Monday, May 14, 2007

DailyKos makes Max Sawicky look silly

Re Sawicky's dataless complaints about the netroots, see e.g. recent front-page stories here and here.

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

First bad wikipedia experience

Rilkekind has a case of otitis media, so I read the wikipedia article. It's pretty good, but there is (at least at least currently) a tarantula on the angel food: a non-mocking section on homeopathic treatment. The sentence "One study showed" etc. is particularly misleadingly written. There has been some effort to ameliorate the section by adding a tincture of rationality but the right thing to do would be to just extirpate it.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

The Nagourney Number

The Nagourney number of this article in the NYT - that is, how many paragraphs one must read before reaching the anti-Republican truth - is finite: 15. Only after reading 15 paragraphs does Nagourney note why the R candidates for president are cautious about being associated with Bush - his 32% approval rating. He doesn't manage to refer to Bush as "unpopular" directly - only indirectly via a qualified quote. Perhaps by the time one of the fine Democrats in the race has won he'll get to that point. For now it's like reading one of those long Latin periods with the weight of thought at the end - but Cicero or whoever meant the end of the sentence to be heard and felt.

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