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.]