An Inconvenient Movie.

The subject of Al Gore always sets me musing about the press. So pardon a paragraph of exposition before I get to Al Gore’s new movie.

It seems to me that the political press has always felt more comfortable with amiable doofuses than with people who genuinely care about what they’re doing. If I wanted to psychoanalyze freely (before you protest, check the name of this blog) I would say that political reporters generally have egos bigger than their intellect and just feel more comfortable around the limited and slightly sleazy politicians who fit their cynical view of how politics is supposed to operate.

Of course there are other ways of winning over reporters. At least one investigator has shown that dumping copious amounts of booze, attention and cocktail weenies on reporters can win you an enduring reputation as a straight talker.

Maybe Clinton was a bit too bright and wonkish to sit at the kool kids table. Certainly Al Gore, brighter and more earnest than your average handful of Brookings scholars, was out before he was ever in. That explains as well as anything I’ve seen how a smear that made no sense – Al Gore makes things up to please people – took on a life of its own in the press. The Heathers had such a good time dissing the bright kid that they rarely if ever took time to note the equally-egregious (actually neither said anything that egregious, which made them equal) whoppers told by Gore’s amiable, limited opponent.

To his credit Gore the almost-president went on campaigning for the same issue as always: people, pollution and the climate. Five years on the speaking circuit has apparently punched-up Gore’s presentation significantly, to the point that director Davis Guggenheim has assembled the Gore lecture, some voiceovers and a scattering of graphics into a film that two reviewers that I usually trust, NY Times and The Onion, describe as an emotional punch in the gut. Now honestly, when was the last time you heard somebody describe a powerpoint presentation like that? Reviewers also also call it informative and intellectually convincing. That seems like high praise for what is basically a movie-length slideshow, and a successful movie will force “skeptics” to try a lot harder than recent ads and op-eds by folks with a weak grasp of the science and obvious conflicts-of-interest.

Not to worry though, climate skeptics may have an ace in the hole: years after the fact media Heathers can’t seem to stop writing their hackneyed ‘90s narratives. Case in point, the dreaded CLENIS. So here is this week’s assignment for the folks at TechCentralStation: find a factual innacuracy in Gore’s presentation. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, just a result misattributed to one scientist instead of another or a misplaced date. In 90-some minutes there has to be something. Then just step back and let the good old Gore-lies-to-please-people credibility smear (that falls under Mentally Imbalanced for those keeping score) take off under its own power. If the kool kids can’t stop themselves from obsessing about the Clintons’ marriage then they won’t mind a chance to kick the smart kid again.

I don’t mean to say that the folks at TCSDaily and elsewhere are fundamentally dishonest, although that may be, but they have to cut down this message before it becomes a phenomenon. The last thing Republicans need is for a million or two Americans to react like the reviewer at the Onion:

The first response to An Inconvenient Truth is horror. No matter how reliably genial and measured Gore’s oratory style, no matter how much hope he dutifully tries to squeeze into the proceedings, it’s hard to come away feeling anything but a prevailing sense of doom. The second response is outrage. How could the press and our leaders allow for the debate over global warming to center on the issue of whether it even exists?

...Quite apart from its environmental agenda, the film is a reminder that there’s no space for substance in political discourse: A 30-second soundbite on global warming could easily be brushed off as tree-hugging rhetoric, but after 100 minutes of level-headed elaboration, it’s chillingly undeniable.

Maybe fear is the greatest motivator. It is depressing to think that Democrats may ride a wave of fear akin to 9/11 demagoguery but hey, that strategy worked out pretty well for Karl Rove and I bet the prospect of the same phenomenon running in reverse has him at least a little bit frightened.

[Balloon Juice]

I plan on seeing this movie. Gore uses facts and science to combat the selfishness and ignorance dispensed by so many. I really beleive this is one of the seminal documentaries ever made. Look at the trailer.  comment []1:01:07 PM    

Primary Enforcement of Seat Belt Law Rejected by MA House.

by TChris

Reasonable arguments can be made that laws should require drivers to wear seat belts, or that motorcylists should be required to wear helmets, because society often bears the cost of injuries that exceed insurance coverage. Others reasonably argue that the government should allow individuals to make their own judgments about the costs and benefits of using seat belts or helmets.

Putting that debate aside, states that mandate seat belt use must decide whether the police should be allowed to stop a vehicle solely because the officer suspects that someone in the car hasn't buckled up. The Massachusetts House wisely declined to give the police the power to stop motorists solely to write a seat belt ticket. About half the states permit only "secondary enforcement" of seat belt laws, permitting seat belt enforcement when the police make a traffic stop for some other traffic violation while prohibiting traffic stops just to write a seat belt ticket.

[TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

As I recall, Federal money is used to subsidize statewide Clickit or Ticket campaigns. I wonder if there is anything in there about it being used as a primary or secondary enforcement tactic?  comment []12:44:16 PM    

Bush Administration Uses ‘State Secrets Privilege’ To Escape Accountability.

This week, six private citizens — including author Studs Terkel — joined the ACLU in a lawsuit against AT&T, claiming the company gave the NSA “sensitive information about massive numbers of domestic phone calls.”

But AT&T and the government may force the courts to shut down the case. With increasing frequency, the Bush administration is employing the state secrets privilege, “a once-rare tactic that essentially gives the government a blank check to kill civil suits.” (Verizon picked up the administration’s lead and invoked the privilege to shield itself from public scrutiny over the NSA surveillance program.)

A look at the government’s increasing abuse of the practice:

– A recent study found that the federal government “has successfully asserted the secrets privilege at least 60 times since the early 1950s and has been stymied five times.”

– “It was invoked only four times in the first 23 years after the U.S. Supreme Court created the privilege in 1953, but now the government is claiming the privilege to dismiss lawsuits at a rate of more than three a year.”

Even more troubling is that the state secrets privilege is based on a 1953 Supreme Court decision that was “based more on concealing negligence than preserving national security.”

Kevin Drum has more.

[Think Progress]

The Administration is not just saying that parts of a case involve state secrets. They say the entire case does. So, one party in a criminal case can simply say, It's a secret, and get away with anything. No oversight by Congress and none by the Judicial branch. I wonder how long before we have judge's chambers being searched by the Executive Branch? They can not only want to intimidate the Congress by such tactics.  comment []12:36:44 PM    

Mice Inherit Trait Without the Gene [AP Science]

Interesting. It appears that RNA is involved but it is a complex system. While so much of our understanding of genetics is based on Mendellian mechanisms, it is the oddball, uncommon ones that could have some interesting effects. I'll be reading this paper.  comment []12:33:52 PM    

[link]

DETENTION FOR A BLOG ENTRY? I don't think that high schools have any business punishing students for things they do when they're out of school, whether or not they blog about them.

Plus, the weasel-phrase "illegal or inappropriate behavior" sets my teeth on edge. Do I trust a high-school principal to judge what off-campus behavior is "inappropriate?" I don't really even trust them with regard to what's happening on campus.

[Instapundit.com]

Perhaps a netter response would be to notify the parents but detention seems a little strong, particularly when the priciple gets to make the decision. But then, I guess the idea of a Unitary Executive is all the rage today.  comment []12:19:33 PM    

Survival of the selfless - scientists find cheats don't always prosper. Selfishness is not necessarily the best survival trait for microorganisms, according to researchers studying the comparative effectiveness of 'cheating' and 'cooperating' strains of yeast. [EurekAlert! - Biology]

Well, the report maily details that those that use energy quickly but inefficiently (by generating toxins) can not out compete those that take use energy slowly but efficiently. Eventually the fast growers leave too many toxins around they can do much with. A purely selfish strategy does not always win, something I wish creationists would undertsand when they suggest that evolution is always about being a selfish bastard.  comment []12:16:45 PM    

Found Footage: Smack your MacBook Pro.

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends

This video shows a clever use of the Apple sudden motion sensor. Simply tap the side of your MacBook and the desktop switches. Sadly, the URL at the beginning of the video is password protected. Here's hoping somone releases the code.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

[The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Only on a Mac. This is kind of a cool idea, although smacking your mac may not be the best idea.  comment []12:07:25 PM    

Gun ads in Boy's Life encouraged youngsters to shoot hawks. Mark Frauenfelder:

Here's an interesting collection of gun and ammo advertisements from 1950s issues of Boy's Life. My father had a gun as a kid, and so did all the kids in the neighborhood where he grew up. Times have changed. Link

[Boing Boing]

I particularly like the one where they graduate from shooting cans on the top of fence posts to taking down crows. 'Let's shoot a road sign! Let's shoot a mail box!' What else is a Boy Scout to do with a gun? At least they are always in uniform when they go shooting cans and birds.  comment []6:10:45 AM    

MIT revamps energy system for more fuel-efficient cars. MIT researchers are trying to unleash the promise of an old idea by converting light into electricity more efficiently than ever before. [digg]

It is an interesting idea. Burn the gas to create electricity to drive the car. There are still way too many obstacles that still need to be hurdled but an interesting idea. More efficient use of gasoline would be a nice thing.  comment []5:51:47 AM    

Matthews: War Crime?.

Matthews: War Crime?

 

 

On Hardball today:

 

Matthews: So what diverted us to Iraq?

 

Batiste:  Good question.  I don't know, and that's...

 

                                             Video-WMP Video-QT

 

Matthews: How come nobody seems to know who this crime...this, this mistake was committed.  How come everybody -- and maybe it'll look like a crime at some point because we were chasing bin Laden, we still haven't caught him, the President said at 9/11 "We're going to catch the guys that knocked down these buildings," but we have lost that pursuit. The top people in al-Qaeda are out there somewhere in Pakistan and yet we're stuck in Iraq with a course that had nothing to do with the people who attacked us on 9/11, right?

 

Batiste: Chris, that's the $24,000 question and I turn to the Congressional oversight committees, the other branch of government who is charged with getting to these answers.

 

(h/t Lynne)

 

He'll return to his previous Al Gore bashing momentarily.

[Crooks and Liars]

Why are we in Iraq? Why did we just stop hunting bin Laden? Why is Afghanistan beginning to dissolve into civil war? It is like the US is led by a bunch of leaders suffering from ADHD. Or maybe there are just so many ripe, low hanging fruits to pluck and devour?So, why work so hard.  comment []5:44:56 AM    

Bush and the First Amendment [Dispatches from the Culture Wars].

If there was any doubt that Bush envisions himself to have unlimited authority that cannot be challenged, this article should put that to rest. The ACLU, representing several citizens, has filed suit against the NSA's call tracking system and the government is arguing not only that they cannot challenge that program, but that no citizen has any right to challenge any allegedly anti-terrorist policy in court at all:

The Bush administration has urged a judge to dismiss a similar case, saying it threatens to divulge state secrets and jeopardize national security. The government argued in briefs that the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of the president's asserted wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.

If the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of such programs, then we might as well not have a constitution or courts at all. That is the function of the courts, to determine the constitutionality of executive and legislative actions. Absent that, there is no means of petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, as guaranteed in the first amendment. Let us once again revisit what the Federalist Papers say about the importance of judicial review:

The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.

Without the courts to protect us from the unconstitutional acts of the executive and legislative branch, all of our rights are in grave jeopardy.

Read the comments on this post... By Ed Brayton none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

This is the fundamental crisis this Administration causing. They believe that there can be NO review of what they are doing, either by the courts or by Congress. No one has the right or ability to examine what they are doing. Can no one see that this philosophy leads to a destruction of any sort of democracy? Without oversight, any executive can do anything, with no check or balance. We are back to a supreme ruler who could potentially refuse to leave office. If it is alright to ignore the 1st, 4th, etc amendments, why not just the whole thing? Would Americans then do something? Hard to say, since they are sitting by and letting so much of the Constitution be shredded.  comment []5:42:23 AM    

Harry Shearer: Dr. Seed Plants One on the Corps.

The UC Berkeley-National Science Foundation report on the causes of the catastrophic flooding in New Orleans was released today, and most media lead with the report's criticism of funding shortfalls for the construction of the flood-control system. "Follow the money." The NYT runs with a story that features the blame the report heaps, mainly on the Corps, with some set aside for the local Sewerage and Water Board, but explain to me, please, how a story whose second-paragraph quote from study member Dr. Ray Seed is this....

"People didn't die because the storm was bigger than the system could handle, and people didn't die because the levees were overtopped....People died because mistakes were made, and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced cost."

...belongs on Page 19. If the same paragraph had said...

"People didn't die because terrorists flew planes into the buildings, people died because mistakes were made, and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced cost.."

... does anyone doubt that would have made the NYT front page? Is the cause of the drowning of a major American city really just a local story?

For a story that emphasizes that the study "proved the inadequacy of the corps", you have to turn to the Times of London coverage.

[Editor's Pick on The Huffington Post]

The stupid editorial choices of the major media is one of the continuing reasons for their decline. People can, and do, find the news that interests them much faster on the internet. The people make their own editorial choices. So why be limited by ones from a small group of cloistered managers? The illegal wiretapping story was sat on for a year (and probably only published because one of the reporters was going to scoop the paper with a book; his own end run around the process. They knew all about a possible attack before 9/11 but chose not to discuss it. The major media have failed and will be replaced by new forms because people really do need to know the facts in an information economy. At least those who want to survive and thrive.  comment []5:31:00 AM    

Judge Jones on the Founding Fathers [Dispatches from the Culture Wars].

The more I see from this guy, the more I like him. Over the weekend, he gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Dickinson College. I like much of what he had to say:

"The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry," said Jones, who was thrust into the national spotlight by last year's court fight over the teaching of evolution in the Dover school district.

The founding fathers - from school namesake John Dickinson to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson - were products of the Enlightenment, Jones said.

"They possessed a great confidence in an individual's ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason," he said.

"This core set of beliefs led the founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state."

This fits very well with the notion that Jon Rowe and I have been advocating for a couple years now, that the leading lights among the founders (the first four presidents, plus Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine and a few others) were primarily "theistic rationalists". All believed firmly in God, of course, but rejected most claims of revelation, believing that we could ascertain the truth about God and the universe through the use of our reason alone.

Read the comments on this post... By Ed Brayton none@example.com. [ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed]

I think several of our Founding Fathers would have a hard time in today's political arena because of their religious beliefs. That is why I snicker anytime some rube tries to claim allegience of the Founding Fathers to whatever form of hellfire and damnation is the current thing. Most of those rubes would not be able to carry on any reasonable conversation regarding religion with Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.  comment []11:08:59 AM    

pwn3d!!!. Jean Rohe:

In addition, you make many assumptions about who I am and what I stand for. You assume that the words shouted from the audience reflected at all times my opinions and values. You assume that I have made myself look like an idiot, which, I can tell you, is just not true. You assume I have taken no risks. I'm curious to see which doors have been permanently closed to me in the future, simply because I've spoken up. You assume that I did what I did simply to draw attention to myself for my own personal benefit. I have said in my writing, and I will say it again, I would never have asked for this responsibility in a million years. The entire event was stomach-churning and unpleasant because it was something I didn't want to do, but knew I had to out of an obligation to my own values. You assume that I have no experience making a living. I have been a full-time college student and have worked a job to pay my own rent and my own expenses for the past two years. You assume that I live in an "echo chamber" of liberal head-patting, when, in fact, I live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a neighborhood notorious for its cultural diversity and sometimes, conflict. I live in New York City where every human interaction is a test of our willingness to coexist as citizens. And finally, I think it is unfair to assume that I have not considered the hardships of Senator McCain's life. Indeed, one of my first feelings upon seeing him in the flesh was compassion for how much he must have endured in his time as a POW. If there's one thing that I know about myself, it is that I care for people, and in that sense I have a great deal of character. Please don't try to bully me anymore.

[Eschaton]

A measured response to a hack job. If McCain and his surrogates had just let this alone, it would have disappeared from the news cycle. But they want to continue churning up the media over this. Red meat, I guess.  comment []11:03:42 AM    

Breaking Pledge, Bush's New Bush Tax Cut Bill Triples Rates For Teens With College Funds....

The $69 billion tax cut bill that President Bush signed this week tripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds, despite Mr. Bush's 1999 pledge to veto any tax increase.

Under the new law, teenagers age 14 to 17 with investment income will now be taxed at the same rate as their parents, not at their own rates. Long-term capital gains and dividends that had been taxed at 5 percent will now be taxed at 15 percent. Interest that had been taxed at 10 percent will now be taxed at as much as 35 percent.

[The Huffington Post | Raw Feed]

I wonder if Taxation Without Representation will become a rallying cry again?   comment []10:10:55 AM    

If "The Ten Commandments" was a wild teen comedy. Cory Doctorow:

"Ten Things I Hate About Commandments" is a mash-up trailer for a John Hughes style teen comedy, using footage from the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments. It's masterfully done, and milk-out-the-nose funny.

Link

(Thanks, Mangesh!)

[Boing Boing]

Wait until you see who Samuel L Jackson is playing!!  comment []11:00:48 PM    

Do you own songs bought online? Well, sort of. Put another way, no.

Reuters tackles an issue that many people apparently don't understand (partly, perhaps, because of Apple's misinformation about the topic):

You ... have spent perhaps a few hundred dollars buying songs from the company's iTunes music store.

But do you really own the tunes? Whether you do, however, depends on how you define ownership.

Apple's FairPlay digital rights management, or DRM, software prevents you from listening to those purchased songs on a music player from Dell Inc., Creative, Sony, or others. The same thing goes for songs you've imported to your computer from CDs you already own.

The DRM software is Apple's way of preventing piracy and is a large part of the reason why the recording industry has so warmly embraced the iTunes Music Store.

I won't buy music from the iTunes Music Store because Apple's 128 Kbps tracks are of too low quality to convert them to decent-sounding MP3 files. For this reason, I prefer Napster (192 Kbps) or MSN Music (160 to 256 Kbps) instead. I wrote about this process in Connected Home a while back. [Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus]

This report is BS. You can import any of your CDs as MP3 at very high quality. I do it at 160 kps but you can go up to 192 kps. With no DRM, allowing you to play them on ANY MP3 player. If you buy something from iTunes, you can convert it to a normal CD format and burn it. then import it back in WITHOUT DRM, into iTunes as an MP3, allowing you to play it on ANY MP3 player. I do not believe this is possible using MSN or Napster.   comment []10:41:36 PM    

#

The man who would be DIA



Hayden :

QUESTION: Jim Bamford. Good seeing you here in the Press Club, General,



GEN. HAYDEN: Hey, Jim.



QUESTION: Hope we see more of you here.



Just to clarify sort of what's been said, from what I've heard you say today and an earlier press conference, the change from going around the FISA law was to -- one of them was to lower the standard from what they call for, which is basically probable cause to a reasonable basis; and then to take it away from a federal court judge, the FISA court judge, and hand it over to a shift supervisor at NSA. Is that what we're talking about here -- just for clarification?



GEN. HAYDEN: You got most of it right. The people who make the judgment, and the one you just referred to, there are only a handful of people at NSA who can make that decision. They're all senior executives, they are all counterterrorism and al Qaeda experts. So I -- even though I -- you're actually quoting me back, Jim, saying, "shift supervisor." To be more precise in what you just described, the person who makes that decision, a very small handful, senior executive. So in military terms, a senior colonel or general officer equivalent; and in professional terms, the people who know more about this than anyone else.



QUESTION: Well, no, that wasn't the real question. The question I was asking, though, was since you lowered the standard, doesn't that decrease the protections of the U.S. citizens? And number two, if you could give us some idea of the genesis of this. Did you come up with the idea? Did somebody in the White House come up with the idea? Where did the idea originate from?



Thank you.



GEN. HAYDEN: Let me just take the first one, Jim. And I'm not going to talk about the process by which the president arrived at his decision.



I think you've accurately described the criteria under which this operates, and I think I at least tried to accurately describe a changed circumstance, threat to the nation, and why this approach -- limited, focused -- has been effective.



MR. HILL: Final question.



QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --



GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.



QUESTION: But the --



GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.



QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.



GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.



QUESTION: But does it not say probable --



GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --



QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --



GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure.



QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause." And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place in probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on

reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?



GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.



Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

We will decide what is reasonable, not your silly courts.

- tbogg [TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger" ]

Do we really want the CIA run by someone who does not even underastand what the 4th Amendment says, much less how to follow it? as long as he finds it reasonable, they can search anyone. Wow!  comment []10:23:56 PM