New York Times: If I didn't already hate you so much, I'd pity you

The New York Times says bloggers are killing themselves.

Because "authorized journalists" are superhuman or something, and therefore never feel stress nor need any sleep.

Such a tragic waste of paper.

(I am getting a lot of hits for this article because of this old post of mine.)

Welcome to the party, pal!

I find a sort of perverse joy in seeing others find evidence that modern "journalism" is largely a sham. Anyone who pays attention knows how they continually lie about topics such as guns and liberty (actual liberty, not Redemopublican faux-liberty).

In this case, ABC is working on a report of an alleged "Bigfoot" photo taken by a trailcam in Minnesota. So they call the man who is probably the current most expert person in the United States (possibly the world) for his comments on the subject. He tells them he thinks it's "bogus," and points out reasons why.

So what happens? They don't even mention him, or his comments, in their report.

Also, more shmournalism at the Today Show.

ABC changes name to APC

Okay, not really.  But American Propaganda Corporation would be much more accurate.  Oh yeah, I forgot.  They aren't into accuracy.

Exposed: The anti-gun agenda behind ABC News' "Before Arranging Playdates, Ask About Guns" | Buckeye Firearms Association:

The kicker about the whole story is this: remember Carol, the lady referenced to at the beginning of ABC's story? It turns out that she has no qualms about letting her son Stephen play with Robbie at his home. In fact, since the ABC crew came out and filmed both kids are still welcome at each others homes for play dates and overnight visits. (Why didn't that make it to the story? I guess it was an inconvenient fact that didn't reinforce the bias in ABC's story.)

Read the whole thing.

via The War On Guns

Ballcock!

It's a "toilet float," it's a "sump," it's a "toilet tank float ball," it's a "ball-shaped thing with something sticking out of it."

Don't be afraid to say it, Des Moines Register, it's a perfectly legitimate word.

Ballcock!

via War On Guns

How many hands you got?

More shmexperts at NYT:

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”

The study reported on attitudes toward smoking in 1,500 households across the United States. It found that the vast majority of both smokers and nonsmokers were aware that second-hand smoke is harmful to children. Some 95 percent of nonsmokers and 84 percent of smokers agreed with the statement that “inhaling smoke from a parent’s cigarette can harm the health of infants and children.”

But far fewer of those surveyed were aware of the risks of third-hand smoke. Since the term is so new, the researchers asked people if they agreed with the statement that “breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.” Only 65 percent of nonsmokers and 43 percent of smokers agreed with that statement, which researchers interpreted as acknowledgement of the risks of third-hand smoke.

Translation: we asked a bunch of people and most of them found the smell of stale cigarette smoke disagreeable, so obviously that means that the smell of stale cigarette smoke is harmful to one's health.

Another viewpoint here.

via My Pipes Community

"Dear Media"

An excellent rant at Cracked:

I feel like all we’re getting are lies and lines, and no one’s talking about the issues and no one’s holding anyone accountable. Media, you’re supposed to be on our side. Stop repeating the same sound bites over and over again. In the history of forever, has a President’s ability to do his job been enhanced or impaired as a result of how they feel about moose-hunting? Then shut up about it.

Yes, the media has been failing us for a long, long time.  It's encouraging that more people are finally waking up to the fact, but what the heck too you so long?

Exactly

via Cryptomundo

Hoax

And of course, since the devoutly environmentalist MSM swallowed the story whole, they have been somewhat reluctant to spread the new word that it was all faked.

You know what I'm talking about.

I bet her name was Joo-Dee

Jon Downes comments on the media with It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it...

Two minutes later he phoned back. "Everybody wants to be on television" he insisted in an increasingly hysterical voice. "Don't be so bloody stupid" I said, and turned my telephone off.

Two hours later, the crew who had driven like madmen from Manchester turned up completely uninvited, and once again insisted on viewing our health and safety procedures. Half an hour later an enormous truck festooned with satellite dishes turned up, and then a sports car containing a blonde bimbette who was planning to make amusing comments about our activities for the studio audience.

"But I don't want to do an interview" I said. "Before we start, can I see your health and safety procedures", she said. "I am not interested in appearing on your programme" I said. "But everyone wants to be on television", she said with what she fondly imagined was a winning smile. I will draw a discreet veil over what happened next. But like Rottweilers on an inner-city housing estate, they got most of what they wanted. With the worst possible grace I gave them an interview.

I'm sure many who read this blog with how the MSM handles the topic of firearms, but as I've said before: It isn't just guns. Journalists, especially television journalists, are becoming increasingly stupid and useless.

Downes is the director of The Centre for Fortean Zoology, a webcaster and film-maker.

I might explain the title later, if I feel like it.

Bullsh*t

A Goliath Sniper Rifle May Take Some of the Physics Out of War. And by "Goliath," he simply means a typical rifle chambered in .50 BMG.

William Graves, owner of GPS Defense Sniper School, teaches Army Airborne soldiers how to use this 5-foot-long gun. He has invited me to this sunbaked backcountry to experience it myself. I'm wearing two types of ear protection — earplugs and an electronic decibel-filtering headset — because the M107's report can be deafening. At a safety briefing earlier this morning, Graves was disturbingly tactical: "Hold the gun tightly when you fire or it will kick and break your nose. If anything happens, take as many gauze rolls as you can and stuff them directly into the wound. If it's something to do with high-caliber rifles, it's going to be catastrophic."

I shiver as Graves scans the terrain and points to a speck on a hillside 700 yards across the canyon. Through the crosshairs of my 14X Leupold Mark 4 scope, it resolves as a head-sized rock. I wedge the stock into my shoulder and hug it tight.

Then a little math. Bullets don't fly forever — they fall in a shallow parabolic curve. Using a ballistic chart that Graves pulled off the Internet, we twist the elevation knob to lower the scope 14 minutes of angle (1 MOA equals 1 inch per 100 yards). I'm now aiming about 8 feet above the target. Hitting the rock should be simple. Advises Graves: "Move the trigger without moving the rifle."

First, whoever heard of the mere recoil of a .50 BMG causing a "catastrophic" wound that one would have to stuff several rolls of gauze into?

Second, if Graves is who he is supposed to be, why did he have to hunt down a chart from the Internet?

Third, as the last paragraph quoted above shows, the .50 BMG doesn't render physics irrelevant.

Journalism, shmournalism.

An utterly sickening, disgusting editorial

Thanks to the Dayton Daily News. Gun control must be packaged well:

At a minimum, it seems these conditions must be in place:

• Pitiful as it is to say, horrifically violent events that can be directly attributed to lax gun laws can force change. Those opportunities have to be used — to protect other innocent people.

• Proposed reforms can't be called "gun control" — even though that plainly is what they are. Better to spin them as "law enforcement."

• It helps when pro-gun advocates say dumb things that make even the moderates roll their eyes, such as when geriatric rocker Ted Nugent told CNN: "Spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when, in fact, it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people."

• Some gun-safety advocates need to oppose the proposed reforms, such as in this case when a few groups said the legislation had been "hijacked" by the gun lobby. In fact, the bill does throw some crumbs to the NRA — such as requiring a process be established that allows convicts and mentally disabled people to at least argue that they should have their gun rights restored.

A member of Buckeye Firearms Association, an Ohio-based gun rights group, has caught on to this strategy. He recently posted on the group's Web site:

What "anti-gun groups, legislators and prosecutors can't accomplish by passing more anti-gun laws (realizing it's virtual political suicide), they are quietly pursuing ... through the back door by increasing the pool of prohibited persons. After all, who could be against keeping guns away from criminals?"

Exactly.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that they are so open about it.

I have never believed that gun-grabbers are simply trying to reduce crime, and are mistaken or misled in their methods. I have always believed it to be about domination and oppression, and nothing else. If you can read this article and still believe that the gun banners are simply good-hearted but mistaken, check with your doctor. Your brain isn't getting enough oxygen.

UPDATE: David Codrea writes an open letter.

UPDATE 2: And gets a typical cover-my-*ss non-answer.

"Bell weather"

Apparently, Time (in partnership with CNN) are now hiring mature-looking junior high-schoolers to blog on the presidential campaign.

If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here. When Obama, the dinner’s last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting “O-bam-a” and “Fired Up, Ready to Go!” So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to “please take their seats for safety concerns.”

As one commenter said, "...aren't words supposed to be your profession?"

Very big sigh.

"Wether" is the correct term for a male castrated goat. Like most other male animals that have been neutered, it becomes more tame and easier to handle, since it's no longer interested in girl goats and mainly just wants to eat and sleep. Rattle the feed bucket, and it comes running, since it can't get distracted by the girls.

If you put a bell on the wether's neck, it wil jingle jangle loudly when the wether runs for the food. Eventually all the other goats, who may still be making the sign of the four-legged wildebeast somewhere out there in the pasture, will learn that when they hear that loud bell jingling, it's food time.

You train your tame wether to follow you. All the other goats are tricked into following the sound of the bell.

Bellwether.

via Shooting the Messenger

Journalists doing research

Here's an interesting search hit, apparently from some media company. I hope they found what they were looking for.

9x18 Makarov is nothing "American." It's just 9x18 Makarov.

The "9" is roughly the diameter of the bullet in millimeters. The "18" is the length of cartridge case in millimeters. It is intermediate in power between the .380 ACP (also known as 9x17) and the 9mm Parabellum (also known as 9x19).

Sometimes I wish they would just send an email and ask. I would be happy to supply any information I could.

Top 10 Economic Myths

I'm no economist, for sure, but I did find this interesting. The Business & Media Institute has compiled their list of The Media’s Top 10 Economic Myths of 2007.

Here's a snippet on housing foreclosures:

The foreclosure figures most stories used came from RealtyTrac, a source that counts each filing in the foreclosure process. One house has to go through several steps in the process, so counting each one as a separate foreclosure is inaccurate. Rick Sharga, the organization’s president, said it is misleading to call the number total foreclosures – which is what the media kept doing.

I go into many "developing areas" as part of my job, and so far I haven't seen any indication that the house-builders are slowing down anywhere around here.

via The Liberty Papers

So this is what "progressive" means

Investigate the Media busts the San Francisco Chronicle and their practice of covert censorship:

Suspicious, I then took the following steps: I deleted the "cookies" that SFGate installs on users' computers to identify who they are, then logged out of my account, and then revisited the same thread on my own computer. As I suspected, the comment was no longer visible, replaced by the moderator's notation "This comment has been removed by SFGate." Then when I logged back in to my account, and viewed the thread as "me" again -- the comment was once again visible.

I also confirmed this by viewing the comment thread using a different browser (Firefox) which did not have any SFGate cookies installed yet, and on which I had not logged in to my account. Sure enough, the comment appeared as deleted; while exactly simultaneously, using my original logged-in browser (Safari) the comment was not deleted.

In other words, whenever I viewed the comments thread as "myself" (i.e. logged in under my account name, which in this case was "jimjams"), my comment remained visible; but whenever I viewed the comment thread either anonymously (i.e. not logged in) or from a browser with no SFGate cookies or (most importantly) from some other computer, then my comment was gone -- deleted by the moderators.

Sounds bad enough, but it gets worse. Read the whole thing.

Authorized journalists doing research

With G00gle, of course.

"Why Scientists Hate to Talk to the Media"

Everyone has heard about, and many have blogged about, the scientist who recently predicted what the human race would turn into in the future. Making fun of him, and so forth.

Except, he didn't.

A wildly interesting story about the eventual division of mankind into two species by the year 3000 caught my eye over the weekend. The story originally published by the Daily Mail authored by Niall Firth on October 26, 2007 provided astounding predictions for the future of mankind. It was also given a top position in the American news index Drudgereport. The Daily Mail story has graphic displays of the evolution of mankind and film clips of the classic work by H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

Further, the story piqued my interest because the sources cited were from the eminent London School of Economics. Specifically, a professor, Oliver Curry who received his PHD from the London School of Economics. His dissertation concerns Morality as Natural History: An adaptationist account of ethics, published in 2005. In essence Professor Curry interests are about values and attitudes and where do they come from.

[...]

In response to the press releases mentioned in the Daily Mail article, Dr. Curry released the following explanation on October 17, 2007.

"In the summer of 2006 I was commissioned by Bravo Television to write an essay on the future of human evolution. The essay was intended as a science fiction way of illustrating some aspects of evolutionary theory."

"Bravo then sent out a press release on the essay, but did not release the essay itself. As a result, a wildly distorted version of what I had written ended up being reported as science fact in the media. I do not endorse the content of these media reports."

[...]

In essence Dr. Curry was asked to write a fictional account of what if and make some projections about some 1,000 years in the future for an episode of a popularized series on Bravo. He never intended that his Essay for Bravo be presented as scientific evidence. An examination of the quotes made in the Daily Mail article referring to a report confuses the peer review research he is conducting and an entertaining essay he never intended to have published as scientific evidence. His words and work are taken out of context.

The Mainstream Media: is there anything you can't trust them to screw up?

The Idiot AJ* in Dallas

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong, sort of. Instead of pulling the race card, she pulled the gender card. But hey, there's still plenty of time.

Everybody already knows about this, I suppose. I haven't watched the video because I'm on dial-up and downloading videos takes a while. Also I've already read enough about it that I think watching it would be a waste of time.

So here's my take: this pathetic excuse for a woman is just another celebrity idiot savant. Not much of a celebrity, I admit, being only a TV news hound in Dallas, but still. Her skill is reading a teleprompter and looking like she knows what she's talking about. Notice I said looking like, because like all celebrity idiot savants, she actually hasn't the slightest clue as to what is right and what is wrong, or what should be done and what should not be done. She has this fatal character flaw in common with all the other celebrity idiot savants who assault our consciousness every day. To her, this was just another grab for attention, and she was so caught up in her own arrogance that she couldn't see she was going to get hammered for it.

I hope she has learned now, but I doubt it. I expect her to pull the racial card on this one. In fact, I think her actions are probably racially motivated, but that's just my hunch. I have nothing to back it up.

My prediction: A year from now she'll have her own talk show on Univision, specializing in how the evil bolillos persecuted her out of her job.

Also: she is not the only one at fault. All those other people who were involved in approving this story are just as at fault as she is. She is only the scapegoat. The entire management of that station should all be fired.

UPDATE: A couple of weeks ago this imbecile was awarded "Broadcast Journalist of the Year honors from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists." And now:

NAHJ wrote the station manager late Thursday urging that Rebecca Aguilar be reinstated "for the sake of good journalism and maintaining your newscasts' credibility in the local community and national journalism community."

There's a shocker. I expect LULAC and La Raza must be working themselves into a mighty fine lather right about now, and we'll be hearing from them soon, as well. If NAHJ were really paying attention they would know exactly how the "local community" feels about her. But they are obviously dedicated to supporting someone based solely on her racial heritage rather than her actual ability or talent.

Via A Keyboard and a .45.

*AJ = "Authorized Journalist."

Where can I get one?

The "Reuger 9mm" with a "75-round clip." "Fresh hollowpoints" not included.

It would make concealed carry slightly difficult, I'd guess.

Xrlq debunks Snopes

Snopes appears to be working for Hillary. Or at least doing their best to cover her ***.

Bias at Snopes is not something new. Insane Troll Logic noticed it more than two years ago.