I was watching the Lou Dobbs program on CNN today (Dobbs was not hosting) and was shocked by the lack of objectivity and clear anti-Obama bias in the reporting. They were spending an inordinate amount of time on remarks that Senator Obama had made at a CA fundraiser concerning the obstacles his campaign faced in small-town America. When you read the full context of Obama's remarks, they are revealed to be relatively benign. Some of the words were perhaps not the best chosen, but the context indicates that there was no ill intent. I suppose if you read the remarks in an unreasonably sensitive, defensive, or partisan way, and parse every word in order to interpret them in a particularly negative way, it is possible to read them as pejorative against small town America. However, I think it is not being objective as a news program to have a title graphic that refers to this as Obama's "slam" against small-town America. Furthermore, here is a quote of Dobbs' poll question:

"Do you believe that Senator Barack Obama's comments reveal his elitist attitude toward every hardworking American?"

Just the way that question is written indicates a bias against Obama. It's practically a push-poll. Specifically, using the adjectives "his" and "every" suggest that the writer believes the answer should be yes, and suggest that to the reader. A more objective question would have replaced "his" with "an" and eliminated "every" while making "American" plural.

It's amazing how our revenue-seeking news media has managed to sensationalize the reporting on this. In his own remarks, Obama clearly notes that he is only talking about "some" not all. Furthermore, his remarks are not even really pejorative. In fact what he is saying is that people's skepticism and resistance towards his campaign is understandable. Somehow this has gotten warped into a slam against small-town America, and some members of our short attention span, dim-witted media is buying the story, probably because it is the most juicy, regardless of whether it is actually true.

You can read the remarks here.

People often conflate good writing or speaking with intelligent thought and analysis. One of the better examples of this is the columns of Jay Mariotti, sports writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Mariotti possesses excellent skill as a writer. His columns are breezy and engaging, although Mariotti is sometimes overly preoccupied with style, especially trying to come up with catchy nicknames or turns of phrase. Many dislike Mariotti because they feel he writes only to be controversial and changes his columns according to the sports wind. While I think there is an element of truth in that criticism, I don't think it is strictly accurate. I think Mariotti's real weakness is that although he is technically a good writer, he is not a particularly good thinker or analyst. In fact, I find his reasoning and analysis to be often trite, shallow, knee-jerk, and/or simply sub par. It's almost never particularly insightful. Despite his reputation for controversy, he writes a number of columns where the essential point is something like, Tiger Woods is a great golfer. (I think he essentially has written that very column more than once.) When he does express stronger opinions, not only does his reasoning and analysis tend to be weak, but he appears to do little background research, often failing to mention facts highly relevant to the topic, or mentioning some facts without their proper context. (For example, he recently cited Cubs manager Lou Pinella's 125 roster lineups last year as exorbitant, but the fact is that while the number was above average, it was far from the high in either the National or American League.) His columns are essentially at the level of a bar conversation, albeit expressed in well-written prose.

The Chemicals Within

http://www.newsweek.com/id/105588

          -------------------------------------------------------------------
' Clearly, there are chemicals in our bodies that don't belong there. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducts a large, ongoing
survey that has found 148 chemicals in Americans of all ages, including
lead, mercury, dioxins and PCBs. Other scientists have detected
antibacterial agents from liquid soaps in breast milk, infants' cord
blood and the urine of young girls. And in 2005, the Environmental
Working Group found an average of 200 chemicals in the cord blood of 10
newborns, including known carcinogens and neurotoxins. "Our babies are
being born pre-polluted," says Sharyle Patton of Commonweal, which
cosponsored "Is It in Us?" "This is going to be the next big
environmental issue after climate change...." '

     -- Newsweek, Feb. 4, 2008
          -------------------------------------------------------------------

I've personally heard or read a number of comments from folks who say they "don't trust" Obama. While I don't think the cause is overt racism per se (though it probably is for some people), I do think there is a fear of difference and novelty. Obama is a different kind of candidate, not just in terms of his racial composition, but with a distinctive name, and an atypical demeanor and speaking style.

I don't buy the explanation that he is new to the scene. John Edwards was even newer to the scene four years ago and you didn't hear so many people saying that they didn't trust him. They might have said he was inexperienced, but they didn't explicity cite a lack of trust.

There are a lot of little things in which I will have to make an adjustment when I move from Chicagoland to NoVA. One of these is internet traffic reports. Here in Chicago there is an excellent traffic site, GCMtravel.com, that I find far superior to the other sites. GCMtravel.com not only has current traffic maps and travel times in graphic and text format, but it also shows historical travel times for routes for a given day of the week over a typical 24 hour period. Thus not only can you tell what traffic is like now, you can estimate when it might clear up or get worse, and make a decision as to when you should take the route.

This past week I drove down to northern Virginia to do some apartment hunting. I found a place in Old Town Alexandria. Ironically, the place I decided on was one I added at the last minute, because I had considered it too expensive, but it turns out they had a special for two months off for the first year.

I almost didn't look at it. I added it because it was one of the few places that had positive reviews online, though I took all those reviews with a grain of salt. I didn't want to live right next to the PTO, and I thought Old Town might be too expensive, so the initial places I wrote down were near Metro stations away from the PTO, but I decided to add a couple places that were a long walk from the PTO, but still relatively near a Metro station.

It's ludicrous that Lorne Michaels actually has the chutzpah to claim that recent SNL skits are sympathetic towards Obama.

A
good impersonation of Obama might be a sort of hybrid
between, say, Lawrence Fishburne and Billy D Williams, or Bill Bradley and Bill Clinton. That is, part erudite
intellectual, part smooth talking charmer. But instead SNL has chosen
an impersonation that presents Obama as a vacuous empty vessel, which
simply fails to offer any insight into any mannerisms or tendencies in
Obama's persona. Instead it comes across like the caricature offered by
the Clinton campaign of Obama as novice and a lightweight, which is
simply not accurate in terms of his actual persona in real life.

And
these sorts of thing do matter in the sense of promoting a narrative
that takes hold in the public consciousness, whether it is accurate or
not.

For example in 2000, the press obsessed about rather minor
incidental inconsistencies in some of Al Gore's statements (like saying
he was flying with the FEMA director when he was actually in a
different helicopter) and created a narrative that Al Gore was making
inconsistent statements and wasn't being authentic. Meanwhile, George
W. Bush got away with flubbing answers to questions all the time,
because people found him folksy and likeable and already had presumed
lowered expectations for him anyway.

The Politics of Race and Gender

It's notable to me that while Clinton supporters bemoan the fact that
Hillary is picked on by the supposedly sexist media because of her
gender, in actuality there has been very little true direct
gender-based attacks against Hillary Clinton, especially when compared to the pretty
overt racial remarks that have been made against Barack Obama. IF there
is a bias against Clinton, I believe it has more to with her own
individual personality and history, as well as Hillary and Bill
Clinton's long political history together.

In terms of this particular primary, I think it's safe to say that
Clinton's gender has provided more political protection for her than Obama's race
has provided political protection for him.

Blame Canada

Here is an article that details how the Canadian government misrepresented the facts, intentionally or accidentally, in such a way as to cast false aspersions on the Obama campaign.

After reading this organized account of the facts, I am truly beginning to wonder whether some elements in the conservative Canadian administration really did orchestrate a smear campaign against Obama in an attempt to damage his campaign.

Unfortunately, in our short-attention span world, the damage is done, and many voters will have the impression that Obama is inconsistent in some way, when in fact both he and Austan Goolsbee were very consistent, and it is the Canadian government that has gotten things all twisted.

Potential for cheaper hydrogen through use of nanoparticles

According to this article, nanoparticles could make hydrogen for fuel cells as cheap as gasoline. People could potentially extract hydrogen at home from water.