Riehl World View notes the migration from the nets and daily papers to cable and the Internet:

Pew states that “37% of the adult population ... – used the internet to get political news and information, discuss candidates and debate issues in emails, or participate directly in the political process by volunteering or giving contributions to candidates.”

The bleeding will stop only once they acknowledge the wound exists at all. The mainstream media is much like the Black Knight after losing the first arm.

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (9)
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I think maybe I've mentioned this little honey before, but now I've got cool pics.

(Pics from The Cellar.)

Yeahp, it shoots around corners:

The CORNER SHOT is the ultimate solution for dealing with the deadly threats that lurk "around the corner" in a variety of tactical situations encountered by military and law enforcement personnel, anti-terror units and SWAT teams operating in open or built-up areas, inside buildings, rooms and enclosed spaces, and especially in forced entry situations.

The CORNER SHOT has already been acquired by police and special forces units around the world.

The key to CORNER SHOT is the swing-hinge front section of the system, a state-of-the-art device that houses the handgun and a compact detachable color video camera. The unique lateral (both left and right) swinging mechanism enables the user to safely sweep, search or engage targets ‘around the corner’ with the camera transmitting what it sees directly to a video monitor. Both the video monitor and the remote trigger control for firing the pistol, together with all system operating switches, are fitted to the frame held by the user.

Also available with "40mm Personal Grenade Launcher," if you act now:

I'm not down with all military lingo. What's a "Personal" grenade launcher? As opposed to what, a public one?

Is lobbing a grenade at someone really that personal? I guess it depends on the recipient's attitude.

Thanks to Bob.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (28)
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First of all, I assume everyone here is familiar with this absolutely hysterical tape of Mr. Paul Anka's profanity-rich chewing out of his band, right? I imagine it will be the new rage, like that new "Star Wars kid" video that's going around.

Cavarly Charge thinks that the laughs at Mr. Paul Anka's expense are undeserved, and sets out to explain the management principles and motivational techinques that collectively may be called "The Zen of The Only Important One On That Stage":

"If you donÂ’t feel embarrassed about it then you have no conscience, you got no heart, you got no integrity-- do you understand that?...and all you do is take the fucking money and you have no substanceÂ…People with substance and character care about what the fuck they do and they fix it...and I think you are working with me because that's the way you are."

This is clearly the “mother lode”. This statement defines the “kind of integrity kick” he is on.

While what he is saying is intense (he is accusing his band of having no conscience, heart, or integrity)-- he is reminding them of why he hired them all in the first place. Obviously the band members displayed some exceptional qualities in their audition, or else Mr. Anka would have never brought them back for a second audition and eventually hired them on. So, he again is challenging them to “get back to basics”. Getting back to the way things were before. By saying this he suggests, and rightfully so, that the band has become lax. He says "You’ve got it too good...and as long as you got it good you gotta make it good".

Anka feels like he takes care of his band. It’s almost a reference back to the important “full value on your money” question. If the guys have it good, which Mr. Anka feels they most certainly do, they need to make good on their work. They need to provide Mr. Anka full value on their services. They owe it to him to perform, no exceptions. There is no half-way. When mistakes happen they know how he moves, so there is no excuse for a sub par performance.

When it all goes awry, they should have the integrity and character to fix what’s wrong. Instead of thinking their boss is a pain in the ass, they need to stop and say “Hey, we have been slacking, Paul pays us a good wage, he takes care of us, we need to fix this loose shit and move on.”

CNN's Jonathan Klein ought to read this important essay and use the lessons therein to bring some "conscious" back to his ailing, aging liberal news outfit, which, I have to say, seems to me to have nothing to add "but confusion" and furthermore just doesn't ever seem to "put me some fucking information here."

Posted by: Ace at 02:47 AM | Comments (16)
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Michael writes to say:

What they show is that in 2004, only 3% of those surveyed said that they turn to the Internet for their news. Now this Blog survey comes out, and they use the big numbers from Cable, Broadcast News, print media and such to dwarf the Blog numbers. But looking at that 3% and comparing it with the bigger numbers from the survey... you get 3% last year compared with... 13% [now]. [Number-crunching deleted.]

That's the number they are hiding (i.e., not pointing out in the press release). I am really disappointed in Gallup for this huge mistake (or rather their lack of comparing the numbers and pointing out the significance of this change).

I did a significance test on the two numbers, and the 3% to 13% is significant (i.e., beyond the margin of error at that percentage for the sample size and for the population for both surveys).

The number is huge. And they ought to be ashamed of themselves for not pointing out the half-full-glass side of the story.

They shouldn't be in the spin business (that's CNN's job), they should be in the data gathering and interpretation business. And this trend is HUGE.

Should have posted this the moment I received it so that I could have avoided being scooped by Kaus and Mystery Pollster, who come to the same conclusions.

Big Buried Numbers Update: 21% of those aged 18-to-29 read blogs at least once a month.

That's what Michael was getting at with "the trend is HUGE." The younger the age cohort, the bigger the blog readership; more than one-fifth of younger people are fairly regular blog readers.

And really, this dealio hasn't been going on very long at all yet.

This is annoying, and yet demonstrates some upside for the dextrosphere:

Gallup finds no gender differences in blog readership, or according to party affiliation. There are slight differences by political outlook, as about a quarter of liberals (24%) say they read blogs at least monthly, compared with 15% of conservatives and 12% of moderates.

Only 15% of conservatives as opposed to nearly a quarter of liberals? There's obviously room for growth on the right side of the blogosphere.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 PM | Comments (1)
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Another case of approaching a restricted site without proper advance warning:

New York Television news is reporting that two New Jersey State Police helicopters were almost shot down today over a south Jersey Nuclear Power plant.

The two helicopters approached low, at points less than 60 feet from the ground, as part of a Homeland Security drill by the NJ State Police. Security teams at the power plant armed their weapons and were awaiting orders to fire when a visual identification prevented a potential tragedy.

On the plus side, I guess the security teams were just about ready to shoot the helos down.

That's a good thing, right?

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 PM | Comments (5)
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Neat stuff from the eggheads at DARPA:

The Self-Healing Minefield system is designed to achieve an increased resistance to dismounted and mounted breaching by adding a novel dimension to the minefield. Instead of a static complex obstacle, the Self-Healing Minefield is an intelligent, dynamic obstacle that responds to an enemy breaching attempt by physically reorganizing. The Self-Healing Minefield consists of surface scattered antitank mines that can detect an enemy attack of the minefield and respond autonomously, by having a fraction of the mines move to heal the breach. Since the minefield is no longer a static obstacle, an open breach cannot be maintained. The Self-Healing Minefield forces the enemy to attack the minefield and deplete the antitank mines surrounding the breaching lane by either repeated assaults or a wide area breach/clearance. In either case the enemy has increased their exposure to covering fires when compared to the current mixed system minefield. An ongoing modeling effort indicates that a self-healing minefield will provide greatly increased military effectiveness of the obstacle.

Thanks to Blakjack.

Posted by: Ace at 12:36 PM | Comments (10)
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A link to the trailer, in case you weren't watching The O.C. last night.

I can't even imagine such a thing, myself.

Dave's thoughts about the trailer-- first, what he thinks he's supposed to say, then what he really thinks.

And the main reason I'm linking this at all: Click on "the Star Wars kid" in the above post, download the first video -- an embarassing video of a, let us say, husky-sized boy doing "kewl" (but not very graceful) maneuvers with a long staff. Half the time he's hitting himself with the thing. The other half of the time he appears to be in danger of falling to the ground from either a lack of coordination or a brief epileptic seizure.

Once you've had enough pathos, start clicking on the rest of the videos -- especially the Star Wars edit and Matrix edit. People have taken this poor kid and made him a laughingstock.

I feel bad for the kid. But the videos are pretty funny. He's the new Tourist Guy.

Blood in the Water Update: Well, it turns out that the "Star Wars kid" isn't quite as new as I imagined... unless you consider something that became the rage in 2003 "new."

Check out the comments to see me get thoroughly pimp-slapped for my wretched ignorance.

My first thought was just to ban all the weisenheimers who thought they could come into my house, as the kids say, and have some japes at my expense, as your great-grandfather was too hip to even say, but then I realized:

Funny stuff. Funny stuff that I didn't have to write. Funny stuff that was created with no effort on my part whatsoever.

The best kind of funny stuff, I think. Sure, it's at my expense, but I'm a 6 on Sloth and only a 4 on Pride, so it's all good, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 12:33 PM | Comments (19)
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Oh, he didn't mean to help "end tyranny," as Bush vowed in his second inaugural. But he does seem to have forgotten about the Law of Unintended Consequences (he's not big on laws, generally; he also seems to have forgotten the Law Against Mass-Murdering Innocent Civilians and the Law Against Fucking Around With Uncle Sam).

The Unpopulist quotes an article essentially thanking bin Ladin for his role in making the world a better place. Unpopulist disagrees strongly with the premise.

But I think there is some truth to it. I think bin Ladin's mass-murder actually has helped -- despite his intent -- to undo the very movement he hoped to advance.

And I hope that stings.

Perhaps it's better this bastard is still alive, at the moment. Perhaps justice is best served by letting him see the unintended consequences of his bloody savagery, and let him watch all his dreams die...

...before a US soldier drills a high-caliber round through his brainbox.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (15)
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Scan down a bit in the comments to this post to read a debate between Alessandra and LauraW.

[Alessandra:] We can't wait until the Iranian women are all in Penthouse, and have become slutty dressed silicone and botox bimbos, who according to the locker-room libertarians is what freedom is all about for women. Or they will have turned into macho lesbiunns, who need to cross-dress to show how "powerful" and not full of hang-ups they are. Homo-obsessed libertarians believe that's freedom too, can we blame them for being so smart? And where's all the female alcoholism? you mean women are not allowed to become alcoholics in Iran? The thought of it... and where's the date rape? Oh, the oppression of not being able to drink and get raped...

Here's to the liberation of Iran to a new level of moronic ideals of freedom! Let's drink a beer to seeing women going from one yoke to another.

I hate to embarass a poster (well, except for Cedarford), but I just don't get this whole doofus feminist/Islamacist-apologist schtick.

Look, if wearing short skirts and appearing sexy is a "yoke" at all, it's either a self-chosen yoke, or a yoke indirectly "forced" on women by prevailing social attitudes.

Which is a little better than a "yoke" directly forced upon you by roaming thugs who will beat you in the street with fists and sticks if you don't comply with their ideals of hidden and ghostlike femininty.

LauraW bravely attempts to repudiate this insanity. She trots out statistics and logic and all that jazz, but I think she really gets to the heart of the matter by offering this carefully considered rejoinder.

Women want to be pretty. For the love of God, that is not "society" forcing "paternalistic" values on women.

Women just want to be pretty. It's that simple.

And, for that matter, men want to be handsome-- Iranian men are also trimming their beards so that, you know, people can actually see their faces rather than a mass of scraggly hair. Their choice, you know-- not sure what "patriarchy" might be forcing them to groom themselves a little cleaner.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (47)
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For crying out loud, if you're going to do shabby work, can't you at least do your own shabby work?:

University of Colorado officials investigating embattled professor Ward Churchill received documents this week purporting to show that he plagiarized another professor's work. Officials at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia sent CU an internal 1997 report detailing allegations about an article Churchill wrote.

"The article . . . is, in the opinion of our legal counsel, plagiarism," Dalhousie spokesman Charles Crosby said in summarizing the report's findings.

Churchill did not return calls to his home or office Thursday seeking comment.

Dalhousie began an investigation after professor Fay G. Cohen complained that Churchill used her research and writing in an essay without her permission and without giving her credit. Although the investigation substantiated her allegations, Cohen didn't pursue the matter because she felt threatened by Churchill, Crosby said.

Crosby said Cohen told Dalhousie officials in 1997 that Churchill had called her in the middle of the night and said, "I'll get you for this."

Nice, huh? Bear in mind this guy openly and unashamedly exhorts his nitwit students/sycophats/cultists to commit terrorism. So this threat -- if actually made -- isn't of the theoretical sort.

Is there even a question this man is a charlatan who needs to be ish-canned as soon as humanly possible?

What the hell does a leftist professor have to do to get fired, anyhow? Admit to being the long-sought "real killer" in the OJ Simpson murder case?

I think leftist academics would even defend that -- after all, severing a woman's head is just a particularly vivid (if somewhat aggressive) form of free academic expression.

Thanks to NickS, who sarcastically notes, "My surprise meter is busted."

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (14)
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