Reality-Based Engineering: 2007/02

The Stern Report On Global Warming

I've never heard of this, but this is some sort of economics report regarding the failure to deal with global warming...h/t to dailykos.com for this link.

Labels: climate change, dailykos.com, global warming, Stern Report

PBS To Look At Crappiness of Media

That's my spin, naturally... :Op

Starts tonite on your local PBS station.

Labels: Cheney, dubya, Frontline, media, PBS, press

Dear Matt: You Dont Get It

In a recent post at mydd.com, Matt Stoller makes the following statement as a sidebar to his whole post on the US needing to come clean with itself re: Iraq (emp. mine):

I was driving into Boston when the lite-brite ridiculousness went on, the marketing ploy that Mayor Menino used to scare the city. A mayor and police department shutting down a city based on fear, incompetence, and arrogance is a serious abridgment of freedom. That he has paid no price for his smearing of two men suggests just how tightly this country is wrapped in a blanket of nationalism and fear.

Matt, perhaps what you dont get is that when people call in seeing things with wires attached to bridges, the police must respond and treat it as if it's a bomb. They had no idea what those things were. You make it sound like Menino had devious intentions from the start. Say what you will about the crap pulled during the 2004 convention ("free speech" zones) but this was a good showing of what local, state and federal law enforement should be doing post-9/11. The Boston police didn't "shut down" a city based on fear and arrogance. That's just an uninformed, from-the-hip statement to say the least.

The two guys that planted these things, sure they were artists, blah blah blah, but sorry, you cant just go and put shit on bridges. There's a reason they call it 'guerrilla marketing'. You do things serrupticiously and below board. Besides, who the hell wants to prosecute those two? They're just patsies to get to the nimrods in the marketing company that said "yes" all the way up the ladder when someone with an ounce of brains should have said "well, you know, not the best idea we've had".

Labels: Adult Swim, bomb scare, Boston, mydd.com, Turner