Inside Conservatism

Fascinating article. A liberal reporter goes undercover on the National Review cruise. The predominant sentiment was intense hatred of Muslims.
Fellow APP students might enjoy this quote from Dinesh D'Souza:

Dinesh D'Souza announced as we entered Mexican seas what he calls "D'Souza's law of immigration": " The quality of an immigrant is inversely proportional to the distance travelled to get to the United States."

(remember, he's from India, so this cuts both ways... aggrandizes him and belittles Mexicans. Never mind, of course, that he wouldn't have been able to enter this country without President Johnson's liberalization of immigration laws)
Check it out:
AlterNet: Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening

A Lesson in Media Literacy

Check this out: the AP has the story as "Withdrawing From Iraq Would Be Difficult"; the Washington Post has "Mixon: U.S. Troop Reduction Could Begin in Jan. 2008". The articles reference the same general in Iraq, but the Post points to his indication that forces could withdraw in January while the AP says the general "added that it would be a mistake to begin any withdrawal [...] before January 2008." Interesting.
Also in the AP article, Robert Gates has this to say:

Gates added that the withdrawal plans would also depend on [...] whether the U.S. has any limited or permanent facilities in the country, the number of forces there and where they could be located.
None of those questions have been answered yet, he said.

So... apparently military bases in Iraq are still on the table despite 70% public opposition to the war...

Pentagon pays millions to shred planes it paid millions to build

The US military [is] paying a defense contractor at least $900,000 to shred F-14 fighter jets it paid hundreds of millions to private contractors to build, in the newest twist to what President Eisenhower once dubbed the "military-industrial complex."

So, let me get this straight... Iran was US ally in the 1970s. US gave Iran F-14 planes. Thirty years later, US and Iran hate each other. US pays almost a million dollars to destroy planes so Iran can't have them. Meanwhile, 19.2% of the world population live on less than one dollar of purchasing power per day.
The irony here is that the planes were destroyed because the Associated Press warned about the danger of F-14 parts getting to Iran.
Crazy...

read more | digg story

The Internet Hasn't Made Us Smarter

From Wired: Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed
Not much to be surprised about here... after all, over 30% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 as of September of last year, despite the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission Report to the contrary. Although the Internet has done a lot to improve opportunities for education, it depends on the willingness of people to seek out new sources.
There is some hope for the Web; for example, Americans reading major newspaper web sites did best on a poll of knowledge about current events, even better than readers of daily print newspapers or network news. But the Internet isn't all it's cracked up to be--people reading news blogs did only slightly better than network news viewers.
Of course, the Daily Show / Colbert Report ranked second on the list... but I would guess a lot of that is due to correlated factors, since Daily Show viewers tend to consume other media as well...

Nerd Rapture

From Reuters.com:

"Indeed, the iPhone's inclusion of so many features into a sleek package triggered a sort of nerd rapture among enthralled gadget freaks."

Pretty much sums it up. Ahhh, nerd rapture.

For a few seconds I was tempted to consider an iPhone. Then rational thought kicked in--it's $2000 (the cost of the first year of service included) for a computer that you can lose on the bus. The web browsing is limited. The phone only takes AT&T's service plan. Pretty big trade-off for the (nerd enrapturing) ability to pinch your screen...