Dangerous Dan

Turkey's prime minister is speaking out against Islamophobia and even mentions the Danish cartoons:

Referring to the row over blasphemous cartoons that were originally printed in a Danish newspaper, he said freedom of expression should not be confused with the freedom to insult.

He's right, of course, in that those two are separate concepts and shouldn't be confused as being the same thing. Properly speaking, the freedom to insult is subsumed under the free of expression so that insulting is an exercise of freedom of expression but exercising freedom of expression is not necessarily done by insulting. And the right not to be insulted doesn't exist at all. I hope that clears things up. Thank you, prime minister.

I beginning to be annoyed by the term "Islamophobia." As with so many socio-political phobias, the label tends to get applied to whomever issues any kind of criticism.

I think I may have discovered the best ice cream ever. It's HEB's Creamy Creations Apple Pie. It's amazing. I may marry it. Don't let my wife know.

At some point in the near future, I'm going to do some updates. I'm still running WordPress 1.5 and the newest version is 2.0.3. I haven't bothered updating yet because doing so overwrites all my formatting and I didn't want to bother with the headache of making modifications. Now that I've got some spare time on my hands, though, I might as well take care of it.

I'm also going to replace the comment authorization image. It has an inconvenient time limit I don't know how to change, which means I'm sure people have lost comments they tried to submit. That and, given the massive number of sp@m trackbacks and comments I've been getting lately, it's apparently been hacked and is no longer serving it's main function.

So if you happen to stop by in the next couple of weeks and things look strange, that's why. Any such oddity should be momentary, though.

"Poll: Majority of Americans want withdrawal plan for Iraq" says the USA Today headline.
If you go to the poll results, though, you find the following:

17% said withdraw immediately. 33% said withdraw in 12 months. That makes 50%, which is not a majority; it's half. 41% said withdraw, but keep troops in Iraq as long as needed and 8% said send more troops (1% had no opinion). So that means a full 49% don't want the troops out within a strict 12 months, which, again, is about half. Given the 5% margin of error, it could easily be the case that a majority of Americans want troops out in 12 months or want them to stay as long as necessary. Also notable is that the percentage of 12 month folks as gone down from 54% in March.

I suppose it could be said a clear majority wants withdrawal since three of the five options say withdraw (at differing times) for a total of 91%, but that’s like saying a majority wants clean air or low crime. Of course people want our troops withdrawn; nobody wants them there permanently. It’s the details that matter.

The article later says, "The poll finds support for the ideas behind Democratic proposals that were soundly defeated in the Senate last week."

This is apparently pure speculation based on 57% saying Congress should outline a withdrawal plan. I guess the author wants to think that because Democrats have been pushing for such a plan, that it explains that number. It's completely contradicted, however, by the 25% who think the Dems have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq compared to the 68% who think they don't, which is even worse than Bush's 31% and 67% respectively. I don't think that qualifies as "support for Democratic proposals."

Dan Rather on Katie Couric as news anchor:

I asked [Rather] if Katie Couric could do as good a job [as he did].

He said, "CBS thinks she will."

"The question was: Do you think she could?"

Dan said, "In time, I think she will. It took her 15 years to make the 'Today' show a hit. I'm sure it will take her longer than that to beat Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams."

Right. This from the guy who started out in first place in the 80′s after taking over for Cronkite and then slipped to second and then, in the 90′s, to a permanent third place behind Brokaw and Jennings. Maybe, Dan, it will take her so long to beat Gibson and Williams because you started her out in the hole.

Bit & bytes & pixels & sprites dug up some more video game commercials, this time from Japan. This one was odd and this one was strangely homoerotic, but I gotta go with the following for my favorite, just because of the nature of the explosion.

"Relatives 'devastated' to learn of soldiers' deaths on TV," says TV outlet CNN that reported on the soldiers' deaths before the families had been notified.

Pearls Before Swine has it right:

It appears that Carson Daly concept of karma has caught up with Dan Rather. In his farewell statement, Rather takes a jab at CBS for forcing him into retirement by sidelining him with the promise of occasional stories that have not come:

I leave CBS News with tremendous memories. But I leave now most of all with the desire to once again do regular, meaningful reporting. My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS's final acknowledgement, after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there. As for their offers of a future with only an office but no assignments, it just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing. So I will do the work I love elsewhere, and I look forward to sharing details about that soon.

Why is this poetic justice? Because it was Rather who forced Walter Cronkite into the same sort of retirement some 25 years ago. Rather threatened to leave CBS unless he got the anchor gig, so CBS sent Cronkite to the bench. Uncle Walt never got the specials or investigative reports CBS promised him as anchor emeritus because Rather didn't want Cronkite interfering with his rising star and he strong armed the network into putting Cronkite out to pasture, permanently and practically-speaking.

And now it's come full-circle. Rather is getting the very same treatment he forced upon Cronkite (not that I care much for Cronkite either). To add to the delicious irony, it is again Rather's own actions that are bringing about his comeuppance. Instead of some new hot shot nipping at his heels, it was Rather's own ambition and hubris that did him in. Ya gotta like it.

I suppose they meant it to look cute. Instead, this teddy bear USB thumb drive is somewhat disturbing.

Looks cute so far, right?

Oh, the humanity!

It looks like his head got crushed in the computer.

More pics here.

(via Engadget)

I'm not sure what Sony was thinking when they made this commerical for the Playstation, but it's amazing.

(via bits & bytes & pixels & sprites)