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The Glamorous Life of a Journalist, Part 173
For previous reminders of what you're missing if you're not in the exciting world of journalism, see here and here, with links to other installments. This is what you missed today:Dear James,I would...
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False Equivalence Watch: POTUS Speaks
I return to my homeland to see that things have improved in at least one way. From the commanding heights of our government, the "false equivalence" problem seems to be coming into view. Here is how...
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False Equivalence Watch: the Platonic-Ideal Form
Yesterday Barack Obama went to the annual Associated Press luncheon and exhorted journalists to avoid the "false equivalence" syndrome in coverage of controversial events. If you've missed the previous...
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5 Simple Ideas from the Antipodes
If I were in big-think mode, I might say something about the contrasts a superficially similar society, like Australia, offers to the modern United States. How much more egalitarian the culture feels,...
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False Equivalence: Here's How You Deal With It
[Please see update below.] Joe Nocera -- disclosure: longtime friend -- has a column in the NYT today about the "controversy" over the Chevy Volt. The controversy is whether this ambitious hybrid car,...
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Direct from Holland, Today's Flying-Car News!
Because there can never be enough news in this category. Just in time for Easter, I give you: the PAL-V, or Personal Air-Land Vehicle, from Holland: Now that you want to study up more, you could...
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Sic Transit Gloria NMAi
It appears that our old friends at Next Media Animation of Taiwan, despite their artistic triumphs, are encountering headwinds in the business world. For samples of some of their greatest hits, go...
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Fang Lizhi
Back in 1988, when the Tiananmen Square crackdown and Fang Lizhi's celebrated exile to the United States were still a year or more in the future, Orville Schell did a long article about Fang and the...
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False Equivalence: Here's How You Deal With It (Cont.)
From the NYT, in a piece over the weekend on the Democrats' effort to get a vote on "the Buffett rule." The merits of that rule aren't the point at the moment. (It is supposed to guarantee that even...
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Pushback on False Equivalence and the Filibuster
In response to an item earlier today about the admirable clarity of an NYT story on the current state of the filibuster, two replies.From a reader in New York:Agreed that the NYT did a good job on not...
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Mike Wallace and American Media
I am sorry to hear of Mike Wallace's death and extend sincere sympathies to his colleagues and family. A career even half as lengthy and accomplished as his would be cause for admiration and gratitude....
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Now This Is Interesting: A Climate Prediction From 1981
It is very much worth checking out an item on Real Climate, from two Dutch scientists. They have found a paper by James Hansen and others from 1981, before climate change was even an occasion for...
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Good News Dept: NMA Not Actually Dead!
Imagine my chagrin: I spend half my time tut-tutting other parts of the press for "false equivalence" or related deviations from excellence. Then it turns out that I've helped spread a rumor without...
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False-Equivalence Watch: More From the AP
An AP story asks the question: Perhaps I can help with this one. Romney is the rich guy. Obama is the incumbent president, with all of the advantages that go along with that role. The Obamas are much...
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Dramatic Video of Wallace, Jennings, Gingrich, and 'North Kosan'
When I was writing Breaking the News back in the mid-1990s, and the associated "Why We Hate the Media" article for the Atlantic, the age of streaming video was not yet at hand. I had a hard time...
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Do Those Aussie Have All the Answers?
Last week I mentioned a few of the lessons I had learned during a recent several-week spell in Australia. Those lessons didn't include how phenomenal Tasmania is, a topic to be addressed in the...
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Interesting-Software Watch: More on 'The Brain'
Last month I mentioned that among my perennial favorites in the "interesting software" category is The Brain, known in a previous incarnation as Personal Brain and out now with a substantially revised...
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The Glamour Never Stops: Sailor Moon Edition
For background on the glamorous life of a journalist and the flow of info that makes it all worthwhile, see a few of these previous accounts.Today in the inbox we have some very sensible cultural...
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Now That You Ask: Why, Yes, In Fact I Do Have a Book Coming Out
Thanks for noticing! I'm prompted to mention it in part because it's just a month away, and also because of several related items in this past week's news.1) Two days ago, in a widely marveled-at...
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Another Log on the Australia-vs.-U.S. Bonfire
Following these previous items on the compare-and-contrast between two big English-speaking former British colonies with superficial similarities and some surprising deeper differences, a reader writes...
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