The Dover Photos

If you have been trying to get to the Memory Hole site to see the Dover photos, it's been overwhelmed since the story broke. There is now a working mirror site here, at Warblogging.

If you know of other working mirror sites, please let me know.

Followup: Journalistic Bias

Thanks to Jemima Periera for the link to this post about journalist bias in the media.

In thirty years of in the writing trades, I’ve covered a lot of things, but three in particular: The military, the sciences, and the police. For years I had a military column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and later carried by the Army Times papers until I was fired for political incorrectness. For half a dozen years I rode with the cops all around the country for my police column in the Washington Times. And I’ve written tech columns and pieces for technical mags like Signal forever.

This isn’t my first rodeo.

In each case the reporters I met were, with very few exceptions, pig ignorant. The military reporters didn’t know the history, the weaponry, the technology, strategy, tactics, or how soldiers work. Almost none had served. The police reporters chased scanners instead of riding regularly and just didn’t know what was out there or who cops are or why they act as they do. The tech writers were mostly history majors.

Over the years I’ve noticed several things. First, in print publications, most reporters aren’t very smart. A few are very bright, but probably through a mistake in hiring. (The prestigious papers are exceptions, hiring Ivy League snots of the sort who viscerally dislike soldiers, cops, rural people, guns, etc.) Reporting requires assertiveness and willingness to deal with tedious material under pressure of deadlines. These qualities seldom come bundled with inquiring intelligence. Consequently reporters (again with the occasional exception) lack curiosity, and don’t read in their fields.

Ouch! Make sure to read Jemima's thoughts as well.

An Important Anniversary

Today marks thirty years of streaking! Yeah! You can thank the Australians for this bit of invention. (WARNING: Not-work-safe photo included.)

Tell Me Again Why We Need This?

A lot of Americans tout the Canadian health care system as a model for us to follow. Are they sure?

A 21-year-old man died of appendicitis after he was refused treatment at an emergency clinic because he didn't have his provincial health card with him.

Gerald Augustin complained of stomach pains on Thursday but the receptionist at the St-Andre medical centre told him he had to return home to get his health card. He didn't make it back to the clinic in Montreal's east end.

UPDATE: Link is now fixed.

Tina Fey is the Hotness

I crush on Tina Fey something awful. She's smart, "caustic" funny, and really hot. What's not to like? Read more here, with pics.

I understand she's also exceptionally good at improv comedy, which is a favorite of mine. A couple of years ago, Drew Carey was being considered as a host for SNL and he proposed doing the show as "all-improv," allowing open-endedness rather than the scripted stuff they usually do. It didn't happen, because a lot of the cast can't do improv. Too bad, as I would have watched that.

UPDATE: You can read a more detailed interview with Tina, thanks to the New Yorker here. There's a good gallery of Tina Fey photos here. Especially check out that bottom-row photo!

Interesting Idea

Heard this one on the radio today (which was on because the downstairs neighbors had their car parked in front of the apartment to jam out for a while):

We define death as the cessation of brain waves. If an injured, diseased or damaged person has some kind of brain waves, they are still "alive," however minimally. We can make judgments on the quality of life, but not the fact.

So why not apply this to abortion? If the fetus has brain waves, it's a human deserving of State intervention to protect its life. It might only be light intervention, but the State still gains an interest. No brain waves yet? No life and hence it's tissue that the woman has full control over, with no State intervention. That means that a woman has roughly into her third month of pregnancy to make an abortion decision.

I think this idea has some merit, speaking as an anti-abortion person. I'm not dogmatically "pro-life," but against the taking of a life without strong protections for the life taken. There are circumstances where abortion is the only way, but far too many abortions are for nothing more than convenience, for a failure of birth control or self-control.

I really hate that continued discussion of abortion was taken by judicial fiat by the Supreme Court when it created from nothing but the flimsiest of justifications a non-medically-based "trimester" system for looking at abortion. We should have followed the European way, which was to let the process of legislative debate work out the kind of abortion laws this country wanted. It would have taken longer, yes, but it would have been something far more acceptable and less contentious than what was imposed on us three decades ago. It would have been organic and not "top down."

Good Bredesen News

While Governor Phil Bredesen is working to raise business taxes by $75 million (See Bill Hobbs for more.), he is doing one good thing. Next week, he'll propose much tougher driver's licensing laws.

The amended version of Bredesen's plan will offer two types of driving documents. One is the regular driver's license, available to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. The other is called a "driving certificate" that cannot be used for identification purposes. It will document only that the holder is qualified to operate a motor vehicle and will look distinctly different from a driver's license.

The certificate will be available to two kinds of noncitizens: People who are legally but temporarily in the United States and those who can prove only their identity and their residence in Tennessee.

It's hard to argue with this, as it gives both sides of the argument what they want. Proponents of State and national security, and those not wanting to aid and abet illegal citizenry, get limits on availability. Proponents of getting illegals to learn driving laws get that. It's a win-win.

One funny bit in the article, though. It mentions a Williamson County raid that netted 25 illegal aliens at a driving school. In connection with the national security concerns mentioned in the rest of the article, it's not wrong to think "Arab Muslims." But you have to read all the way to the last paragraph (which may get cut if other outlets trim this AP story for space reasons) to learn that the 25 were from India! Oh my.

Hotcha!

Last weekend I asked if something was up with WREC AM600's Saturday afternoon lineup. Today we have the answer. Jim Montgomery's Computer Connection now runs at 10AM. At noon we now have Andrew L. Clark, Sr. Yeah! Clark has been doing a Sunday afternoon show that gets good marks, but low listenership because of the day. He's now been expanded after listener request.

I really like Clark. Unlike Mike Phlegming, who is shallow, hysterical and absolutist, Clark is thoughtful and respectful. By virtue of his weekend show, he can allow his callers time to make their points; he has time to question them. Mike's show is crammed full of station promos and ads, so he's constantly doing slice'n'dice to callers to hustle them along. Not to mention that Mike is seemingly incapable of making a point succintly and clearly. His writer's roots always trip him up. He gets lost in sentences, searching for a word or following a thought down a rabbit hole; he trails off, then jerks awkwardly to a similar thought or inadequate word to finish up. He doesn't have time to go back and restate himself. For some reason, though, every break he summarises his point for folks just tuning in. (Or he thinks he has to?)

Sorry for the digression.... Anyway, Clark's first show wasn't auspicious. He wandered into a long discussion about Catholicism and its role in American politics, then was forced to defend against charges of anti-Catholic bias. Still, it was refreshing to hear actual back-and-forth on local WREC programming.

Following that was the return (revival?) of "The Weekend." This is Clear Channel's nationwide call-in show, where a CC jock takes it national for two hours. Every week, different host. I like this, as we get to hear folks who might otherwise stay unknown. It's how I discovered Jane Norris from Virginia; she's a great host. One can hope she'll come back in the rotation this time.

And speaking of the 800 lb. napalm gorilla, Fleming has done a turn or two on this program. It was fascinating. He deliberately lower his tonal range and spoke more slowly than he does here. Still the same doof, but apparently he's heard about his voice.

A Reader Experiment

I'm not going to say anything, although the fact that I'm posting this undoubtedly gives some indication of my feelings. Go to this Commercial Appeal news report and you tell me: bias or neutral? Be sure to read the whole thing, to the end, before commenting. Is the writer injecting some bias or is it bias-free? Why?

Healthy Skepticism

Good article from Commercial Appeal music writer Bill Ellis today. He writes about a revived Musicians Advisory Council, part of the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission. Ellis views the thing with an open eye, but a skeptical one that remembers the past and listens to the present. Good stuff.

Me, I really don't think government commissions are the answer to problems with Memphis' music promotion. But you'd expect that, of course. Go to the article to see some proposed ideas and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Wendi Gets Her Wish

UPDATE: There is now a mirror for the Dover photos, which seems to be working as of Saturday evening: Warblogging's mirror site.

The Commercial Appeal today prints a photo from the MemoryHole collection of Dover AFB photos of caskets arriving from Iraq. Good for them.

The story is careful to emphasize context, that is how the photos are presented and the material or stories that accompany or surround them. Good for them.

I think these photos should be published. As a supporter of the War on Terror: Iraqi Front, I think it's vital to never forget the final price of war. The media acting as a filter for me is a repugnant idea. Make the pictures available, then let the people decide whether or not to view them. That's the right way.

Memorial Day is coming up. Hopefully, at least one of these pictures will be in the paper on that day.

[Note: The Memory Hole is being overwhelmed with traffic and may be hard to get to. That alone is a sign of how people feel about the issue of releasing the photos. While you're at the site, take a moment to look at some of the other war pictures and other documents they feature. Memory Hole is dedicated to keeping alive those Web documents and other things that get taken down by embarrassed folks.]

Weird Spam

Got some truly odd spam today in the blog mailbox. It was titled "Saddam Hussein Escapes." The attachment, some html, claimed a BBC story was reporting that Saddam had escaped, but had a link like this: http://123.456.789.123/pics. Of course my spider-sense was tingling, and I was deeply skeptical, but this email also had a sense of someone who wanted to share some comedy graphics or something, which I've branched out into, so I cut'n'pasted the link. The result?

A website for Viagra. GAAAH!!

I knew it. Some advice for folks who want to email me? A lot of email has been deleted from the mailbox because it has subject lines like "hey" or "see this" or "a funny website." I once got some flamemail from a guy who called me "an evil fuck" and a Nazi who enjoyed gassing children and minorities simply because I hadn't responded to his first email, which was titled "hey." Duh. I almost skipped a funny blog today because the subject line wasn't distinctive.

And don't just put the blog name in the subject, either. I get tons of spam with the blog name. Make it unique, OK? Like "H-B, funny graphics link," "Free beef tacos for you!" or something. I haven't gotten a virus on my computer in quite a few years because I'm so hardline on emails and attachments. I'm sorry to make y'all work harder, but that's how it is.

Too Good to be True

When the story first got out about the picture of the caskets being loaded into a plane at Dover AFB, I was glad. I think it's important for those pictures to come out. They remind and inspire.

The story was that a woman who worked for the airplane maintenance company was so moved by the scene of three long rows of flag-draped caskets, she took a picture and sent it to a good friend of hers. The Pentagon decided just before the Gulf War to stop releasing pictures. She knew it was against her contract and could get her fired, but was moved enough to flout the law for a greater good.

Her friend in Seattle got the pic and was similarly moved, she said. So much so, she sent the pic to the local paper, which printed it. And within days, that pic travelled around the world. The photographer, Tami Silicio, was fired.

I saw the friend on NBC's Today show this morning. All they talked about was what you read above. There was nothing else. It was all vaguely patriotic in an anti-government kind of way, except one thing that stood out.

The friend said she thought it unfair that the government had decided for the families of the dead soldiers whether they could release the photos. Yet this woman made a decision herself, for all the families, to release her picture knowing it would be published. But Katie Couric didn't pursue that and the story made it all look good and above board.

Or so goes the story.

Turns out there's a darker side indeed and motives might have been far less than pure. I'm not talking about the friend now having an agent sell publication rights to the photo for $1400. Nor how the photographer somehow knew to sign over the rights to her friend. No.

It turns out that the two women, Amy Katz (the friend) and Tami Silicio (the photographer), had sued Dick cheney and Halliburton for discrimination in 2000! They worked for Halliburton in Kosovo. When Katz went to use a port-a-potty, she found it guarded by an Albanian. he said that two of the toilets were for ethnic Albanians and the other two were for Americans. Katz was outraged and refused to use the "American" johns, but the Albanian guard wouldn't let her use the "Albanian" ones, saying it was against their Muslim faith for men and women to use the same facilities. Katz filed an EEOC complaint.

You can read a longer and more detailed account (minus the religious explanation) here. It's an awfully designed webpage, so stop the loading after you see text and do a "find in page" on "Katz."

So now we have the spectre of anti-Bush / Cheney-Halliburton / "It's the oooooiiiiil." leftist anti-war activism coming into play. Was this simple patriotism or was there a second dirtier agenda working? Now we'll never know for sure.

You can read more on the breaking story at FreeRepublic or at NewsMax.

Further Down the Slippery Slope

When the latest drive to legitimate homosexual marriage began, one of the arguments used against it was this, spoken by Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum:

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.

He was blasted and excoriated without mercy by those pushing the agenda. "Wrong, wrong, wrong," they cried. "This is different."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Polygamists in Utah are now doing just that, using the same law that homosexual activists used to extend their rights.

Polygamists are citing the U.S. Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas (2003) ruling to challenge marriage laws. In Utah, the ban on polygamy came under attack as civil rights attorney Brian Barnard brought a federal lawsuit, Bronson v. Swensen, No. 02:04-CV-0021, on January 12, 2004, against the state based in part on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Lawrence.

Two other attorneys have also referenced Lawrence in defending polygamists. The Arizona Daily Star cited convicted bigamist and child rapist Thomas Green, whose lawyer, John Bucher, argued in Utah v. Green that Green’s convictions should be thrown out in light of Lawrence.

You can read some more here.

I'm of split mind on this. One the one hand, marriage has been a bond used by society to keep issues of legitimacy and inheritance straight. It has also been a way to keep society stable. Using religion and the fear of eternal damnation kept the numbers and amount of straying low(-ish). So did the possibility of unintended pregnancy. Stable families are the best way to raise children, and so to be encouraged. I'm not aware of any societies in relatively modern times that have had homosexual marriage on a par with hetero-marriage.

On the other, things have changed. We have medicine to tell us who is related to whom. We have central depositories of records, accessible by computer and Internet, to keep inheritance straight. We have the Pill, to remove unintended pregnancy; and safe abortion to catch the ones the Pill doesn't.

Making democracy the basis of our government has also changed things. Instead of the family, represented by the father, being the basis of government participation and decision-making, we made it the individual. Our government must deal only with individuals, or it's not democratic. It can't favor some over others. Full participation requires it.

That basis fueled a lot of social changes. Women have entered every area of society, which is good. Religion, seen as a tool of oppression, began to lose influence. The fundamental punishment behind marriage lost its power and so marriage lost its iron grip.

It has all come to where we are today: Marriage now is a contract between people, negotiable and breakable. Reduced to contract status, there's no reason it can't be between any parties willing to make one.

That's where we are today. Men and women put their own interests first. Marriage is so degraded in meaning it has become malleable to any who can push its edges. Thanks to a successful push by women to have the government and private enterprise take over some part of child-rearing (supported by men who were glad to be freed as well), raising well-adjusted kids isn't central to marriage any more. The argument for government licensing of marriage loses strength.

I supposed the libertarian in me should be happy, but I look at the teeming chaotic mess and worry for the future.

Journalistic Bias

Rachel of Rachel and the City has a link to a short piece looking at newsroom media bias. It's a short, informative read, but I take exception to some things.

The author basically argues that bias doesn't exist, or if it does it's so complex that everything averages out.

I would first like to point out that the two charges -- news coverage is driven by political bias and news coverage is driven by the profit motive -- are fundamentally incompatible.

This doesn't mean they can't co-exist. It also means there's a constant struggle between the two, the status of which I believe does drive some stories, or lack of coverage of others.

For example, the Commercial Appeal ran a great story the other day about City Councillors taking gifts from local businessmen. It was largely in the context of sports and the lack of a strong law against the practice. Fine, as far as it went. But how about looking into the businessmen who regularly seem to come up when this kind of access and familiarity is discussed? Developers have never been studied in any great detail by the Commercial Appeal, and yet they drive a lot of what happens in our government. Look at County Mayor AC Wharton's sputtering initiatives to "control sprawl."

Why hasn't this happened? I suspect that the fact that developers, and the realtors and builders they work with, are a force not to disturb in a meaningful way. Look at all the advertising they and their related industries buy in the Commercial Appeal. Look at the demonstrated pull they have with our City and County governments, where access and availability is important for the paper to function. Is there a link? I'd like to think not, but how can we know? We should trust a business that is famously resistant to outside scrutiny?

Amazing as it may seem, people get into journalism because they think journalism matters (and that it will be fun). Professional pride plus fear of nasty phone calls keeps them ex-tremely scrupulous about balance and fairness.

Two points here. First, he's saying that journalists self-select for being idealists driven by social concerns. That automatically means bias. Second, how many restaurants have you been in where you've complained to staff and management about the service or food? Has it made the staff or management perform any better? Exactly. They endure, grumble and keep on doing what they've done.

Which leads to another point not covered in the article, but implied in Rachel's post: television newsrooms run at full tilt all the time. There's little enough time to get the job done, much less discuss how to slant it. It takes someone at the top or with a strong will (remember Applegate at WMC?) to grab the rudder and change the direction.

Which to me means that newbies get swept up into the rushing stream with little ability to direct the flow. They have to absorb the culture already existing in that newsroom and make it their own, or they get fired. They have to rely on previous instincts, or instincts taught by the newsroom, to get the job done.

Those instincts will be idealist, social-change-driven ones, and the news will be pressed into the narrative templates, pre-existing formulae, for presenting news that have evolved in the past couple of decades. Take a moment to read Dr. Cline's analysis and discussion about media bias. He presents good questions to ask and good tools to use.

Do I think bias exists? Of course. It's why this blog came into being. I had been reading Jackson Baker's "On Politics" column in the Memphis Flyer and was constantly astounded and angered that he could get away with all the propagandising, slant, rewriting and Democratic agenda-push he did. Someone needed to present a corrective and when I discovered blogging, I did. This blog's name derives from Mr. Baker and his column. The Commercial Appeal had the same effect on me, especially Susan Adler Thorpe and Paula Wade.

I saw an imbalance and a social wrong. I saw self-serving hypocrisy by those who claimed to be for the little guy, and to be fair and impartial. Addressing a wrong was all I wanted to do.

Wait? Doesn't that sound familiar?

Let me close by pointing you to a group of bloggers who have really struck gold. In South Dakota, David Kranz has long been the senior political sage. His paper sets the agenda and his writings are taken by other paper's editors and writers as authoritative. Critics have long accused him of Democratic bias, but since he controls the State's largest paper, where could they go? How could they get through or around the people who were the problem?

With an important election at stake (Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle is in a close re-election race.), they went to the Internet and started blogging. Through careful documentation and link-the-dots writing, all openly presented along with their sources, they have proven their point, to devastating effect. They by-passed the newspapers, the public gatekeepers, and went straight to the people. It's starting to cause an uproar, but more importantly it is demonstrating some fundamental shifts.

Newspapers are losing their gate-keeper status; so are national television networks. The bias of some of the people who work in them (I'll be charitable here.) is being exposed and discussed substantively. This is leading to meaningful calls. Folks who resist are losing credibility; folks who adapt will survive in some new form.

Blogging and Internet discussion are driving this change. People can put sources -- photos, documents, video, on-the-scene reports -- right into the hands of readers, free of editing or other manipulation. Computer space is theoretically unlimited, so now there's no reason not to present full transcripts and whole documents, rather than "documents...that" have been "edited" so that we "don't know" what was actually "said." Removing the opportunity for actual or possible bias through selection or presentation alone would be something to hail.

Readers can get news right now, not when the paper comes out tomorrow, or in television news' mediated/edited version which will also lack substance. You the reader can learn about and chase down related information right now, participate in figuring out what it all means, contribute to the process of winnowing bad information from good. In this way, news doesn't go through a relative few hands that can profoundly alter it, but through numerous hands that can simultaneously multiply the kinds of bias introduced (helping to cancel it out by the end of the process) and spot those alterations (leading to immediate corrections).

In the old world, it was vital to ask "Who watches the watchmen?" They were supposedly self-policing and we the reader were told to trust their assurances of openness, honesty, impartiality and balance. It's the brave new world now. No longer do you passively consume news created by others. You put your critical thinking skills to work and decide what's news to you. We are all the watchmen, with a million eyes watch what we do and a million outlets to speak out. That's the best kind of policing.

Star Trek News

First, the funny stuff. BBSpot has news that Paramount has released the Service Pack 1.0 for Star Trek. It "fixes" the errors of continuity and credulity in the original series.

Now, the bad news. Star Trek Executive Producer Rick Berman is announcing an eleventh film. It is to be a "prequel," though he doens't elaborate on that. The story hints that it might be the Starfleet Academy proposal: following young cadets from across the Federation during their four years at the Academy.

Grooooooaaaaaan.

These guys need to leave it alone. Enterprise hasn't succeeded at all, and is still in danger of being cut from the UPN schedule next Fall. The last ST film was a huge disappointment. Berman and Braga have shown that they just don't get it in terms of what Star Trek is and is about. They crank out a show that's called Star Trek, but it isn't "Star Trek."

If they have to do Starfleet Academy, then give it to the WB and let a production team that knows how to cater successfully to that audience (Everwood, Gilmore Girls, and the successfully adapted Smallville) rework it. At least it would be different.

Betting on the Future

Tennessee's lottery joined the Powerball franchise this week, to less than stellar opening numbers. That's been about the only bad news so far. The lottery has been running ahead of schedule, put millions more into the HOPE fund than expected, and made $700,000 in bonuses for the folks who run it. We should all be happy, right?

Maybe not. This USAToday editorial looks at how lotteries have worked out for other States and the news isn't good for our future.

But even as they enacted lotteries for education during the 1970s and '80s, states continued to cry out for additional educational funding. This was puzzling, given the supposed infusion of lottery monies. To clarify why, political science professor Patrick Pierce and I reviewed education spending from all states for the 25 years from 1965 to 1990. During this time, 12 states enacted lotteries for education. We found that states generally increase annual education spending about $12 per capita before a lottery is adopted. In the first year after beginning a lottery, states increased their education spending by almost $50 per capita.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

But after the first-year surge in spending, the annual rate of change in educational spending in a state with a lottery dropped sharply. Rather than increase education spending by $12 per resident every year, these states' spending went up only $6 per capita. In a few years, the initial flush of lottery funds into a state's education programs had been eaten up, and the state lagged those that didn't rely on lottery-generated education funds.

It's something we need to keep our eyes on.

While we're talking lottery, let me remind readers of this link to Rev. Don Sensing's writings on gambling and lotteries.

And...while you're at One Hand Clapping, scroll up and read his take on folks like me who worry that a military draft may be coming. He's served in the military and brings a lot of good, hard experience and knowledge to the issue. His take? Not likely until we've tried legislating an expanded volunteer army first. That's good to hear.

Not Important Enough, Apparently

You'd hardly know it if you depended on the Commercial Appeal or the Memphis Flyer for your State political news, but Tennessee has been running a tax revenue surplus. Rather than bank that "extra" money, Governor Bredesen and the General Assembly are already making plans to spend it. No sales tax refunds or reductions for you!

Since the Peck-era took hold at the CA, State-level political news has been deprecated, pushed into the Metro section. They don't even depend on their Nashville "bureau" anymore. You're as likely to see an AP wire report as see Richard Locker's byline. As the Income Tax Wars proved, what Nashville does is vitally important news. Just because it's not "people-focused" or "community building" doesn't mean it's not important. If they don't report it, how else will we know the details?

Well, one way is by Internet. You can start with Bill Hobbs. Bill is an online journalist and blogger who has been covering Nashville for several years now. He's a strong fiscal conservative, skeptical of government intentions, and has a journalism background. His reporting is solid, if biased; but that bias is clear and upfront. Bill never pretends to be other than he is.

You can also turn to websites like Tennessee Tax Revolt and the Nashville Files. Nashville Files pulls stories from that city's papers, but also from around the state; it's a necessary adjunct to the Commercial Appeal for political junkies. TTR was Command Central during the Income Tax Wars. Since that victory, they've shifted to a more general anti-tax increase stand.

Anyway, Hobbs today links to a Jackson Sun editorial asking Bredesen to exercise the fiscal restraint he was elected for. Hobbs then gives you some links to follow to get up to speed on the story, if you've been relying on the local papers to keep you informed.

Speaking of Tennessee Tax Revolt, they have been following the budgets of cities and counties across the State. For example, they link to this Shelby County Commission story. Getting on their email alert is a good idea; I have.

Stay informed. Find the news.

The Truths Not Told

When the FedExForum was being proposed, and the tiger team was in full gear, some critics of public funding for the arena argued that there were studies that showed publicly funded arenas did not return on their investments and were often used by team owners as another way of maximising their profits. Several studies have been done now and, to my knowledge, not one has yet shown that publicly funded sports facilities are good returns on investment.

The local daily was in full booster mode at the time -- ruthlessly supportive. They mentioned such studies only briefly and dismissively, before loudly telling one and all that the "intangible" benefits were just as profitable. They still do it. Easter Sunday had an editorial from a Professor of Economics at the UoM who even argued both positions -- spending most of her article pointing out the lack of economic benefit to the City and then turning around to meekly utter the "civic pride" loyalty oath at the end.

Look at all the media hoopla about the Grizzlies' playoff run. Everyone is now crowing "How you like us now?" The assumption -- there is no evidence or proof -- is that Memphis is now big league, "world class" in the city's over-used formulation, and folks notice us favorably and take us seriously. Of course, that didn't convince MTV. But hey! We're world-class baby.

This week, yet another study shows that public funding isn't necessary. The authors persuasively show that arenas generate enough income to pay for themselves. You can read the study's press release, with more information, here.

There is a weakness to their assumption, though, one that ought to be pointed out. They base their numbers on arenas and stadiums being used for twenty years or longer. That's not the case any more. Our Pyramid is barely a decade old and considered a relic. Teams don't make promises even up to a decade now. Owners may not plan to move, but being locked down when opportunity comes -- or fortunes change -- isn't good business practice for them.

The good news for those who oppose public funding is that the Internet is making the fight more even. Sites like this and this are where citizens can end-run the newspapers and radio/television stations that will blunt their opinions. Never forget that newspapers and radio/television have valuable financial and prestige interests in getting big sports teams in their markets. Opposing these teams' demands is not good for them.

When the Grizzlies were pitching to come here, the local daily and television made all opposition seem to center around Duncan Ragsdale and Heidi Shaefer. Except in the Letters column, and disparaging reports about City Councillors, you saw little about citizen organisation and that was only to brush it aside as foolish. That, I feel, was deliberate. The next time, it will be much harder to pull off. There's a network of websites and blogs, more people are online, and people are much more comfortable using the Internet. Organisation will be better and stronger.

If we're lucky, that won't be happening any time soon.

The Professoriate and The Truth

Excellent essay at TechCentralStation from John Kekes. It's long, but it systematically examines and refutes what many professors practice.

The justification for the funding universities and colleges receive is that they make an indispensable contribution to the well-being of their society. For coping with the multitude of problems that beset society requires policies, policies are likely to succeed if they are based on the truth, and universities and colleges are supposed to be guardians of the beliefs that a society has most reason to recognize as true. If institutions of higher education do through teaching and research what they are meant to do, they deserve support and respect; if they do not, they deserve the opposite. North American higher education is in danger of losing that support and respect because many professors have abandoned their obligation and use universities and colleges as tools for the political transformation of our society....

Matters, however, are even worse. It would be one thing to declare forthrightly that universities and colleges no longer regard the upholding of truth through teaching and research as their basic obligation. It may, then, be said that henceforth institutions of higher education are to be in the vanguard of the transformation of society to reflect a political ideal. But not only is this not said, it is denied with hypocritical indignation. For defenders of preferential treatment realize that if they told the truth about the political ideal they are aiming at, they would have to justify it to politicians who allocate resources for teaching and research, not for political activism; to parents who pay for students' expenses on the assumption that they will get an education rather than be conscripted as foot soldiers into the army of political activists; to those professors who continue to uphold the truth and refuse to subordinate it to political considerations; and to citizens who do not wish to pay taxes to finance self-appointed activists bent on changing their society. Their justification would have to reveal what qualification entitles professors of literature, sociology, or anthropology, for instance, to take advantage of their students' willingness to learn and harangue them with a political view about how society should be transformed. It is because no convincing justification could be given that instead of telling the truth, these professors spread falsehoods....

Most relativists, however, are not consistent. Their actions are at odds with what they claim to believe because no sane person could seriously hold the pernicious and absurd beliefs to which relativists are committed. This is shown every time relativists consult a physician, not a faith healer; call a plumber to unclog a sink, not a magician; want rapists prosecuted, not held up as role-models; and send their children to school, not to a shopping mall. But this does not stop many professors from using relativism to further their political ideal. For they appeal to it to justify using the classroom as a political forum, making political speeches instead of teaching, belittling the great achievements of the past, and hypocritically claiming that they are merely doing knowingly what the vast majority of humanity is doing in ignorance. The net effect is the betrayal of truth, the gross violation of professional obligations, the corruption of students, and the subversion of higher education. All of which is made even more egregious by the knowing cynicism with which it is usually done.

Lots, lots more.