27 July 2004 @ 8:15AM >> Attention Mike Dukakis: All of a sudden, that tank doesn’t look so silly.

26 July 2004 >> What Kerry needs to do is attract some of the voters who don’t equate Bush with Hitler. That’ll be hard if Kerry is seen as surrounded by extremists. Maybe Kerry recognizes this but is trying to have it both ways, as he does when he votes in favor of bills before he votes against them. But this is an issue he can’t waffle on. When voters view the Democratic Convention, they’ll either see hatred on display or they won’t. I’m sure Kerry’s team will do their best to present a sanitized convention, but today’s Democrats seem to be driven by rage and not reason. And rage is very hard to contain, which means we may be in for a rather interesting week up in Boston. More >>

25 July 2004 @ 3:38PM >> It’s I-told-you-so time! This admission from New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent confirms what may of us have known for years:

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Of course it is.

[...]

Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.

Okrent goes on to describe how the culture at the Times views some people as “as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide,” such as “devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, [and] Texans.” (I would add conservatives to that list.) Okrent argues that this culture permeates the Times as a whole and is not limited to the editorial page, the one place where bias is understandable.

While it may not seem that we should be applauding Mr. Okrent for stating the obvious, one must appreciate the massive institutional resistance that likely opposed such a public admission. But it is a wise move, not because it fixes anything, but because credibility is the primary asset of any media outlet. If a paper isn’t even honest about itself, how can one believe anything else printed there?

Mr. Okrent notes how the perception of liberal bias at the Times allows readers to dismiss what they read there:

Newspapers have the right to decide what’s important and what’s not. But their editors must also expect that some readers will think: “This does not represent me or my interests. In fact, it represents my enemy.” So is it any wonder that the offended or befuddled reader might consider everything else in the paper—including, say, campaign coverage—suspicious as well?

Okrent’s article may be a one-time event, or it may be the first step toward bringing balance to the Times. If it’s the latter, then this admission represents a monumental moment at the Times. And if not, then at least it provides some ammunition against liberals who either refuse to admit or can’t see the slant at the Times. (I had one college professor who repeatedly argued that the Times was right-wing, an argument we stopped having after I showed him that the Times hadn’t endorsed a single Republican presidential candidate in over 50 years but had consistently backed liberal icons like George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis, all of whom lost landslide elections.)

Good for you, Mr. Okrent. I’m sure this won’t make you terribly popular among your peers over at the Times. But the truth will rarely win you a popularity contest.

25 July 2004 @ 3:01AM >> In the discussion forum, Dylan asked about the relative lack of recent Brain Terminal site updates. I’m re-posting my reply here, because it may be of general interest:

Dylan,

Yes, I am working on a new project: a feature-length documentary film. Although the film itself won’t be ready for around another year, I will be submitting an early version in short form to a couple of film festivals this fall. We (the members of the production company formed to make this film) recently made the decision to show some of our material at these festivals, and getting the footage ready in time is a monumental undertaking. Unfortunately, as I scramble to edit the footage, I’ve had very little time for anything else, which is why there have been relatively infrequent updates to this site lately.

The good news is that when the footage for our short film is ready, we will be posting it online. When we do, I will certainly let everyone here know where they can find it. We expect this to be sometime by October.

I can’t reveal much more about the project now, other than to say that—while it does involve politics—it does not focus on protesters, the 2004 election or Michael Moore. Still, the topic is one of vital importance to the future of our country, and I hope—perhaps naively—that this project will help change some institutions that have become strikingly corrupt in the last few decades.

In the meantime, I apologize if it appears that I am neglecting this site. When this project is complete, I believe it will make the recent drought seem worthwhile.

Take care,
Evan

18 July 2004 @ 4:40PM >> Supporters of John Kerry are apparently employing some new tactics to get attention from voters:

Town police are looking for a man who sexually groped two women in a mall parking lot last week.

[...]

In the first incident, Lisa Hayes of the Town of Poughkeepsie was with her children and about to get into her car about 12:30 p.m. when the man approached her.

‘’I was putting the stroller in the trunk and was walking to get in the car and all of a sudden, I felt a presence behind me,'’ she said.

Startled, Hayes said she pulled back as the man reached for her hand while peeling off homemade John Kerry stickers he was carrying.

‘’He was saying, ‘Are you going to vote for Kerry?’ ‘’ Hayes said. ‘’He started sticking them on my breasts and feeling them.'’

No word yet on Bill Clinton’s whereabouts during the incident.

16 July 2004 @ 3:41AM >> Smarter Child, an automated chat-bot program running on AOL’s Instant Messenger, is about as non-partisan as your average thesaurus. When a 13-year-old girl named Erin started a political “conversation” with Smarter Child, she noticed a definite political slant. Among the choice quotes:

• “George W. Bush is way uncool.”
• “I’m a Kerry supporter myself.”
• “John Kerry rocks.”
• “I really, really don’t like George W. Bush.”

AOL says it was unaware that Smarter Child was programmed to plug John Kerry, adding that the news was “concerning.”

I wonder if Smarter Child’s “opinions” should count as an in-kind advertising contribution to the Kerry campaign.

13 July 2004 @ 8:19PM >> While perusing the Roget’s New Millenium Thesaurus over at thesaurus.com, I noticed the following synonyms listed for the word bigoted:

biased, conservative, dogmatic, illiberal, narrow, narrow-minded, obstinate, opinionated, partial, partisan, sectarian, slanted, small-minded, twisted, unfair, warped

The antonyms of bigoted are listed as:

broad-minded, humanitarian, liberal, open-minded, tolerant, unprejudiced

According to this entry, we can see the political world according to Roget’s: Conservatives are warped people who are also biased, opinionated, unfair, small-minded and bigoted. Liberals are humanitarians who are open-minded, unprejudiced and tolerant.

Given the favorable associations with the word liberal and the negative view of the word conservative, one could easily conclude that this entry was written by a liberal. If that’s true, then it must also be the case that an open-minded, unprejudiced and tolerant person is describing people with different views as twisted and small-minded. That doesn’t sound very open-minded, unprejudiced or tolerant, does it?

It doesn’t to me, either.

So, I did a little research and discovered that Roget’s New Millenium Thesaurus is edited by a woman named Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. After a little more research, I was able to place a call to Ms. Kipfer, PhD.

Much to my surprise, Ms. Kipfer, PhD picked up the phone herself. I asked her if these characterizations indicated a political bias on the part of the people behind Roget’s. Ms. Kipfer, PhD replied that the word choices were not a sign of bias, just some sort of oversight. She further explained that a thesaurus is usually compiled from other thesauri—an act that, in another business, might be considered something else entirely—and that this would explain the “oversight”.

Ms. Kipfer, PhD suggested that the current entry might be corrected in a future version. I found Ms. Kipfer, PhD to be quite pleasant on the phone, and I have no reason to doubt her.

So, will my phone call really result in a change? I don’t know for sure, but if you find a future edition of Roget’s where conservatism is not portrayed in such an unflattering light, you’ll have this unfair, narrow-minded, opinionated bigot to thank.

10 July 2004 @ 12:26AM >> When I was eleven years old, I knew I was very interested in politics. Perhaps that’s why I feel a little kinship with Emil Levitin, who at the ripe young age of eleven is an aspiring political commentator.

And, unlike me at that age, Emil (a pseudonym) has the good sense to be on the right side of the aisle! (Back then, I was handing out leaflets for Walter Mondale.)

As the folks over at OxBlog said of Emil’s Republican Voices site, “it is very hard to believe that an 11-year old can write so well.”

9 July 2004 @ 1:01AM >> Not everyone attending a Bill Clinton book signing is necessarily a rabid Clinton supporter. I found this out when I received an e-mail from Ed Dvir, one of the folks I interviewed during Clinton’s recent book signing in lower Manhattan.

Ed, the gentleman in the brown hat who speaks of skipping to the juicy parts of Clinton’s autobiography “like a romance novel”, is not a fan of Clinton. He was actually there to get a signature and sell the autographed book on Ebay, which he did to the tune of $620. Not bad!

Although the video itself did not characterize the people standing in line as supporters of Bill, the old introductory text to the video did. Understandably, Ed objected to being lumped in with the Clinton worshippers, so I’ve changed the text describing the video.

My apologies to you, Ed. I can only imagine the severe stain on one’s reputation by being erroneously labeled a fan of Clinton!

7 July 2004 @ 6:13PM >> Check out this quote from a recent Los Angeles Times article:

L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator for Iraq, left without even giving a final speech to the country — almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year.

Obviously, the second part of that quote is a bit of editorializing. But we’ll ignore the fact that the statement came in a “news” story and not an opinion piece. The greater transgression is the fact that the report is dead wrong. Bremer did deliver a farewell speech, and it was apparently quite well-received by at least some Iraqis.

In all fairness to the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post screwed up the story as well.

Napoleon once said, “Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.” It’s good advice for the conspiratorially-minded. But in the case of the traditional media, why does it always seem that the supposed incompetence carries with it a specific political message?

2 July 2004 @ 8:25PM >> I don’t use Microsoft Windows. The bugs, viruses and pop-up ads that plague Windows users would drive me crazy. Actually, they drive me crazy anyway, because being my family’s only techie means that I am often asked to act as a surrogate customer service representative for Microsoft.

Recently, my neighbors started having problems with their Windows machines. Then my girlfriend started having similar problems. The system would slow down, refuse to connect to the Internet, and would generally behave unpredictably. My solution was to install Mozilla Firefox, a web browser that traces its lineage back to Netscape. (Remember them?)

Since replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox, the problems have gone away. (Note, however, that viruses can also be transmitted by e-mail, so don’t open any attachments unless you know exactly what you’re doing.)

Apparently, I’m not alone in recommending that people stop using flawed Microsoft products like Internet Explorer: today, I read that the Department of Homeland Security is suggesting that people avoid using IE:

The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer.

The Microsoft browser, the government warned, cannot protect against vulnerabilities in its Internet Information Services (IIS) 5 server programs, which a team of hackers allegedly based in Russia has exploited with a Java script that is appended to Web sites.

The particular virus initiated this week inserts Java script into certain Web sites. When users visit those sites, it initiates pop-up ads on home and office computers, and allows keystroke analysis of user information. The target is believed to be credit card numbers. CERT estimated that as many as tens of thousands of Web sites may be affected.

If you have to use Microsoft Windows, I would very strongly recommend against Internet Explorer. And, if you have the luxury of choosing which operating system you use, try Apple’s Macintosh OS X, and you’ll see what computing is like when you don’t have to constantly fight your computer. Apple’s Safari web browser—included with Mac OS X—is excellent.

1 July 2004 @ 6:51PM >> For an example of why it’s so hard to trust the accuracy and completeness of the coverage of the Iraq war, read this article from Marine Corps reservist Eric M. Johnson:

Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don’t get much notice — or in many cases, any notice at all.

Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. He spent most of his career on the metro and technology beats, and has only four years of foreign reporting, two of which are in Iraq. The 31-year-old now runs a news operation that can literally change the world, heading a bureau that is the source for much of the news out of Iraq.

Very few newspapers have full-time international reporters at all these days, relying on stringers of varying quality, as well as wire services such as Reuters and Agence France-Presse, also of varying quality. The Post’s reporting is delivered intravenously into the bloodstream of Official Washington, and thus a front-page article out of Iraq can have major repercussions in policy-making.

When so few people control so much of the news that comes to us from Iraq, the worldview of those few people is of paramount importance. It’s just another reason why balance is needed in the traditional media.