They should have traded forgers

Kevin Kusinitz at the Weekly Standard's blog posts about the Los Angeles Times piece on the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. A supposed confidante of Sean Combs is the story's source, providing FBI documents implicating Sean Combs.

Except it turns out those are crude forgeries, banged out on a typewriter "three decades after the feds switched to computers." Kusinitz reminds us of the CBS/Dan Rather/Bush/Air National Guard kerfuffle, but isn't it a beautifully symmetrical reversal?

The Bush forger used a computer to forge documents that were done on typewriters, while this guy used a typewriter to forge documents that are done on computer!

Obama's religion speech

Drudge has the full text of Obama's speech. Not bad in places, but it still sounds as if he's trying to weasel out of questions about what he knew of Rev. Wright's anti-Americanism and apparent anti-white racism. Twenty years with the guy, remember. He asks us to partially excuse these outrageous sentiments, because there's some background to them that we shouldn't dismiss. OK, I'd like to see him say the same thing next time a white makes a racist comment. We've got to understand, don't you know?

One ugly moment was equating Geraldine Ferraro's mild and justifiable comments--on Obama's unremarkable political qualifications, aside from his race (I'll add, though, that he's a good orator)--with Wright's explicit and angry anti-American and anti-white diatribes. He put those right down on the same level! And he didn't excuse Ferraro, mind you--he implied a partial condemnation of Ferraro similar to his partial condemnation of Wright. Classy.

More on Wikipedia

Heh, heh, heh...I just came across this funny article about Wikipedia and accuracy. I especially enjoyed the author's response to a couple of readers who'd snidely (reasonable in principle, but it was snide in tone) suggested comparing Wikipedia and Britannica in the error rate per word, rather than per article:

Let's put to this to the test.
Here's a hypothetical entry, containing two serious errors.

Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1462 and published the Theory of Relativity.

We can see that it is 13 words long: an "error rate" of one every 6.5 words.
Now here's a longer version.

Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1462.
Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger snake
He published the Theory of Relativity.

This version is 114 words long, and contains only 2 errors - an "error rate" of one every 57 words. That's almost nine times more accurate - and very much proves Barry and Ernest correct.
We unreservedly apologize, and once again, must hail the power of "collective intelligence".

My rising frustration with Wikipedia

It came to my attention this week that there were some problems with the Wikipedia entry on a University of Pittsburgh physicist, David Snoke. I've linked to the Discussion page, rather than the entry itself, to demonstrate the bile and bad behavior that goes on in the process of making an "encyclopedia" entry at this site. It's disgusting.

Snoke is a respected condensed-matter physicist, albeit one who probably wouldn't have gotten a Wikipedia entry (well, except he is in Who's Who). The entry was created because of an article he co-authored on complexity in protein evolution. It has implications for intelligent design, and there's where the problems have come up.

The page has been run by anti-ID people and had for a while been worded more like a polemic against Snoke. Snoke has tried to correct some of it, but much of what he adds keeps getting deleted by his antagonists. I have never done any Wikipedia editing, just because I haven't felt like spending the time it seems to take, but this would be something worth contributing to, if I did.

I'm not convinced by ID, but it deserves a more respectful hearing than it's getting in this excuse for an encyclopedia. I'm glad that at my institution, we're able to have debates on it amongst the faculty, without this kind of behavior.

Why I love the internet

While trying to find the link to The Nation in my previous post, I came across its Wikipedia entry and decided to read the history of the magazine. The history mentions a 1919 letter to The Nation which Franz Boas, father of American anthropology, angrily wrote, denouncing four (unnamed) scientists for acting as spies for the United States during WWI. They'd been using their scientific work as a cover, but they were real scientists. Boas was taken out to the woodshed for this, being quickly and overwhelmingly condemned by the American Anthropological Association.

I clicked on to Boas' entry for more. He wrote,

A soldier whose business is murder as a fine art, a diplomat whose calling is based on deception and secretiveness, a politician whose very life consists in compromises with his conscience, a business man whose aim is personal profit within the limits allowed by a lenient law -- such may be excused if they set patriotic deception above common everyday decency and perform services as spies. They merely accept the code of morality to which modern society still conforms. Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life is the service of truth. We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches. It is bad enough if we have to put up with these, because they reveal a lack of strength of character that is liable to distort the results of their work. A person, however, who uses science as a cover for political spying, who demeans himself to pose before a foreign government as an investigator and asks for assistance in his alleged researches in order to carry on, under this cloak, his political machinations, prostitutes science in an unpardonable way and forfeits the right to be classed as a scientist.

He was referring to the spy ring run by Sylvanus Morley, which was looking for evidence of German U-boat bases in Mexico and for German activity in that country. Don't forget that we'd intercepted the Zimmerman telegram in 1915, in which Germany tried to convince Mexico to attack the US in return for getting the Southwest back. So this wasn't some idle hobby for Morley--it was a serious bit of work he did to defend this country. Morley's own entry states that he's considered the best spy America produced in WWI, and his scientific work was an excellent cover. He was a real scientist, in fact. He worked on the Mayans and discovered Uaxactun, in Guatemala. He also did a lot of work on the Mayan hieroglyphs.

That set me off to my bookshelves, because I've got a few books on those. Sure enough, Morely's mentioned in them! I didn't think that a post on The Nation's rebuke of Chavez would send me all the way around to this, but that's the fun of these things.

"The Nation" on Chavez

Huh. I just saw The Nation on the newsstand, and their cover story asks whether comrade Chavez is starting to betray Venezuela's "experiment in democracy."

Wow. One of two the major left-wing opinion magazines questioning Chavez's democratic credentials?! Next thing, they'll be praising Reagan, and it's all downhill from there...

Clinton's awkward backtracking on Mississippi insult

"[T]he former first lady said the comments she made about the state in the run up to the Iowa caucuses "were not exactly what I said," even though they came directly from an interview she gave to the Des Moines Register in October. Let's review those comments, shall we?

The newspaper quoted the New York senator discussing Iowa and Mississippi being the only states that have never elected a woman governor or sent a woman to Congress.

"How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi? That's not what I see. That's not the quality. That's not the communitarianism; that's not the openness I see in Iowa."

And how does she slither out of this one?

"What I said is what I learned is that neither Iowa or Mississippi had ever elected a woman statewide and I referenced the fact that I was the first woman elected statewide in New York and I told the Iowans that they had a chance to try to change that and now in Mississippi giving Mississippi voters a chance to change that."

Awww, how noble of her! Offering her humble services to lift the benighted Mississippians out of their backwardness.

Obviously, though, her original comment was insulting precisely because she was praising Iowa at the expense of Mississippi--using the latter state as the standard of backwardness. It does no good to say that Mississippi and Iowa both have opportunities with her candidacy. "How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi?" She was flat-out slamming Mississippi.

Damn yankee. (And my apologies to nice yankees out there.)

Eco nonsense

Why does the press give any attention to a group like "Friends of the Earth"? They're complaining that an American Airlines flight from New York to London had only 5 passengers on board...and (oh my gosh!) it still flew!!! They're spitting mad. They don't seem to notice that planes don't fly passengers in one direction only. That plane was going to turn around in London and fly right back to America, carrying more passengers. So what do you gain by not flying out there? You strand another whole planeload of passengers who were going to go the opposite direction!

Nutty environmentalists.

Chicago strikes at the heart of the drug problem

...by wanting to ban Ziplock bags with either length or width under 2". Like the ones I buy to store nuts or loose candy. Or the kind you get sewing and button repair kits in. Right, that'll fix the drug problem. Love this line: the ordinance will be an "important tool" to go after grocery stores, health food stores and other businesses. Yep; those are the ones to go after. Stinkin' grocery stores!

Captured laptop documents Venezuelan aid to FARC

Well, this has got to be embarassing. After killing the FARC leader Raul Reyes, the Colombians have captured a rebel laptop with all kinds of neat-o documents on it. Including discussion of what may be a $300 million gift from Chavez to the rebels: "Who, where, when and how will we receive the dollars and store them?" What to do, what to do?

It also reveals the US (who has some citizens being held hostage by FARC) has been making overtures to them in some odd way. I hope we're not really negotiating with this bunch, but I understand the motivation to do so. Weird is this passage, though:

Writing two days before his death, Reyes tells his secretariat comrades that "the gringos," working through Ecuador's government, are interested "in talking to us on various issues."

"They say the new president of their country will be (Barack) Obama," noting that Obama rejects both the Bush administration's free trade agreement with Colombia and the current military aid program.

Reyes said the response he relayed is that the United States would have to publicly express that desire.

Huh. Well, I'd like to see more about what that means!

Hillary pulls through

Well, I didn't expect this to happen last night: Clinton won both the Ohio and Texas primaries. The Democrats had both a primary (2/3 of the delegates) and a caucus (1/3) in Texas, and while Obama's ahead in the caucus delegates right now, they've not counted all of those, yet.

Now, I want McCain to win the general election, but I'm pulling for Hillary to get the Democratic nomination, since I think she'll be easier to beat. And I agree with Limbaugh's desire to see the Democrats stretch out their primary fight as long as possible. The longer they're beating up on each other, the less we need to do it. The best outcome would be a brokered convention, even. Besides causing more havoc on their side, it would simply be fun to watch. I haven't seen one of those in my lifetime.

Still, I wonder if an extended Democratic primary season is wholly good for our side. The longer their season goes on, the longer the press will be giving them the bulk of the attention. I've been listening to XM Radio's P. O. T. U. S. '08 channel, which is devoted to Presidential campain coverage, and the discussion is mostly about the Democrats, because they're the ones still debating amongst themselves. POTUS '08 has great coverage--I'm not complaining about them; it's inevitable the Democrats will attract more attention as long as there's an actual contest on their side.