Media Criticism

Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

At long last, Ward Churchill is on his way to the unemployment office (I wish–I’m sure that some wacko college is just slavering to pick him up, if he can just burnish his native American creds).

I wish that reporters would call his lawyers on this kind of nonsense, though:

“We’re going to a real court because we can trust juries to do the right thing,” said Churchill’s attorney David Lane. “Churchill says this all completely bogus. Let’s see if a jury and a Federal District Court agrees with the committee. Or see if everything that’s happened here is retaliation for Ward Churchill’s First Amendment free speech relating to 9/11.”

…When his essay was brought to light in January 2005, Gov. Bill Owens, state lawmakers and relatives of Sept. 11, 2001 victims in New York immediately denounced it. University officials concluded Churchill could not be fired for the essay, but in March 2005 they launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism and other research misconduct.

“A committee last year began to look at his writings including his essay on 9/11,” said DiStefano. “We determined his writings were protected under the First Amendment. However, during that process there were allegations of research misconduct.”

Instead of wrapping himself in a flag, Chuch has wrapped himself in the First Amendment, and thus despoiled it. And unfortunately, the university has aided and abetted this misconception.

There are no First Amendment issues at stake here, at all. Churchill has the right to say whatever he wants, but the First Amendment does not grant him the right to remain a university professor (any more than it protects the New York Times from prosecution for violating the law regarding disclosure of secrets, should Alberto Gonzales grow a pair and decide to prosecute Bill Keller and company).

Contra the findings of the university committee, Churchill has no “First Amendment right” to say whatever he wants and suffer no repercussions. If they wanted to fire him for his “little Eichmanns” statement, they’d be perfectly within their constitutional rights to do so. The only thing preventing it is his contract that goes along with tenure.

Fortunately, while that contract does in fact allow him to say the vile things he chooses to say, it doesn’t extend so far as to protect him against his repeated and egregious acts of academic fraud. I hope that this case does go to trial, so that both he and his attorney can waste their time and money in fighting a pointless case, in futile support of a truly disgusting human being.

Media Criticism

Well, That Explains It

If only he’d released this version. Iowahawk has a rough draft of Bill Keller’s letter explaining his publishing decision:

It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Jihadi Accountant and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? I’ll tell you who we are, pal. We are journalists – the people whom the inventors of this country specifically appointed to be the protectors of this little experiment we call the “human race” against the privations of out-of-control Texas Oil Nazis. And if you check your Constitution, I don’t think you’ll see anything in there about the right to clog up the press’s inbox with your stupid Rush Limbaugh talking points.

Science And Society

I Never Fail To Be Amazed

At not only how different the state Doppler radar is from the local one, but at how little rain one can get from a “heavy shower’ on the local Doppler. I filled the pool this morning in the hopes that one of the many “thunderstorms” predicted for today would actually hit us. We watched all weekend as they approached southeast Palm Beach County, and would either stall, or fizzle out, just before they reached us. We really need the rain here. And thunderstorms are one of the three things that I like about south Florida, relative to south coastal California.

Still, I’m glad that we have much better weather forecasting and sensing than we did as a kid growing up in southeast Michigan, when the best they could do is tell you that they had “tornado watches” and “warnings” and it was based on a WAG as to where they were going to go.

Administrative

External Hard Drive Question

I’ve been thinking that a good way to make my laptop dual boot without messing with the current Windows installation would be to install a Linux distro on an external USB drive. Two questions:

Are there any problems with this (assuming that I can boot off a USB port) and are there any external drives that get their power from the USB port (so I don’t have to find a power socket to use it)?

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, the search word I was missing was “portable.” There do seem to be some available that run off the USB port.

[Update a couple minutes later]

It seems to me that the cool thing about this is that you could boot from anyone’s computer into your own system, as long as the machine was bootable from USB.

War Commentary

Where’s The ACLU (Part Two)?

…and what are they going to do about these phone tappers?

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted a document sent to soldiers of the Territorial Army’s (TA) London Regiment, which has soldiers fighting in Iraq.

The document warned that insurgents in southern Iraq had managed to obtain the home telephone numbers of British soldiers using electronic intercept devices.

It said there had been many instances in the last weeks of relatives and friends of personnel serving abroad on operations getting nuisance phone calls”.

War Commentary

Where’s The ACLU (Part Two)?

…and what are they going to do about these phone tappers?

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted a document sent to soldiers of the Territorial Army’s (TA) London Regiment, which has soldiers fighting in Iraq.

The document warned that insurgents in southern Iraq had managed to obtain the home telephone numbers of British soldiers using electronic intercept devices.

It said there had been many instances in the last weeks of relatives and friends of personnel serving abroad on operations getting nuisance phone calls”.

War Commentary

Where’s The ACLU (Part Two)?

…and what are they going to do about these phone tappers?

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted a document sent to soldiers of the Territorial Army’s (TA) London Regiment, which has soldiers fighting in Iraq.

The document warned that insurgents in southern Iraq had managed to obtain the home telephone numbers of British soldiers using electronic intercept devices.

It said there had been many instances in the last weeks of relatives and friends of personnel serving abroad on operations getting nuisance phone calls”.

Technology and Society

Supply Chain Mismanagement

We bought a new telly back in February at Brandsmart USA (I never know whether the name is Brand Smart, or Brands Mart, or if the name is meant to be deliberately ambiguous that way)–our first leap into the HDTV water. It was a Samsung thirty-inch CRT.

When I first turned it on, a loud buzz emitted from it, lasting about a second. It was annoying, but once the picture came up, everything was fine. I should have taken this to be a warning.

A month or so ago, we lost stabilization on the horizontal sweep, resulting in wavy sides. Fortunately, this was one of those rare occasions on which we actually bought an extended warranty (it was past the ninety days from the manufacturer). After several days, we got a service call (about a week and a half ago, before I went to California). The serviceman took one look, and said that it was a bad power supply. He also told me that the noise at startup wasn’t normal, and was also a bad supply, or perhaps a flyback transformer. If we’d reported it initially, we would have just gotten a new teevee.

But since it was past the ninety days, he was going to have to repair it. He told me that he’d have to order a new power supply from Samsung.

I called this morning (Monday), and they still didn’t have it in, and wouldn’t be able to even tell me when they would, unless I call them again on Wednesday (with the usual waits on hold through two different departments), and which time they could tell me.

How is it, in this day and age, that a major Korean electronics manufacturer can not only not have a part delivered to a major metropolitan area within a couple days, but not even know, after a week and a half, when they will?

Popular Culture

It’s Always 1932

Iowahawk has a brief history of the hot rod:

Even back then Deuces were highly collectible. Car guys started hoarding them, heeding Mark Twain’s famous advice to “buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” Strangely, though, they did start making Deuces anymore: high demand spawned an entire industry devoted to replica and restoration parts. Body repair panels and replica fiberglass Deuce bodies began appearing in the late 1960s, and are now available from dozens of suppliers, as are reproduction 1932 Ford frames. Recently several companies – such as Brookville Roadster and Dearborn Deuce – have introduced complete steel reproduction bodies. With a big enough budget, today you can make a pretty faithful steel recreation of a real 1932 Ford out of nothing but brand new parts. The paradoxical result is that 1932 Fords are more plentiful today than they were new. A scant 275,000 Fords rolled off the assembly line in 1932; today a greater number of “1932 Fords” are currently registered just in the state of California.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!