarily a compatible lead-in for a late night talker. kimmel's numbers benefited from the 'new' nightline catered more towards a younger audience (even competing with letterman on some nights).

while i'm a fan of the post-modern/media commentary nature of jimmy's show, more viewers apperantly checked in once jimmy putting on a tie

¶ - nitish @ 8:53 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, June 10

where do old news stories go?

despite open hostility in liberal strongholds including academia, the military personnel continues the positive trend which began shortly after negative reports last year. however compared to the trumpeting of the negative, the MSM appears to whisper the positive news (found via lucianne)

similarly, the 'eavesdropping'-surveillance that libs previously whined about, gets some judicial approval (the ldotters strike again)

[but, of course, there is no media bias...]

¶ - nitish @ 9:21 AM | 0 comments

Friday, June 9

a day late...

check out the headline and the byline of this article...
timing is everything [found via the best of the web today]

¶ - nitish @ 4:24 PM | 0 comments

covering the zarqawi coverage

the national review online's media blog wraps-up initial media reaction-coverage of the death of zarqawi in a 'good, bad, and ugly' format. the WaPo and NYT go with unqualified stories [but i'm fully expecting the 'yeah, but...' pieces shortly] while reuters and BBC chip in with caveat full reports.

while reuters (dutifully) continued with a 'yeah, but...' story yesterday afternoon (found via the ldotters), the NYT pieces together a narrative of the zarqawi kill.
the nro's corner maintains media reports like this with too-descriptive (possibly identifying intelligence assets) while using anonymous sources conveying possibly sensitive info

¶ - nitish @ 9:09 AM | 0 comments

what else are struggling pc companies supposed to do?

the recent success of amd has hurt behemoth intel and forced formerly intel-only dell to finally include amd into the mix.

intel goes with another tech shift, while announcing price cuts and complaining about a market metric in which it apparently fails miserably (trying to introduce 'satisfaction per watt' is kinda laughable).

meanwhile, in dell's continued courting of the analyst community, the company let's them eat cake

¶ - nitish @ 8:29 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 8

anti-war complaints transcend time

in the spirit of conservative satire site ScrappleFace, the nihilist in golf pants hypothesizes possible refrains today's anti-war protesters could have said about D-Day. some of my faves

8. All this death and destruction is because the neo-cons are in the pocket of Israel
7. The soldiers are still on the beach, this invasion is a quagmire
6. Sure the holocaust is evil, but so was slavery
5. We are attacked by Japan and then attack France? Roosevelt is worse than the Kaiser!

and the grieving mothers of the 10,000 D-Day casualties would be trotted out in the MSM

¶ - nitish @ 8:07 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 7

tv odds n ends

note: all stories found via tv tattle

- does it really count when nbc's first ratings win now? [bugmenot login]
nbc pulled it off by sticking with alotta original programming against repeats. the struggling network will take what it can get.
(question: why didn't nbc include deal or no deal and/or apprentice finales during sweeps?
possible answer: they wouldn't have done as well against first-run competition)

- where are they now?
a wrap-up of the gang's post-90210 careers spares no snark [bugmenot login]
full house's little steph charts an unexpected career path

- other 'reality' tidbits
while paris and nicole's fake the simple life dropped off big time from the network run, it did relatively well for the e! channel. (it'd probably done better on the vh1 celebreality block)

maybe i'm a glutton for bad tv, but tv monopoly doesn't sound like a bad idea...

¶ - nitish @ 3:35 PM | 0 comments

maybe that wasn't worth it

the baby brangelina pics that a coupla magazines paid alot for got leaked on the web.
if people truly paid $4.1 million, 1.25 million copies need to be sold at the $3.29 cover price to recoup the cost.
that's ridiculous considering the ease of leaks...the government can't stop leaks...

update jun08: the ny post and gawker continue to go with the pix despite threats of lawsuit

¶ - nitish @ 8:59 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 6

giving a friend a hand

if one liberal blogger gives a reacharound to another liberal blogger in a MSM publication...
does it make a sound?

¶ - nitish @ 2:54 PM | 0 comments

Monday, June 5

moving from failure to failure

the whackos behind tv turnoff week--which incidentally doesn't appear to have gathered much support--try to broaden the failure--i mean campaign to other screens

good luck with that!

¶ - nitish @ 3:13 PM | 0 comments

france's continued decline

i'm no fan of jacques chirac and france, but this is getting ridiculous...

the french take every opportunity not to work (found via lucianne.com). a simple change of national holiday cannot happen.

As if to underline M Chirac’s declining power, his ministers have been unable to impose the reform on their own ministries, which are also stopping work. In the private sector nearly half of French businesses will be on holiday, while the rest will remain open.

the resistance to work assures france's better days are long gone

¶ - nitish @ 9:34 AM | 0 comments

Friday, June 2

some cheese with that whine

on last night's the situation with tucker carlson, guest robert f kennedy jr pushes his rolling stone article about how the 2004 election was stolen from john kerry.

the idea sounded a bit of a stretch, especially considering some of the non-partisan sources rfk jr cites including john conyers, dennis kucinich to beat the dead horses of exit polls and widespread disenfranchisement. throw in the opportunity to undermine black conservatives like ken blackwell, and you got the standard lefty MO.

the winds of change blog cites a previous mother jones analysis which rebuts some of these tired arguments
update: mystery pollster also tackles rfk jr and even reliably liberal salon.com is skeptical (is this non-partisan skepticism a trend?)

¶ - nitish @ 11:56 AM | 0 comments

another inconvenient fact

the Nature article about the arctic hot spot apparently included another angle not emphasized in previous coverage.

there's oil up in that there ice [it was tough to find an accessible article as the ny times article requires registration and the houston chronicle and NYT's IHT strangely scrubbed their articles]
it looks like an agenda creeped into the matter

Several of the researchers said they were reluctant to focus on that aspect of the work, saying it would be unfortunate if their climate studies prompted new oil exploration that could liberate more greenhouse gases and further warm the climate.

But one of the authors, Henk Brinkhuis of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was not shy when he first pointed this out to reporters in 2004. This week, he said he remained confident that the prospect was real. [emphasis added]

the weird thing is i didn't hear this reported in 2004

¶ - nitish @ 9:46 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 1

an inconvenient fact

the sunny and warm arctic...
the notion is not another slide in al gore's documentary an inconvenient truth.
another inconvenient fact is the lack of action and follow through during gore's vice presidency and 2000 campaign

Yet when he ran in 1992 for vice president, Gore made very little of the greenhouse effect. It was the Republicans who raised the issue, to tease him as an environmental extremist. Climate change was not a major theme of the Clinton years, and little progress was made while Gore served in the White House. His only significant act over eight years was to help negotiate a Kyoto treaty that the Clinton administration never submitted to the Senate for ratification. One might argue that the problem was Gore's limited power within the administration. But a better explanation is probably that Gore was too worried about his own future to press the case harder. Running for president in 2000, he downplayed environmental concerns in general, for fear of again being caricatured as "ozone man." Faced with what his political consultants viewed as a potential liability, he abandoned the cause nearest his heart.

in any case, humans and/or global warming will somehow get blamed for natural disasters and beyond

¶ - nitish @ 9:22 AM | 1 comments