Balance the Humours

4 comments

There is a spate of “Tourettes-like” symptoms – tics and involuntary movements – among a particular group of girls in the LeRoy school district. Convinced that these girls aren’t faking it (I have no idea how), public health officials have reached a logical conclusion for what’s behind this:

…but at least one local expert in the field of movement disorders stated Thursday that what most of these girls experienced is likely the result of mass hysteria.

It’s describing a mass psychogenic (psychosomatic) group of symptoms shared among a large population, but doesn’t it sound medieval? Doesn’t that sound like the treatment would involve leeches or a stoning or visiting a shrine. In other words, it sounds like a junk, throwaway diagnosis that loosely translates into “we don’t know what the hell is going on” and has the added bonus of being backhandedly sexist.

Collins, Marines, and SOPA

One comment

1. And in the end, Mr. Collins merely had to unplug the lights and radio in order to return them to their rightful owner, the people of Erie County. He didn’t need to deal with a guy he fired, he didn’t need to go to Cappellino’s.  It’s simply wonderful to be rid of him and his sense of nobility and entitlement, isn’t it? The notion that he’s looking to (a) challenge the well-liked, hard-working Kathy Hochul; and, in turn, (b) primary David Bellavia, who is still waiting to run that race, is simply delicious.

2. A video showing American Marines pissing on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters has everyone saying predictably angry things. That’s why you should read what Hamilton Nolan has to say about war, and what we should really be pissing on.

3. For some unknown reason, the federal government appears poised to pass the improperly named “Stop Online Privacy Act“, or SOPA. It criminalizes sites that store, maintain, stream or otherwise offer pirated content, and permits the government to revoke IP addresses and domain names. Also, once an offshore piracy site is summarily deemed illegal by the US Attorney General, the government can force domestic ISPs to block their customer’s access to those IPs. Furthermore, the proposed penalty would weaken security when you’re, say, doing online banking. But most ridiculously, SOPA allows the government to block your IP and track what you’re up to on the internet.

Deep packet inspection is the only way to block data from specific Web pages, or URLs. It also may raise new privacy concerns about SOPA because it relies on intercepting customers’ Web browsing, analyzing the protocols to see what’s going on, and reviewing the packets’ contents. That looks a lot like wiretapping, and a bipartisan group of House members soundly condemned it when a company named NebuAd tried it in 2008.

SOPA restricts and monitors Americans’ internet experience, censors what websites they can see, monitors what they’re doing, and places unreasonable burdens on domestic ISPs and hosting companies. It would create a governmental blacklist of websites. The whole thing takes the unbridled nature of the internet – the free-wheeling communications platform we all use and depend on, and turns our experience into something resembling a third-world authoritarian dictatorship, all so some Chinese website doesn’t offer pirated Metallica MP3s. The cure is worse than the disease. Senator Gillibrand is a co-sponsor of SOPA. Senator Schumer supports it, as well. It’s time to contact them and urge them to vote against the internet blacklist. Also, visit the “Stop American Censorship” site for more information and how to get involved.

[vimeo 31100268 w=400 h=225]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tea from Leaves!

6 comments

Buffalo News diner Janice Okun reviews Ming Cafe today. The charming little Chinese restaurant is located on the same block as Shango, across from UB South, and is well-known for odd opening times and great food.

Ms. Okun’s review reveals:

1. Ming Cafe makes its jasmine tea from actual tea leaves. Somehow, this is surprising or unusual.

2. Ming Cafe doesn’t offer all that sweet-and-sour crap you’re used to seeing on Chinese menus, but mixes it up a bit. Also, the menu is not “tomelike”.

3. She ordered Crab Rangoon, except it had shrimp and ricotta instead of crab and cream cheese. Shrimp Yangon?  She also ordered tofu and spinach dumplings, “fried as crisp as could be”.

4. Given a chance to order a really interesting escargot dish, she instead ordered Singapore noodles (found on every Chinese menu), and was surprised that it had curry. Singapore noodles is universally recognized as a vermicelli dish with meat, shrimp, veggies, all loaded with curry. It’s curried noodles – you can’t be “surprised” by the curry. This is akin to her being surprised that a muffuletta comes with an olive salad. Sichuan chicken, also found on just about every Chinese menu, was served with “medium” heat, on a bed of spinach.

5. Ms. Okun says the food and service were “excellent” and “very good”.  This doesn’t explain why she gives Ming only 3.5 stars under her unexplained scheme. On what basis is the half-star given? Everything was good based on the safe choices she made, and her surprise over something quite predictable.

6. The image accompanying the review features the owners, and a plate of beef tofu.

Based on the foregoing, I give this review only one and one-half okuns.

I am not at liberty to explain how I arrive at that figure.

Truth Vigilanteism

3 comments

The New York Times’ public editor has an earnest question to ask you:

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about…

…[for example,] on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”

To me, getting to the truth of a matter asserted is part & parcel of a journalist’s job. Anything less is nothing more than mindless transcription of spin and press releases. It’s as if the Times is asking whether doctors should treat patients, or whether lawyers should represent clients.  For years, it’s been a given that the fourth estate acts as a BS detector for a populace seeking information. Enough with the phony “some say” strawman, enough with letting people get away with repetitive lying.

Should the New York Times, the paper of record, be a “truth vigilante”? It should never have been otherwise.

How Not to Run a Sting

6 comments

In order to prove the need for a voter ID poll tax, and to prove how easy it is for someone to procure and cast a false ballot, the kid who took ACORN down based on fabrications sent some people to New Hampshire to…well, to procure and cast false ballots.

The problem is that it’s a state and federal crime to do just that, and a pretty severe one at that – a felony. And it’s not a sting – it’s the commission of the crime itself; they didn’t catch people falsifying ballots or conspiring to falsify ballots – they actually did it.

“In either case, if they were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law,” Schultz said. “So right off the bat, what they did violated the law.”

Election law expert Rick Hasen, who writes the Election Law Blog, joked in an email to TPM that O’Keefe’s team should “next show how easy it is to rob a bank with a plastic gun.”

“Who in their right mind would risk a felony conviction for this? And who would be able to do this in large enough numbers to (1) affect the outcome of the election and (2) remain undetected?” Hasen wrote.

Of course, there was a spate of “Future O’Keefe Stings” on Twitter such as:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/TheDarklady/status/157252524464816128″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/buffalopundit/status/157246918513274880″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/MotherJones/status/157244859663654912″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/d_pardee/status/157224694762831872″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/fbihop/status/157223680294928384″]

The Schadenfreude over this kid’s ham-handed efforts to promote conservative causes and embarrass liberals is awesome. I look forward to his next effort to re-create what he did with ACORN, but the problem is it’ll never happen because everyone knows he’s a fraud with zero credibility.

 

Collins and His Car

11 comments

The best thing about being rid of Chris Collins in elected office is that his daily fits of pique are now just comical. Collins is a millionaire – he can very well pay to remove county equipment from his personal car, but he amazingly demands the county pay for it. The equipment – lights and a radio that Collins had installed because he chose to do so – belongs to the county, and Collins can either have the county remove it for him or he can remove it himself. But because emergency services is now run by a guy he fired, he doesn’t want them touching his car.

The county never should have, however, withheld Collins’ paycheck – it’s against the law to do that, and it’s right that this was undone. So, the ball is in Collins’ court. He can take his car to a mechanic, park in a handicapped spot, and have it removed himself at his own expense. He can ask the county to pay for the removal, or he can perhaps write it off as a business expense, like he does the mileage he so proudly proclaims he never asked the county to reimburse.

1 … 152 153 154 155 156 … 165