IN RESPONSE TO JOE CONASON, Professor Bainbridge crunches the numbers. And asks a question about news judgment.

THE OTHER DAY I MENTIONED JOHN GARTNER’S NEW BOOK, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a little) Craziness and (a lot of) Success in America. Now Daniel Gross has a review in Slate, concluding: “Gartner is right that hypomanic first movers matter a lot, and that we need a few more. But we shouldn’t forget the huge contributions of the more sober-minded folks who follow behind and pick up the pieces.”

THE WILL COLLIER / STEVE LOVELADY DIALOGUE continues.

THIS ARTICLE from The Australian on blogs, Eason Jordan, etc., isn’t bad, but the headline — as Reckers notes — is probably wrong: bloggers were far more interested in seeing the Davos tape than in getting rid of Eason Jordan. But my opening quote on the media reaction is this:

“THEY’RE scared spitless,” says Glenn Reynolds. “But they shouldn’t be.”

They are. And they shouldn’t be. I just listened to the WSJ’s Bret Stephens on Hugh Hewitt’s show, and his basic line seemed to be that everybody screws up, so nobody should be criticized too harshly.

Well, everybody does screw up, and there’s nothing unforgivable about screwing up. What’s unforgivable is either deliberately misleading, as with the Rather bogus-document story, or following a screwup with denials and stonewalls as with Rather or Jordan. The defensiveness with which a lot of Big Media folks are responding to this topic suggest to me that either they’re unable to imagine a swift and open correction, or that their work is even worse than we think . . . . At any rate, as I said on Charlie Rose, they could easily incorporate bloggers as unpaid fact-checkers and assistant editors, improving their product and making friends. All they need to do is get off those high horses for a while.

UPDATE: Davos insider and blogger Lance Knobel weighs in on what’s going on:

Although the Forum has long claimed non-plenary sessions are off the record, this is followed far more in the breach than the observance. Much of the reporting from Davos comes out of so-called off-the-record sessions, without the journalist obtaining the consent of all involved. Further, most people recognise that it is futile to claim an event attended by more than a few people can truly be off the record. Larry Summers, when he was deputy Treasury secretary, told me in Davos that the first thing he learned in Washington was that any conversation with more than two participants would never be off the record (a lesson he has had to relearn recently). . . .

What certainly could have happened, shielding the Forum from embarrassment, was for Eason to have asked for the recording to be released. Even in more formal off-the-record situations, if the participants agree after the fact, material can move to on the record.

As several people have commented since the Eason resignation, what was on the tape must have been as bad or worse than reported. I suspect the Forum would have released the recording on Eason’s request, but no such request was forthcoming because of what would have resulted.

I suspect the same thing. (Via Dave Winer). And, by the way, I should mention that I have more on the Jordan / blogs fallout over at GlennReynolds.com.

MICHAEL SILENCE IS CELEBRATING DIVERSITY: It looks better than when I did it . . .

TRAFFIC CAMERA UPDATE:

Red light camera programs in at least 19 cities across the country are likely to be shut down this year following actions taken by courts and legislatures in the past two weeks.

State legislatures threaten programs in Virginia, where 7 cities use the technology; Texas, where one city uses stoplight cameras; and Utah, where there are no cameras, but a strong push to install them. The courts threaten the programs in eleven North Carolina cities and could prompt significant refunds for ticketed drivers in California, where 39 cities use the technology.

These things are a longstanding InstaPundit topic, and I’m glad to see them fading away in so many places. Let’s hope this is a trend.

ANOTHER NEGATIVE REVIEW for Thomas Wood’s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, this time from Max Boot in The Weekly Standard. I mentioned some earlier negative reviews here.

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE has questions for conservatives on Social Security reform: “I’m open to persuasion (and remain ideologically inclined to favor private accounts), but I would really appreciate some serious answers to these questions before making up my mind.”

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru responds.

CONSERVATIVES AGAINST THE INDECENCY BILL: You can’t question the right-wing credentials of guys whose site used to be named “CrushKerry.com,” but here’s post in strong opposition to the legislation:

One of the problems is that politicians get so juiced up to out-moralize one another, they forget this is supposed to be America. There’s lots of great countries where the state controls what you are able to watch. Move to one of them if you hate Janet Jackson.

As for me, I use the remote control.

Me too.

LOOKING FOR HEALTHCARE BLOGGING? There’s not much of that here, but I do offer a pointer to Grand Rounds, where health care professionals blog about health care.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS A roundup on Syria.

THE L.A. TIMES corrects a correction. Good for them!

MORE COOL WEB VIDEO: Amazon has the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trailer online, which is pretty good. I think Amazon is being very smart, as their video features are bound to lure a lot of traffic.

UPDATE: For some reason that link isn’t working for some people. But you can find the video on Amazon’s main page.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up, with blog posts on all sorts of things, by all sorts of people. And don’t miss the second installment of the Carnival of Education. Plus, don’t miss the Iraqi bloggers’ roundup at the Carnival of the Liberated.

I don’t participate in Carnivals — I just send traffic. I’m sort of a barker, I guess.

UPDATE: And the Red Ensign Standard is a sort of Carnival of Canadians.

INTERESTING PIECE FROM NEW YORK MAGAZINE by Spy founder Kurt Andersen on the new liberal guilt:

But now our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration’s awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might—might, possibly—have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq.

At a media-oligarchy dinner party on Fifth Avenue 72 hours after the elections, the emotions were highly mixed. The wife of a Democratic Party figure was (like me) unabashedly hopeful about what had happened in Iraq. Across the table, though, the wife of a well-known liberal actor was having none of it; instead, she complained about Fahrenheit 9/11’s being denied an Oscar nomination. And a newspaper éminence grise seemed more inclined to discuss Condoleezza Rice’s unfortunate hairstyle than the vicissitudes of Wolfowitzism. It was the night of the State of the Union speech, but as far as I know, no one (including me) ducked out of the dining room to find a TV. Who really wanted to watch Bush take his victory lap?

Read the whole thing.

EIGHT YEARS OF EMAIL, analyzed.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the Popular Mechanics debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories that I linked the other day. The Popular Mechanics folks have done a great service. Their debunking won’t persuade the nuts — but it will make the nuts easier to spot.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE? “When colleges ask applicants about their race or ethnicity, the forms always say that the question is optional. Increasingly, students are exercising their option — and not answering the question.”

Or maybe they just don’t think it’s that relevant.

HMM: “TEHRAN, Iran – An unknown aircraft fired a missile on Wednesday in a deserted area near the southern city of Dailam in the province of Bushehr where Iran has a nuclear power plant, Iranian state television said.”

UPDATE: Now they’re saying it was a fuel-tank drop.

TODD ZYWICKI:

But is it true that it is “now documented” that 50% of bankruptcies are caused by health problems?

The conclusion is based on a study in Health Affairs. Reviewing the study, it appears that the estimate that 50% of bankruptcy filings are precipitated by a “serious medical problem” cannot be supported based on what that study actually examined.

He offers a rather lengthy critique.

TOM MAGUIRE WRITES on how the lefty blogosphere can conquer the world.

REAL SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM: My TechCentralStation column is up.

THE CHARLIE ROSE blog show is airing now, at least where I am. The Syrian Ambassador comes first, though.

UPDATE: Trey Jackson has posted some video excerpts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Geraghty liked the show, and has nice things to say about Joe Trippi.

RATHERGATE UPDATE: More disarray at CBS.

UPDATE: Much more here, from the New York Observer:

Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the network’s credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths from the same document.

Mr. Howard and two other ousted CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—haven’t resigned. And sources close to Mr. Howard said that before any resignation comes, the 23-year CBS News veteran is demanding that the network retract Mr. Moonves’ remarks, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name.

Mr. Howard, those sources said, has hired a lawyer to develop a breach-of-contract suit against the network. Ms. Murphy and Ms. West have likewise hired litigators, according to associates of theirs, and all three remain CBS employees and collect weekly salaries from the company that asked them to tender their resignations.

This seems likely to end badly for all concerned.

A “FIRST AMENDMENT WEDGIE” in Maryland: I think a lot of press folks are discovering the gap between what they think the First Amendment ought to cover, and what it actually does cover.