Why Asians wear surgical masks in public

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Surgeons wear masks to protect patients from their mouth-borne germs, not the other way around, but Asians wear surgical masks in public for a number of reasons, and they’ve been doing it for a century:

The custom of facemask-wearing began in Japan during the early years of the 20th century, when a massive pandemic of influenza killed between 20 and 40 million people around the world — more than died in World War I. There were outbreaks of the disease on every inhabited continent, including Asia (where it devastated India, leading to the deaths of a full 0.5% of the population). Covering the face with scarves, veils and masks became a prevalent (if ineffective) means of warding off the disease in many parts of the world, until the epidemic finally faded at the end of 1919.

In Japan, a few years later, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, triggered a massive inferno that consumed nearly 600,000 homes in the most populous part of the nation. After the quake, the sky was filled with smoke and ash for weeks, and air quality suffered for months afterward. Facemasks came out of storage and became a typical accessory on the streets of Tokyo and Yokohama. A second global flu epidemic in 1934 cemented Japan’s love affair with the facemask, which began to be worn with regularity during the winter months — primarily, given Japan’s obsession with social courtesy, by cough-and-cold victims seeking to avoid transmitting their germs to others, rather than healthy people looking to prevent the onset of illness.

Then, in the 1950s, Japan’s rapid post-World War II industrialization led to rampant air pollution and booming growth of the pollen-rich Japanese cedar, which flourished due to rising ambient levels of carbon dioxide. Mask-wearing went from seasonal affectation to year-round habit. Today, Japanese consumers buy $230 million in surgical masks a year, and neighboring countries facing chronic pollution issues — most notably China and Korea — have also adopted the practice.

Traditional Chinese Medicine puts a premium on proper breathing and clean air, which may explain some of the masks’ popularity..

Posted in Science | No Comments »

What happened in Ferguson

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

The Washington Post goes over what happened in Ferguson, according to the Grand Jury testimony:

The narrative begins at 11:45 a.m., when Wilson was dispatched to another call. Minutes later, he heard two radio dispatches describing a person who stole cigarillos from a nearby market, a black male wearing a red hat, khaki shorts and yellow socks and accompanied by another male.

Wilson-Brown 01

Posted in Crime | 3 Comments »

Caseless Ammo

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Caseless ammunition has been the small-arms ammunition of the future for decades now, but it was also the ammo of the future in the mid-1800s, before we settled on metallic cartridges:

Christian Sharps’ self-consuming cartridge made of linen was introduced in 1852. It was made at his Fairmount, Pennsylvania, gun factory. This was a definite improvement over the fragile paper-filled envelopes previously used. The linen could be held in shape and would stand more abuse than the paper cartridge. That cartridges, in one form or another, were beginning to be used throughout the service is verified by a record showing the purchase of 393,304 paper cartridges by the United States Army in 1851.

Col. Samuel Colt collaborated with the Ely brothers of England in making further improvements on his patented self-consuming cartridge. This cartridge was made of a stiffer and more durable paper, and could be held to close manufacturing tolerances. The paper cartridge case was impregnated with a mixture of potassium nitrate. The explosion of the powder charge completely consumed the cartridge case. The percussion cap had sufficient force to rupture the paper and drive fire through to the powder charge.

Smith and Wesson of Springfield, Mass., in 1857 manufactured the first really successful rim-fire version of a metallic cartridge, self-contained and reasonably waterproof. This ammunition, with added improvements, to the present day is still produced by various American companies.

On 22 January 1856, the unusual method of housing both detonator and propelling charge in the base of a bullet was introduced and patented. The Winchester Arms Co. made a repeating weapon called the “Volcanic” using this odd principle. As the propelling ingredients were all contained in the bullet itself, there was naturally no problem of case ejection. This radical design was to compete with the impregnated self-consuming paper cartridge cases.

The volcanic bullet had a small charge of finely granulated powder, and a larger portion of fulminate of mercury mixture housed in a thin metal cup, all of which was protected from the elements by a thin cork insert. When the ball was fed into the arm, a spring-loaded firing pin was cammed forward and forced through the cork until it was brought to bear on the primer cup. A smart blow from the hammer ignited the detonating mixture, forcing the flame through the openings provided, and exploded the powder in the upper conical cavity of the bullet.

During the middle of the nineteenth century, the introduction of various methods of producing cartridge cases, the development of the conical bullet, and the idea of integrating the detonating cap in the cartridge were undoubtedly responsible for the rapid and radical designs of the innumerable weapons constructed to fire them.

Even skin cartridge cases were used successfully. They not only furnished a waterproof container, but also were easily made into the self-consuming case that seemed to be a military “must” of the day. To produce this cartridge case, pig’s intestines were used. After cleaning and while still wet, they were stretched over forms of the required cartridge dimensions. When dried, the powder and bullet were put in place. The skin case was then treated with a compound consisting of “eighteen parts by weight of nitrate of potassium, pure, and seventeen parts of sulphuric acid — pure, after which it was washed to free it from the soluble salts and excess of acids, and then dried by blotting… in order to render it perfectly waterproof, a light coat of shellac varnish was applied.”

It is easy to see how multifiring weapon development went hand in hand with cartridge design. As each different type of cartridge was introduced, inventors followed closely with a mechanical firing system, designed to use the new idea. No matter how radical a departure any new cartridge may have been from the heretofore accepted methods, there was a gun with an equally original design to shoot it.

The greatest problem in ammunition development was finally solved by George W. Morse’s invention in 1858 — the first true attempt at a metallic cartridge with a center fire primer and an inside anvil. It marked the most important step in the whole history of cartridge design. All other methods, experiments, and alleged improvements were but attempts to do what Morse successfully accomplished.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | No Comments »

Swedish Exclusion Areas

Monday, November 24th, 2014

The Swedish police have released a map of 55 areas where they have surrendered control to criminal gangs:

These areas have long had problems with mailmen, fire trucks and ambulances being attacked when trying to enter, which has led to them routinely requesting police escort. Now it’s the police being attacked outright.

These no-go zones are primarily so-called “exclusion areas” which is the politically correct term for the 186 ghettos that have sprung up around Sweden in the past two decades. These areas are predominantly populated by immigrants from muslim countries with low education and even lower employment rates. The exception being the enthusiastic entrepreneurs in the fields of drug dealing, protection rackets and robberies.

Since the real law doesn’t apply, the function of justice has largely been taken over by the gangs themselves, not unlike how the mafia is seen as the go-to place in rural Italy when the local police is too corrupt to serve its purpose. Unofficial courts are held and punishments are meted out based on the cultural norms of the dominant gangs. Some no-go areas even have vehicle checkpoints at the border. Not police checkpoints, but the gangs protecting their turf from law enforcement and rival gangs.

This development would have been inconceivable only 20 years ago, and one would think this official surrender by the police would have made big headlines. This is not the case; the most attention it seems to have received in mainstream media is an opinion piece in national paper Svenska Dagbladet.

It can be speculated that this is due to the fact that any reporting on this could be seen as “support” for nationalist party SD that wants to restrict the vast inflow to these ghettos, which is an absolute no-no amongst the journalists and could cost them their jobs. The world’s most extreme immigration from the MENA-region must continue unchallenged, and another 100 000+ must be added annually to the ghetto gangs’ recruitment base.

Posted in Crime, Policy | 1 Comment »

The Myth of the Golf Nazi

Monday, November 24th, 2014

Today it’s more prestigious to be a victim of the majority than a member of the aristocracy, Steve Sailer notes, but it’s no fun to be an actual victim, so the best thing is to be recognized as a member of a hereditary victimocracy — for instance, to be related to somebody who couldn’t get into an exclusive golf club:

The surprisingly common Jewish-American preoccupation with vague family legends of a grandfather being blackballed at a country club has led me to study up on the history of private clubs. It turns out that most of what we think we know is a retconning of American social history.

Contrary to mythos, as far as I can tell:

First, as early as 1925, a higher percentage of Jews than gentiles may have belonged to country clubs.

Second, Jewish country clubs were, on average, more luxurious and expensive than gentile clubs.

Third, a 1962 study by the Anti-Defamation League found that Jewish country clubs were more discriminatory than Christian clubs.

Fourth, historically, Jewish applicants were mostly excluded for ethnic reasons by Jewish country clubs.

Granted, it’s difficult to find hard information about any private golf clubs, since they value privacy, so my surmises aren’t always rock solid. In particular, Jewish country clubs are far more obscure on average than comparably big-budget non-Jewish clubs, because Jewish clubs stopped hosting major championships a half-century ago.

I had expected to find that traditionally Jewish country clubs don’t hold big tournaments because of residual anti-Semitism from the super-WASPy United States Golf Association and the less upscale Professional Golfers of America. But it turns out that the USGA and PGA had Jewish clubs host their major championships back in the bad old days of the 1920s and 1930s.

For example, Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open at Inwood on Long Island in 1923, and Gene Sarazen triumphed at Fresh Meadow in Queens in 1932. The PGA Championship also visited Jewish clubs in the Tom Buchanan era: Walter Hagen won at Inwood in 1921, Leo Diegel at Hillcrest (the famous movie industry club in Los Angeles) in 1929, and Tommy Armour at Fresh Meadow in 1930.

Ever since the civil rights movement turned its unwelcome attention upon the all-Jewish (and thus all-white) Brentwood Country Club in Los Angeles for planning to host the 1962 PGA Championship, it’s been hard to learn anything about the membership policies of Jewish country clubs.

Posted in Policy | 1 Comment »

This is my boomstick!

Monday, November 24th, 2014

Early gunpowder wasn’t really gunpowder so much as thunderpowder:

Strange as it may seem, the Battle of Crecy, which showed the longbow at its best, was also the scene of an incident that sounded the death knell, not only of the bow, but of all merely mechanical means of missile propulsion. This battle saw the first recorded use of artillery in an engagement between major armies and heralded explosives as a means of missile propulsion. However, the justified praise of the longbow was so great at this time that were it not for the meticulous writings of a few historians of the day, it would have gone unnoticed that Edward III employed stampede cannon on his flanks. These devices represented artillery in its crudest form, and were mainly used, as the name implies, to scare the enemy’s horses and strike terror into the untrained foot soldier. Missile throwing ability was secondary. Earliest cannon design appears to have been that of an iron tube encased in wood to give it further support, and still keep it light. The explosive was a crude black powder to which generally was added various kinds of wax. the mixture being made into balls. The balls, when discharged, produced an effect somewhat like an oversized Roman candle. The cannon’s front end was supported by a metal fork and, to take care of recoil, the butt simply was placed against a convenient knoll. Firearm development stems from this modest beginning.

[...]

Bacon spoke of the simple deceits which are practiced by jugglers and ventriloquists, and commented that “popular opinion does anything that men wish it to do, so long as men are agreed about it.

“In addition to these marvels, there are certain others which do not involve particular constructions. We can prepare from saltpeter and other materials an artificial fire which will burn at whatever distance we please… Beyond these are still other stupendous things in Nature. For the sound of thunder may be artificially produced in the air with greater resulting horror than if it had been produced by natural causes. A moderate amount of the proper material, of the size of a thumb, will make a horrible sound and violent coruscation.”

[...]

Although Bacon suggests several military uses for his explosive (for instance, “an enemy might be either blown up bodily or put to flight by the terror caused by the explosion”), there was nothing to be found in any of his writings to show he ever once contemplated its use as a missile-throwing agent. The identity of the individual who first thought of propelling a projectile through a tube from the force generated by gunpowder still remains a mystery.

Loud weapons work.

Posted in Science, War, Weapons | No Comments »

Go Big or Go Home

Sunday, November 23rd, 2014

Go big or go home!

Posted in Media, Policy | No Comments »

Firestone in Liberia

Sunday, November 23rd, 2014

Last month, Firestone’s rubber plantation in Liberia made the news, because it stopped ebola in its tracks:

The case was detected on a Sunday. Garcia and a medical team from the company hospital spent Monday setting up an Ebola ward. Tuesday the woman was placed in isolation.

“None of us had any Ebola experience,” he says. They scoured the Internet for information about how to treat Ebola. They cleared out a building on the hospital grounds and set up an isolation ward. They grabbed a bunch of hazmat suits for dealing with chemical spills at the rubber factory and gave them to the hospital staff. The suits worked just as well for Ebola cases.

Firestone immediately quarantined the woman’s family. Like so many Ebola patients, she died soon after being admitted to the ward. But no one else at Firestone got infected: not her family and not the workers who transported, treated and cared for her.

The Firestone managers had the benefit of backing and resources of a major corporation — something the communities around them did not.

Notice how NPR emphasizes that Firestone managers had the benefit of backing and resources of a major corporation, when, really, Firestone had managers who simply instituted a quarantine and made it stick.

Now that same Firestone plantation is getting a different kind of media attention. The latest Frontline, Firestone and the Warlord, looks at Firestone’s actions during the Liberian civil war. As The Vice Guide to Liberia makes abundantly clear, Liberia is a messed up place today, but when the incompetent gunmen were running the show, it got really bad.

What is the right course of action for the ex-pat managers of an enormous, immobile asset, in a country embroiled in civil war? They were apparently wrong for leaving and wrong for coming back.

Posted in Business, Policy | 1 Comment »

Smart Phones and Child Injuries

Sunday, November 23rd, 2014

From 2005 to 2012, injuries to children under fi ve increased by 10%, and a new study suggests why:

Using the expansion of ATT’s 3G network, I find that smartphone adoption has a causal impact on child injuries. This eff ect is strongest amongst children ages 0-5, but not children ages 6-10, and in activities where parental supervision matters. I put this forward as indirect evidence that this increase is due to parents being distracted while supervising.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Peanuts Trailer

Saturday, November 22nd, 2014

The official trailer for next year’s Peanuts movie is out. The CG look is surprisingly true to the minimalist line art of the original, and — if we ignore the not-at-all-timeless pop song in the middle — the tone feels right:

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Clausewitz, Nonlinearity and the Unpredictability of War

Saturday, November 22nd, 2014

Classical mathematics concentrated on linear equations for a sound pragmatic reason, Ian Stewart noted: it couldn’t solve anything else. Modern chaos theorists like to emphasize this point.

James Clerk Maxwell noted another chaotic concept over a century ago:

When the state of things is such that an infinitely small variation of the present state will alter only by an infinitely small quantity the state at some future time, the condition of the system, whether at rest or in motion, is said to be stable; but when an infinitely small variation in the present state may bring about a finite difference in the state of the system in a finite time, the condition of the system is said to be unstable. It is manifest that the existence of unstable conditions renders impossible the prediction of future events, if our knowledge of the present state is only approximate, and not accurate…. it is a metaphysical doctrine that from the same antecedents follow the same consequents. No one can gainsay this. But it is not of much use in a world like this, in which the same antecedents never again concur, and nothing ever happens twice… The physical axiom which has a somewhat similar aspect is “That from like antecedents follow like consequents.” But here we have passed from sameness to likeness, from absolute accuracy to a more or less rough approximation.

In describing war, Clausewitz resorts to a striking metaphor of nonlinearity:

In the last section of Chapter 1, Book One, he claims that war is “a remarkable trinity” (eine wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) composed of (a) the blind, natural force of violence, hatred, and enmity among the masses of people; (b) chance and probability, faced or generated by the commander and his army; and (c) war’s rational subordination to the policy of the government.(28) Clausewitz compares these three tendencies to three varying legal codes interacting with each other (the complexity of which would have been obvious to anyone who lived under the tangled web of superimposed legal systems in the German area before, during, and after the upheavals of the Napoleonic years). Then he concludes with a visual metaphor: “Our task therefore is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between these three tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets.” (29) What better image could he have conjured to convey his insight into the profoundly interactive nature of war than this emblem of contemporary nonlinear science? (30)

Although the passage is usually taken to mean only that we should not overemphasize any one element in the trinity, Clausewitz’s metaphor also implicitly confronts us with the chaos inherent in a nonlinear system sensitive to initial conditions. The demonstration usually starts with a magnet pendulum hanging over one magnet; when the pendulum is pulled aside and let go, it comes to rest quickly. Positioned over two equally powerful magnets, the pendulum swings toward first one, then the other, and still settles into a rest position as it is captured by one of the points of attraction. But when a pendulum is released over three equidistant and equally powerful magnets, it moves irresolutely to and fro as it darts among the competing points of attraction, sometimes kicking out high to acquire added momentum that allows it to keep gyrating in a startlingly long and intricate pattern. Eventually, the energy dissipates under the influence of friction in the suspension mountings and the air, bringing the pendulum’s movement asymptotically to rest. The probability is vanishingly small that an attempt to repeat the process would produce exactly the same pattern. Even such a simple system is complex enough for the details of the trajectory of any actual “run” to be, effectively, irreproducible.

My claim here is not that Clausewitz somehow anticipated today’s “chaos theory,” but that he perceived and articulated the nature of war as an energy-consuming phenomenon involving competing and interactive factors, attention to which reveals a messy mix of order and unpredictability. His final metaphor of Chapter 1, Book One captures this understanding perfectly. The pendulum and magnets system is orderly, because it is a deterministic system that obeys Newton’s laws of motion; in the “pure theory” (with an idealized frictionless pendulum), we only need to know the relevant quantities accurately enough to know its future. But in the real world, “a world like this” in Maxwell’s phrase, it is not possible to measure the relevant initial conditions (such as position) accurately enough to replicate them in order to get the same pattern a second time, because all physical measurements are approximations limited by the instrument and standard of measurement. And what is needed is infinitely fine precision, for an immeasurably small change in the initial conditions can produce a significantly different pattern. Nor is it possible to isolate the system from all possible influences around it, and that environment will have changed since the measurements were taken. Anticipation of the overall kind of pattern is possible, but quantitative predictability of the actual trajectory is lost.

There are a number of interconnected reasons for the pendulum and magnets picture to be emblematic for Clausewitz, and all of them go to the heart of the problem of understanding what he meant by a “theory” of war. First of all, the image is not that of any kind of Euclidean triangle or triad, despite its understanding as such by many readers. Given his attacks on the formulation of rigidly “geometric” principles of war by some of his contemporaries, such an image would have been highly inapt. (31) Clausewitz’s message is not that there are three passive points, but three interactive points of attraction that are simultaneously pulling the object in different directions and forming complex interactions with each other. In fact, even the standard translation given above is too static, for the German original conveys a sense of on-going motion: “Die Aufgabe ist also, dass sich die Theorie zwischen diesen drei Tendenzen wie zwischen drei Anziehungspunkten schwebend erhalte.” (32) Literally: “The task is therefore that the theory would maintain itself floating among these three tendencies as among three points of attraction.” The connotations of schweben involve lighter-than-air, sensitive motion; a balloon or a ballerina “schwebt.” The image is no more static than that of wrestlers. The nature of war should not be conceived as a stationary point among the members of the trinity, but as a complex trajectory traced among them.

Secondly, Clausewitz’s employment of magnetism is a typical resort to “high-tech” imagery. The relationship of magnetism to electricity was just beginning to be clarified in a way that made it a cutting-edge concept for its time. It is quite possible that he actually observed a demonstration of a pendulum and three magnets as envisioned in the metaphor, for he was a man of considerable scientific literacy. (33) His famous incorporation of the notion of “friction,” also a high-technology concept for his day, is another example of this characteristic of his thought.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the metaphor offers us insight into a mind realistically willing to abandon the search for simplicity and analytical certainty where they are not obtainable. The use of this image displays an intuitive grasp of dynamic processes that can be isolated neither from their context nor from chance, and are thus characterized by inherent complexities and probabilities. It encodes Clausewitz’s sense of war in a realistic dynamical system, not an idealized analytical abstraction.

Posted in Science, War | 2 Comments »

FPS Action Movies

Friday, November 21st, 2014

First-person-shooter games came out before the modern action-camera craze, but it turns out the GoPro footage of a practical-shooting stage looks just like a video game.

Now we’re getting first-person-shooter action movies:

Posted in Media, Weapons | 3 Comments »

The Giver Giveth and the Giver Taketh Away

Friday, November 21st, 2014

Doug Lemov discusses film adaptations:

A few weeks ago a transatlantic flight finally caused me to watch Saving Mr. Banks the story of how Walt Disney won P.L. Travers’ trust and warmed her cold, cold heart just enough to get her to gift the ages with a Disney version of her book Mary Poppins.

Decent movie, that Saving Mr. Banks.  If nothing else it offers compelling proof that history is a tale told by the winners.  The winners being movie makers in this case.  It turns out that when you leave it to a movie studio to tell the story of what movies do to books — really nice books — you get a very nice tale indeed, in which the books get really-nicer.  Don’t you see? A movie is just an act of love for a book.  A movie only wants honor a book and bring it to life — make it live forever, and maybe add a little music.  Is that so wrong?

No, the movie tells us. No, it is not wrong at all. It is right! In the end even the curmudgeon-ish author is shown to see it.

But If P.L. Travers told the story of the movie-fication of Poppins it might sound different.  After all, she did cry at the official release of Mary Poppins, but it wasn’t tears of appreciative joy.  In real life, she cried to see what they had done to her baby.

And in a lot of ways she was right to cry.  The movie is fine.  Not much wrong with it except Dick Van Dyke’s unconscionable effort at an accent. And the fact that it ain’t the book. That’s the big one.  I read the book with my kids a few years back and was stunned, so incredibly stunned, to find it nuanced and complex and rich and fascinating. It was beautiful: anything but schlocky, light years better than the movie, even if I read it in a horrible garble of Van-Dyke Cockney. But I only found out by accident that the book is a jewel. Having a song-and-Dick-Van-Dyke version of the movie out there made me assume for years that I should not read the book. I mean, with a hokie movie like that, who would?

He’s not going to see The Giver.

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He fired all six!

Friday, November 21st, 2014

For a long time, almost all cops carried revolvers. This is what happened when Illinois State Trooper Ken Kaas got into a shootout with a gunman armed with a semi-automatic shotgun:

Each was using his vehicle, successfully, for cover. Midway through the firefight, the gunman suddenly stood up and left his cover, rushing toward trooper Kaas with his shotgun up and a wolfish grin on his face. Ken shot him in the midriff and the criminal fell. It was over.

The suspect survived. In the “prison ward” of the hospital, guards overheard him talking with his appointed attorney. The exasperated lawyer asked him why he had left a position of safety to practically walk into the muzzle of the trooper’s waiting gun. “He fired six shots!” the recovering would-be cop-killer exclaimed. “I swear to God! He fired all six!”

As carefully as he kept count, the criminal didn’t know that Illinois troopers carried Smith & Wesson 9mm semi-automatics. Ken had shot him down with the seventh round in his Model 39, most certainly averting his own death, since the trooper could never have reloaded an empty six-shot revolver fast enough to stop the deadly charge.

In the late 1970s, Mas Ayoob did a study of shootings during the first decade in which Illinois troopers had semi-autos instead of revolvers:

I was able to identify 13 who had survived with those guns,when they probably would have died if they’d had the old six-guns. Most involved gun grabs where the troopers were saved because the bad guy couldn’t find the safety catch when he got control of the gun, or the trooper had pressed the magazine release during the struggle and deactivated the round in the chamber via the S&W Model 39’s magazine disconnector safety. But four of those saves were absolutely firepower based.

Posted in Crime, Weapons | No Comments »

Uber Gets the Buzzfeed Treatment

Thursday, November 20th, 2014

Uber gets the Buzzfeed treatment, and Scott Adams (Dilbert) is not pleased:

Let’s start with Buzzfeed’s totally manipulative and misleading headline:

Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists

Holy shit! Uber must be evil! They are trying to suppress freedom of the media!

Except… that isn’t what happened, according to Buzzfeed’s own reporting in the article with the misleading headline.

Michael didn’t “suggest” doing anything. Nor did he — then or now — even want to dig up dirt on journalists. Assuming Buzzfeed’s reporting of the details is accurate, all he did was make a dinner party intellectual comparison between the evil of the media that was unfairly attacking them (which I assume is true) and their own civilized response to the attacks.

Michael’s point, as Buzzfeed reports it, was that horrible people in the media mislead readers and there is nothing a victim can do about it within the realm of reasonable business practices. The Buzzfeed business model is totally legal. But, as Michael explained, probably over a cocktail, the only legal solution to this problem would be to use freedom of the press to push back on the bad actors by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

But it was just private cocktail talk. It wasn’t a plan. It definitely wasn’t a “suggestion.” It was just an interesting way to make a point. The point, as I understand it from Buzzfeed’s own reporting, is that Uber does play fair in a fight in which the opponents (bad actors in the press) do not. I find that interesting. It is also literally the opposite of what the headline of the story “suggests” happened.

And Michael made his point in a room full of writers and media people. Obviously it wasn’t a plan.

It’s not as if Michael was talking about manipulating the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Those publications might get some facts wrong now and then, but they don’t have a business model that involves intentionally taking things out of context to manufacture news. No one suggested trying to strong-arm the legitimate media. Michael was talking about the bottom-feeder types that literally manufacture news, hurt innocent people, damage the reputation of companies, and hide behind the Constitution and freedom of speech. You can’t compare the bad actors in the press with the legitimate press. And in my opinion it makes interesting dinner conversation to speculate how one can stop the bad actors without breaking any laws.

And then Buzzfeed proved Michael’s point by taking his words out of context and showing that Michael could do nothing about it but apologize for… Buzzfeed’s misleading description of what he said.

That’s called “news.”

Posted in Business | 3 Comments »

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