Tag: Boing! Boing!

Another Boing! Boing! -ism

Another typical Boing! Boing!-ism, this time trying to sarcastically dismiss the risks of shining laser pointers at commercial aircraft,

Sky and Telescope article on laser-pointer etiquette

Marc Laidlaw points out this article from Sky and Telescope that has good information about the deadly laser pointers that terrorists have been using to knock aircraft filled with women and children right out of the sky. Oh, when will the horror end?

According to engineer Samuel M. Goldwasser, who maintains an extensive Web site about lasers called Sam’s Laser FAQ, if you were to look directly into a laser-pointer beam from a mile away, it would appear as bright as a 100-watt bulb seen at a distance of less than 100 feet. Most people would find such a bright light very uncomfortable and would instinctively blink and/or turn away.

Link

Sky and Telescope, which is the source of the quote, is not nearly as cavalier as Mark Frauenfelder is . Just two paragraphs later, Sky and Telescope notes the very real dangers posed even by the sort of laser pointers used by amateur astronomers,

Direct viewing of a laser-pointer beam, even briefly and at a distance of a kilometer or two, has the potential to cause temporary flashblindness — the same effect you get right after a flash photo is taken — or afterimages. These effects last anywhere from seconds to minutes. Glare, which is a reduction or loss of central vision, lasts only as long as exposure to the beam. All these effects could be disastrous if they struck a person operating machinery, driving a car or truck, or flying a plane. Fortunately, there have been no reports of laser-related accidents of this type so far.

The danger here is, in other word, very real despite what Fraunfelder would apparently like his readers to believe.

Source:

Some Pointers on the Use of Laser Pointers. Richard Tresch Fienberg, Sky and Telescope, Undated.

Anti-Porn Witch Hunts Are So Creepy When They’re In India

This Boing! Boing! link is fascinating, I think, because it really highlights just what partisan hacks the authors of that particular blog have become.

Here’s the short version — a kid in India uses his cell phone to take video of some girl giving him a blow job. Someone posts a copy of the video for sale on an Indian subsidiary of Ebay.

Here’s where things start to get bizarre — the Indian government arrests the president of the Ebay subsidiary, Avnish Bajaj, and charges him with disseminating obsenity because, (after all, the video was offered for sale on his service.)

One can imagine the well-placed outrage, for example, if the U.S. Justice Department ordered the arrest of the CEO of EBay in this country because someone posted an obscene video for sale.

In the Indian case, it turns out that Bajaj is an American citizen and so the U.S. government is actively intervening on his behalf with the India government. But instead of lauding the government for looking to protect the rights of its citizens, the move is derided by the usual suspects,

Update: Fleshbot picked up an interesting/creepy angle on the story as reported by Agence France-Presse: the incident is
reportedly being followed at the “highest levels” of US government as well. Fleshbot’s editor asks, “Yes, the manager of Baazee.com is an Indian-born US citizen, but still. Is this the sort of case the US State Department usually gets involved in? We’d have thought they were busy with other things, like … oh, war and stuff.” Link

And reader John McCarthy says, “According to todayÂ’s Salon, CondiÂ’s on the trail of the India phone sex scandal.”

[Condoleezza] Rice is understood to have telephoned the U.S. ambassador in India, David Mulford, about the case. The Bush administration’s national security advisor and future secretary of state has let it be known that she is furious about Bajaj’s humiliating treatment. He is, after all, a U.S. citizen.

Again, I can’t imagine Boing! Boing! treating so cavalierly the arrest of a U.S. citizen by the U.S. government for such a tertiary (non-existent actually) role in disseminating obsenity. The obvious comment that comes to mind about the administration’s role is that it is nice to see them defending the rights of Mr. Bajaj, and that hopefully they can start to take the rights of Americans living on U.S. territory as seriously as they take the rights of Americans living in India.

Instead, the U.S. efforts to protect Bajaj are simply (emphasis added)”intersting/creepy.” What the hell is creepy about protecting Bajaj from an anti-porn witch hunt? Oh, that’s right, since John Ashcroft and George W. Bush aren’t leading the witch hunt, the story’s just not the same.

About that Impending Bird Influenza Pandemic

Saw this item at Boing! Boing!,

World Health Organization’s bird flu warning: 100 million deaths

Matt Vine sez: Since yesterday, the rest of the world has been buzzing with news of the World Health Organization’s warnings of a impending flu pandemic that could kill up to 100 million. These warnings are suspiciously missing from American news sites – we get things like “Godzilla honored with ‘Walk of Fame’ star” from CNN’s front page.” Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:47:00 AM

Of coures if you actually bother to read any of the articles that Boing! Boing! links to you, you learn that the impending epidemic is not so impending.

In fact, there is no evidence that the bird flue can be spread from human to human, which would be necessary before it could become a pandemic. There are apparently two cases of bird flu where researchers haven’t yet figured out how the individuals contracted the disease, but otherwise all cases of the bird flu have been transmitted directly from birds to human beings. It is telling that unlike the SARS outbreak, so far there appear to be no cases of infections among health care workers who have treated victims.

So why is the WHO going around saying that there’s this impending pandemic? Well, the short version is that it isn’t. The long version is that its Pacific regional director made the claims about the bird flu pandemic, and the rest of WHO appears to be scratching its head about where he came up with these claims.

For example, here’s the New York Times’ coverage,

Dr. Shigeru Omi, the W.H.O.’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific, said that if a pandemic should strike – an outcome he termed “very, very likely” – governments should be prepared to close schools, office buildings and factories to slow the rate of new infections. They also should work out emergency staffing to prevent a breakdown in basic public services like electricity and transportation, he said.

. . .

W.H.O. officials in Geneva said later that they had not received an advance copy of Dr. Omi’s remarks and did not know the basis for his estimates and why he believed a pandemic was so likely.

. . .

In sounding the alarm about avian influenza, “W.H.O. is trying to raise concern because we’re concerned, but W.H.O. is not trying to scare the planet,” Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the agency, said in a telephone interview.

“No one knows how many are likely to die in the next human influenza pandemic,” or even when it will occur, said Dr. Klaus Stöhr, the agency’s top influenza expert. “The numbers are all over the place.”

The same thing happened with SARS, you might remember, where there were a few individuals who claimed SARS was going to turn into a pandemic.

Obviously such a pandemic is always possible should a virus like the bird flu mutate into a highly communicable form, but a pandemic is far from impending.

Source:

W.H.O. Official Says Deadly Pandemic Is Likely if the Asian Bird Flu Spreads Among People. Keith Bradsher and Lawrence K. Altman, The New York Times, November 30, 2004.

Mark Frauenfelder Lies to Himself to Feel Better

Boing! Boing! again confirms its need to avoiding cognitive dissonance (emphasis in the original),

Olli sez: “Just found this link to some really interesting anti-communist propaganda from the 1960’s. It’s a comic book that looks at what *COULD* happen to *YOU* if those evil commies get their hands on the USA. Endorsed by none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself!” Link (When I read it, I mentally swapped every instance of “communists” with “red-state republicans” and it was even more enjoyable — Mark)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:50:43 AM

Almost enough to have me hoping for more Xeni jardin pr0n posts.

Do Boing! Boing! Authors Lie to Themselves to Feel Better?

I had to laugh a bit when I saw this Boing! Boing! post about a poll that aimed to find out what people know about candidates they’re planning to vote for. The short version is that many people who support President Bush don’t know the first thing about his actual positions. For example, it found that a majority of Bush supporters don’t realize that he’s opposed to the Kyoto Treaty or the International Criminal Court.

Frankly, I don’t find it that surprising that people are misinformed, but Boing! Boing! and the person who did the poll have to take it one step further — Bush supporters aren’t just misiniformed, they’re actually suffering from cognitive dissonance. Or, as Mark Fraunfelder succinctly puts it in the title of his post, “Poll shows that Bush supporters lie to themselves to feel better.”

This is a bizarre line of reasoning. For example, we know that there is disagreement over whether Osama Bin Laden was really at Tora Bora in late 2001, and so far there’s no definitive evidence either way. Despite this John Kerry has taken to claiming that Bin Laden was definitely at Tora Bora and Bush let him escape.

Should we consider people who agree with Kerry to be suffering from cognitive dissonance and lying to themselves? In my opinion this is dangerous as it creates a situation where we begin to believe and argue that those we disagree with politically are not just wrong or misinformed, but that they suffer from personality disorders or worse.

I’m not surprised when I see this from Ann Coulter or Michael Moore, but when it comes from otherwise reasonable people like the folks at Boing! Boing! I am surprised.

Consider, for example, a post that Cory Doctorow made on October 15th in which he linked to a cartoon video, Pirates and Emperors, and headlined his post “Schoolhouse Rock that tells it like it is.”

Really? According to Pirates and Emperors,

Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were all mass murderers when they were on the CIA payroll. That’s why they got the job. Either that or Uncle Sam is just a bad judge of character.

This is simply not true and, in fact, is directly contracted by the 9/11 Commission Report,

Twenty-three when he arrived in Afghanistan in 1980, Bin Ladin was the seventeenth of 57 children of a Saudi construction magnate. Six feet five and thin, Bin Ladin appeared to be ungainly but was in fact quite athletic, skilled as a horseman, runner, climber, and soccer player. He had attended Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. By some accounts, he had been interested there in religious studies, inspired by tape recordings of fiery sermons by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian and a disciple of Qutb. Bin Ladin was conspicuous among the volunteers not because he showed evidence of religious learning but because he had access to some of his family’s huge fortune. Though he took part in at least one actual battle, he became known chiefly as a person who generously helped fund the anti-Soviet jihad.20

Bin Ladin understood better than most of the volunteers the extent to which the continuation and eventual success of the jihad in Afghanistan depended on an increasingly complex, almost worldwide organization. This organization included a financial support network that came to be known as the “Golden Chain,” put together mainly by financiers in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. Donations flowed through charities or other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Bin Ladin and the “Afghan Arabs” drew largely on funds raised by this network, whose agents roamed world markets to buy arms and supplies for the mujahideen, or “holy warriors.”21

In fact, while it’s a popular claim among far Left wing activists, there’s no evidence that Osama Bin Laden was ever on the CIA payroll. The United States practice in Afghanistan during the mujahadeen war against the Soviets was to give arms and aid to Pakistan’s ISI which then disbursed such aid and largely had a free reign over how it did so. CIA officers did meet with Afghan leaders, many of whom were themselves Islamist nutcases, but apparently not with Arab fighters. After all, the Arab fighters didn’t need American or Pakistani help — Bin Ladin was reportedly bringing in $20-$30 million a month in funding through financial networks he helped set up and coordinate.

For what it’s worth, Bin Laden has also denied that he ever received any aid from Americans.

Moreover, it is simply wrong to call Osama Bin Laden a “mass murderer” at this point in his life. Bin Laden’s main role in Afghanistan through the end of the Soviet occupation was as a source of funding for and recruitment of Arab fighters.

At this point, I guess I should write that those responsible for Boing! Boing! are victims of cognitive dissonance who simply ignore any information, such as the 9/11 Commission Report, that might upset their world view, preferring to lie to themselves instead.

But that seems a bit extreme and silly. Can’t people just be wrong or have honest disagreements without throwing around accusations that people are lying to themselves?

More Boing! Boing! Anti-Bush Knee Jerk Reflexology

Yet another example of Boing! Boing! letting its anti-Bush knee jerk reaction get the better of it. Bush is scheduled on Wednesday to give what his campaign calls a major speech. The Bush campaign is making much of the fact that Bush was going to talk about medical liability but is now going to talk about terrorism and the economy.

Boing! Boing!’s Mark Frauenfelder goes nuts with this extremely bizarre post,

Will Kerry get equal time to respond to President Bush’s last-minute speech

In an effort to halt his deteriorating ratings, President Bush has announced that’ll he’ll be giving a major speech on Wednesday. “The president is said to be eager to rebut Kerry’s attacks on [the] issues.” I’m imagine he is, since Kerry won’t be able to respond. Will Kerry be given equal time on the networks?

What the hell does that mean? Kerry won’t be able to respond? What, is Bush going to have Dick Cheney sit on Kerry to prevent him from responding? Of course Kerry will be able to respond, and you’ll likely see dueling soundbites on the 6:30 p.m. news on Wednesday or Thursday.

Fraunfelder seems under the false impression that broadcast networks will carry Bush’s speech live just because he calls it a “major speech.” Give me a f—ing break — the broadcast media never runs campaign speeches live.

Kids, this is your brain. And, this is your brain on reflexive Bush bashing.

Update

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one watching television instead of blogging. A lot has been made of the fact that two cable news channels — CNN and MSNBC — chose to run Bush’s speech live (I’m sure all 12 people watching MSNBC in the middle of the day were thrilled by that decision).

Big deal — cable news channels regularly run live feeds of campaign speeches by Kerry or Bush, and if you bill the appearance as a “major speech” that is not just a standard recapitulation of the stump speech, one or more of the cable news channels will probably run the whole damn thing live as long as it’s a slow news day. On September 20, for example, CNN ran a major Kerry speech on foreign policy live beginning at 10 a.m. Similarly, a number of the cable channels ran Kerry’s midnight speech on the last day of the Republican National Convention.

What would have been inappropriate, would have been if CBS, ABC or NBC had interrupted their daytime broadcasts to air Bush’s campaign speech live, since they don’t usually run campaign speeches from either candidate live. And, of course, they didn’t because they can’t build an audience based on the half dozen cats whose owners accidentally leave the television on and tuned to MSNBC during the day.

And, of course, the Kerry campaign did have a chance to respond to Bush’s speech. The broadcast networks featured reports with excerpts from Bush’s speech and from a speech that John Edwards gave the same day. In fact, the coverage on most of the networks was overwhelmingly negative (as it should be) toward Bush due to testimony about the CIA report finding that Saddam Hussein’s WMD program had ended several years after the end of the first Persian Gulf War.