Kim Jong Un Looking at Things

Following in the footsteps of his father. [Link]

Like father, like son. Since the recent death of Kim Jong Il, North Korean state-run media has been releasing a series of images of the "Great Successor," Kim Jong Un, visiting schools, factories, and military facilities. These visits, which were frequently publicized by his father and his grandfather Kim Il Sung, are called "field guidance" trips -- opportunities for the supreme leader to give on-the-spot advice. For decades, the North Korean myth-making machine endowed Kim Jong Il with amazing wisdom, prowess, and intelligence, and it continues that tradition now with his son, touting him as a marksman, poet, economic genius, and wise military strategist. Little is actually known about Kim Jong Un. Even his age remains in doubt -- he may be 28, 29, or 30. Based on the state-released photos collected here, he is following closely in his father's footsteps, albeit with a touch more visible affection.

Before Watchmen

Oh, this will not end well. [Link]

This summer, DC Entertainment will publish all-new stories expanding on the acclaimed WATCHMEN universe. As highly anticipated as they are controversial, the seven inter-connected prequel mini-series will build on the foundation of the original WATCHMEN, the bestselling graphic novel of all time. BEFORE WATCHMEN will be the collective banner for all seven titles, from DC Comics.

“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. “After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”

Stepping up to the challenge is a group of the comic book industry’s most iconoclastic writers and artists – including Brian Azzarello (100 BULLETS), Lee Bermejo (JOKER), Amanda Conner (POWER GIRL), Darwyn Cooke (JUSTICE LEAGUE: NEW FRONTIER), John Higgins (WATCHMEN), Adam Hughes (CATWOMAN), J.G. Jones (FINAL CRISIS), Andy Kubert (FLASHPOINT), Joe Kubert (SGT. ROCK), Jae Lee (BATMAN: JEKYLL AND HYDE), J. Michael Straczynski (SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE) and Len Wein (SWAMP THING).

BEFORE WATCHMEN includes:

• RORSCHACH (4 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Lee Bermejo

• MINUTEMEN (6 issues) – Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke

• COMEDIAN (6 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J.G. Jones

• DR. MANHATTAN (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes

• NITE OWL (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert

• OZYMANDIAS (6 issues) – Writer: Len Wein. Artist: Jae Lee

• SILK SPECTRE (4 issues) – Writer: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner

Each week, a new issue will be released, and will feature a two-page back-up story called CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CORSAIR, written by original series editor Len Wein and with art by original series colorist John Higgins. There will also be a single issue, BEFORE WATCHMEN: EPILOGUE, featuring the work of various writers and artists, and a CRIMSON CORSAIR story by Wein and Higgins.

“The original series of WATCHMEN is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire,” said Dave Gibbons, WATCHMEN co-creator and original series artist.

“Comic books are perhaps the largest and longest running form of collaborative fiction,” said DiDio and Lee. “Collaborative storytelling is what keeps these fictional universes current and relevant.”

DC has the right to do this, but should they?

Reality Show Venn Diagram

Wow. That is a lot of cake, swamp and wars in Alaska. [Link]

It's not your imagination — there really are that many reality shows about swamps, weddings, Louisiana, and cake. And here's visual proof: The following Venn diagram maps the overlapping relationships between reality shows. Included on this chart are only shows that aired in 2011, 2012, or are scheduled for or are in development for this season (and in a few rare instances, there are notes on reality-TV niches not yet filled). The reality-TV universe is even more repetitive and connected than you could have imagined. 
Two small caveats: Wedding Cake Wars ended in 2009 but was too perfect a fit not to include, and Bear Swamp Recovery is not set in a swamp, it's merely named for one. 

The ultimate show should be set in Alaska or Texas and involve pawning or repoing wedding cakes in the swamp.

Occupy Providence protests Catholic Schoolgirls by throwing condoms at them

So does this mean the 1% are Catholic Schoolgirls? Catholic Schoolgirls are responsible for high student loans? Catholic Schoolgirls are greedy, fat-cat bankers? [Link]

Because nothing says speaking truth to power like standing up to little girls. Right?

From LifeSiteNews…

PROVIDENCE, RI, January 30, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week.

About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday.

Classy… BTW, Aren’t these folks always saying they’re all about free speech? How exactly does shouting other people down qualify as a defense of free speech?

UPDATE I: As Glenn Reynolds points out, if you threw bacon at Muslims you’d be a racist.

I am pro choice and I am appalled at this. The more the Occupy crowd hangs around, the more reprehensible they appear. I do not think they get that.

Time for an upgrade to Liberalism 5.0

First step, figure out what it is. Long and thoughtful piece by Walter Russell Mead.  [Link]

Now it has happened again. The success of our institutions and ideas has so changed the world that they don’t work any more. We cannot turn back the clock, nor should we try. America’s job is to boldly go where none have gone before, not to consume our energies in vain attempts to recreate the glories of an unattainable past. We need to do for our times and circumstances what other Americans have done before us: Recast classic Anglo-American liberal thought, still the cultural and moral foundation of American life and the source of the commonsense reasoning that guides most Americans as they evaluate policy ideas and party programs, in ways that address the challenges before us.

For those blue Democrats clinging to liberalism 4.1, this is a time of doom and gloom. For those red Republicans longing for a return to liberalism 3.0, it is a time of angry nostalgia: Ron Paul making a stump speech. This should be a time of adventure, innovation and creativity in the building of liberalism 5.0. America is ready for an upgrade to a new and higher level; indeed, we are overdue for a project that can capture the best energies of our rising generations, those who will lead the United States and the world to new and richer ways of living that will make the “advanced” societies of the 20th century look primitive, backward and unfulfilled.

We’ve wasted too many years arguing over how to retrieve the irretrievable; can we please now get on with the actual business of this great, liberal, unapologetically forward-looking nation?

Guilt by Association

If you are a Republican and not a Democrat. A tale of two (former) staffers. [Link]

Last week two political operatives were arrested in separate incidents, one Democrat and one Republican. It certainly isn't news that political operatives sometimes break the law, but how the different incidents were reported is typical of how the Old Media establishment uses guilt by association to tar Republicans but rarely does the same thing to take swipes at Democrats.

The similarity in the two stories is that both of the accused are former staffers of high profile politicians. The Democrat was an Obama campaign staffer while the Republican was a staffer of the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Neither currently works for those high profile pols, but only the Republican was linked to his former boss. The Democrat's link to Obama was mostly ignored by the media.

The Democrat:

So, how was Edwards' arrest reported? For one thing, it was hard to find Edwards' Democrat affiliation and his past role as a top Obama campaign staffer in stories of this incident.

• KCCI TV Channel 8 (Des Moines) does not bother to note the perp's Democrat ties at all.
• The Dubuque Telegraph Herald and the Des Moines Register both published an AP report that simply calls Edwards a "Des Moines man accused of ID theft." Also no mention of his Democrat Party ties.
• Finally, Eastern Iowa News blog reports Edwards Democrat ties only at the very end of its story.

It is interesting to note that the story of the criminal action by this former Obama staffer is not easy to find. Few Old Media outlets bothered to cover it.

The Republican:

So, how did the Old Media handle this tale of criminality? Unsurprisingly, Russell's ties to Walker and his party affiliation were either in the headline or the very first paragraph, if not both. And there were dozens of stories posted on this incident, too.

• The New York Times slammed Walker with guilt by association in its headline and first paragraph.
• Reuters did the same thing as the NYT.
• The Associated Press follows suit by mentioning Walker in the headline and the first paragraph.
• Green Bay’s NBC affiliate also features Walker in the headline, etc.
• In a companion story, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also prominently features the perp’s party affiliation.
• Politico pulls the same stunt as the others.

There are more stories than these few, of course. In fact, there are far more stories about this former Walker aide than there are about the Obama operative. Politico, for instance, never reported on the Democrat criminal. Apparently the news of the criminal actions of a former staffer for a mere governor is far bigger news than that of a former staffer of the President of the United States.

Lost in the computer

Ghost in the machine. [Link]

Some time ago, the editors here at TNW put out a post that was a collation of our first computing experiences. Given the age range of our staff, it was quite the list. However, once the post was out, a piece of email landed in my inbox that contained stories that not only dealt with a reader’s first interactions with a computer, but also with some of the first computers.

He told me a number of vignettes that we’ll get to in a moment, but first, the story of a friend of the man who got lost inside a computer.

The story was mentioned only in passing during our first correspondence, but I was put in touch with the man in question, and his story is beyond hilarious. Think back to the 1950s, when computers were built of vacuum tubes, and you have the right time frame. This is his story, condensed slightly:

In 1950, I was 10 years old, visiting the Michigan State University campus. The computer was on the ground floor, turned off, with the door open. It was perhaps half the size of a gym, with many rows of cabinets taller than me. I wandered up and down the rows looking at the vacuum tubes until I got bored. By then I couldn’t see the door, and didn’t remember how to get back out. I was literally “lost in the computer”. So I continued wandering, eventually found the open door back out, and left.

Sending the Message

Student suspended after taking photo of sleeping substitute teacher. Yes, phones are not allowed to be used in class but this seems more to be punishment for embarrassing the school then about using the phone in class. so the message is this: do not embarrass those in authority above you. [Link]

A school faculty member saw the photograph on a social media website and alerted the principal at Mustang Mid-High School, a Mustang School District spokeswoman said. School officials met Friday about the matter.

The photograph shows a closed-eyed man reclining behind a classroom desk. He was apparently substituting for a biology teacher at the school. It's not clear if the photograph was taken during class time.

Cellphones are allowed on school grounds, but cannot be used during class, school officials said.

“We understand the importance of having these devices,” Mustang School District spokeswoman Mary Leaver said. “But we have to maintain a learning environment.”

Family members of the suspended student confirmed the suspension, but declined comment.

Officials wouldn't disclose the names of students they think might be involved in taking the picture and posting it on the Internet. They declined to provide further information on the substitute teacher.

Leaver said administrators are investigating the actions of the substitute and would not comment further, calling it a personnel issue. Leaver said disciplinary action against students is at the discretion of the principal and not discussed publicly.

Mini protesters a big problem in Siberia

Toys as protest. [Link]

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".

"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."

Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency in a March vote.

Passersby admired the display with giggles, but police took it more seriously, examining its details and writing down each placard.

"The authorities' attempt to limit citizens' rights to express their position has become absurd," said Lyudmila Alexandrova, a 26-year-old graduate student and protest organiser. "We wanted to hyperbolise this attempt and show the absurdity and farce of officials' struggle with their own people."

Reasons for long term habitation of the Moon

181 reasons from NASA. [Link PDF]

Create a strategy for permanently transferring government lunar assets, such as physical facilities, associated infrastructure, and the
related operational considerations (physical, logistical, legal transfer), to the private sector. As these assets are transferred, there will
need to be sufficient commercial or scientific reasons for living on Moon, such that it remains an attractive destination for private
firms to utilize the government assets and invest further.

Crazy Numbers

Comparing Apple's quarterly numbers. [Link]

Simply looking over the numbers, it might be hard to wrap your head around what Apple just announced for their Q1 2012 results. A company this big is not supposed to be able to nearly double revenue year-to-year. Nor are they supposed to more than double profit. But Apple did both. The numbers are so big that they almost seem like they should be typos — especially coming after a quarter that was a “miss” (though we can now clearly see what a joke that “miss” was). So perhaps it’s best to point out some bigger numbers and to frame some of them in ways to make them easier to understand. That’s what all of Twitter seemed to be doing anyway during the earnings call this afternoon.

Apple’s profit of $13.1 billion was equal to theirrevenue in Q4 2010, as Jordan Golson notes. To be clear, that was just a year and a quarter ago. That’s how quickly Apple is growing.

Apple added $38 billion in cash to its reserves just in the past year alone, as Horace Dediu points out. They now have $97.6 billion in cash and equivalents. $64 billion of that is offshore, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated during the call — meaning, it would cost money (taxes) to bring it back into the U.S.

Apple’s cash hoard alone is worth more than all but 52 companies on Earth, as Dennis Bermannotes.

Apple earned more money last quarter than the entire company was worth (in terms of market cap) just eight years ago, as Mathew Ingram relays from Eddy Elfenbein.

Apple likely sold three times as many iPads as Amazon sold Kindle Fires. At twice the price. And at a profit, as Jon Fortt notes. When asked about the impact of the lower-cost tablets, Apple CEO Tim Cook specifically mentioned the Kindle Fire and noted that when looking over Apple’s numbers, they didn’t seem to see any impact (positive or negative) from the Kindle Fire being on the market.

Apple’s revenues, while massive, are nothing compared to a company like Walmart, which reported$109.5 billion in revenue last quarter. BUT that $109.5 billion only turned into $3.3 billion of actual income for the quarter. In other words, Walmart has more than double the revenues of Apple, but Apple has more than four times the profits of Walmart. That’s remarkable.

Apple’s profits place them on this exclusive list of the most profitable quarters among corporations. You’ll note that Apple is the only company on the list that’s not an oil and gas company. And they’re a “mere” $3.2 billion from the top spot.

Lowered Expectations

Simply doing your job, and demanding that others do so as well is now heroic. [Link]

Italian social networks on the Internet are singing the praises of De Falco, who tirelessly coordinated the rescue effort.

The tragedy had made De Falco "burst into tears with anger," his commanding officer told the Rome-based daily La Repubblica.

"Yes, I’m crying," the port authority chief was quoted as saying. "But I don’t think I’m being weak. Compassion is not weakness."

His attitude is in stark contrast to that of the captain now being blamed for the disaster and whom Italian prosecutors are seeking to indict.

Unable to conceal his anger on the night of the accident, De Falco told Schettino: "Go aboard and tell me how many people are on board - whether there are women and children and people in need."

A volley of expletives and threats followed as the port authority chief tried to get the captain to follow his orders.

The Internet community began hailing De Falco as a hero even while he was still coordinating the rescue effort. Headlines appeared on Twitter such as, "De Falco for president" and "Santo subito" ("Saint now!"), to the amazement of his wife.

"People who simply live up to their everyday responsibilities are suddenly becoming idols, personalities and heroes in this country," she commented with some concern.

SOPA tone deafness by Democrats

Chortle. Probably the only time I will ever link to Kos. [Link]

Look at who is dropping support for SOPA.

"I'm withdrawing my co-sponsorship for the Protect IP Act," said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican.

Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, "will be withdrawing his name as a co-sponsor" of Protect IP, a spokesman told CNET today. Fellow Protect IP co-sponsor Sen. James Risch, an Idaho Republican, said today that he wants "more time to re-examine the legislation before going to a vote" and has asked staff for a detailed briefing, a spokesman said.

And Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who has long been a close ally of Hollywood on copyright and is up for re-election this year, said on Twitter that "I will not only vote against moving the bill forward next week but also remove my co-sponsorship of the bill." [...]

Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican who is listed as a SOPA sponsor, "reserves judgment on the final bill," a spokesman told CNET today. "He's certainly not saying pass the bill as-is -- there are legitimate concerns in this bill." SOPA sponsor Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, now says: "I will not support a bill unless my constituents are comfortable with it."

If you keep reading that story, the Democrats listed all remain adamant that they'll remain co-sponsors of the legislation but work to "fix it".

Bullshit.

It's been a while since we've seen Democrats this tone deaf, this oblivious to political reality.

You have an entire wired generation focused on this issue like a laser, fighting like hell to protect their online freedoms, and it's FUCKING REPUBLICANS who are playing the heroes by dropping support?

Achievement Unlocked!

Video game style achievements for developers. [Link]

Visual Studio Achievements, a Visual Studio plug-in, enables developers to unlock badges and compete against one another for a place on a leader board based on the code they write, its level of sophistication, and the Visual Studio capabilities they use to do so. Developers finally have the ability to actually show their friends, colleagues, project managers, spouses and customers how good they are at what they do all day and sometimes into the night.

Visual Studio Achievements is both playful and pragmatic. Built on ideas from the developers themselves, it is intended to be a humorous community-building game as well as a path to the many, and, to some, unknown features offered in Visual Studio. This is one of several initiatives Microsoft is undertaking to recognize developers for their tireless and indispensable work.

The three dominant factors shaping development in the industry today are how developers build apps, how they make money, and how they uniquely solve hard problems with new scenarios. The development environments, as well as the tools, need to be geared around how to make it easier and more enjoyable for Microsoft developers to do these three things. When you add in the prediction that by 2015, more than 50 percent of organizations will gamify their innovation processes, Achievements is a small but important element in delivering on that commitment.

The Visual Studio Achievements plug-in analyzes a background thread each time code is compiled, as well as listens for particular events and actions from Visual Studio. When certain criteria or actions are detected, the plug-in triggers a pop-up alert and awards a new badge, which is then displayed on the public leaderboard and the developer’s Channel 9 profile.

Augmented reality contact lenses almost here

This seems really awesome. [Link]

Our eyes are just not built for the future. It sucks, but it's true. We can't physically focus on things that are very close to us, which is why we're not all rocking high-resolution immersive virtual reality displays built into our eyeglasses. How do we fix this problem? Simple: we upgrade our eyeballs.

We've posted about head-mounted VR displays a lot around here, but there's always a compromise going on: you can have a small, slick system that projects a little image with a narrow field of view, or you can have a gigantic bulky system that projects a big image with a wide field of view. The reason that you can't have the best of both worlds (a big projected display in a small system) is that our eyes simply cannot focus on images displayed at the distance of a pair of glasses. We can sort of fake it by fooling our eyes into thinking that the image is actually farther away, but doing this takes a lot of clunky optics, especially if you're going for something that looks halfway decent.

The obvious solution, then, is to modify our eyes to enable them to focus on objects that are much, much closer. It's not very hard to do this: you just need contact lenses. The hard part is creating a contact lens that keeps the rest of the world in focus while allowing you to view extremely close-up displays at the same time, but this is what a company called Innovega has managed to do.

Google's "Don't be evil" in Kenya

If this is true, it is difficult to see how this is not evil. [Link]

So Mocality laid a trap: when that IP range next visited the Mocality site, they fed it fake phone numbers that went to Mocality's own call center, where a Mocality operator pretended to be a business-owner and recorded the conversation. In that conversation, the caller identified himself as a Google employee, calling about a joint Google-Mocality venture, and asking the business to pay Google for a Kenya Business Online website with its own domain on that basis. This was, of course, absolutely fraudulent. There was and is no Google-Mocality joint venture.

Shortly after, that IP range stopped visiting Mocality's servers, but another range, this one registered to Google's Mountain View headquarters [edit: this address has previously been used to conduct official Google business in India], began to query its database. Again, Mocality served a fake result with its own call-center number, and an hour later, they received a call from someone identifying herself as working on Google's behalf, asking for money for a joint Google-Mocality product.

The conclusion is hard to escape: Google -- or people working on its behalf, with its knowledge and cooperation -- took the numbers of tens of thousands of Kenyan businesses from Mocality's database, then fraudulently solicited money from them by claiming to be in a joint venture with Mocality. This seems to me to be outright criminal activity, and Google has a lot of explaining to do.

UPDATE [Link] (Emphasis added)

Google gave paidContent this statement from its Europe and emerging markets product and engineering VP Nelson Mattos:

“We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites.

“We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.”

"A team of people working on a Google project" is "Google employees".
Also, we're mortified that we got caught.

Head Start never did

It doesn't work. [Link]

You take the million or so poorest 3- and 4-year-old children and give them a leg up on socialization and education by providing preschool for them; if it works, it saves money in the long run by producing fewer criminals and welfare recipients — and more productive citizens. Indeed, Head Start did work well in several pilot programs carefully run by professionals in the 1960s. And so it was "taken to scale," as the wonks say, as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

It is now 45 years later. We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program's effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.

According to the Head Start Impact Study, which was quite comprehensive, the positive effects of the program were minimal and vanished by the end of first grade. Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years, according to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, who said, "I guess they were trying to rerun the data to see if they could come up with anything positive. They couldn't."

The Head Start situation is a classic among government-run social programs. Why do so many succeed as pilots and fail when taken to scale? In this case, the answer is not particularly difficult to unravel. It begins with a question: Why is Head Start an HHS program and not run by the Department of Education? The answer: Because it is a last vestige of Johnson's War on Poverty, which was run out of the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The War on Poverty attempted to rebuild poor communities from the bottom up, using local agencies called community action programs. These outfits soon proved slovenly; often they were little more than patronage troughs for local Democratic Party honchos — and, remarkably, to this day, they remain the primary dispensers of Head Start funds. As such, they are far more adept at dispensing make-work jobs than mastering the subtle nuances of early education. "The argument that Head Start opponents make is that it is a jobs program," a senior Obama Administration official told me, "and sadly, there is something to that."

This is criminal, every bit as outrageous as tax breaks for oil companies — perhaps even more outrageous, since we are talking about the lives of children. Happily, the Administration is taking steps to clean up the mess and channel money to the local programs that work most effectively, but a more complete overhaul will undoubtedly be needed. There are those who argue that this is a fool's errand, that the federal government simply can't run an effective local education program. They are called conservatives, and they have a point. Then there are those who say that even if Head Start isn't working so well, at least it's funneling money to poor neighborhoods that need it. They are called liberals, and they have a point too.

Both are wrong: in these straitened times, we need world-class education programs, from infancy on up. But we can no longer afford to be sloppy about dispensing cash — whether it's subsidies for oil companies or Head Start — to programs that do not produce a return.

And here is why the news media is not trusted or respected

New York Times editor asking, unironically, should the Times point out when people lie in statements to the press. To be, in his words a 'Truth Vigilante'. [Link]

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had “misunderstood” a financial disclosure form when he failed to report his wife’s earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it not likely that Mr. Thomas “misunderstood,” and instead that he simply chose not to report the information.

Another example: on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”

Yes, tell us when someone is playing fast and loose with the facts. Yes, even those people I agree with. The media is there to keep everyone honest.

Give us facts, not a narrative. Let us determine what it means, but give us the tools to make informed decisions.

Why it is important to turn your ringer off at the Philharmonic

It might make the conductor stop the symphony. [Link]

The New York Philharmonic's Tuesday performance of Mahler's Ninth symphony was halted by an unwelcomed sound: someone's ringing iPhone (using the marimba ringtone). It rang repeatedly in the fourth movement of Mahler's final completed symphony. From Super-Conductor:

According to an eyewitness, the offending phone owner was in the front rows of Avery Fisher Hall when his phone went off. (A post by Michael Jo on the classical music blog thousandfoldecho.com specifies that the interruption happened just 13 bars before the last page of the score.) In other words, in the final moments of a 25-minute movement, that ends a 90-minute symphony.

"Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra," the concert-goer, music student Kyra Sims, reports. She related how the orchestra's music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good "three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long."

Window Display

When can I get one?