Freeman Hunt

"Your piece wasn't pro-Obama enough," says NYT to McCain.

2008-07-21T12:24:00.005-05:00

I kid, I kid. But the truth is equally hilarious:

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The paper's decision to refuse McCain's direct rebuttal to Obama's 'My Plan for Iraq' has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.

'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece,' NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain's staff. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.'

And what does Shipley mean by mirror?

Shipley continues: 'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.'

Ha! So the NYT defends not publishing the editorial of one of the two major Presidential candidates on the basis that it isn't structured as a pure reaction to the editorial of the other candidate.

I guess sometimes you're so deep in the tank that you can't be bothered to come up and look over the sides anymore.

UPDATE: You can read McCain's non-Obama-mirroring editorial at the Drudge Report. Methinks the NYT was loathe to publish the editorial because it contained things like this:

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists.

Can't have readers exposed to that sort of thing. They might start questioning the NYT war narrative.

UPDATE 2: More reactions here.

Astaire for Your Sunday

2008-07-20T18:37:00.001-05:00

Arkansas Governor's School on Arkansans Ask Their Governor

2008-07-20T16:34:00.002-05:00

It's not actually called "Arkansans Ask Their Governor" anymore, but it sounds like the same program. I was on this when I went to Governor's School eleven years ago, and it was a lot of fun. If you live in Arkansas, you might want to tune in on Thursday if you've got the time.

Governor's School is easily the best formal education experience I've ever had, including all the summer camps I attended and all of the college level programs I've been involved with. There is definitely some truth to the often heard accusation that the program comes with a liberal political bias, but the philosophical side of the program was excellent when I was there, and the range and quality of speakers was phenomenal. (And obviously the liberal political bias didn't have any permanent effect in my case...)

The summer I attended, I think I was the only student who went to every single optional speaker session. If you're attending Governor's School right now or plan to do so next year, I urge you to go to every speaker session including the Q&As--even the ones that look like they'll be boring. You might be surprised at how often a session that you'd expect to be terrible ends up offering some great intellectual gems. And it might be hard to appreciate now, but there will rarely be another six weeks in your life that will offer the opportunity to interact with such varied and accomplished people in so many different fields.

Is It Really So Bad to Have a Sewage Plant Named After You?

2008-07-19T11:27:00.002-05:00

Some people are getting a chuckle out of this. Others are shaking their heads at the childishness of it. But I'm doing neither. I don't think it's such a bad idea.

What does a sewage plant do? It takes utter filth, sewage, and turns it into something great, clean water. I say it's something of a compliment to slap a person's name on that process.

Sure, It Would Bridge Enthusiam Gaps,,,

2008-07-16T22:52:00.003-05:00

... It would definitely increase my enthusiasm for having something else to do, like blow drying the lawn or repainting a room with a Q-Tip, other than vote on election day. (Via Instapundit.)

Other enthusiasms which would increase: enthusiasm for vomiting, enthusiasm for changing my voter registration to Independent, and enthusiasm for using expletives. I'm sure there are more. Would you have an increase in some special enthusiasm if McCain picked the Huck for VP?

"... How does the John Q. Taxpayer Nature Center sound?"

2008-07-16T16:49:00.003-05:00

I think it sounds great.

If they must name these places after people, they should only be able to use the names of people who are dead. Or if they must use the names of the living, how about a taxpayer selected at random with a subtitle like this: Tyler Presley Nature Center, Mr. Presley's payment of $56,784 in state taxes thus far in his life was enough to pay for the paving of the parking lot and the landscaping near the picnic area. That might give us a better sense of how much money our officials are confiscating from us.

"We would never allow a candidate to receive our support who says 'I want to reduce the number of slaves in America ...

2008-07-16T16:38:00.005-05:00

"... -- but I am 100 percent committed to keep slavery legal.'"

A look at Obama's position on the slavery of our time.

Isn't it strange how we look back on outrageous injustices of the past like slavery and think, "How utterly barbaric--we would never allow that to happen now," and yet we are not so vigilant that we notice the outrageous injustices of our own times? Someday future people will be looking back on abortion, seeing it exactly as we now see slavery, and they'll think us all a bunch of barbaric rubes.

UPDATE: Wish I had seen this earlier today: great post on abortion up at Althouse.

Amba regretting an abortion: "if an embryo or fetus is regarded as disposable, then you are, too."

Well put.

"Sometimes, people have to trip and fall to be reminded that it’s important to watch their step. "

2008-07-15T13:45:00.003-05:00

So says Glenn in an excellent column about vaccines and the upkeep of public infrastructure.

...the percentage of parents vaccinating their children has fallen, perhaps because some parents see no point in warding off diseases they’ve never encountered. Religious or new-age beliefs may also factor into the decision: The San Diego outbreak spread in a school where nearly 10 percent of the students had been given personal-belief exemptions from the vaccination requirement. The East Bay outbreak started at a school that emphasizes nature-based therapy over mainstream medicine; fewer than half of the students were vaccinated.

Emphasis mine. I bet that less than 1% of those 10% claiming a personal-belief exemption actually held personal beliefs precluding vaccines. Think that's pure conjecture on my part? I have proof in my email box that anti-vaccine people are falsely claiming religious exemptions.

I belong to almost every moms' group in my area, so I'm on quite a few email lists. There's one list in particular with a great number of anti-vaccination subscribers. Every now and then there is an email along the lines of "Tommy is about to start school, and I'm afraid to have him vaccinated, what do I do?" Then comes the reply, "Get a religious exemption form. So-and-so-anti-vaccine woman will tell you what to put on it. Here is her contact info." Yikes.

And Glenn is also correct in positing that most anti-vaccine positioning is driven by fear of autism. In these mom circles, that's the only argument I've ever heard against vaccination, and I hear it a lot. I wish more people were aware of this:

And a simple glance at health statistics shows that autism cases continued to rise even after thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative widely blamed for the supposed autism link, was largely phased out of U.S. vaccines by 2001.

And this:

Nevertheless, these unsubstantiated fears have led some people to say that getting vaccinated should be a matter of individual choice: If you want to be protected, just get yourself and your children vaccinated.

Only it’s not that easy. While the measles vaccine protects virtually everyone who is inoculated, not all vaccines have the same rate of success. But even if a vaccine is effective for only 70, 80 or 90 percent of those who take it, the other 30, 20 or 10 percent who don’t get the full benefit of the vaccine are usually still not at risk. That’s because most of the people around the partially protected are immune, so the disease can’t sustain transmission long enough to spread.

But when people decide to forgo vaccination, they threaten the entire system.

That is the main point that people do not seem to understand. These parents mean well, but many of them do not seem to realize that by foregoing vaccines, they threaten our modern, mostly disease free way of childhood. (That's not to say that all of them don't; I've heard at least one mother admit that she's a free rider on the system, and that she likes it when other kids get vaccinated.)

If I quote out all the good parts, I'll be quoting out the entire column, so read the rest of it over at Popular Mechanics.

There is one point on which I hope Glenn is wrong but am afraid that he is probably right. I hope it doesn't take the tragedy of an outbreak to get everyone vaccinating again.

Perhaps if we gave copies of this book to every vaccination shy person in the United States, people would start talking about vaccinations rationally again. A girl can dream anyway.

"Because they're idiots, I guess."

2008-07-10T00:13:00.002-05:00

As I head off to bed, this makes me laugh out loud.

Ending Toddler Thought Crime

2008-07-09T14:15:00.002-05:00

LONDON, July 7 (UPI) -- Toddlers who say "yuck" when given flavorful foreign food may be exhibiting racist behavior, a British government-sponsored organization says.

The London-based National Children's Bureau released a 366-page guide counseling adults on recognizing racist behavior in young children, The Telegraph reported Monday. ...

The bureau says to be aware of children who "react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying 'yuck'."

Ha. (Via Val's Bien.) I believe bureaucrats are capable of any asinine thing, but even I couldn't have made this one up.

Were They Angry at Men Being Gay...

2008-07-08T15:25:00.002-05:00

... or were they angry because they'd been lied to about the nature of the event? I think if you got a crowd expecting a cage match extremely drunk and then just read them a book or simply didn't provide any entertainment at all, you would get the same reaction. People don't like being bilked out of their time and money regardless of whether or not they're watching men kiss each other.

File Under: Things Seen Coming a Mile Away

2008-07-02T15:50:00.002-05:00

The question is: why didn't he see it coming?

Director dropped after failing to deliver part to starlet. Same starlet, by the way, that he left his wife and five children for.

A modern day morality tale in real life.

Official Obama '08 Campaign Song

2008-06-28T11:28:00.001-05:00

Or at least what it should be:

Or maybe this, which for some reason cannot be embedded.

Biker as Seen in Rearview Mirror

2008-06-26T16:51:00.000-05:00

Arkansas Pastoral

2008-06-26T16:47:00.002-05:00

And industrial pastoral:

"Not only would lots of information fail to make us smarter; it would actually make us dumber by overwhelming us."

2008-06-24T12:52:00.001-05:00

From Dale Hoiberg of Encyclopedia Britannica (emphasis mine):

Long before the Web, Lewis Mumford predicted that the explosion of information could "bring about a state of intellectual enervation and depletion hardly to be distinguished from massive ignorance." Not only would lots of information fail to make us smarter; it would actually make us dumber by overwhelming us. The solution, he thought, was not to be found in technology alone but in "a reassertion of human selectivity and moral-self discipline, leading to continent productivity." In these days of information incontinence, in order to be part of the solution rather than the problem, I think it is important to remember this.

I think that's spot on.

Religious Belief in America

2008-06-23T19:01:00.004-05:00

This study is absolutely filled with interesting bits of information (via Hotair.) The part pointed out at Hotair, that 21% of atheists say they believe in God, is particularly odd. Is that further indication of the total failure of public schools or is anti-realism becoming more fashionable?

For Your Monday

2008-06-23T12:53:00.000-05:00

So You Can Use TXT Files on Amazon's Kindle...

2008-06-23T12:25:00.002-05:00

I didn't know that. I thought you could only use Kindle content from Amazon. I hadn't read the Kindle description page in a while, but today I saw this:

Eliminating the need to print, Kindle makes it easy to take your personal documents with you. Each Kindle has a unique and customizable e-mail address. You can set your unique email address on your Manage Your Kindle page. This allows you and your contacts to e-mail Word documents and pictures wirelessly to your Kindle for only $.10. Kindle supports wireless delivery of unprotected Microsoft Word, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI files.

PDF conversion is experimental. The experimental category represents the features we are working on to enhance the Kindle experience even further. You can email your PDFs wirelessly to your Kindle. Due to PDF’s fixed layout format, some complex PDF files might not format correctly on your Kindle.

If you are not in a wireless area or would like to avoid the $.10 fee for wireless delivery, you can send attachments to "name"@free.kindle.com to be converted and e-mailed to your computer at the e-mail address associated with your Amazon.com account login. You can then transfer the document to your Kindle using your USB connection. For example, if your Kindle email address is Jay@Kindle.com, send your attachments to Jay@free.kindle.com.

When I thought that you couldn't load TXT files on it, I had no interest in the Kindle at all. (What good is a reading device if you can't use Project Gutenberg with it?) Now I might have to rethink that in time for Christmas.

There are still some issues though. Look at the picture of the Kindle. See the buttons on the sides for "next page" and "previous page?" Now see all the buttons at the bottom? Where do you put your hands? There are buttons everywhere.

I have a friend who has one of these, and I told him that it looked like it would be easy to accidentally turn the page. He said that it was. That could get annoying. But maybe I make too much of this issue. I would have to play with one of these for a while to see if the buttons are a real problem.

Mobile Device for Blogging?

2008-06-23T11:55:00.004-05:00

In anticipation of a new blogging project (and probably more blogging here too), I've been coming up with ways to increase the efficiency of my computer time. I have very little time at the computer each day, so anything that cuts down on my having to click around or actually be at my desk is a good thing. To that end, I'm planning to use some kind of feed organizer like Bloglines. In addition, I'd like to be able to post away from home.

Sprint, being the good folks that they are, are offering me a big chunk of change off of a new phone for being a longtime customer. Has anyone had experience blogging from a Treo or similiar PDA phone? Perhaps there are other, better options. What would your ideal mobile blogging setup be?

UPDATE: I could use my Palm TX with a keyboard. Of course, that limits me to wifi hot spots which isn't ideal, but it might work.

My Kid Could Paint That

2008-06-09T11:59:00.004-05:00

We watched this movie last night and enjoyed it. However, I was left doubting some of the conclusions drawn by the director, namely that the little girl wasn't really the one doing the work.

The director juxtaposes the paintings created on camera and the girl's earlier, off camera work, presumably to lead one to conclude that they look different from one another and so must have been painted by different people. But as a parent, that's not what I saw. The earlier work looked very much like what I imagine my own son's work would look like if I gave him a canvas and pressed him to fill the entire thing. There is a certain regularity of movement through the paint which can create the illusion of a mature abstraction but is really, I think, the result of a young child exploring the paint in a regular way with repetitious movements.

Thus, I think it is very possible that the girl's later work looks different from her earlier work because she is growing up and no longer simply exploring the paint. She is actually trying to represent things. You would expect one's first attempts to represent real life to be crude, and because there are no longer the exploratory, repetitious movements, you lose what had appeared to be subtle and mature looking abstractions.

ADDED: I just realized that I didn't even comment on the larger issue of the validity of abstract expressionism as art. On that I'll just say that I thought the movie totally undercut the claim that such work qualifies as real art. If something is art, it is art no matter who created it. This does not seem to be the case in abstract expressionism. Such works may be art if art only means beautiful, but if by art we mean Art, as in something more transcendent or expressing some truth, I'm not convinced that such works qualify.

But Wouldn't You Be Embarassed to Cut Everyone in Line...

2008-06-09T11:48:00.002-05:00

... and sit in a super-special customer throne? (Via Instapundit.)

Some Music for Your Weekend

2008-06-06T21:58:00.000-05:00

A Conversation with a Waiter

2008-06-04T20:12:00.002-05:00

Patrons having conversation about McCain.
Waiter: What about McCain?
Patron 1: We're planning to vote for him.
Waiter: McCain is just another Bush.
Patron 1: No, he's not; he's really not.
Waiter: What's the only issue they're different on? Immigration?
Patron 2: No, actually McCain and Bush agree on immigration. They're both basically pro amnesty. In fact, the bill Bush was campaigning for last year was the McCain Kennedy bill for comprehensive immigration reform.
Waiter: Oh yeah. [waves dismissively and then without a hint of humor or irony adds] I just made myself look ignorant, but I know more about this than 99% of the world.

I bet.

Not Something I Like to Read in a Textbook Introduction

2008-06-03T17:36:00.002-05:00

From what is probably the leading textbook for Old Testament introductory classes:

Since this book is intended for students, I have tried to avoid entanglements in scholarly controversies. For this reason, there are no footnotes. Instead, each chapter is followed by suggestions for further reading. ... Inevitably, the bibliographies are highly selective, and consist primarily of books that I have found useful.

No footnotes?! With apologies to Dr. Collins as I have not yet read the book and this may not be the case, that paragraph sounds like it could read:

I find many Old Testament scholarly controversies silly and believe my position on most issues to be the correct one. Therefore, I have simply stated my position plainly and see no need to offer alternatives or to support my assertions with citations.

I can't stand textbooks without footnotes. I've read too many works, especially in theology, where rather controversial positions are asserted as facts without supporting evidence. I must see the evidence!

Hopefully the evidential information is included as part of the main text. In that case, there's less need for footnotes.

However, I also like footnotes because I like to see who the author has been primarily influenced by. If someone cites the same guy over and over, I know it's probably a good idea to look that guy up as well as who has disagreed with him over the years.

Maybe I've just been spoiled by this book. Davies provides the best citations and the most excellent lists of further reading. I love him.

I am a footnote fiend.