Monday, April 25, 2005

Best Of Homespun Bloggers April 24th, 2005

MuD&PHuD

Misunderstanding?

A few days back I posted some thoughts on the Terri Schiavo case. One of my contentions elicited a comment and I would like to set the record (as I see it) straight. I would, however, be grateful if anyone with a better understanding of legal-speak that myself would step in and correct me if I am in error.

Considerettes

Bill Frist's "Religious War"?

It seems that the NY Times thinks that Bill Frist has started a religious war over the judicial nominees. My "blogger-in-law" Jim Jewell and I co-fisk the Times' editorial, highlighting their sloppy writing, lack of fact checking, amazing hyperbole, and redefinition of words.

Carpe Bonum

Mossberg tosses a fat one, Microsoft goes down swinging

Anyway, in today's column, Mossberg reviews Microsoft's free blogging platform, Spaces. Mossberg's columns have covered blogs before, usually with guest columnists, but this week is the first time Mossberg has reviewed a blogging tool himself.

Product managers see these Mossberg reviews as an opportunity for publicity, but also as a huge risk. If the product fails for Mossberg, the world will know.

Don't Let Me Stop You

Fun with Machine Translation

Artificial Intelligence is often the same as Natural Stupidity, and machine translations prove this epigram. We have now added links to each post that will provide Google's machine translations for the corresponding post pages. Conceivably, this may be of some use to some readers, but the primary motivation is fun. The translations are amazing, both in their successes and their failures. For example the link translation of a previous post about Nebraska football...

Bunker Mulligan

Ever notice how politicians scurry around like cockroaches when the light shines on them? First we had BCRA which was supposed to take Big Money™ out of politics. The policians had already figured out how to bypass that before it was ever really considered, so it was a non-starter as far as reform is concerned. And when small-money ways of expressing support of or opposition to candidates made inroads, politicians and bureaucrats looked to quash that vehicle, too.

Weapon of Mass Distraction

Bird Flu Less Deadly, More Dangerous

It seems illogical, but by morphing into a less virulent strain, H5N1 is more likely to cause the global pandemic experts say is overdue. While the case fatality rate has dropped from 100% to around 35%, it's becoming easier to spread. To compare, the Spanish flu of 1918 killed between 40 and 100 million people, and fewer than 5% of the infected died.
|