Great read on the recent progress in Iraq. You can't argue with the basic facts -- a lot less people are dying:

In order to avoid embarrassing themselves, the war's opponents in the press and politics will have to make a tactical adjustment of their own. Look for them in the coming weeks to try to shift the debate to the one area where Iraq has not progressed dramatically since the start of the surge--its stumble-prone central government.

If they are allowed to do this, then the American people will miss the real miracle that has occurred in Iraq over the last several months. Peace is breaking out through Iraq and the sectarian violence declining because that is the demand of the Iraqi people. Iraqi society has tired of bloodshed, and has opted for tolerance. It is the most amazing and inspiring story of the admittedly still-young 21st century. And yet few in the media have deigned to tell it, and many in our body politic refuse to hear it.

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From the under-rated film, "Quick Change," starring Bill Murray, Randy Quaid and Geena Davis. One of the funniest scenes in movie history.

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Regarding the latest Halloween fashions:

Gabby Cirenza wanted to be a referee for Halloween. The outfit she liked had a micro-mini black skirt and a form-fitting black and white-striped spandex top held together with black laces running up the flesh-exposing sides. She looked admiringly at the thigh-high black go-go boots that could be bought as an accessory. And she thought the little bunny on the chest was cute.

"Absolutely not," said her mother, Cheryl. "That is so not happening."

Gabby is 11.

And the Playboy Racy Referee costume was only the latest that her mother had vetoed one pre-Halloween-crazed afternoon at Party City in Baileys Crossroads as too skimpy, too revealing, too suggestive .

Bawdy Halloween costumes, however, have become the season's hottest sellers in recent years. Not just for women, but for girls, too. And parents such as Cirenza don't like it.

Gabby eyed the Sexy Super Girl but decided against it. A friend at her Catholic school had worn that costume for a Halloween parade and pulled the already short miniskirt way up to cover her tummy. "That didn't look very good." But Gabby did like the Aqua Fairy, a vampy get-up with a black ripped-up skirt, black fishnet tights and blue bustier that comes in medium, large and preteen. A medium fits a child of 8.

No.

How about the Funky Punk Pirate Pre-Teen, with an off-the-shoulder blouse and bare midriff?

Yes. A disturbing trend.

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Hey look. It's the 1903 NY Times article announcing Pulitzer's $2 million gift to Columbia University to create the journalism program.

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Stephen Colbert announcing his run for president in South Carolina. His speech wouldn't raise an eyebrow if delivered by a real politician. He truly does the country a favor by pointing out the utter inanity of our political system.

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Incredibly shoddy journalism from Fox News.

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So, FEMA holds a press conference, but they're fielding questions from their own PR people.

Very smooth, very professional. But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.

Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.

Asked about this, Widomski said: "We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute."

But the staff did not make up the questions, he said, and Johnson did not know what was going to be asked. "We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day." Despite the very short notice, "we were expecting the press to come," he said, but they didn't. So the staff played reporters for what on TV looked just like the real thing.

Incredible.

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Apparently, there's quite a movement afoot regarding the "truth" behind Sept. 11. Here's Bill Clinton responding to one of these conspiracy theorists. Here's his best quote:

An inside job? How dare you. How dare you. It was not an inside job. You guys have got to be careful, you're going to give Minnesota a bad reputation.

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Rather shoddy journalism from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today:

Amid allegations that the White House censored CDC Director Julie Gerberding's written testimony on climate change, a U.S. senator Wednesday called for the release of documents detailing how and why changes were made.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sent a letter to President Bush seeking all drafts of the written testimony for comparison with what Gerberding presented at a committee hearing Tuesday.

Boxer also asked the White House to disclose which officials were involved in reviewing her statement and what led to the deletion of nearly seven pages about the health consequences of climate change.

"I am deeply concerned that important scientific and health information was removed from the CDC Director's testimony at the last minute," Boxer said in the letter.

Ten paragraphs into the article, we hear from the CDC Director herself:

Gerberding said Wednesday she was happy with her testimony and that the review process was normal. In a lunch-hour speech before the Atlanta Press Club, Gerberding said she made all the points to Congress that she wanted to make.

"This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Gerberding said of the furor. "I don't let people put words in my mouth. I spoke the truth to Congress."

The testimony went through many versions, perhaps as many as 40, Gerberding said. "This was not an issue of someone trying to cover up a connection between climate change and health," she said.

Many White House administrations have reviewed Congressional testimony of government agency chiefs in the past -- it's just part of the process.

So, who other than a constant critic of the administration, also had a problem with the White House editing of the CDC director's comments?

The Union of Concerned Scientists:

To the Union of Concerned Scientists, it appears Gerberding was censored. "At first blush this is consistent with what we've seen throughout the Bush administration on climate change," said Michael Halpern, outreach coordinator of the group's Scientific Integrity Program.

The reporter doesn't attempt to identify "The Union of Concerned Scientists." Despite its egalitarian name, the group is actually a liberal advocacy organization, according to the policy proposals on its Web site.

With all these facts, this issue looks like a typical partisan attack of dubious news value. Too bad the editors chose to make it the top story on page one.

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Thanks to the WSJ's James Taranto to pointing out this hilarious Reuters quote:

"I saw the fire brigade vehicle rushing to the area at top speed. Somehow its brakes failed and hit one police vehicle and coalition vehicles, then the Americans started firing," said Reuters correspondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai.

Why so funny? The byline of the article: By Noor Mohammad Sherzai.

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Great obituary from The Economist:

THERE were usually several versions of any story involving Bob Denard. To explain how he came to be found, in the early hours of November 26th 1989, standing over the blood-soaked and pyjama-clad body of the president of the Comoros Islands, there were three alternatives. One: Mr Denard had shot him. (He denied it in court; though he had been in the same room, and very close to him, he had not pulled the trigger.) Two: the palace bodyguard had burst in wildly, filling the president with bullets. (“Inexplicable,” Mr Denard agreed, but true; “an accident arising out of a general state of madness.”) Or perhaps—mad theory three—an army commandant had fired off an anti-tank missile by mistake, which had crashed through the window of the presidential bedroom.

The French courts never worked it out, and in 1999 acquitted Mr Denard for lack of evidence. His long dark history as a mercenary in Africa, from 1961 onwards, had blurred everything about him. His name was Bob Denard, or Gilbert Bourgeaud, or Colonel Bako, or Mustafa M'hadjou. The wound that made him limp had come from a bullet in Congo, or perhaps in Algeria. His fascination with all things military sprang from a boyhood in the French resistance in the Médoc, or alternatively from his first entranced sighting of the shiny helmets, boots and guns of the German troops invading his village. He had been cashiered from the French navy, at 16, for running riot in a Saigon whorehouse or for burning down a restaurant. Fact or fiction: few knew for sure.

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Interesting WSJ article on a Hong Kong newspaper that's pushing the boundaries of free speech in China.

Late last month, Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai's reporters were among the first in the world to sneak into tightly controlled Myanmar to cover brutal crackdowns on antigovernment demonstrators. His Apple Daily newspaper ran their stories and photos of bloodied monks on the front page for three days, and pointed the finger at China to stop the violence.

The next week, Apple's cover moved onto other priorities: A British teenager's belly-button ring had gotten lodged inside her body, and Apple had front-page photos, diagrams and interviews with local starlets about their own belly-button rings.

Mr. Lai, long a combative agitator for press and political freedoms in China, has remade Hong Kong's media landscape by pairing two unlikely subjects -- democracy and sex. His Next Media Inc. publications frequently provoke Beijing and have stoked antigovernment rallies in Hong Kong, in political reports often interspersed with racy photos or consumer reviews of local strip clubs and saunas.

The Journal translated two front pages from the paper. Very interesting. The first pages shows pictures of the Burma crackdown that I've seen nowhere else.

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This is hilarious. A bunch of 9/11 nutjobs infiltrated Bill Maher's live talk show. Maher's reaction is rather funny. Apparently they took aim at him because of his radical view that the Twin Towers were not destroyed by controlled detonation.

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Yeah, I need to build a Cylon Jack-O-Lantern too. Of course, the LED lights can be used to build one of these too.

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Anna Ruby Falls, GA.

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Great article on the bitter rivalry between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali:

Joe Frazier hasn't fought Muhammad Ali in 32 years but he spars with him every day. They are both old men now, broken by difficult lives and too many years spent fighting for their paychecks. They have paid dearly for the prizes they won with the biggest price extracted from each by the other.

Although both would be diminished as fighters if they had never crossed paths, for Frazier neither time nor shared infirmities have softened his heart. He always has been a hard man and there is no harder place inside him than the spot still occupied by Ali. It's a large spot where the bruises remain even after all these years.

That's why there was always only one picture of boxing's greatest legend hanging in Frazier's Gym at 2917 North Broad St. in a rundown section of Philadelphia that few tourists visit. It was the one of Ali flat on his back, Frazier standing over him with both pain and triumph on his face.

That's how Frazier wants to be remembered -- in that moment after he sent Ali to the floor in Round 15, the final round of the first fight of their tragic trilogy. The rest he'd just as soon forget. Or rewrite. Ali taunted and tortured Frazier outside the ring far more than he did inside it, and he did a lot of damage inside it to Frazier. He marginalized him in a way

I tend to idolize Ali -- he was a man of great character who stood up for his beliefs. But, I should remember the good with the bad. His treatment of Frazier was deplorable.

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Interesting article from the Christian Science Monitor on the concept of journalism "crowdsourcing":

Mayhill Fowler wrote a significant Web-only political story this week that took the temperature of the Democratic electorate. More remarkable than her conclusion – that Democrats are more undecided and less Iraq-focused than polls suggest – is the whopping 17 reporters in nine states who filed on-the-ground accounts to contribute to it.

The cornucopia of contributors, surpassing what most news outlets could ever afford, cost virtually nothing. That's because the reporters are volunteers, including Ms. Fowler, a Californian, who at age 60 has embraced beat reporting on Barack Obama.

"I looked through all the information that people sent in and I came up with what I thought were the significant things we discovered in these 14 cities on Saturday," she says. Her story was published online by Off the Bus, a project boasting 1,500 citizen journalists and affiliation with The Huffington Post, a liberal website.

"Until [this] post, there's nothing really on the Obama campaign that I think we've brought that the mainstream media can't. It's this kind of joint effort that really is the thing," she adds.
Collaborative citizen-reporting projects like this one are sprouting across the political landscape of Election 2008. Thousands of volunteers are adding muscle to efforts by professional reporters and campaign staff to leave no stone unturned – and no skeletons in the closet. But to drive volunteer interest, many of these "crowdsourcing" efforts draw more energy from partisan fervor than traditional journalism's impartiality, say experts.

Read the rest.

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So, the case of an Illinois judge who won a libel suit last year has been settled out of court. A shame because we need one of these cases to go to the Supreme Court to combat this worrisome trend:

Since 1986, judges have won eight of 11 cases in which they have sued news media, according to the Media Law Resource Center in New York. Dozens of other cases brought by judges were dismissed before trial, said center staff attorney David Heller.

In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court set the bar for libel of a public official incredibly high -- "actual malice." Since then, the news media have enjoyed wide latitude in the coverage of public officials, except for one group. Apparently, free speech is good for everyone, unless you're criticizing sitting judges.

The Boston Herald had to pay a judge $3 million in June after losing it's libel battle in state courts. The paper hasn't said whether it will appeal to the federal courts. Hopefully, it will.

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Restricting speech at Google. These types of reports aren't new.

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Interesting email from Michael Yon to Instapundit:

All the talk back in America of partitioning Iraq is a mistake. There is some desire by the Kurds, but overall Iraqis seem very much against the idea of partition.

On another note, during a CNN interview this weekend, I reiterated what I have been saying for some time:

"I've seen a very serious change in the seas. I'm not predicting this but I would not be at all surprised to see a precipitous drop in violence in Iraq in general over the next six months or so. I just would not be surprised based on the things that I'm seeing in Nineveh province, out in Anbar, up in Baghdad and out in Diyala and out here. Will it last, nobody knows, but it's certainly, the indicators are starting to look better and better."

... Al Qaeda is in trouble in Iraq. The civil war that was growing in 2005, and then began erupting in 2006, is now on the decline. I was extremely worried during 2006 that al Qaeda would succeed by engulfing Iraq in civil war, but the Iraqis I speak with in various provinces are now smart about what AQI was up to. AQI tactics are backfiring -- hugely backfiring. Strangely, al Qaeda, who nearly caused a complete meltdown, is becoming helpful in uniting Iraq. Strange world, Glenn!

Certainly does seem like there's already been a precipitous drop in violence in Iraq. But, I guess it all depends on whose version of the truth you choose to believe.

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Methinks the remake of "Get Smart" will be hilarious.

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Interesting article from The New York Times on why Al Gore won the Nobel Peace prize, given that Alfred Nobel wanted the award to go to: [T]he most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses."

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Peer-reviewed literature casts doubt on man-made global warming

While preparing a lit review for a recent paper, I ran across this article that makes clear at least some scientists still doubt the man-made link to global warming. Published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal "Renewable Energy," the author could find no evidence that man-made pollution has led to the global temperature changes. Here's part of the abstract (italic added for emphasis):

Mathematical expressions which represent possible human influence on global temperature variations are developed, analysed and discussed ... This establishment implies that, contrary to previous expectations and opinions, anthropogenic [human-caused] activities hardly generate significant net alterations in global temperature or solar energy patterns. ... This is apparently the first scientific finding in the open literature which tends to support the consistent disputing of the human element in climate change by the USA and Australia as well as the views of the "climate skeptics" which heavily supported the September 2003 World Climate Change Conference held in Moscow.

The author is Ernest C. Njau, chair of the physics department at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Njau elaborates in the full-text of the article:

One of the implications of the contents of this paper is that anthropogenic [man-made] activities are not the dominant force behind the post-1800 global warming trend. Atmospheric CO2 [carbon dioxide] is the primary greenhouse gas that is believed to have contributed to global warming since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The use of fossil fuels (e.g. oil, coal, natural gas, etc.) is the dominant source of anthropogenic CO2. In line with the implications of this paper, Ryabchikov shows that the main source of supply of CO2 to the atmosphere is not anthropogenic activities, but tropical regions of the ocean. These regions supply 2×1010 tons of air-borne CO2 annually to the temperate and circumpolar latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

I don't claim to understand the science behind this author's conclusions. But, I can read an academic article, and I know that at least three other scientists had to review and approve of its methods before publication. I also know that the Earth has warmed many times in the past, so there's little face validity in assuming that its latest warming cycle must be due to human activity.

Njau's article does not represent the first time that the man-made link to global warming has been questioned in the academic press. In 2005, in the peer-reviewed journal "Pure and Applied Geophysics," three authors concluded that the current scientific literature did not support the theory that man-made pollution was causing global warming. From their abstract:

Our review suggests that the dissenting view offered by the skeptics or opponents of global warming appears substantially more credible than the supporting view put forth by the proponents of global warming. Further, the projections of future climate change over the next fifty to one hundred years is based on insufficiently verified climate models and are therefore not considered reliable at this point in time.

Given this literature, I feel comfortable saying that I still hold some skepticism regarding global warming.

Furthermore, future research may want to examine whether the reason so many scientists appear eager to assume that man is behind global warming has more to do with ideology than scientific method.

UPDATE: Here's another peer-reviewed journal article that questions the science: "An Inconvenient Maybe" (2008) in the journal Estudios de Economia.

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Great investigative article from USA Today:

Lynn Brewer, author of Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story, has become a globally known authority on what went wrong at Enron. Since 2002, she has given close to 200 speeches around the world. At $13,000 per appearance, she has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for her company, The Integrity Institute. In her presentations, Brewer recounts the wrongs she witnessed at Enron — a company that grossly overstated its earnings and collapsed into bankruptcy six years ago — and exhorts her listeners to act ethically in all of their dealings.

In recognition of her bravery in speaking out as a whistle-blower, the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, is featuring Brewer in an exhibition devoted to freedom of speech.

A salute from the people who give out the Nobel Peace Prize is a heady achievement, but what makes Brewer's story truly remarkable is that she appears to have fabricated significant portions of her tale, starting with whether she was ever an Enron 'executive' and extending to her claims of being a 'whistle-blower.'

Instead, a USA TODAY investigation, involving interviews with two dozen former colleagues, reveals Brewer to be an astute self-promoter who parlayed an undistinguished 32-month stint as an Enron employee into a lucrative career in the corporate ethics industry. She appears to have succeeded by modeling herself after another woman regarded as an Enron whistle-blower, Sherron Watkins."

Take the time to read the whole thing -- the reporter really did a great job interviewing everyone who knew her to establish the fact that she's really full of crap.

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Duffy donned his first sweater vest of the season. Yes, fall has arrived.

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A rebuke for Al Gore:

A High Court judge today ruled that An Inconvenient Truth can be distributed to every school in the country but only if it comes with a note explaining nine scientific errors in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film.

The Government had pledged to send thousands of copies of the film to schools across the country, but a Kent father challenged that policy saying it would “brainwash” children. A judge was asked to adjudicate between Stewart Dimmock and the Department of Children, Schools and Families.

Mr. Justice Burton ruled that the film could be sent to schools, but only if it was accompanied by new guidlines to balance the former US vice-president’s “one-sided” views. The judge said some of the errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration” in order to support Mr Gore’s thesis on global warming.

I wonder if there's a similar legal effort in the United States.

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Great report from The Christian Science Monitor on a crackdown in Egypt:

The regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is in the midst of one of its largest crackdowns against public dissent in a decade.

Seven journalists have been given prison sentences in recent weeks; more than a thousand activists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's most popular political opposition, languish in jail; and labor organizers involved in a wave of strikes at government-owned factories have been detained.

An important international story that no one will ever hear about.

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Apparently radical feminist bra-burning rallies in the 60s are just a myth:

The infamous bra-trashing demonstration that gave birth to the myth was part of a 1968 protest of the Miss America pageant.

Jacqui Ceballos, 82, of Fort Lauderdale, was there. The president of Veteran Feminists of America remembers that sunny day in September when she boarded a bus in New York City bound for Atlantic City, N.J.

'The radical women were starting up all over the country,' Ceballos told me in a phone conversation last week, and you could still hear the excitement in her voice. 'All the buses were lined up. We sang all the way there.'

The women, a few hundred strong, gathered on the Boardwalk to protest the pageant, which they felt was demeaning to women.

'We started demonstrating, and our plan was to burn bras and other items, but it was against the law.'

Even more surprising is that an organization called Women In Media & News keeps an eye on media outlets who report the bra-burning myth as fact.

Who knew?

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Sorry for the light blogging lately. Just did a presentation for Faculty Day at the college where I teach part-time. I put my PowerPoint presentation online using Google's new "SlideShow" application.

Now, Google offers free online Powerpoint, Excel and Word. And you can access your documents from anywhere. I'm a big fan.

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Video of a CBS reporter asking a Congresswoman about some pork barrel spending. The lawmaker nearly loses her cool. Uncomfortable to watch.

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Wow! Another highly effective video from Dove regarding the beauty industry. (I know, they're trying to sell stuff too -- but I don't think that dilutes the efficacy of this message.)

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Take a second to look around this Flikr photo gallery. A Richard Scarry children's book from 1963 is compared to an updated version from 1991.

As the Amazon book blog puts it:

Need to update a kids' book for modernity? No problem: just put Dad in the kitchen, change the police officers to women and the schoolteachers to men, and ditch any milkmen, "pretty stewardesses," and Wild West-style Indians. And if you want a better ratio of women, just add hair-bows.

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The Red Sox beat the Angels last night and appear headed to the ALCS again. Manny Ramirez hit a three-run homer in the 9th to win it. Here's what he had to say after the game:

I am one of the best players in the game.

Who says today's major leaguers aren't as classy as the old-timers?

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Pretty funny story.

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This just in:

A television commercial for Nabisco's Fig Newton bars that debuted Friday preys on a wide range of innate human weaknesses, from greed and gluttony to the compulsive need for self-gratification in an otherwise cold and uncaring world, industry sources reported Monday.

"Flattery, pride, self-aggrandizement, fear of rejection: This latest Fig Newtons ad campaign fires on all cylinders," advertising executive and CNBC talk-show host Donny Deutsch said. "It has nothing but contempt for its target audience, its exploitative nature borders on the unethical, and it's one of the most brilliant marketing strategies in years."

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AND OBEY!!!

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A report from Sudan:

KABKABIYA, Sudan - Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security officials who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet representatives of ethnic African refugees from the ongoing conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound.

Carter was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security services interrupted.

"You can't go. It's not on the program!" the local security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as "The Elders."

"We're going to anyway!" an angry Carter retorted, telling security officers they didn't have the authority to stop him.

Just didn't want to miss my one opportunity to praise President Carter. Well done, sir.

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Now, I'm not saying that I support this type of authoritarian action:

Days after banning "sexually provocative sounds" on television, China has now stopped networks showing "saucy" adverts for push-up bras and figure-hugging underwear ahead of a major Communist Party meeting next month.

Other targets of the crackdown are "low-brow and base" commercials for sex toys and those featuring famous people or experts attesting to the efficacy of medicines, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said on its Web site (www.sarft.gov.cn) Friday.

"Every television advertisement management bureau and television station must strengthen their political consciousness and responsibility toward society," Tian Jin, deputy head of the regulator, was quoted as saying.

But, I think that we should acknowledge that there are deleterious affects to the over-sexualization of our culture. The fact that I can't watch a baseball game with my six-year-old son without seeing overtly sexual advertisements troubles me.

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This'll raise some eyebrows with the music labels:

In a break from industry tradition the UK band famous for hits including Creep, Paranoid Android and Karma Police, has told fans "it's up to you" what they pay to digitally download the album.

This isn't the first time that an artist has opted to charge nothing for its album, but the move is significant because Radiohead remains one of the biggest bands in the world.

Radiohead is free to sell its album directly from its official website because it is no longer tied to a record label. So far the album is only available to pre-order from the website, where it can be downloaded on release on October 10.

While loyal fans are likely to want to pay the band something, customers could opt to pay as little 45p - the credit card handling fee.

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My brother-in-law is going vegetarian for one month. Read of his experience via his aptly named blog, John Duffy's Sacrifices.

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