September 2006 Archives

Yep:

Billionaire investor and dot-com veteran Mark Cuban had harsh words Thursday for YouTube, the online site that lets people share video clips, saying only a "moron" would purchase the wildly popular start-up.

Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, also said YouTube would eventually be "sued into oblivion" because of copyright violations.

"They are just breaking the law," Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. "The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue."

I'm not an expert on the economics of corporate acquisitions, but he's correct on the copyright issue. I'm surprised YouTube already hasn't been taken to court for this.

I recently set up a YouTube playlist, and my assumption is that every video I've included is technically a copyright violation. But, it will be fun for users while it lasts . . . .

Heh. If only the factory workers had something on hand to extinguish the fire . . . .

Even the product description is contradictory. It says: "Chimfex sticks are indispensable as your first line of defense for controlling fires." But then: "CAUTION: ALWAYS CALL YOUR LOCAL FIRE DEPARTMENT FIRST!" So I guess the sticks are your "first" defense after you call the fire department.

I came across this CIA's Online 'Personality Quiz'.

I didn't think it could be as bad as described, so I went ahead and tried it. Found out two things:

(1) The quiz determined I'm a "curious adventurer," and

(2) If that website is indicative of the type of recruiting the CIA is doing, then it's no surprise if American intelligence is in bad shape.

Not only is the quiz silly (what kind of superpower do you want?) but the results don't make a connection to anything. So I'm a "curious adventurer," so what? I didn't see a link to any related CIA careers. Or if there was one, it wasn't obvious enough for me to see it. What's the point? It appears to be a weak PR tool.

Based on the campaign commercials I've paid attention to the past few weeks, illegal immigration is apparently the top issue Tennessee voters face in November.

If I were a campaign consultant (candidates: get your offers ready), I imagine a negative TV ad as follows:

Candidate X thinks border security should be treated like this [show footage of volleyball match]. A vote for X is a vote for open borders. Vote for Y.

That ought to stir a few of our culture warriors up.

On a thinly related matter, but this reminds me of the multicultural volleyball experience I had a few weeks back. Usually I play recreational volleyball one night a week at my church. One week a bunch of players from an affiliated Hispanic group unexpectedly showed up. Somehow I found myself on a team consisting of a Hispanic/American guy (who speaks English and is a regular), and four other people who, as far as I could tell, didn't speak any English. Fortunately, a basic game doesn't require much communication, so I managed not to make a fool of myself. But needless to say, we didn't attempt to implement much strategy.

The funniest part may have been the appearance of the team. Not trying to get into ethnic stereotypes here, but there was a distinct pattern. I'm 5'10", if I stand on my toes. There was one other guy about my height, and the rest of the players were at least 4 inches shorter than me. It was odd being the "tall" guy on the team, as if the universe had tipped off its axis.

But what those guys lacked in stature, they made up for with hustle. Quite a feisty bunch, who didn't want to give up on points. It was refreshing to watch.

What's the greatest issue Congress faces today?

If you guessed "World War III," terrorists killing every American, Social Security, Medicare, skyrocketing health care costs, education, illegal immigration, crime, energy, threats to the environment, or the outsourcing of American jobs, you guessed wrong.

According to Ms. Musgrave, it's gay marriage.

Alert to one-man-and-one-woman married couples: the gays are out to get you! Vote Republican to quell this threat.

As Atrios notes, it's lame that Fox News is trying to make a political (tax cut) issue of the stock market rally when the all time high was reached months before Bush took office.

But that wasn't the lamest Cavuto I saw yesterday. The show had a segment featuring a caption which attempted to make a tie-in to 9/11. I had the volume down and didn't catch most of it, but the an oft-repeated theme on Your World is that if we are good Americans who support Republican tax cuts and pay lots of money for stocks, then the terrorists won't win.

TVNewser has the '06 vs. '05 third quarter comparison (money demographic). The results are fairly brutal: for prime time, CNBC is the only network that hasn't dropped at least 25%. (Mad Money and Big Idea have helped buoy CNBC's ratings).

Here's a more detailed table (.pdf).

Absent another calamity, it appears the executives should get together and hype up another missing white woman to get ratings back on track.

NY Post (of all newspapers):

Condoleezza Rice's office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe," internal documents show.

Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council - "the final decision maker" on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
. . .
Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of "competing priorities" such as national security and "opening Wall Street," according to a report by the EPA's inspector general.

Of course we now know that the air around Ground Zero was anything but safe after the towers collapsed. And hundreds of rescuers are now paying the price with long-term respiratory ailments.

The obvious question here is why the NSC director, with a background in Russian studies, had the "final" call on whether or not air was "safe"? At any rate, where there's a conflict between business and environmental concerns, it's no mystery which side is going to win in this White House. I hope the people we were rushing back to lower Manhattan didn't have to breathe very often.

A free tip for would-be criminals: if you are carrying around marijuana, it's best not to attempt to hitch a ride with a police officer.

There's been a lot of brouhaha the last couple days regarding President Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Channel. A couple takes on it:

(1) As a general matter, I think the issue was fair game for Wallace to raise. However, if reports were true that FNC agreed that half the interview was supposed to deal with Clinton's Global Initiative, and then Wallace hit him right at the start with this, it's pretty poor interviewing form.

(2) Although the substance of Clinton's response seemed to be on point (it's hard to get to verify some of the facts), he emotion did cause him to go a little over the top. He could have done without the "smirk" remark and comments about the "right-wing" people going after him. At times it sounded as if he is as bothered by the messengers as the message. He should have just stuck to the facts in refuting the attacks.

I assume this is a short-lived story, and a nice media distraction from Iraq for Rove, Inc. However, if there is a longer-term implication, I hope it's one William Kristol identified:

In this interview, Clinton rallied Democrats. He reminded them of their talking points on Bush's alleged passivity in his first eight months in office (remember Richard Clarke!), and on the alleged distraction posed by Iraq from the more worthwhile war in Afghanistan.
. . .
If the Bush-Rove war-on-terror offensive stalls out this week (and much of the media is committed to making this happen), and Democrats do well in November, Bill Clinton can take credit, at a crucial moment, for discrediting the terror issue as a mere political ploy, and showing Democrats how "to fight back" and how "to stand up to the right-wing propaganda machine" (in the words of Howard Dean).

That would be a nice fallout from this----the Democrats apparently need some sort of spark.

Interesting aside: FNC reportedly scrubbed copies of the interview on YouTube, but now I see that at least some of them are back. Not sure how that has worked out.

President Bush's view of the bloodshed in Iraq (video):

BLITZER: We see these horrible bodies showing up ...

BUSH: Of course you do.

BLITZER: ...tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, Al-Qaida in Iraq's still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see -- you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people. Twelve million people voted last December.

Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.

(Emphasis added).

It's an interesting perspective:

• 2,700 Americans killed on September 11 = a day that changed everything
• 2,700 Americans killed + 20,000 Americans wounded + tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and wounded = a comma in history

I wonder how well it would go over if a leading Democrat referred to the attack on September 11 as a "comma" (or semicolon) in the grand scheme of history. I suspect it wouldn't go over well.

[Incidentally, I majored in history, and in four years I never did learn when the "final history" regarding an event is written. Perhaps Tony Snow can clear that point up on a slow news day.]

If that wasn't enough, Mr. Bush added this:

These people want a unity government. The unity government is functioning. I'm impressed by President Maliki.

I've talked to him. I've seen the decision-making process that he's put in place. The Iraqi army is still recruiting and training.

Unity government? Funny, I just read this:

After yielding to several demands from Sunni Arab parties, Iraqi political leaders agreed on Sunday to start debate on a bill that could eventually allow the country to be broken into autonomous states.

I guess it all depends on what your definition of a "unity government" is.

UPDATE: Jack Cafferty weighs in on the "comma."

An American graduate student offers a short video on electric bicycles in China.

Seems to me that a motor takes the fun out of it. But I suppose it's a helpful upgrade for the elderly. And the "fun" probably wears off after a few years if that's your only mode of transportation.

Without elaborating on the topic, the graduate student says that Chinese cities are deemphasizing bicycle transportation in favor of cars. Supposedly the latter makes for a more "modern" city. To the contrary, I think the opposite is true; a city upgrades itself by becoming more cyclist friendly.

David Herron has a few more thoughts on the video.

Washington Post:

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

See also the NY Times article.

Undoubtedly this comes as a huge surprise to everyone. And by "everyone," I mean those who believe the Bush administration.

Yes.

News, information, blogs, forums, YouTube, e-mail, and, uh, . . . you get the picture. It's infotainment central.

Heh.

"Fair and balanced," as always.

(Background for the term "Cavuto" is here.)

Being an air marshal is a lot more physically demanding than I imagined:

A key House member yesterday said that Congress should review the large number of federal air marshals sidelined by injuries sustained while protecting passengers from another September 11-style terrorist attack.

More than 2,100, or nearly half the Federal Air Marshals Service's peak force, have been awarded workers' compensation claims in the past three years, according to the Labor Department.
. . .
"I deal with pilots and flight attendants on aircraft all the time, and we don't have that kind of record," [ Rep. John L.] Mica said.

Here I thought that (absent an incident) air marshals essentially just rode around on the planes. It would be interesting to compare this workers' compensation claim rate with that of flight attendants, who share similar working conditions.

In a 20/20 interview, Bill O'Reilly claims that the FBI informed him that he is on an al Qaeda "death list."

Undoubtedly, in al Qaeda's campaign to end the global power of the United States, Mr. O'Reilly ranks near the top of the list of high value targets.

This reminds me of the war "freedom" blogggers who have publicly worried about the danger of al Qaeda using computer attacks to shut down their blogs.

USA Today:

When it comes to President Bush's approval rating — the number that measures his political health — one factor seems more powerful than any Oval Office address or legislative initiative.

It's the price of a gallon of gas.

Statisticians who have compared changes in gas prices and Bush's ratings through his presidency have found a steady relationship: As gas prices rise, his ratings fall. As gas prices fall, his ratings rise.
. . .
A statistical analysis by Doug Henwood, editor of the liberal newsletter Left Business Observer, found that an "uncanny" 78% of the movement in Bush's ratings could be correlated with changes in gas prices. Based on trends in crude oil prices, Henwood predicted last Thursday that it "wouldn't be surprising to see his approval numbers rise into the mid-40s."

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, Bush's rating rose to 44%, his highest in a year. Average gas prices, which peaked at more than $3 a gallon in August, had dropped under $2.50, the lowest since March.

Interesting how "supply and demand" is working.

• Thai coup: Earlier this year Joshua Kurlantzick wrote a piece which provides background for what's happening in Thailand. He notes how the (past?) prime minister's strong-arm tactics have apparently backfired:

  Terrorism and insurgencies provide elected officials with an opportunity to exploit an inherent weakness of democracies--the willingness, even eagerness, of their citizens to hand near-authoritarian powers to strong leaders in return for the promise of security. But the lesson of the last five years is that authoritarian tactics tend not to quell insurgencies, but to make them worse. And when that happens, democracies exhibit an inherent strength: their tendency to demand accountability.

  Apparently, that's what we saw yesterday, though not in the most democratic of processes.

  Billmon wonders how the Bush administration will respond to the coup:

  Either way, though, I'm guessing the "principles of democracy" will be plenty flexible enough to allow Shrub to give the new military government his tacit blessing.

  That is, assuming the generals don't support Roe v. Wade or stem cell research or anything Satanic like that. I mean, Thailand may be important, but you gotta draw the line somewhere.

  Funny how the world usually doesn't work out to be as black and white as "freedom" versus "the evildoers."


• Filibuster for torture: Senator Frist threatens a filibuster against an anti-torture bill. Makes one proud to be a Tennessean, doesn't it?


• Housing starts: Professor Hamilton examines the data and concludes that it's been 40 years since housing has taken a comparable slide to our current one without producing a corresponding recession.


• Double standard: Female substitute teacher who had sex with a minor isn't sentenced to jail time. During sentencing, the judge noted that a male defendant would probably have been incarcerated.


• Bluegrass State turning orange: Amid much fanfare, Maysville, KY, gives Coach Bruce Pearl the keys to the city and makes him an honorary Kentucky Colonel.

President Bush treats the United Nations with a little irony this morning:

Freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed -- it must be chosen.

I guess you could say we have 130,000 American choosers camped in Iraq.

This graph shows there is a disturbingly close correlation between gasoline prices and President Bush's approval rate. I'm not a statistician, but a glance at the chart reveals that the two largely parallel each other.

This doesn't prove that there's a causal relationship, as other factors are at work. For instance, after September 11, Bush's approval ratings didn't shoot up because gas prices dropped (which they did because of reduced demand), but rather because America had been attacked.

Still, the two plots are close enough that it makes me wonder if many Americans base their world/political view based on gas prices. Given the reports I see in the news whenever gas prices rise, I suspect there is something to this.

Obviously, it's a lame approval barometer. The president has very little control over gas prices. And even if he could control them, why should gas prices be the ultimate factor? Why not health care expenses or housing expenses, which for most people are a more significant cost? Or more pointedly, why not the Iraq War, Katrina response, immigration, or budget policy? These are things a president has far greater impact on.

It's a weird way of viewing the world.

CNN.com is now running content from The Onion.

These days it's getting more difficult to distinguish between "news" and satire.

• I am a geography novice. Took this quiz a few times. The first attempt was brutal. The next couple tries were better, but only because I was getting countries such as Germany and Brazil rather than ones I'd never heard of. Clearly, I could spend more time studying maps of Africa, the former Soviet republics, and the island nations.
• A cool animation of a day of flights over North America.
• The Lincolnization of Bush. On Friday, President Bush continued his effort to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln. Asked about his weird comment on a "Third [Religious] Awakening," Mr Bush responded:

  I'd just read a book on Abraham Lincoln, and his presidency was right around the time of what they called the Second Awakening, and I was curious to know whether or not these smart people felt like there was any historical parallels.

  Is our president learning American history? The Second Awakening actually occurred before Lincoln, primarily in the 1820s and 1830s. He might want to check that book again.

  But it gets funnier:

  I also said that I had run for office the first time to change a culture . . . to helping to work change a culture in which each of us are responsible for the decisions we make in life. In other words, ushering in a responsibility era.

  Uh, Bush being part of a "responsibility era"? That's stand up comedy material.


• Health/diet:

  The current [spinach E. coli] outbreak follows food-borne illnesses from cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupes and unpasteurized apple and orange juices over the last several years. In 2004, produce-related outbreaks surpassed those associated with beef, poultry or fish, with 86 outbreaks, compared with 29 in 1997, when the states started electronic reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Hmm, widespread problems with fruits and vegetables? What is safe to eat these days?

Interesting line from the White House yesterday. Here it is responding to a letter in which General Colin Powell states his opposition to Bush's terror-detainee legislation:

Firing back, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Powell was "confused" about the White House plan. Later, Snow said he probably shouldn't have used that word.

"I know that Colin Powell wants to beat the terrorists, too," he said.

Wow, I'm glad we cleared that one up. It's good to know that a decorated military commander and Bush's own former Secretary of State "wants to beat the terrorists." One might wonder why that issue was even implicitly questioned.

Oh, that's right--Powell challenged one of Bush's policies, thus it's only natural to conclude that he supports the enemy. I'm glad Snow was able to confirm that Powell is still on America's side.

Ahh, an immutable beauty of capitalism: if there is a way to rip unsophisticated customers off, some company is sure to do it:

A widow rented a rotary dial telephone for 42 years, paying what her family calculates as more than $14,000 for a now outdated phone.

Ester Strogen, 82, of Canton, first leased two black rotary phones - the kind whose round dial is moved manually with your finger - in the 1960s. Back then, the technology was new and owning telephones was unaffordable for most people.

Until two months ago, Strogen was still paying AT&T to use the phones - $29.10 a month. Strogen's granddaughters, Melissa Howell and Barb Gordon, ended the arrangement when they discovered the bills.
. . .
New Jersey-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service, said customers were given the choice option to opt out of renting in 1985. The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, he said.

"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said.

Amusing how the writer saw fit to include a definition of a rotary phone--makes me feel a bit older (we had one when I was a kid).

Anyway, 750,000 people still leasing phones? I'd bet over 95% of the "demand" for this "service" comes from people who don't understand they are being ripped off.

I'm sometimes have to scratch my head when reading about published research. Here's another example':

Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles, new research from Bath University suggests.

The study found drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than those who are bare-headed.

Dr Ian Walker, study author and "traffic psychologist," suggests "the reason drivers give less room to cyclists wearing helmets is because they see them as 'Lycra-clad street warriors' and believe they are more predictable than those without."

In certain situations, there might be something to this; on some residential roads drivers may give a wider berth to an erratic-riding mountain biker than they give a steady road biker. But to confirm the paper's conclusion, one would have to control for several factors that I suspect this study failed to do, such as road type, vehicular traffic speed, cyclist speed, cyclist riding style, et cetera.

Moreover, on more "dangerous" roads, drivers probably often can't distinguish between helmeted and non-helmeted riders, either because: (1) they don't have time to notice, or (2) the road is so narrow that there's not much clearance anyway.

In any case, I'm going to continue wearing the helmet. Whatever minimal safety benefit there may be to this study, it's clearly outweighed by the protection a helmet offers during a low-speed accident.

I generally don't watch Larry King Live unless he has on a guest interesting enough to carry the show. Why not? Because too often King asks either stupid or shallow questions. If I wanted, I could compile a list of lame ones every show. But I'd have to suffer through the show in order to do that. So I won't.

Here's a funny example from King's recent interview with Andre Agassi. He asks about the tennis star's wife, Steffi Graf:

KING: Stephanie going to keep on playing?

AGASSI: No, she hasn't played in seven years now.

KING: She won't play again at all?

AGASSI: Well...

KING: She played for the last time.

Ooops.

I understand that when you interview a couple hundred people a year, you can't possibly know everything about all of them. But you'd think if King knew enough to ask about Steffi, he'd know she hadn't competed this century. And even if he didn't, doesn't he have a staff that does research?

If you want to know why CNN's ratings have gone down the drain the past decade, part of your answer is in the 9:00 p.m. Eastern hour. I've wondered why the network continues to have this show. My best guesses are:

(1) King is like that old professor at a college department who no one is willing to fire because he's been there for 40 years; or

(2) CNN wants to lock in the 80+ year old demographic.

Either way, it's a waste of prime time air time.

Jon Stewart's response to President Bush's "non-political" 9/11 speech. Typically funny, yet cuttingly insightful.

One good point raised: if the fate of the civilized world depends on the Sunni/Shia battle being waged in Baghdad, why are we screwing around with our already failed "stay the course" strategy? Why not send our entire military? Perhaps incorporate a draft.

"You can't tell Americans we are going to fight for our very way of life and then say there's nothing we can do to help . . . except trust you. That scares people . . . fills them with terror--which, from what I understand, is a, from what I understand, is the actual word we're fighting.

Level with us, we know there's evildoers out there, doing evil. But if your idea is to keep invading all these different countries until the world is completely safe, fella, the world's never been completely safe.
. . .
If this is a battle for civilization, make your case, and gear it up, let's World War II this thing, all right. And if it's not, stop scaring the [bleep] out of everybody ever two years.

It's a shame our politicians can't speak with this clarity.

I've been watching a little of the September 11 (2001) rebroadcasts at CNN and on MSNBC.

It's still remarkable how quickly events that morning changed things. One minute the big "news" was a fashion show, then, within a couple hours, the whole world seemed to be blowing up.

The events transpiring were horrific enough. But the terror was compounded by the ensuing chaos. What would happen next? The news broadcasts were littered with unconfirmed reports of attacks across the land. Suddenly nothing seemed impossible; we'd entered a new age of uncertainty.

Over the past five years, much has been made of 9/11, politically and otherwise. But today in particular, we our thoughts and prayers should be with all those lost that day. Especially those who died helping others.

Rest in peace.

I recently upgraded to MT 3.32 and am currently playing around with templates. Please excuse the damage. I expect the site to be restored shortly.

It's safe to say that we won't be seeing this guy reporting from a combat zone anytime soon.

If you wanted evidence of clueless Americans, look no further:

Asked whether former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 52 percent said he was not, but 43 percent said they believe he was. The White House has denied Hussein's 9/11 involvement -- most recently in a news conference August 21, when President Bush said Hussein had "nothing" to do with the attacks.

43%(!?!) in the poll had a false belief about the basis of an ongoing war? Who are these people? And why don't they believe Mr. Bush's statement? Either they:

(1) aren't listening to the disclaimer, or

(2) they have been listening to just about every other speech were Mr. Bush talks of "Iraq September the 11th."

The White House can now try to backtrack all it wants; Operation Mislead has been a success.

Heh.

President Bush, September 20, 2001:

[W]e will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

ABC News:

Osama bin Laden, America's most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a "peaceful life," Pakistani officials tell ABC News.

The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a "peace deal" with the Taliban.
. . .
In addition to the pullout of Pakistani troops, the "peace agreement" between Pakistan and the Taliban also provides for the Pakistani army to return captured Taliban weapons and prisoners.

"What this means is that the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism director.

The agreement was signed on the same day President Bush said the United States was working with its allies "to deny terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world."

One could argue that there has effectively been a safe harbor area in Pakistan for the past few years, as most "experts" agree that bin Laden has been living there and we've seen little effort to capture him. I'm sure this story regarding our supposed ally will be spun and downplayed both here and over there. Still, it will be interesting to see how it plays in Washington and on TV news.

This piece examines who contributes to Wikipedia.

One the surface, it appears that most of the work is done by a few users:

"I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it's actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing ... a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix ... or something like that."

But when you examine the content users are adding, the profile changes:If you just count edits, it appears the biggest contributors to the Alan Alda article (7 of the top 10) are registered users who (all but 2) have made thousands of edits to the site. Indeed, #4 has made over 7,000 edits while #7 has over 25,000. In other words, if you use Wales's methods, you get Wales's results: most of the content seems to be written by heavy editors.

But when you count letters, the picture dramatically changes:

few of the contributors (2 out of the top 10) are even registered and most (6 out of the top 10) have made less than 25 edits to the entire site. In fact, #9 has made exactly one edit -- this one! With the more reasonable metric -- indeed, the one Wales himself said he planned to use in the next revision of his study -- the result completely reverses.
. . .
When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site -- the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it's the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

If this conclusion is correct, the lesson is that to keep Wikipedia growing, it's pool of contributors must continue to broaden. Casual users must feel comfortable jumping in and posting content.

Recently I created a Wikipedia account and started an article, so I can make an observation on this. It's really easy to register and start an article. What is a bit more difficult is learning the formatting so the article looks decent. There are ample tutorials available, but I had hunt through several pages to find what I was looking for. Once you figure a tool out, it's easy to change the article. And the preview screen is nice. The trick is in getting there.

To broaden the contributor base, Wikipedia might work on making the editing/formating instructions easier to find and understand.

I watched a good part of the fourth quarter of the Miami/FSU game last night. ESPN was running a regular broadcast; ESPN2 featured a split screen feed with several different camera angles.

This is the first time I've seen this kind of football telecast (saw them do it for basketball last winter). It's not a bad idea; certainly beats another poker show. It's somewhat interesting watching the action from the "skycam" or an end zone camera.

What I didn't like was how they wasted three sections showing the coaches and a player sitting on the sidelines. Some of us don't have 52" TVs, so screen space is at a premium. Yeah, we know there are two coaches standing on the sidelines. Perhaps they are wandering back and forth. Maybe one of them is even waving his arms. So what? Do we need to see that the whole game? [Incidentally, the camera people responsible for following the coaches have a really, really boring assignment.]