An exhaustive study reported in the WaPo confirms the obvious. “The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were ‘the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions.’”

It would be great if this was just sloppy journalism. But writer Harold Meyerson hits the nail on the head:

One question inevitably raised by these findings is whether Fox News is failing or succeeding. Over at CBS, the news that 71 percent of viewers hold one of these mistaken notions should be cause for concern, but whether such should be the case at Fox because 80 percent of their viewers are similarly mistaken is not at all clear. Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the other guys at Fox have long demonstrated a clearer commitment to changing public policy than to reporting it, and an even clearer commitment to reporting it in such a way as to change it.

Take a wild flight of fancy with me and assume for just a moment that one major goal over at Fox is to ensure Bush’s reelection. Surely, anyone who believes that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were in cahoots, that we’ve found the WMD and that Bush is revered among the peoples of the world — all of these known facts to nearly half the Fox viewers — is a good bet to be a Bush voter in next year’s contest. By this standard — moving votes into Bush’s column and keeping them there — Fox has to be judged a stunning success. It’s not so hot on conveying information as such, but mere empiricism must seem so terribly vulgar to such creatures of refinement as Murdoch and Ailes.

Margaret Cho has a blog and it’s not bad. She beats up on Fred Phelps this week too. Sonny boy gonna have a busy few weeks on the Internet.

So apparently the haters use Google, too. In response to my recent post about Fred Phelps, someone named Timothy Phelps posted the following response:

Two comments, filth-boy. First, it’s only because you don’t really know Christianity or the Bible that you pretend not to know what happens to God-hating fools when they die. Read in Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus. Unless you’re just dead set on being ignorant, you will have your answer. Second, there is absolutely nothing grammatically incorrect about saying “in defiance of God’s warning”. God’s commandment quoted here is also a warning of the consequences. Much like a statute making an act a crime is a clear and undeniable warning that to engage in the act will result in punishment under law. Try not to impose your lack of grammatical prowess … in addition to your lack of scriptural understanding … on everybody!

To which I responded:

Hey everybody– start calling me “filth-boy.” I really like that one. And Timothy, I’m shocked to hear you quoting the New Testament, since your god clearly predates and misinterprets the gospel of grace and love in Christ. My understanding of that gospel is not impressed by your wrongheaded proof-texting. The devil can quote scripture for his purposes, so I’m hardly impressed that you can, too.

Finally, I didn’t say it was grammatically wrong, but syntactically (and therefore logically) flawed–I think Fred was trying to say “because he defied God’s law,” but failed to be that clear. The proposed statement makes it sound like going to Hell is against God’s law–tellingly, the opposite of his intended hateful meaning.

Hi Timothy, if you’re still enjoying our site, you should know I was raised Nazarene, am a practicing Anglican, and have read more theology than a lot of low-church preachers. I’ve read the Bible plenty–certainly enough to know that worshipping it (instead of the true God) is idolatry just as sure as bowing down before that golden calf was.

I did a little websearching and apparently this Timothy guy really is Phelps’ son. If he’s the one I’ve seen on TV a couple of times–like the time they came to Seattle and picketed my church, St. Mark’s, to proclaim that the gay couple who died in the Alaska Airlines crash in California a couple years back were in Hell–he can probably tell us quite a bit about the real, close-to-home motivations for his father’s gay-baiting zeal. Because the son I saw on TV acts way gayer than any of us. Hell, he would make Perry look butch. None of the Fab Five are as flaming as this guy. As with the rumored-to-be-a-jew Hitler, we know that nothing fuels the fires of hatred quite as much as self-hatred. So of course it doesn’t surprise me at all that Phelps’ son spends so much time on the Internet, though I’d expect him to be somewhere with more pictures and less text.

Deregulation: brought to popularity by two decades ago Reagan, Thatcher and converted into a religion by their successors, has failed. Sure, in a free and efficient market, deregulation should bring better results at lower costs to the consumer. But has this ever happened? Deregulation revolutionized the airline industry and brought cheap flights to all, but are we better off flying today than we were ten years ago? Will the airline industry survive ten years from now? The only other “success” story I can think of is the telephone industry.

The problem, of course, is rooted in the mythical efficient market. It seems that the biggest proponents of deregulation are the least likely to set the conditions necessary for it to succeed: true competition, liquid markets, and available information. The UK railroads was the first large-scale example of this I saw. How can you have competition when only one company is allowed to run trains in a specific region? Predictably, deregulation of the UK rail industry was a total failure, and led to wide-scale deterioration of the infrastructure and several deadly accidents.

On a smaller scale, I was astounded to learn that here in Seattle, only one cable company serves any one house. At our new place, we can only get Millennium; at my last place it was Comcast or nothing. Where is the competition? No wonder cable costs so much.

Check out this article on the effects of deregulation on the energy industry. Not only did the legislators that oversight and maintenance of large-scale public infrastructure, with so few players, could ever represent an efficient market, they ignored the basic physical design of the network and designed rules guaranteed to overstress the hardware. Despite the warnings of engineers and physicists, deregulation of the electricity market in the US was practically guaranteed to result in poorer service from widespread blackouts.

The fundamental problem is that deregulation requires all the generators to be linked together so that they can trade electricity, basically linking the entire grid into one big machine. So when a problem occurs in one area, it spreads widely. You’d think the solution would be to return to the old ways, where energy was generated regionally, without these interdependencies, right? Wrong. The FERC advocates increasing cross-country transmission, and is willing to spend billions and undermine environmental legislation to allow utilities to continue to trade electricity in support of this mythical free market. And who’s going to pay for all of this? From the article:

To pay the extensive costs, the utilities and the DOE advocate increases in utility rates. “The people who benefit from the system have to be part of the solution here,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abrams said during a television interview. “That means the ratepayers are going to have to contribute.” The costs involved would certainly be in the tens of billions of dollars. Thus, deregulation would result in large cost increases to consumers, not the savings once promised.

So let me get this straight. Deregulation was supposed to make electricity cheaper and more reliable for the consumer. It didn’t work. So now, we’re going to make the consumer pay to get the benefits promised in the first place?

Deregulation sucks.

So not only were republicans able to steal the 2000 elections in Florida, but that disaster has accelerated the shift to e-voting, without broad discussions of its methodologies and risks. As much as I love digital technology, I am upset with any voting system that fails to provide a paper trail of any kind.

Worse still, the CEO of Diebold (the dominant player in traditional and electronic voting machines) is an activist, far-right Republican fundraiser, who wrote in a fundraising letter last year that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” This immediately makes me thinks about foxes in the henhouse. And with e-voting, there is absolutely no way to be sure votes haven’t been tampered with. And a recent Johns Hopkins study of Maryland’s e-voting procedures shows how easy Diebold (and flawed state safeguards) make this. (How easy, you ask? Hardwired passwords, source code exposed on public FTP sites, and the storage of election results on easily-forged smart cards. Add to this the serious flaws in the training of election workers and the physical security of the machines after their shipment to polling places, and you end up with the potential of wholesale election tampering and theft.)

Even more troubling are the comments of a whistleblower who worked with Diebold as a subcontractor in the lead-up to Georgia’s 2002 gubernatorial election, which ended up with the surprise unseating of a popular Democrat by a Republican challenger who had trailed him in the polls throughout the election. Diebold subcontractor Rob Behler claims that Diebold engineers applied patches to voting machines after they were certified, and that they actively avoided recertification, due to time constraints and because it could have prevented Diebold from being paid for the machine. Why the need for patches? Because up to 30% of the machines were crashing and freezing. (The OS in question? Windows CE.)

I am always mindful of the adage that one should never suspect malice until ignorance is ruled out. Diebold sounds mighty ignorant, and it has cleared leapt into the breach with e-voting in an attempt to preserve the market share it built up on mechanical voting systems. But you know, they make most ATMs, which are about as safe and reliable as technology gets. Wouldn’t you expect they could engineer a voting machine that is at least as good as an ATM? Unless, that is, there were compelling reasons to hold our votes less secure than our money. If you’re the CEO of Diebold, perhaps there is a good reason.

Digital voting systems are fine– the technology has the potential to make voting faster, more convenient, and more accessible for those with disabilities. But it is clear that e-voting needs to maintain some kind of paper trail to allow auditing.

Looks like nonfamous (and me!) was quoted in the New York Daily News last week. I’m not so familiar with this paper. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Another walk with Short Dad today. Yayy! Let’s spin round in circles three times by the door. “Sit!” “Sit!” “Down!” “SIT!!!”. Hmm, maybe I’d better sit. Short dad puts the leash on. Oboy it’s the long leash! Double yay!

I lead Short Dad on the usual route. Down past the blackberry bushes in the overgrown lot. Along the straight road with all the interesting staircases to explore. What’s that down there? The park!?! Oboyoboyoboy. I’m real excited now.

But why is Short Dad stopping? He’s looking at a lamp post, but it doesn’t seem like he needs to go potty. No… he’s looking at a sign stuck to the post. There’s a picture on it. Hey, it looks like me! I wonder why it’s stuck up there.

Short Dad is trying to take down the sign, but it looks like he’s having trouble doing it with one hand. Lots of sticky tape all around the post. What’s he doing now? He’s taking the clipping thing and attaching it to his belt. Oh, I see! He’s attaching the leash to the caribiner so he can use both hands to take down the sign. Looks like he’s making progress now.

But I want to go in the park!! Maybe if I tug a bit he’ll take notice … whoa! Looks like the belt loop on Short Dad’s pants is gonna break.

ARGHAGAGAHGH! What’s this noise on the ground! Gotta run gotta run. Omigod! It’s chasing me! And clattering! Oh, the clattering! I can’t get away from it! Maybe if I run down this hill into the bushes I can escape… run run run run run run run

run run run run run … it’s still chasing me!!

run run

run

ACK!! I’m stuck! Stuck under a recycling bin! But at least the clattering has stopped. Maybe I’ll just hide here for a while.

…

Is that Short Dad’s voice? Hmm. I think I’ll just stay right here thank you.

…

He’s calling me again. Go away! Let me be neurotic in peace Short Dad!

…

Oh dear. A corgi is sniffing at me! What will I do? And look, the corgi’s Mum is looking at me now! Go away! But look, she’s untangling the leash. Maybe she has a soft bed I can lie on. I think she’s taking me home.

Corgi’s mum puts a bone in front of me. Is it mine? I don’t think so. Corgi has come up and eaten it. Lucky I didn’t touch it. Mustn’t touch what isn’t mine.

Corgi’s mum looks at my collar. It’s pretty and jangly isn’t it? Now she’s going to the telephone. “Hello … is that animal control? … Yes, I’ve found a dog … I see a license number on his collar … yes, I’ll hold while you call.” A couple of minutes later the phone rings. “Yes, I have him right here … come over, I’ll leave the light on.” I wonder what that was all about?

Knock knock! Scary noise. What’s that? Is that Short Dad’s voice? Maybe if I peek around the corner! It is him… gotta hide. He’s calling me! “Sit!” Sounds like the stern voice. I’d better sit. Oh look, it’s the short leash. That means we’re going to the Dog Park!! Yayyy!! I’m happy. Short Dad leads me out of the strange house and into the Big Truck. I love riding in the truck. I bet we’re going to the park. Can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait. Hey, why are we home already? Oh well, better run upstairs and into my bed.

I wonder why we didn’t go to the dog park? Maybe it’s because I ran away from Short Dad. Nahh, couldn’t be. I’ve never done anything like that before, so how mad could he be? In any case I promise never to do it again.

There is a great German word, Weltschmerz, which roughly translates to “awareness of the pain of the world.” Clearly, the world has plenty of pain, some caused by us in the West, who have almost no direct, unmediated way of appreciating just how bad things are in some places. The point is not guilt, but simple perception. Although the WiFi – SM site is a joke, and kid of a funny one, but it’s not fundamentally a bad idea. I’d wear one for a week.

Less painful, but just as useful, might be a “daily Weltschmerz report” like the weather or UV index, that quantified suffering, distress, and discomfort on a global scale (and perhaps the pockets of elation, relief, and joy in others). The increasing insulation of the West from the real conditions of the majority of humanity is a serious problem, and I feel no idea is too far fetched that might bridge this gap.

A great review of the show we saw in Vancouver, with a great title: A Male Lesbian Whose Appeal Is Mainly Cerebral.

The Times describes Eddie as “the most popular, and exportable, British comedian since the heyday of Monty Python.”

Since the Times has that horrible paid archive thing and requires registration, I’m going to break a bunch of laws. Click below for the story.
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I can’t decide how I feel about Seattle, and if this Wired News article is any indication, I’m not alone. I still begrudge him his billion dollars worth of stadiums, but I actually think the South Lake Union plan is a good one. Though Seattle does lag behind other biotech hot-spots, the UW is emerging as a major research hub and should be throwing off a lot of private sector innovation.

Lord knows we need to diversify away from software (read: Microsoft). It’s kind of ironic that Allen might help us to do that.