Apparently the Bush administration's war on science is now being assisted by the New York Times, who were so helpful in facilitating the war on Iraq. From the New York Times Book Review:

Modern man can choose from a veritable smorgasbord of Type 1 errors: string theory, neo-Darwinism, cosmology, economics, God. Astrology is as good as any...

Oh, now I get it. Science is just a bunch of nice stories, kind of like in the Bible.

But who is this writer, and why did the NYTwits let him get away with such an idiotic statement? More after this mouse-click...

It's not that the AP article on the SOTU entitled Bush Skips Complex Realities in Address actually says Bush is toast. But try to imagine such a headline a year ago.

More SOTU and Bush evisceration, courtesy of the back-from-death fourth estate, below the fold...

When I saw the picture of Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com, on the cover, I just had to read the article. I really like craigslist.com; I even used it successfully to buy some furniture several months ago.

What I thought would be an interesting article about how Craig (and the internet in general, including bloggers) is changing the media. What I found was a vile and juvenile screed attacking Craig for, get this, taking money away from newspapers and causing job losses in the newsroom.

Follow me on an exploration of one newspaper's descent into irrelevance...

http://www.RealityBasedTV.com

to provide a focus for this work. Please visit the site and take a look at the interviews of:

Crystal Patterson - 37 minutes (about 10-20 minutes download on DSL)

Cindy Sheehan - 1 minute (very quick download)

Prof. Juan Cole - 7 parts of about 12 minutes each (a few minutes download each)

More info after the flip...

Juan Cole reports that the fraud is too obvious to ignore:

Al-Hayat reports that 643,000 votes were cast in Ninevah Province (capital: Mosul). At the time it filed, 419,000 had been preliminarily counted, and the vote was running 75 percent in favor. Ninevah Province was the most likely place that Sunni Arabs opposing the constitution might be able to get a 2/3s "no" vote.

Several of my knowledgeable readers are convinced that the Ninevah voting results as reported so far look like fraud. One suspected that the Iraqi government so feared a defeat there that they over-did the ballot stuffing and ended up with an implausible result.

More below...

Go watch the interview here. If you don't have Quicktime7, get it here (if you are on Windoze like I am). You will need Quicktime 7 to see this video quality at such a (comparatively) low data rate, for this video as well as more that will be available on the internet in the months to come. The new Quicktime version will not mess up your PC, as some previous versions are said to have the propensity to do.

A brief outline of the interview follows after the click...

[From the diaries by susanhu. Citizen journalism! Great job, Mark.]

As some of you may have read, I was planning to travel to the University of Michigan and do an interview with Prof. Juan Cole, the noted expert on the Middle East and proprietor of the blog Informed Comment. This was an outgrowth of an email exchange that I had with him as well as some diaries I posted on dKos and on BMT.

Well, I decided to go all out and do a video interview. I was accompanied by fellow dKosser JessicaDrewSW, who contributed her video expertise and was the cameraperson. I have just posted the complete interview video (split into seven parts) at the following locations:

Please click...

Well, I decided to go all out and do a video nterview. I was accompanied by fellow dKosser JessicaDrewSW, who contributed her video expertise and was the cameraperson. I have just posted, for your preview, an introductory video to the full (over 1 hour) interview at the following location:

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/61748

all you have to do is go there and, after the page loads, click on the "This media file's URL: Link" just below my picture on the web page. Left click if you want to view the video within the browser, or right click and select "Save target as..." (or similar, bepending on your browser) to save the video as a file on your computer. It is a Quicktime file.

More after the click...

As some of you may recall, University of Michigan Professor and Middle East expert Juan Cole (whose work I have been pimping shamelessly here for the past few months) has agreed to be interviewed by me. Well, now is the time!

I am presently in Ann Arbor and will be interviewing Prof. Cole on campus Thursday. I will not necessarily be able to ask all suggested questions but I encourage you to let me know your thoughts.

I will be posting the interview as a diary sometime this weekend, so please keep a lookout for it!

I loved the negative press on Rove so much that I headed right down to the corner store to get an actual hardcopy of the SF Comicle, the one with Rove's face taking up a goodly portion of the front page above the fold, his head held high (by the way, it's held high so as to attempt to hide the double chin - don't ask how I know). But as I was walking I had this sinking feeling...

Please click "Read more..." for the feelings...

I had another informative, and this time amusing, email interchange with Juan Cole. It started out seriously enough with this email:

Please read the whole series after the flip...

Recently the noted historian, middle east expert, and blogger opined that a pullout of US troops from Iraq could be accomplished by way of a UN Option. This marks somewhat of a shift from his email response to me a month ago, in which he said that the US would be in Iraq for many years, and I welcome his new thinking.

There has been criticism of this plan, However, or at least the following aspect:

Yesterday I emailed Prof. Cole to ask his perspective on this. He was kind enough to reply and our email exchange is quoted below.

A new memo has surfaced from the Downing Street meeting. It is on Page 1 of the Washington Post.

Bush is so toast. Quotes from the WaPo article and also the Times of London after the flip.