30 September 2005 @ 4:35AM >> After reading about Bucknell’s problem with the phrase “hunting terrorists,” an alumnus suggested that I give the new university president, Brian C. Mitchell, the benefit of the doubt. More >>

30 September 2005 @ 4:20AM >> Yesterday, for the first time, I watched an entire TV show online—and I wasn’t breaking the law!

Google Video, a new beta-test site from the search engine company, made available the premiere episode of Chris Rock’s new sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris.”

Not only was the show pretty damn funny—it has now earned a coveted spot on my TiVo—but the picture and sound quality were impressive. There was no skipping or stalling, the video window was large enough to make for enjoyable viewing, and the quality of the motion and resolution was impressive.

Hopefully, this isn’t just a one-time publicity stunt; I’d love to watch more shows this way. Of course, since the online episode was free and it contained no ads, I’m not expecting this service to be a permanent fixture without some sort of modification to the business model.

Now if only Google Video would add “The Office”...

28 September 2005 @ 11:40AM >> Two words. At Bucknell University, that’s all it takes to get dragged into the President’s Office for a half-hour discussion of word choice. And these aren’t offensive words, at least not out here in the real world. But Bucknell apparently has a different definition of what is and is not acceptable.

On August 29th, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing an upcoming speaker: Major John Krenson, who had been in Afghanistan “hunting terrorists.” Those two words—”hunting terrorists”—resulted in three students being called to Bucknell’s Office of the President by Kathy Owens, the Executive Assistant to the President.

According to the students, when they arrived at the President’s Office for the meeting, Ms. Owens held up a print-out of the offending e-mail and said “we have a problem here,” telling the students that the words “hunting terrorists” were offensive. For the next half-hour, the three students were given a lecture on inappropriate phrasing.

(When contacted, Ms. Owens did acknowledge that the meeting took place, but refused to answer any questions about what transpired. She did not deny the account of the students.)

Last year, while collecting footage for my upcoming film Indoctrinate U, I noticed that the campus was plastered with flyers that screamed “vagina” in large block letters. Although some people might find these flyers offensive, it is protected speech at Bucknell—as it should be—but apparently the phrase “hunting terrorists” is not.

(Perhaps someone should remind Bucknell’s administrators that the American soldiers who are “hunting terrorists” are fighting the very sort of misogynistic thugs who would gladly stone a woman to death for talking about her vagina in public.)

For years, Bucknell has denied that it has a speech code, the speech-stifling regulations that many schools use to punish political speech they don’t like. But if Bucknell isn’t in the business of restricting free speech, then why did these students have to spend 30 minutes listening to criticisms of the phrase “hunting terrorists”?

Most students I know would prefer not to spend their time defending their speech in front of highly-placed university administrators. By taking this action, the Bucknell administration is sending a signal to students: say only those things we approve of, or we will hassle you. The long-term effect will be that students will think twice before engaging in political speech that they know will be unpopular with the administration.

As an alumnus of Bucknell, this is all very depressing. Even more so because the recent appointment of Brian C. Mitchell as the new University President was met with optimism from students who have grown tired of fighting the constant battles against campus political correctness. Let’s hope this incident is just a minor misstep in a new administration, and not a sign of things to come.

Update: The university is now claiming that the students are misrepresenting the meeting. However, I have e-mail evidence from the university president himself that backs up the students’ claims.

27 September 2005 @ 1:46PM >> Here’s an interesting list of things that offend Islam...and things that don’t.

26 September 2005 @ 9:39PM >> The International Freedom Center, the controversial Ground Zero memorial, has a powerful new foe: Senator Hillary Clinton. The New York Post reported this weekend:

“I cannot support the IFC,” Clinton declared last night in a strongly worded statement in response to an inquiry from The Post.

Her tough comments are Clinton’s first significant remarks about the controversy raging at Ground Zero over the Freedom Center, which 9/11 families and other critics fear will become a center of anti-Americanism.

“While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns family members and first responders have expressed to me,” Clinton said.

“The LMDC [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] has authority over the site and I do not believe we can move forward until it heeds and addresses their concerns.”

In the face of obscene political correctness, Senator Clinton is demonstrating a levelheadedness that is all too rare from Democrats these days. If more Democratic politicians took regular stands like this, they’d probably enjoy much more success at the ballot box. Of course, the triangulating Clintons understand this too, which may or may not be the sole reason Hillary adopted this position. Either way, she deserves credit if her opposition helps prevent the International Freedom Center from defiling the graveyards of so many people.

Update: Governor George Pataki finally pulls the plug. The IFC is dead. Finished. It won’t be disgracing Ground Zero. Special thanks should go to Debra Burlingame, whose tireless efforts pushed this issue onto the radar screen of New York’s politicians.

22 September 2005 @ 8:15PM >> The Air America financial scandal claimed its first victim, the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, a Bronx charity from which some $875,000 was apparently pilfered in order to finance the upstart left-wing radio network:

The national board of the Boys & Girls Clubs voted to yank Gloria Wise’s charter, barring them from using the much-heralded organization’s symbols and fund-raising clout because of a breach of ethical standards and failing to file audits.

Evan McElroy, a spokesman for the national organization, said officers at Gloria Wise had ignored repeated requests to file annual financial reports. “We gave them plenty of chances,” he said.

“Our clubs are run according to ethical business practices that were, in the view of our board, breached,” McElroy said of the Gloria Wise club based in Co-op City.

City investigators yanked more than $10 million of public contracts from Gloria Wise in June after revealing a probe of the club’s finances, including the bizarre transfer of nearly $1 million to the left-wing radio station.

Meanwhile, with its supply of financing from inner-city youth cut off, Air America has taken to begging listeners for contributions. Apparently, advertisers aren’t willing to pay much for dismal ratings.

The moral of the story? Liberal radio can’t survive without the money of American taxpayers.

22 September 2005 @ 1:00AM >> John Hinderaker presents “an interesting window into the mind of an influential liberal journalist.”

20 September 2005 @ 9:14PM >> Polar ice caps on Mars are melting, reports Space.com:

[NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft] observed a gradual evaporation of carbon dioxide ice in one of Mars’ polar caps, pointing to a slowly changing Mars climate.

“They way these polar pits are retreating is absolutely astounding,” [geologist Jack] Mustard said.

But like the rockfalls, researchers were unable to account for the gradual climate change.

“Why is Mars warmer today that it was in the past, we really have no way of knowing why,” [scientist Michael] Malin said.

Let’s see:

1. Earth getting warmer.
2. Mars getting warmer.
3. Increased solar activity.

Gotta be those fossil fuels.

19 September 2005 @ 7:57PM >> The New York Times launched a brilliant new initiative that just may help improve its image. Stung by constant embarrassment over the mental droolings of columnists like Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert, the Times has decided to partition off the offending writers, putting them behind a wall that costs $49.95 a year to breach.

No longer will the great unwashed masses of Internet writers be able to directly cite the work of these columnists, which may be precisely the point. Who’s going to bother paying for the privilege of fact-checking Paul Krugman? I’m sure I’m not the only one who won’t be forking over any cash to wade through the high school fantasies of Maureen Dowd, whose meandering columns read like notes taken by her psychologist.

I understand why the Times wishes to build a cocoon around itself, but doing so may only hasten its descent into irrelevance. Still, as an online-only reader of the paper, I applaud the decision. Not having the option of reading those columnists is going to save me a lot of time.

18 September 2005 @ 2:42PM >> Is there any human activity left that Europeans do not expect the government to finance? Ananova reports:

The Danish government is under attack for paying for its disabled citizens to have sex with prostitutes.

The official ‘Sex, irrespective of disability’ campaign pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

Stig Langvad of Denmark’s Disabled Association defends the expenditures, saying: “The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.”

According to the article, “opposition parties have attacked the regulations, claiming it is an immoral way of spending tax-payers’ money.”

Immoral? How about just wasteful? If prostitution were considered moral, would that mean the government should pay for it?

And why should such a program be limited to the disabled? I know some perfectly-abled people who can’t seem to get laid. Shouldn’t they get some relief from the government as well?

16 September 2005 @ 2:03PM >> Byron Calame, the public editor of The New York Times, blasted opinion columnist Paul Krugman and editorial page editor Gail Collins today for the failure to issue a correction over Krugman’s misrepresentation of the media-led recount effort in the wake of the 2000 election:

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error “is expected to promptly correct it in the column.” That’s the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages “a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece.”

Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn’t been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn’t offered any explanation.

[...]

A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times’s credibility more than having no policy at all?

That’s a good question, and Mr. Calame deserves credit for asking it. At least one person at the Times apparently believes that long-term credibility matters; apparently it doesn’t to Paul Krugman or Gail Collins.

Welcome to the fight, Byron. You officially have my respect.

16 September 2005 @ 1:33PM >> “Chanman,” a public school teacher, wrote in to describe his own experience with Islamic prayer in school:

Two years ago, I taught at a high school in the Sacramento area. One day during lunch, I walked to the lounge of the social studies department to make some copies. There were two girls wearing hajibs, standing outside the door of the lounge. They stopped me from entering because, “our friend is praying in there.” Their friend, a Muslim, was using our teachers lounge to pray toward Mecca because she felt funny about doing it outside. Meanwhile, I am stopped from performing my teacherly duties because a Muslim was using the teachers’ area to pray. Of course the head of our department was all for this and was quite tickled with himself at his showing of tolerance and compassion. I couldn’t help but wonder, would he have shown the same tolerance and compassion if a Christian girl had asked if she could use our teachers lounge to pray? To ask the question is to answer it.

16 September 2005 @ 12:00PM >> The Times of London’s Higher Education Supplement profiles Evan Coyne Maloney: “You need to leave or you’re going to jail,” intones the policeman. The camera pans down to a holstered gun at the officer’s waist. Evan Coyne Maloney, scourge of the Establishment, is clearly not welcome.” More >>

15 September 2005 @ 11:29PM >> Pallywood is a short documentary, available online, that shows how freelance Palestinian cameramen are funneling staged “war footage” through major media outlets into homes throughout the world. Naturally, these staged shots are engineered for the highest emotional propaganda value, intended to get the viewer to sympathize with the Palestinian cause.

SecondDraft.org exposes how broadcast media are duped—perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not—into becoming unpaid assistants of the Palestinian media effort.

Update: This article in Commentary magazine, sent in by reader Bill Walsh, indicates that what you see in Pallywood is just the tip of the iceberg.

15 September 2005 @ 11:01AM >> Have you ever noticed how faddish science can be? It always seems like some food that we were told to eat more of ten years ago now turns out will kill us. It’s not just limited to dietary concerns; it happens with earth science as well. Did you know that just ten years before people started panicking about global warming, scientists were convinced the biggest environmental threat was global cooling?

This article by Peter Gwynne—published on April 28, 1975 in Newsweek—tries to stir up a panic about the impending “little ice age”. More >>

14 September 2005 @ 12:54PM >> An e-mail in response to “Prayer in School? Only for Muslims” points out an imprecision in my argument:

From: darwin
Subject: prayer in school
Date: 8 September 2005 5:20:04 AM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

You wrote: “Everybody knows that prayer isn’t allowed in school—for Christians.”

As I understand it, this ruling is nothing new... Christians can pray in schools, privately, during non-class time. As this case appears to be about a Muslim girl who wants to pray during lunch (not class time) I don’t see what the big deal is.

I’m a fan of Brain Terminal and your movies, but I think you’re overreacting to [this case.]

=darwin

Darwin,

Yes, as I now understand it, voluntary student-initiated prayer is permissible during non-class time. If that were the extent of the case, then I don’t think there would be much discussion. I don’t have any problem with Muslim students praying in public schools, so long as the rules for them are the same as for anyone else. So, if this portion of the original news item is the only salient point, then it seems the Muslim student has a legitimate gripe:

While her classmates were eating lunch, she wanted to go off by herself for a few moments to pray. The 14-year-old was told she couldn’t, and went home distraught that afternoon in October 2003.

However, the same article, entitled “Schools loosen limits on prayers,” implies that some sort of special consideration is being sought:

Her case was part of a nationwide grass-roots effort by Muslim parents to make public schools more friendly and accommodating to Muslim students.

...and that schools are changing their procedures in response to that effort:

“You’re seeing a lot of schools becoming more sensitive this way,” said Michael Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

If the schools are following the existing rules, then they accommodate Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc. students equally. If they are not following the existing rules and are somehow treating Muslim students worse than any other group, then that is wrong and it should stop. But it sounds like the problem is that because strict Muslims need to pray five times a day, they are asking for special consideration from the schools beyond what is granted to anyone else.

Should American school schedules be reworked to make it easier for Muslims to pray? That’s a point that can be debated. But it seems to me, over the last 50 years, American schools have become much less welcoming to the practice of Judeo-Christian faiths during school hours. So I find it odd that as our society continues to stamp out any trace of our own religious heritage, we would start bending over backwards to embrace the religious practices of others.

13 September 2005 @ 2:04PM >> If mosques were treated in this fashion, the very same people who are now torching these synagogues would likely use it as an excuse to explode a few commuter buses.

And if mosques were burned to the ground by gun-toting mobs of Jews (or Christians), Europe and the U.N. would react as though Mohammed himself had just been flushed down a toilet.

Interesting, then, the worldwide silence after these synagogues are torched. No outrage. No demands for apology. Nobody getting blown up in retribution.

The lesson?

Desecration of religious symbols is acceptable—and sometimes even funded by the government!—as long as certain groups don’t get offended.

If it weren’t for the Israeli army, I suspect these mobs would gleefully set ablaze every single synagogue in Israel. And if that ever happens, will the world be just as silent?

11 September 2005 @ 9:00AM >> Remember.

9 September 2005 @ 12:15PM >> AP is reporting:

A large solar flare was reported Wednesday and forecasters warned of potential electrical and communications disruptions.

[...]

Significant solar eruptions are possible in the coming days and there could be disruptions in spacecraft operations, electric power systems, high frequency communications and low-frequency navigation systems, the agency said.

Obviously, President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove cooked up this solar flare scheme to distract attention from Hurricane Katrina, a storm they created to kill black people and distract attention from Cindy Sheehan, who they sent to Texas to overshadow reporting of the Valerie Plame leak, which occurred so we could get into a quagmire in Iraq, a war that was concocted to divert attention from the failure to get Osama bin Laden, who really doesn’t exist anyway, since everybody knows that President Bush and the Israelis arranged the 9/11 attacks to give the U.S. an excuse to take over the Middle East, which we’re doing for cheap oil (or is it expensive oil?) so we can drive SUVs (or is it so Bush’s oil cronies could get rich?), because if everyone’s happily driving SUVs (or pissed off about high gas prices), they’ll forget all about the stolen election in 2000.

Remember that when you have trouble placing cell phone calls next week. It’s all Bush’s fault.

8 September 2005 @ 10:24AM >> Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney (no relation) are both reporting on newly unearthed documents showing that Al Franken—contrary to his on-air denials—was intimately involved in the financing of Air America Radio, including the “loan” from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club that is now being investigated by New York City and State authorities:

Far from being an innocent party with no knowledge of Air America’s money woes, Franken was a signatory to the agreement. The document, published here for the first time, exposes how Franken misled his listeners and the press about his knowledge of the charity loan.

It is interesting to note that this story is being driven entirely by two bloggers, Malkin and Maloney. The establishment media, which gleefully covered all the details of Rush Limbaugh’s troubles two years ago, is missing the story entirely.

7 September 2005 @ 3:14PM >> Everybody knows that prayer isn’t allowed in school—for Christians. But when the multicultural left goes against the atheist left, things get interesting. Perhaps because Islam has no connection to those racist dead white male oppressors who founded this country, the same standards that keep Christian prayer out of school apparently don’t apply to Islamic prayer:

Yasmeen Elsamra had a simple request: While her classmates were eating lunch, she wanted to go off by herself for a few moments to pray.
The 14-year-old was told she couldn’t, and went home distraught that afternoon in October 2003. Praying five times a day is a cornerstone of her Muslim faith.
“If I wasn’t allowed to pray my second prayer at school, I couldn’t do it at home,” she said. “When school finishes, the third prayer begins.”
Her family contacted the District-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which asked the school district to reconsider.

[...]

Her case was part of a nationwide grass-roots effort by Muslim parents to make public schools more friendly and accommodating to Muslim students. The movement has gained strength since the September 11 terror attacks.
“The reality for many Muslim students in public schools is very difficult,” said Ingrid Mattson, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America. “It’s highly stressful.”

[...]

“You’re seeing a lot of schools becoming more sensitive this way,” said Michael Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Meanwhile, Accuracy in Academia reports that religion is also creeping into required classes in California’s public school system:

“From the beginning, you and your classmates will become Muslims,” the simulation directions that went with the course promised. “During your journey, you will travel in caravans, enact generosity and hospitality, engage in trade, dress up as a desert nomad or Bedouin, eat authentic food from the Islamic world, build Islamic structures, produce poetry, create works of art, and race to be the first caravan to reach Makkah.”

Actually, this is virtually the only course required in the California public school system that uses the name of God with any degree of reverence. At the same time, it is about the only religion that the California Department of Education requires for study in public schools.

[...]

[One student’s mother] asked school administrators whether any of the Judeo Christian faiths, including her own, were offered for study. Her questions left administrators tongue-tied. Other religions were not offered for study, at least in that local school.

It’s like déjà vu all over again!

No word yet from the ACLU when it will start suing to eliminate the menace of religion in public schools.

7 September 2005 @ 2:38AM >> “The last thing you want with a thesaurus is to offend anyone.”

So says Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD, the online editor for Roget’s Thesaurus.

Roget’s recently scrubbed several offensive synonyms from the entry for Arab:

The entry, which appeared on thesaurus.com, listed the word as a noun meaning “beggar,” and gave 16 pejorative synonyms including “homeless person” and “welfare bum.”

Sounds pretty reasonable that these entries should be removed. Aside from being offensive, they simply aren’t accurate reflections of common linguistic usage.

“I looked it up and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum[.]

I feel your pain, brother. You should check out all the derogatory synonyms that Roget’s is still listing for the word conservative.

2 September 2005 @ 10:35AM >> In a posting aptly entitled “Recording industry announces plans to screw up remaining business model,” John Paczkowski at Good Morning Silicon Valley notes that some in the music industry are upset about Apple’s success with its online music store. Apparently, the store isn’t sufficiently bleeding customers dry, which may have something to do with its success:

The New York Times reports that some record labels, jealous of the profits Apple is making on sales of the iPod, are pushing the company to abandon the $.99 uniform pricing approach that has made iTunes so successful and instead adopt a multitiered model that would price songs by their popularity. New songs, they say, should be priced at up to $1.49; older, less popular songs at $.99 or less.

“I just think the music companies are now at a point where there’s too much money on the table not to insist [Apple accept variable prices],” Paul Vidich, a special adviser to America Online and former executive vice president of the Warner Music Group, told the Times. “The question is what do they want the profile of the business to look like going forward?”

Indeed. And beyond that, is the market for paid downloads established enough to sustain such a pricing adjustment in its dominant service? A sudden shift away from the $.99 sweet spot could send consumers fleeing back to the file-sharing networks.

Ironic, isn’t it, that the recording industry, which two years ago had no digital music strategy to speak of, is today trying to muscle the company that gave it a digital music revenue stream. “As I recall, three years ago these guys were wandering around with their hands out looking for someone to save them,” said Mike McGuire, an analyst at Gartner G2. “It’d be rather silly to try to destabilize [Apple], because iTunes is one of the few bright spots in the industry right now. [It’s] got something that’s working.”

For years, the recording industry has resisted the notion that its current business model is obsolete in the era of music-as-files. Even though the iPod and other MP3 players have effectively separated music from its physical medium, the industry itself has done little to embrace the mechanism that more and more people prefer for their music enjoyment. Instead, they’ve been busy suing teenagers who download music illegally and trying to prop up an outmoded distribution model. Music no longer needs to be trapped in circles of plastic, but the music business is so paralyzed by panic that they’re ignoring what customers want.

Is the industry so short-sighted that it would take the risk of knifing the most successful legal online music system? Probably. But disrupting the iTunes Music Store may just send many currently paying customers back to the illegal downloading.

If individual songs cost $1.49 each, many CDs would cost more if you bought them online than in a store. This doesn’t make any sense; the incremental cost of each album sold online is basically zero, whereas each CD obviously has the cost of materials embedded in the price. Many people will feel ripped off to pay a premium that provides them with nothing, so they probably won’t go back to legal online music buying. But it’s even less likely that they’ll go back to buying CDs, and that’s precisely the danger for the music industry.

1 September 2005 @ 2:19AM >> A reader responds to my recent post on the viability of saving New Orleans:

From: Gary Dannenbaum
Subject: Can New Orleans be Saved?
Date: 31 August 2005 10:27:21 PM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

Evan,

As usual I appreciate your insight to issues large and small that you cover on [Brain Terminal], however I must take exception to your recent posting regarding the Crescent City.

You are a smart man, Evan. You think rationally and in a logical manner. You obviously are not from the South. This disaster known as Hurricane Katrina is not the first storm that has virtually wiped out New Orleans. Why do you think the cemeteries are built above ground? Sewage and foul matter have run in the streets many, many times since the inception of what is affectionately known as “The Big Easy.”

New Orleans will come back. They can’t sanitize it. The best way to describe why New Orleans will never go away is this. Please pardon the French. Laissez faire bon temp roulez!

Kindest regards,
Gary Dannenbaum

There’s a little Bourbon Street in all of us. I only regret I never visited while I had the chance. May the spirit of New Orleans live on, in whatever form the city takes next.