Living in a Political World

Tuesday, April 6, 2004

world opinion and the increased violence in Iraq
8:41:00 PM

Is Britain's immigration system working?. Tony Blair has joined several of his ministers and senior security officials at Number Ten, for talks on the state of the UK's immigration system. Is the current system working? [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]
2:38:45 PM

Google News Tells How Well Your Site Is Doing. Last year I noted how Newsknife's "Google News Watch" monitored how Google News' story selection rated compared to that of human editors. Newsknife's methodology caused some debate, however. Now, reports the company's Neil Pharazyn, Google News is being monitored on how it sorts news-item sources by relevance. Each news item on Google News links to numerous versions of the same story as carried and/or written by different news websites. Those listings are sorted by relevance.

Pharazyn says that Google News has now evolved to become "a good barometer of how well a news site is serving (...)

Entry continued... By steve@poynter.org (Steve Outing). [Poynter E-Media Tidbits]
2:37:33 PM

New Evidence Bush Pushed Iraq War Right After 9/11. The White House continues to deny that in the days after 9/11, the President immediately began planning an invasion of Iraq, calling such charges "revisionist history"1 and claiming Iraq was "to the side"2 immediately after the attacks. But new revelations by a former top British official confirm that immediately after 9/11, President Bush started planning to use the terrorist attacks as a justification for war in Iraq, despite having no proof that Iraq had any connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11.3 [Misleader]
2:35:47 PM

New Lesson for College Students: Lighten Up. Colleges are responding to the rising number of students seeking help for stress by offering treatments far beyond traditional medicine. By Sara Rimer. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
2:14:23 PM

Philadelphia joins Innovative Car-Share Program. The City of Philadelphia has announced that it would reduce its fleet by 400 vehicles and join PhillyCarShare. The city began selling off the first 50 sedans yesterday. Employees have access to a fleet of hybrid gas-electric cars parked in 17 locations with an electronic key and can reserve the vehicles over the internet. This looks like an intriguing program with a lot of merit. A similar program has been available in San Francisco for about three years where four city departments have signed up. [David Fletcher's Government and Technology Weblog]
2:08:13 PM

Online Consoles Soar While PCs Stumble (AP). AP - Only a few years ago, online games still lurked on the fringe of American culture. [Yahoo! News - Technology]
2:05:44 PM

flight not fight - Americans heading north - again
12:53:50 PM