Latest Blogs
USA Today Continues to Hype Hybrids and Ignores the Downsides of Owner
Hybrids still cost more and can have repair problems, but media coverage stays positive.
CBS Disagrees with Fed, Presents Worries about 'Credit Crunch
'Evening News' hints that the Federal Reserve's decision not to lower interest rates is making it harder to get a mortgage.
Couric Praises Pelosi's New Congress for Promises Kept: They 'Worked M
When Nancy Pelosi rose to be the House Democrats’ leader in 2002, Katie Couric said to NBC colleague Ann Curry: "Is it okay to say, ‘You go girl!’?" That cheerleading spirit continued in her Monday "Katie Couric’s Notebook" commentary (featured at her blog Couric & Co.) lauding the new Democratic Congress: "this new crop worked much harder than the last. A big accomplishment was in…
Ethanol Raising Price of Beef
So, you want to use corn to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, huh? Have you thought through all of the ramifications first? For instance, how are cattle ranchers going to afford to feed their cows, and what might that do to the availability of beef around the country and its price? Clearly, such issues weren't fully considered before Congress decided to mandate the use of ethanol…
Sci Am Worried Newsweek’s ‘Global Warming Is A Hoax*’ Headline i
I received an e-mail message from a global warming skeptic yesterday suggesting that Newsweek's disgraceful article about climate change "deniers" could backfire given the facetious headline "Global Warming Is A Hoax*" on the cover. The thinking was that since far more people would see the magazine at the newsstands than would actually buy it and read the article, a much larger number of people…
CNN's Phillips to Iraq Commander Odierno: Is Your Job Career Suicide
The day after Barry Bonds set a dubious record, CNN's Kyra Phillips [file photo] might have set one of her own. Rather than "Career Home Runs," file this one under "Tasteless and Inappropriate Questions Posed to a Soldier in a War Zone."At about 3:40 P.M. EDT on this afternoon's CNN Newsroom, co-anchor Phillips was interviewing Lt. General Raymond Odierno, the MNF second-in-command in Iraq.CNN…
NYT Blogger: 'If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack
Blogger Steven D. Levitt asked his readers to imagine themselves as terrorists today and come up with their own ways of "maximizing terror" at the new home of the Freakonomics blog, The New York Times website. Levitt speaks:Hearing about these [airline restriction] rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking…
Networks Use Bridge Tragedy to Build Support for Higher Taxes
Minnesota disaster brings out media tendency to promote government, though they bash businesses under the same tragic circumstances.
Beat the Press: Google to Allow People Mentioned in News to Respond
An interesting development from Google today. Starting now, the search engine is going to allow people who are mentioned in a news story to respond to it and have their responses posted within Google News (h/t Brian Clark):Here's how the new system will work: people or organizations that are mentioned in news stories can submit comments to the Google News team, which will then display those…
Exercise Causes Global Warming
In the '80s, rock musician Joe Jackson published a song called "Everything Gives You Cancer." Recent assertions by England's Green Party parliamentary candidate Chris Goodall suggest that sometime soon, someone - maybe Al Gore sycophant Sheryl Crow - is going to write a hit song called "Everything Causes Global Warming." As reported by the Times Online Saturday in a piece hysterically titled…