Katie Couric has a blog:
Add to that my first piece on 60 Minutes on the illnesses that thousands of first responders are experiencing five years after September 11th. To be a part of that broadcast was needless to say, an enormous thrill. My father called me afterwards and said,
And a great journalist. Oriana Fallaci, rest in peace. Don’t know where she’ll end up–she was a devout atheist, but unlike many of her (non)religious cohorts, she was able to make the distinction between modern Christianity and the medieval Islamists with whom we are war.
[Update at noon]
Michael Ledeen, who was her friend, has some thoughts. Also, as Monte Davis notes in comments, her book If The Sun Dies
[Update at 5:30 PM EDT]
A more extensive eulogy from Michael Ledeen:
Those who know Italy will recognize Orianna as the quintessential Tuscan, right out of the texts: tough, intellectually brutal, brilliantly and eloquently disparaging of anyone who doesn
Jerry Lee Lewis is the last man standing.
I just heard on the teevee that Anna Nicole Smith has suffered from a mammary loss.
The poor woman. First her son dies, and now this. The only thing that she had going for her, really, was her mammarian endowment. How will she get through life now?
[whisper, whisper]
What?
[whisper]
A memory loss?
Ummmm…
Never mind.
Read Professor Pielke.
I was amused at the unintended irony of this story at the BBC:
President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren told the BBC that the climate was changing much faster than predicted.
What does that say about their ability to make predictions?
I’ve been listening to this fight between the Senate and the White House over clarifying what Common Article III means.
You know, I’m open to the argument that we should follow the Geneva Conventions because it’s the right thing to do and right way to behave, but the argument that we should do it to ensure good treatment of our own troops is simply laughable in the real world (and I suspect that most of those in uniform think so, too). When is the last time we fought an enemy that actually obeyed the Geneva Conventions?
And of course, I think that it’s a perverse travesty, and counterproductive of the purpose of the conventions, to reward people who trample on them by treating them under their provisions. All we do thereby is encourage them in their barbarity. That is a Supreme Court decision that needs to be revisited.
This may be a breakthrough for obesity:
After the volunteers had eaten, Dr Batterham took blood samples from them every 30 minutes for an hour and a half, and measured the concentration of peptide YY. As she suspected, it was the high-protein meal that coaxed the greatest production of the peptide.
Having proved the point in people, she then turned to a more reliable laboratory animal
Megan McArdle and Stuart Buck have an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner on the innumeracy, economic and otherwise, of many reporters:
…many conservative readers attributed the misleading figures to liberal media bias. But it is more likely ignorance than malice. Every year, scores of fledgling journalists pour out of liberal arts programs. Though many will need to pick through mountains of statistics in search of the truth, few have been taught the skills to do it.
They quickly become victims of advocacy groups pushing skewed statistics. Through ignorance, they may also start manufacturing their own flawed numbers. Since number-crunching beats (such as business and finance) are generally viewed as a tedious waystation en route to more interesting beats, few are enthusiastic about developing these skills. And their editors may not be in any position to help them.
The problem is compounded by the fact that journalists who do know how to read a balance sheet, run a regression, or analyze economic data, can generally get a job that pays a lot more than journalism. Some stay in the field out of love for their work (journalism is a really great job), but in our experience some of the best flee to greener pastures.
Megan McArdle and Stuart Buck have an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner on the innumeracy, economic and otherwise, of many reporters:
…many conservative readers attributed the misleading figures to liberal media bias. But it is more likely ignorance than malice. Every year, scores of fledgling journalists pour out of liberal arts programs. Though many will need to pick through mountains of statistics in search of the truth, few have been taught the skills to do it.
They quickly become victims of advocacy groups pushing skewed statistics. Through ignorance, they may also start manufacturing their own flawed numbers. Since number-crunching beats (such as business and finance) are generally viewed as a tedious waystation en route to more interesting beats, few are enthusiastic about developing these skills. And their editors may not be in any position to help them.
The problem is compounded by the fact that journalists who do know how to read a balance sheet, run a regression, or analyze economic data, can generally get a job that pays a lot more than journalism. Some stay in the field out of love for their work (journalism is a really great job), but in our experience some of the best flee to greener pastures.
Megan McArdle and Stuart Buck have an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner on the innumeracy, economic and otherwise, of many reporters:
…many conservative readers attributed the misleading figures to liberal media bias. But it is more likely ignorance than malice. Every year, scores of fledgling journalists pour out of liberal arts programs. Though many will need to pick through mountains of statistics in search of the truth, few have been taught the skills to do it.
They quickly become victims of advocacy groups pushing skewed statistics. Through ignorance, they may also start manufacturing their own flawed numbers. Since number-crunching beats (such as business and finance) are generally viewed as a tedious waystation en route to more interesting beats, few are enthusiastic about developing these skills. And their editors may not be in any position to help them.
The problem is compounded by the fact that journalists who do know how to read a balance sheet, run a regression, or analyze economic data, can generally get a job that pays a lot more than journalism. Some stay in the field out of love for their work (journalism is a really great job), but in our experience some of the best flee to greener pastures.