PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Rich Galen traces the connection between pork and corruption. Plus a suggestion on what to do.
PorkBusters action has slowed down since Congress is out of session — but if you’d like to call your Congressmember’s local office and stress your opposition to pork spending, and your desire for cuts, there’s nothing stopping you. Since most of them are home in their districts now, it might even get noticed more.
UPDATE: Read this, too.
I DON’T CARE MUCH ABOUT THE OSCARS, but Roger Simon does.
LOTS OF UPDATES TO THE HDTV POST, including a video camera endorsement from James Lileks.
BILL ROGGIO CONTINUES HIS REPORTING FROM IRAQ.
JOHN HAWKINS interviews Tammy Bruce.
UPDATE: Reader Frank Wilson forwards this review of Tammy Bruce’s new book.
A FEW INTERESTING WAR-RELATED ITEMS: “Indonesians ask why Muslims turn to bombs.” They’re not the only ones asking.
“Assassination in Samarra Backfires.” Austin Bay notes that sometimes terrorists experience blowback.
“Dems Determined to Ignore Progress in Iraq.” Mark Steyn says that antiwar Democrats have their heads in the sand. (Meanwhile, the Columbia Journalism Review seems to have its head in the sand regarding Democrats who aren’t antiwar.)
UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein uncovers a new war plan.
CARNIVALESQUE is a carnival of medievalist blogging. (Via ClioPatria.)
UPDATE: The Carnival of the Cats is up, too.
DISAPPEARING MEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION:
The trend of females overtaking males in college was initially measured in 1978. Yet despite the well-documented disappearance of ever more young men from college campuses, we have yet to fully react to what has become a significant crisis. Largely, that is because of cultural perceptions about males and their societal role. Many times a week, a reporter or other media person will ask me: “Why should we care so much about boys when men still run everything?”
It’s a fair and logical question, but what it really reflects is that our culture is still caught up in old industrial images.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: GirlintheLockerRoom says Gurian’s numbers are wrong.
MOVEON STRIKES OUT: “ZERO calls, emails, or letters resulting from the ad.”
BILL QUICK’S weekend cooking thread is up!
UPDATE: So is this week’s Haveil Havalim.
HUGE PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTS IN HONG KONG: Gateway Pundit, as usual, has a roundup, with photos.
Publius has more, too.
HERE’S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE FROM WIRED on efforts to reinvent the 911 emergency-call system to take advantage of more modern technologies. The conclusion seems right:
If national safety – the ability to respond to hurricanes, terrorist attacks, earthquakes – depends on the execution of explicit plans, on soldierly obedience, and on showy security drills, then a decentralized security scheme is useless. But if it depends on improvised reactions to unknown threats, that’s a different story. A deeply textured, unmapped system is hard to bring down. A system that encourages improvisation is quick to recover. Ubiquitous networks of warning may constitute our own asymmetrical advantage, and, like the terrorist networks that occasionally carry out spectacular attacks, their power remains obscure until they’re called into action.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: The author of the Wired article, Gary Wolf, has more on this topic on his blog.
THE OFTEN-IRASCIBLE MATOKO KUSANAGI thinks I’m exaggerating the threat from avian flu. (“My friend that’s a post-doc in biochemistry says probably we have 5 to 10 years before the virus can mutate for airborne human-to-human transmission, and that it may never happen.”)
Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to be alarmist: I’ve repeatedly tried to make the point that avian flu may not amount to anything, but that preparations for pandemics in general are a good idea. (See, just for example, this post and this one. Oh, and especially this one.) And I’ve certainly never been as, um, dramatic as the scientific journal Nature, which published a fictional journalist’s weblog reporting on the course of an avian flu epidemic.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that the assurances of a friendly post-doc in biochemistry are the end of the matter, either. The truth is, it’s impossible to predict with certainty when or if avian flu will mutate to spread easily among humans. But it’s clear that we’re not prepared for that, or similar, threats. If we wait until it’s clearly underway, it’ll be too late. Pointing that out hardly seems alarmist to me.
UPDATE: Here, by the way, is the Wall Street Journal’s avian flu newstracker. It’s free to nonsubscribers, I think. (Since I subscribe, it’s sometimes hard for me to tell.)
Meanwhile, here’s a poll. What do you think?
(Go straight to the results by clicking here.)
MORE: Reader Eric Kuttner emails:
“If we wait until it’s clearly underway, it’ll be too late. Pointing that out hardly seems alarmist to me.”
Uh oh! Now they’re going to say you claimed the threat was imminent, just like Bush!
Heh. I think they already did. Meanwhile, William Aronstein emails: “Any appeal to authority should be rejected in a scientific discussion. But the appeal to ‘my friend that’s a post-doc in biochemistry’ takes the cake.” I thought so, too.
Aronstein has more to say, below the fold. Click “more” to read it.
I KEEP SEEING FOX NEWS doing its “War on Christmas” things. Why don’t they just give John Gibson the month off and replace him with Foamy the Squirrel?
UPDATE: Uh, oh: “Vandals burn Swedish Christmas goat, again.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Related post here.
MORE: Reader Aram Hagopian thinks I’m mocking Christianity. But while there’s mocking going on here, that’s not it. I find the whole thing kind of bemusing: Merchants who desperately want people to spend money because it’s Christmas are afraid to say the word, while those who are complaining are basically demanding that we commercialize Christmas more openly. Sigh.
Ann Althouse, meanwhile, thinks that Christmas doesn’t belong in commercials for judicial nominees.
Related stuff from Fox, with video, here.
PLAME UPDATE: Tom Maguire is all over the latest developments. And Mickey Kaus observes: “The upshot may be that, despite Joseph Wilson’s dramatics, his wife’s outing didn’t really cause such national security damage–something a few scandal-poopers have claimed all along.”
Gee, do you think?
UPDATE: A “flock of pouting spooks.”
GREG DJEREJIAN IS correcting Maureen Dowd on Iraq. That’s kind of the Bunny Slope of blogging, but he handles it with panache.
UPDATE: In a similar low-challenge vein, Rand Simberg notes dishonesty about the war at the Los Angeles Times. Easy, but as always, worthwhile.
WHEN ZOMBIE SOLDIERS ATTACK: The Mechanical Eye looks at the latest in over-the-top anti-Bushiana from Joe Dante. The Insta-Wife is also writing about the veteran Zombie voters some folks fantasize will get Republicans out of office.
One of her commenters isn’t impressed with Dante’s originality: “Dead people voting for Democrats? That’s just art imitating life.” Heh.
Zombies do seem to be making a comeback lately. I don’t know if Dante’s follow the rules laid out here, but I’m planning to be prepared, just in case. You can’t be too careful!
Meanwhile, for the opinions of actual, living soldiers, try starting here.
UPDATE: Will Collier doesn’t like the Slate review by Grady Hendrix much.
ANOTHER UPDATE: If the dead start rising over the Iraq War, a lot of them will be rising from Saddam’s mass graves. Why not a movie about that? And who would they be haunting, if they did . . . .
MORE: We’ll be seeing this clip on Fox News, I’ll bet. I think Dante’s leading with his chin, here!
STILL MORE: An email from reader Sam Wilkinson suggests that Max Brooks will be the big winner in all this. And reader Michael Becker writes:
My son is a recently retired Marine. My inner circle includes about a zillion Marines (all of the “door kicker, combat” variety) and the families of those Marines. My point here is to note that should Iraqi Freedom fallen show up as zombies the list of people who should be screaming in the streets does not include Bush. Kerry, Clinton (both), Boxer, Pelosi, Reid, Dean, Murtha (especially him) will find themselves in a world of hurt. I don’t have the time or space to pass along the venom that those people, and their fellow traveling ilk, are subject to from the military folks. It’s kind of a shame that active duty military are prevented from expressing their real opinions about politicians.
Actually, I think it’s a good thing. I do wonder, though, how a movie in which zombie soldiers attacked antiwar types for “betraying” them would play in the Village Voice and Slate. Well, okay, no I don’t.
MORE STILL: Okay, there are zombies in this film, but at least there’s sex.
SONY’S DRM-SPYWARE — not just bad for business and consumers, but bad for national security:
A high-ranking Bush administration official weighed in Thursday on anti-piracy efforts domestically and abroad, indirectly chastising Sony BMG Music Entertainment for its digital rights management (DRM) software, which computer security analysis say uses tactics typically employed by virus writers to hide its components and resist their removal. . . .
Seated on a panel that featured entertainment and technology executives Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as Susan Mann, director of intellectual property policy for Microsoft, Baker wrapped up his opening comments with the following admonition for the industry:
“I wanted to raise one point of caution as we go forward, because we are also responsible for maintaining the security of the information infrastructure of the United States and making sure peoples’ [and] businesses’ computers are secure. … There’s been a lot of publicity recently about tactics used in pursuing protection for music and DVD CDs in which questions have been raised about whether the protection measures install hidden files on peoples’ computers that even the system administrators can’t find.”
In a remark clearly aimed directly at Sony and other labels, Stewart continued: “It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it’s important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.
“If we have an avian flu outbreak here and it is even half as bad as the 1918 flu, we will be enormously dependent on being able to get remote access for a large number of people, and keeping the infrastructure functioning is going to be a matter of life and death and we take it very seriously.”
It’s the new Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security, Stewart Baker. Follow the link for video. And I love that line: “It’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer.” People need to be reminded of that.
FOR CUTTING AND PASTING FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE, it’s the press plagiarist of the year award. Some of it seems more like idea-lifting than true plagiarism, but it’s amusing.
IT’S A VENEZUELAN QUAGMIRE: “Blasts from small explosives injured three people at a Venezuelan military base and outside a public office as the South American country prepared for a congressional vote Sunday amid a boycott called by opposition parties, Venezuela’s government news agency reported.”
DON’T PANIC YET, but this is bad avian flu news if it turns out to be true.
HDTV UPDATE: Reader Thomas Wharton emails:
Any progress on an HDTV search? Your posts from March mentioned the waiting game, have you or are you closer to making a move?
This could be the season for my wife and I, but information overload keeps me from pulling the trigger. We are of modest means so a good old CRT seems our best option.
Any info would be appreciated.
I’m afraid I’m still waffling. However, I was at Circuit City the other day with the InstaWife, and looked at the HDTV display, and was much more impressed with the quality of the pictures that I saw than the last time I did so. I don’t think this is because the TVs were better, necessarily, but because Circuit City was doing a better job of getting a high-quality HDTV signal to each one.
If you’ve got the room, and you don’t want something absolutely huge, CRTs are still a good deal. I’d really like one of these, or even (thinking bigger still) one of these, but I’m still surfing the price-performance curve.
Anybody got any suggestions for Mr. Wharton?
Meanwhile, while I was at Circuit City I did see Sony’s new super-compact HD camcorder, which is just amazingly small for its quality and felt good in my hand, though I didn’t really get a chance to try it out. That’s another one I’m holding off on (we’ve got enough video equipment as it is), but if I had a new baby and anticipated shooting miles of video right now I’d consider it, as that’s going to be the new standard.
And while I’m on the subject of TV-related stuff, let me whine just a bit. I’ve got one of these Sony DVD players. It was fairly inexpensive, but what I like is the almost iPod-like front-panel control setup, which makes it easy to control without a remote. (Click on “larger image” to see what I mean). It’s discontinued, and I can’t find that on the newer models. I guess Sony (and other manufacturers) want to save a buck or two by not putting that kind of functionality on the front, but I really like that. I hate appliances, TVs or whatever, that can only be run by a remote control. And I actually think it’s a mistake for manufacturers to pursue a rock-bottom price point on this stuff. DVD players have gotten so cheap that I doubt a few dollars’ price makes much difference, and — to me at least, and probably to others — an easy user interface is worth a lot. It’s disappointing to see how often manufacturers miss that.
More thoughts on that subject here and here.
UPDATE: Reader Rick Giovanelli emails:
Check out the Panasonic HDTV plasmas — TH-xx50U, where xx is for the size — 37, 42 or 50. Consumer Reports and CNET both have it very highly rated. The 42 inch is available at Best Buy for under $3000, and you can probably finance it for free for 12-18 months, which makes it not much more expensive than a fully-loaded cable bill. Samsung DLP seems to be the next best option, moving down the cost-curve, but this Panasonic is really fantastic. I’ve had it for less than a month and it’s already incredibly disappointing when the football game I want to see isn’t on in HD.
As for DVD players, I feel your pain. Most of the new ones don’t have the dang “enter” button on the front, so you have to find the remote simply to play a DVD. It’s ridiculous — something’s got to give. It makes you really appreciate the Disney Fast Play feature that you noted a while back. Either DVDs need to be set up to automatically play, or you’ve got to give me a way to make them play from the unit itself.
Yeah, these people need to think about, you know, the user. Some readers warn that Samsung is among the less reliable HDTV manufacturers in their experience. I never know how much to make of stats like that, given that different models can vary widely in reliability anyway.
Reader Tom Provost emails:
I just bought this one a couple of months ago: Link
and I could not be happier. I am a total movie nerd (I work in film) and the picture with both DVD’s and, say, watching football or ‘Lost’ in high def, is simply incredible.
I also like it because only one set of cords comes from the back, to a separate box all your other devices plug in; you can situate the box somewhere you can access easily.
That’s nice, I guess. (See Tom’s film company website here). Meanwhile, Kevin Murphy emails:
One of the odd things about HDTV is how abysmal most of them are at regular NTSC display. The new 1080p sets are generally no better than the old ones. Now, in a perfect HDTV world this wouldn’t matter, but so much programming, especially non-network and live, remains 480i. I was particularly disappointed in the Sharp 1080p LCD set you link, as well as the new 1080p Mitsubishi DLP sets which are, if anything, worse.
If you really want to test a set for NTSC display, ask the salesguy to put up an NTSC basketball game. Seems to be the utter torture test of the set’s scaler. Football will work, too. The salesguy will, of course, not want to do it, mainly because he knows most of the sets are mediocre to horrid at live action 480i.
Only one set was A-rated at NTSC by Consumer Reports: The Panasonic 50″ plasma TH-50PX50U. Some say the new Sony 1080p SXRD set is pretty good. I’ve not seen either in that mode, however.
All HDTV sets seem to show HDTV and DVDs fairly well. And that’s really all they want to show you at the store.
Go figure. Reader David Barlin wants to help:
Good afternoon and happy holidays from a long time reader.
I have a suggestion for Mr. Wharton – my company has a new site that makes product recommendations for people suffering from information overload – www.activebuyersguide.com.
Our engine asks 4 or 5 questions about how the visitor wants to use a product, and then suggests products that best match what the visitor needs.
Right now we have these active buying guides for two types of products:
Televisions: Link
Digital Cameras: Link
Then, like many other sites, we offer a comparison pricing engine so the visitor can find the best price.
Just thought Mr. Wharton and your readers might find it a useful tool.
He might! I tried it out and found it hard to navigate by preferred screen size, but it does have some useful information.
MORE: James Lileks emails:
That Sony HD camera is sweet indeed; I’ve been using it since August. The difference between the HD camcorder and the low-res predecessors is stunning, – instead of seeing trees, you see trees and leaves; instead of lawns, you see blades of grass. Also, nose hairs and small, indelible wine stains. But it’s still worth it.
Apple’s entry-level movie-editing app, iMovie, handles HD, so anyone can start making crappy, plotless home movies with a heretofore unimagined level of detail. Provided they have the storage space – one hour of HD, edited, takes up about 75 GB.
You’ll need some of those terabyte external hard drives, I guess. And reader Billy Earle emails:
I’ve dealt with various flat tv/monitor technology over the past eight years. Along with being a video producer, I’ve also ben charged with selecting flat monitors for displays, etc. for Georgia’s Technical College System and various other departments across the state.
This is what those eight years have taught me:
CRT – old technology but a perfected technology. CRT tv’s are sharp, reliable and last a long time. Great angle of view. They’re heavy and take up space. They do not suffer from burn in. Bright.
Plasma – suffer burn-in quite easily, regardless of what the marketing says. Poor angle of view. Average life – five years if you are an average television watcher. Getting brighter.
LCD – this technology has great potential. Image retention is a problem (it’s very close to burn in). For the most part, image retention can be corrected. Average life is five to seven years for the average tv watcher. Bright.
DLP – If you want to go big, go DLP. No burn-in, no image retention. Great angle of view. Bright. I would strongly suggest the Toshiba Cinema Series DLP sets. Great boxes. They have a black border around the screen which, visually, increases the brightness. Down side is having to replace the lamp.
Personally, I wouldn’t own a big (larger than 20″) LCD or Plasma television as I’ve seen too many of them after real world use and the picture just doesn’t hold up in real world use.
Look for a set that can display 1920×1080 – that is true HD resolution. If you’re paying for HD (cable, the terrestrial receiver cost, etc.) you may as well be able to display it natively.
For me, I’m gonna get the biggest 1920X1080 CRT I can find – or get that sweet Toshiba Cinema Series DLP. Unless you don’t mind replacing a $2K TV in five years, I’d skip the LCD and Plasma until the technology has matured a bit.
-CAVEAT- I am a video producer/still photographer so my judgement regarding a good quality image display may be too anal for most.
So noted. And several readers have found the CNET reviews helpful.
Several readers also like the Audio Video Science Forum.
And if you’re looking for an excuse to wait, you can always hold out for SED TV.
MAJOR JOHN TAMMES, an Illinois National Guardsman recently returned from Afghanistan, responds to Rep. Murtha’s “broken army” comments, and he’s not happy:
Unmitigated crap. And I don’t say this out of defensiveness or service pride – I’ll tell you about how far we have had to come in a bit. First, though, a little material for you to mull over. . . .
As anyone who has read this blog knows, The Inner Prop and I served in Operation Enduring Freedom V (Afghanistan, March 2004-March 2005). We stood at the end of the longest sustained supply line in the history of human conflict. We were in war-torn Central Asia. Af-frickin’-ghanistan. We had decent food, e-mail, phone (OK, sometimes they weren’t always working, but almost all the time) excellent medical support, good pay, regular (if slow) mail. We had a PXs at most of the larger bases, and coffee places sprang up too. We had so damned much ammunition that we needed to build a bigger ammunition supply point at Bagram, AF. We had so many vehicles that we were constantly squabbling over where to put them all – and we had enough up-armored ones too. Our supply warehouses were stuffed with clothing, boots, body armor and the like. “Living hand to mouth” is the worst lie of the bunch.
The constant stream of re-enlistments was a revelation to me. When I was the Executive Officer of the garrison at Bagram Airfield (a job I gladly traded away after 5 months) I had to find room to more than double the size of the Retention Office. I personally administered the oath of re-enlistment to an E-5 and an E-7. The E-5 was a mother of two young children and the E-7 was eligible to retire when we got home!
Broken? Hardly. Is it difficult work? Yes.
Read the whole thing.
My own opinion is that Congress is “broken.” But not, alas, living hand-to-mouth.
UPDATE: While Rep. Murtha doesn’t have the time to get the facts right on the war, Congress does have the time to investigate the BCS system. Jeez. Did I say “broken?” Yes, I did.
IS THE WEST LOSING AZERBAIJAN? Of course, there’s some question whether it was ever ours to lose. Here’s an email that former InstaPundit Paris correspondent Claire Berlinski (now in Turkey) sent in response to my last Azerbaijan post. When I got it, I thought it was not-for-publication, and by the time I found out otherwise it was old news. But maybe it’s relevant now:
Actually, my fiancé David Gross is in Azerbaijan right now taking photos for Zuma. He says the protests today were anything but massive. The opposition is apparently nominal, as well as “unprofessional, unthinking, and unattractive.” (You can take the last adjective with a grain of salt, I suppose; he was after all writing to me.) He spent the day yesterday with the ADP, who seemed to him unprepared for the protests. He accompanied them to a neighborhood where fraud had been alleged, but no one wanted their leaflets. (“They’re liars like the rest of them,” said one of the women he spoke to.) “They [the ADP] are like a small business,” he wrote to me last night, “with employees, a boss, and a product, and while they’re not the best on the market, they’re a little spicier and cheaper than the others … if they were ever a serious opposition, they were crushed before the elections.” They were hoping for 50,000 at the rally today; David thought there were 5,000 to 10,000 at most (“really, rather dull”). After the rally, he sent me this rather deflated SMS: “The opposition is a farce. This country is stable.”
That’s no reason to give up on freedom there, but it sounds as if an Orange Revolution isn’t in the cards any time soon.
UPDATE: Nathan Hamm emails:
To add to the email you posted this morning, the weakness of the opposition should also give some food for thought to those who are very upset that the US (and Europe when people bother to pay attention to what they’re doing) isn’t making a bigger stink of things.
I don’t think the situation has been particularly well-played on the part of the US, but we cannot will a healthy opposition and democratic revolution into existence (Guardian column writers and Kremlin officials might tell you otherwise…). And while we can let them know we think they got a raw deal in the vote, that we deplore violence used against protesters, and that we support their goals, is it worth putting all our chips behind them if their support is shallow? (Or if they can’t keep up the protests? They cancelled this weekend’s: Link.)
I think the answers are fairly straightforward, but people often get caught up in the excitement of “a new democratic revolution!” without paying enough attention to what opinion is in the country.
Watch for something similar after Kazakhstan’s presidential vote in the next few days. It’s even clearer there that the opposition’s support is extremely shallow, and often looks to be made up of opportunistic former officials. In the past, they’ve been extremely savvy at playing Western media and NGOs to make them seem more relevant to Kazakh politics than they really are.
As I say, not a reason to give up, but we need to be realistic in our expectations. Remember, democratization is a process, not an event.
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