Monday, November 17th, 2008

Time	Event
7:42p	The chart says it all... Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
7:57p	More efficient generator for wind turbines Article here.   Sounds pretty good.  Back when I was building wind generators, we used Volkswagen generators because we could get them easily.   This was back when Volkswagens were air-cooled, so we had to make do with primitive stuff then. This generator looks as if it will do well at low power ranges, but I dunno about higher power ratings. (1 Comment | Comment on this)
8:01p	Joe the Plumber Trashing Fallout Now that the election is over and the candidate the Ohio Secretary of State back is safely victorious, it looks as if the state of Ohio and the ACLU have sprung to the defense of citizens of that fine state.  You know the old saw about barn doors and horses escaping..... Anyway, looks as if the Ohio legislature will get a look at a bill to prevent more little episodes like the one where Joe the Plumber got more completely "vetted" (and abused by the MSM) than the candidate he dared ask a question of.  Hopefully, we citizens have learned our lesson and will check with the Press about what we are allowed to have free speech about, hereafter. (Comment on this)
8:19p	The 4th Estate  you are actually paying attention to the official "news" organizations, watch out for anonymous sources.  When a news story won't reveal sources, I would have to consider the story suspect.  Mind you, sometimes sources are anonymous for good reasons ("they're gonna kill me and my family if they find out..." reasons) and if the journalist reports that, I can accept that and work with it.  But if an anonymous source is your only source, and ther is no reported reason, the story is suspect on its face.  And if no second source confirms the story, it's not a story, just a rumor.   Example, take the "Sarah Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent" story.  The so-called "journalists" reporting got plenty of mileage out of it, indeed they took it up with considerable relish.  Problem is, the source was not only anonymous, but didn't exist.  David Shuster of MSNBC, a "crack investigative journalist" with all kinds of chops (he's on network news, after all!), reported that a campaign adviser for the McCain campaign had come forward and identified himself as the source of a Fox news story saying Palin believed that Africa is a country instead of a continent. Shuster had an identified source, Martin Eisenstadt, the McCain policy advisor.  Eisnenstadt works for the prestigious Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy.  Sounds good, eh?  Problem is, neither Eisnstadt or the Harding Institute exist.  Both are part of a hoax invented by a film maker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Hirvish.  Retraction here.  BTW, how many heard or saw the retraction? That's the kind of high-quality journalism we get every night.  One more reason not to watch TV, for me.  I can get more reliable news from the Times of India.  And their English is better, too. (Comment on this)
10:44p	This is kind of silly - selection bias, likely.  Kind of like the reports that conservatives must be stupid because, well, they're conservatives, after all!  My sister is currently pushing that one. Still, it does say something about voters and the media. (Comment on this)

<< Previous Day

2008/11/17 [Calendar]

Next Day >>