Just came across this story relating to my January 25th blog post on Mike Daisey’s story of his visits to factories in Shenzhen. As it turns out they were indeed stories–large portions of his monologue have been revealed as complete fabrications.
This American Life has fully retracted the story, so I thought I would do the same since I linked to it when it first aired.
According to this story in the New York Times, Google can detect regional flu outbreaks up to 10 days ahead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Check out Google Flu Trends to see data for the U.S., and for individual states.
Even though I haven’t been a registered Democrat for some time now (switched to independent 5+ years ago), I’m very interested in this turn of events. I hope it means that we’ll actually have a two-party system again, instead of a party-and-a-half like we’ve had for awhile. How he’ll play in the South is anybody’s guess, but I think a lot of his views will turn out to be more moderate than people expect.
To the Washington Post and the Washington Times we can add another paper: The Washington Examiner. In this age of the Web, blogs and other forms of electronic media, starting a print newspaper seems an odd choice. From my time as a technology intern at the Washington Post, I remember stories from bosses about how DC used to have four newspapers. The Washington Star was the one they remembered most, since a number of them worked there before it closed up shop in 1981.
From this column by Dave Matsio, it sounds like they want to do something a little different with their opinion pages.
The rest of their website looks pretty well done. We’ll have to wait and see if the writing is good. It would be nice if they got lucky and broke an important story or two before the larger papers.
If I’m reading this article correctly, it sounds like Social Security benefits are certain to be reduced, and these personal accounts are intended to provide an opportunity to make up the difference. It seems like a bad idea if the original purpose of Social Security was to keep the elderly out of poverty.
You can read Charles Krauthammer’s whole commentary to get the context, but he essential begins his column by using the elections that happened during the US Civil War and its immediate aftermath to defend elections in Iraq that may leave out parts of the country.
To call this an “apples and oranges” comparison would be putting it mildly. If England or France had over 100,000 troops in this country and was fighting on the side of the North or the South, Krauthammer might have an argument. But since that isn’t what happened, it’s merely a bad excuse for the disenfranchisement of “barely 20 percent” of Iraqi citizens.
The one point he makes in his column that I agree with is that a civil war is already happening in Iraq. Which is why it seems senseless to me for him to say this:
If Iraq’s Sunni Arabs–barely 20 percent of the population–decide they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, ending with 30 years of Saddam Hussein’s atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and participate in the new Iraq.
This idea that Iraq will go on without the Sunnis if they don’t lay down their arms and vote completely ignores the nature of the violence that has been taking place. In the same section of the newspaper is an article about candidates for this election in Iraq being murdered. We shouldn’t forget how quickly the violence spread to other parts of Iraq after the Fallujah offensive either.
What seems to be shaping up is another Beirut situation–US troops in the middle of a civil war. It won’t turn out any better now than it did then.
According to this article in The Hill newspaper, the House GOP will change a rule they enacted in 1993 requiring leaders to step down from their posts if indicted for criminal conduct. The reason: majority leader Tom DeLay may be indicted in a case currently proceeding in Texas. Two of his aides have already been indicted for their conduct.
This move, so soon after an election allegedly decided on things like moral values is just one more thing that says to me that Republicans are better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk when it comes to ethics and morality. The GOP spent a lot of years using the corruption of Democrats for political gain. It’s quite hypocritical to change a rule they themselves instituted because they feel the charges are politically motivated. It’s a textbook case of situational ethics if I ever saw one.
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