Fox News: Where fair and balanced is a trademark, not a description

Fox News Channel has sued liberal humorist Al Franken and the Penguin Group to stop them from using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title of his upcoming book.

    

What are these folks up to? A job undone (USA Today editorial, via PatriotWatch.com)

While there has been some progress, a Monday story in USA TODAY shows that one basic security task has yet to be completed. According to the report, 12 separate terrorist "watch lists" maintained by at least nine agencies still have not been consolidated. And the Department of Homeland Security has no timetable for finishing the job.

Developing a governmentwide database on potential terrorists is a top priority in the war on terror. Had a common database been in place before the Sept. 11 attacks, the State Department would have known before issuing visas to at least two hijackers, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, that the CIA had linked them to al-Qaeda. Until such a database exists, no central governmental source exists for screening individuals applying for visas to enter the USA, crossing U.S. borders or even flying.

    

Paging Dr. Banner: Gamma-ray weapons could trigger next arms race (New Scientist)

Scientists have known for many years that the nuclei of some elements, such as hafnium, can exist in a high-energy state, or nuclear isomer, that slowly decays to a low-energy state by emitting gamma rays. For example, hafnium-178m2, the excited, isomeric form of hafnium-178, has a half-life of 31 years.

The possibility that this process could be explosive was discovered when Carl Collins and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas demonstrated that they could artificially trigger the decay of the hafnium isomer by bombarding it with low-energy X-rays (New Scientist print edition, 3 July 1999). The experiment released 60 times as much energy as was put in, and in theory a much greater energy release could be achieved.

    

Even the Wall St. Journal wonders why we are ruled by these liars (J. Brad Delong)

The battalion of reporters investigating 16 words in President Bush's State of the Union address might want to dispatch a squad to look into the 15 words uttered by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz March 27.

In testimony about Iraq to the House Appropriations Committee, Mr. Wolfowitz said: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Really?

Perhaps it depends on the meaning of the words "relatively soon."

But if he was talking about the current decade, Mr. Wolfowitz's statement, echoed by others in the administration at the time, was then and is still simply untrue.

    

It's a Ruff Life: Is Your Dog Fulfilled? (Slate)

I drive a couple of hundred miles each week so my border collies can embrace their destiny—or is it their ancestry?—by herding sheep at a farm. When I'm there, I'm always amazed at the scores of people who show up with all sorts of dogs, from avid herding breeds to bewildered mutts. Their owners are all eager to expose them to the ancient art.

....As Americans who love their dogs have increasingly emotionalized them and come to see them as family members, complete with complex psychological lives and histories, they feel more and more anxious and guilty about them. It follows that dogs, too, should have every chance at fulfillment. And it also follows that dog owners should come to feel as if they are never doing enough. "Is it OK to have a dog and still go to work?" one woman e-mailed me recently.

Today's dog owners might pause and consider that their pets may sometimes actually need much less from them than they want or feel they need to give. Most dogs require an hour of exercise a day, not endless fetching and chasing or romps with scores of excited peers. (A dog that chases balls, sticks, and Frisbees and races around all day is sometimes an obnoxious, aroused, or hyper dog, not necessarily a fulfilled one.) They certainly need love and attention, but not always as much of it as we think. They need food and things to chew on, but not as much as we usually provide. A trainer friend told me I wasn't helping my anxious border collie out by rushing him around to stimulating activities all day. "He needs to be socialized with dogs and people, but he also needs to learn how to be calm just as much as he needs to work. I see dog people smiling all the time when they see their dogs racing around in packs like maniacs, but they aren't always doing their dogs a favor. Dogs don't have 'fun' in the way that humans do, and people often confuse excitement and arousal for yuks."

In natural environments, which almost no dog or owner can find anymore, dogs are like lions. They lie around much of the day, rousing themselves every now and then for food or sex or to chase after something appealing. Dogs don't have human emotions. They don't get bored in the human sense of the word, although they do need some activity. They may get anxious when left alone—they are pack animals and usually prefer company—but loneliness is a human, not canine, emotion. With proper training and acclimatization, sometimes confinement, almost any dog can spend time alone, vegging out, smelling the smells and listening to the sounds of the world, chewing on rawhide, or staring at nothing in particular. One European study suggests that dogs left alone sometimes are smarter than dogs that are smothered by attention: They get the opportunity to solve problems by themselves.

    

Making play while the sun shines: Ant farm teach children about toil, death (The Onion)

PASADENA, CA—Wonderco, a Pasadena-based educational-toy manufacturer, unveiled its new Playscovery Cove Ant Village Monday, touting the ant farm as a fun, interactive way to teach children ages 5 and up about unceasing, backbreaking toil and the cold, inescapable reality of death.

"Your little ones will have a front-row seat as worker ants labor, day in and day out, until they inevitably die of exhaustion, their futile efforts all for naught," Wonderco spokeswoman Joan Kedzie said. "A Playscovery Cove Ant Village, complete with stackable tiny ant barns, see-through 'Antway' travel tubes, and connecting 'Antports,' is your children's window into the years of thankless, grueling labor that await them as worker drones in our post-industrial society."

Billed as "the fun way to teach your kids to accept their miserable fate stoically," the ant farm retails for $14.95.

    

Blogging 2004: Dennis J. Kucinich on the dangers of 'free' trade (Kucinish guest-blogging with Lawrence Lessig)

We are now being hoisted on the petard of NAFTA and the WTO. America's trade policies have been dictated by powerful multinational corporations whose flag is not red white and blue, but green with a dollar sign. Our nation is approaching a $500 billion trade deficit, which represents a genuine threat, not only to our economy, but to our Democracy. Global corporations have used the United States to help create a multinational trading arrangement which denies both American workers and workers of other nations the protections of basic labor law. NAFTA and the WTO were written specifically to preclude the enforcement of rights to organize, collective bargaining, strike, rights to safe work place, and right to a secure retirement. This enabled corporations to move jobs out of America to places where workers have no protections. NAFTA and the WTO have facilitated a race to the bottom in terms of wages and workers rights generally. The WTO essentially locked in the NAFTA trading regime by making any attempts to modify the basis of trade WTO-illegal.

The question is not whether or not America trades with the world, the questions are what are the rules of the game. And America is claimed by rules which are rigged against us. I have said that I will cancel NAFTA and the WTO in order to return to bilateral trade, conditioned on workers rights, human rights, and environmental quality principles being written into our trade agreements with other nations. The is the only way that we can stop corporations from coercing wage concessions or breaking United States unions. This is the only way that we can re-empower the hopes of people of all nations for a better standard of living and for control of the institutions of their own governments.

    

Why the Bush lies matter, regardless of his war's merits: The Case for War (Matthew Yglesias)

"The whole point, in fact, is that the Bushies (and many of their supporters) never really cared about the case for war they outlined. They had decided for independent reasons that it was necessary to go to war, and in order to go to war it was necessary to build public support for war. In order to build public support, it was necessary to lie. The point of exposing the lies is twofold. One is to persuade the group of people — the small but electorally-crucial group of folks in the middle — who were swung by the case that they now ought to swing back. The other is to expose the fact that the administration is basically full of liars.

"Even if the lie du jour was committed in support of a policy that you supported, the fact that the administration feels no compunction about deceiving people in order to advance their policy goals is something that ought to concern you. This isn't because of some generally Kant-style "lying is bad" argument. Rather, the trouble is that next you you might be the one on the fence (as I was about the war) and you might be the one who's tricked into supporting something that you would have opposed if you knew the truth. The fact is that it's extremely difficult, if not totally impossible, to get accurate information regarding America's foreign intelligence if the people presiding over the intelligence services are determined to misrepresent the intelligence to the public."

    

Warren Ellis writes a 60-part novel as blog (Via Boing Boing)

Ellis is one of the comic writers I make a point of reading. His wonderfully paranoid X-caliber run a few years back paved the way for Morrison's current remake of the X-men franchise.

    

Negiah in the News: Wedding-day kiss will be couple's first (The Seattle Times)

While it is unknown how many of the almost 2.5 million couples who get married in the United States each year set limits on the physical aspect of their relationship, it's not uncommon in the 350-member community of Trinity Baptist Church.

Pastor Richard Seim said he does extensive premarital counseling, involving eight sessions with every couple, and talks with them explicitly about the limits they are setting.

The vast majority of couples he marries — as many as four out of five, he said — have committed to do nothing physical besides kiss and hold hands before their weddings. About one-third kiss for the first time at the altar, he said. And when he gave his own daughter away at her wedding, he felt sure he was placing her hand into her husband-to-be's for the first time ever.

    

Good News: Reform leader thanks Jerusalem's Haredi mayor (Rabbi David Ellenson in Forward Op Ed)

"As the solemn fast of Tisha B'av was observed this week, we remember that our Temple was destroyed and our people dispersed because of the sin of senseless hatred. The greeting that the mayor of Jerusalem extended to our Reform delegation at this time indicates that Jews need not fall prey to this sin again. We must all emphasize that what unites us as Jews is far more important than what separates us. May we all warrant many more years of such mutual respect for the sake of Israel and our people."