Is That a Fact?

A thought for today, from David Bohm:

When we say 'this is a fact' we then imply a certain ability of the fact to 'stand up to' a wide range of different kinds of testing. Thus, the fact is established, i.e. it is shown to be stable, in the sense that it is not liable to collapse, or to be nullified at any moment, in a subsequent observation of the general sort that has already been carried out. Of course this stability is only relative, because the fact is always being tested again and again, both in ways that are familiar and in new ways that are continually being explored. So it may be refined, modified, and even radically changed, through further observation, experiment, and experience. But in order to be a 'real fact', it evidently has, in this way, to remain constantly valid, at least in certain contexts or over a certain period of time.

One-Newspaper Nation

In Panic on 43rd Street, Michael Wolff argues that the Gray Lady is losing its core market and becoming an Everyman suburban daily:

Unlike The Washington Post, which has put much of its editorial and business energies into dominating its local market, the Times's strategy—a doomsday scenario, foreseeing a one-newspaper nation, a last-man-standing paper—has been to make the paper national. Hence, The New York Times is no longer principally a metropolitan paper. With a daily circulation of 260,000 in the five boroughs, it's no longer even creditably a New York paper. (Its two tabloid competitors, the Daily News and the New York Post, have far more readers in New York City.) It's an Everyman suburban daily.

You can see this strategy in liberal Montgomery Country, where blue newspaper bags (New York Times) outnumber the orange (Washington Times) handily in many neighborhoods. The New York Post would make a better Everyman national newspaper, though.

One PowerPoint Over the Line

In Everything You Wanted to Know About Getting a Job in Silicon Valley But Didn’t Know Who to Ask, Guy Kawasaki weighs in on the pros and cons of the four-page CV:

As a rule of thumb, if you can’t pitch your company in ten slides or pitch yourself in one page, your idea is stupid and you suck, respectively.

Any questions?

Another Gift to Japanese Hardliners

The Russian Border Guards Service has killed an unarmed Japanese crab fisherman in the Kurils. He was minding his own business and maybe fishing illegally when they shot him in the head with what they described as a “warning shot.” They later explained that his trawler -- no doubt menacingly fast and maneuverable -- had tried to ram their patrol boat.

It’s in the Way that You Use It

Many in the media claim the Katyusha has no military value because, well, it is inaccurate. That would have been news to the Soviet army, which demonstrated as far back as 1941 that truck-mounted Katyushas could saturate a target area with salvo fire and then quickly drive off. Used correctly, this multiple-launch weapon (referred to by the Germans as Stalin’s organ for its rumbling booms) caused extensive casualties and shock.

Today, however, the various small, unguided rockets the media calls Katyushas have been adapted by guerilla groups for single-launch use, in Hezbollah's case to avoid rapid and punishing Israeli counter-battery fire. This has stripped the rocket of its military value, leading some to call it a “terror weapon,” as though it were a sort of poor man’s V-2. Yet even with Hezbollah’s profligate use (4,000 and counting) a single Katyusha incoming is more annoying than terrifying, especially for civilians who have moved beyond its short range. What, then, is it good for?

Andrew McGregor, writing in Jamestown’s Terrorism Monitor, argues that Hezbollah’s use of the rocket “signals its mastery of media warfare.” I think he’s exactly right. For low self-esteem television audiences in the Muslim world accustomed to folding Arab armies, watching a ghost town like Kiryat Shemona (population: three jumpy alley cats) get pounded must seem like cause to throw candy. And given its recruitment and propaganda function, Hezbollah terrorists probably don’t lose too much sleep over the Katyusha’s inaccuracy.

Deep Thought of the Day

If you’re delivering a speech to a conservative gathering, and you’re just dying up there, say something about Reagan and then sit down before the audience does.

Blah. More News You Probably Missed

Achy thumbs down: The BlackBerry is now a HackBerry
North Korea’s very weird Dear Leader has not been seen since July 4th
Meanwhile, mistrust between Japan and South Korea is at its deepest since a poll began in 1995
Yarr: Lloyd’s, noting less piracy, has dropped its war risk designation for the Malacca Strait
A new tool to fight drug counterfeiting: IBM has launched an RFID system for pharmaceutical tracking across the supply chain...
...but an RFID survey shows shockingly slow adoption by retailers
A dim view of Tom Hayden and the far left’s “bid to Vietnamize the Iraq liberation effort”
The ACLU of Louisiana hassles St. Bernard Parish over a Katrina memorial

Global News & Opinion You May Have Missed

More light summer reading: Mein Kampf hits number three on Ankara bestseller list
Ouch: Dr. Gono moves to stem 1,200% inflation in Zimbabwe
Chad and China reestablish diplomatic ties
A fatwa banning Muslims from helping Hezbollah gets argued...
...while another in Pakistan bans women from working for NGOs.
Bradley Burson argues that Israel is losing World War III
"Our worst fears have materialized": Cadeverous Rolling Stones trash German soccer pitch
Libya releases five Bulgarian nurses on bail, having held them seven years on absurd trumped-up charges
Christians still missing in China’s Zhejiang province after mega-church destruction
X-ray equipment tuned to the iron in ancient ink reveals hidden text in The Archimedes Palimpsest

Will DVD Album Kill the CD?

Warner Music Group is launching DVD album in a bold attempt to end the CD’s 24-year reign as physical format of choice for music. The new discs will play on today’s DVD players, but are not backward compatible with CD players, disintermediating an installed base of approximately 96 quintillion CD players.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece on the new format:

Warner, the world's fourth-largest music company, is in the final stages of securing technical licenses that will enable it to sell a bundle of music and extra features on a single DVD, according to people familiar with the matter. The DVD would include a music album that plays in both stereo and surround-sound on a standard DVD player -- plus video footage that plays on a DVD player or a computer. There will also be song remixes, ring tones, photos and other digital extras that can be accessed on a computer.

The company plans to make the new format available to its subsidiary record labels for product-planning purposes as early as next week and to introduce the discs to consumers with a handful of titles in October. A full-blown launch is planned for early next year. The hope is to fuel increased sales of both new product and catalog titles, in the process lifting the industry just as the 1982 introduction of the CD boosted sales as consumers replaced cassettes and vinyl albums.

Referring to the new format as “DVD album” is clueless, even for the record industry. Album means “two good tracks and ten tracks of filler.” Yes, I understand it’s not the final name, but you didn’t catch Microsoft referring to Longhorn as Microsoft Heifer before it became Vista.

Then there’s the matter of a price point higher than already-overpriced CDs. Filling the disc with shovelware might answer the question “what do we do with the extra capacity?” or “how do we clog up the hard drives of pirates?” but ring tones (??), remixes, and interviews are worth zero to most buyers, plus or minus a few cents. Besides, consumers have more pressing questions these days, such as “does this refrigerator come with an iPod dock?”

As for offering better sound, consumers wouldn’t be opposed to the idea. It’s just that they have [expletive deleted - Ed] in their ears and don’t care about anything better than, oh, 128 kbps.

Unlike previous failed formats, DVD album could kill off the CD if the entire industry got behind it. However, it is still a physical format, which puts it on the wrong side of history. Bricks and mortar record stores may long for a new format -- especially one that arrives before that last going out of business sale -- but it’s easy to resist the idea of buying your record collection all over again.

Meathead’s Candidate

A financial report shows that Hillary continued to work her contributor network at a Ron Burkle event this spring, adding to her $43 million campaign war chest with $4,000 from Billy Crystal, $2,100 from Robert Iger, and $3,200 in smart money from Rob Reiner.

By locking in high-dollar donors early, Hillary pushes likely Democratic candidates toward MoveOn.org-style Internet strategies aimed at smaller donors. And because such grassroots efforts require attention-grabbing positions, those elbows on each side of the fundraising pie may also shift the pack leftward earlier.

It's true -- ask Meathead.

A Glow of Health

There hasn’t been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since the 1970s, but that may be about to change.

Amarillo Power is proposing the plant that, pending regulatory approval, could be completed and online within a decade, according to a copyrighted story in Tuesday's Amarillo-Globe News.

The proposal calls for a two-unit, 2,700-megawatt advanced boiled water reactor designed by General Electric, documents obtained by the newspaper through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other sources show.

A megawatt is enough power to serve between 700 and 1,000 homes.

This approximately $5 billion project is the second sign of a nuclear revival following a June filing by NRG Energy to add 2,700 MW of nuclear generation capacity (not to mention a thousand jobs) at its existing South Texas Project.

Given that every anti-nuclear and nanny state group will gear up to stop them, I would think utilities interested in diverse energy supplies and a sustained nuclear revival could help by expediting any letters of intent they may be thinking about.

Concentrator Photovoltaics

With oil over $70 a barrel, demand for solar power is surging. However, silicon production hasn’t scaled up and may be a long-term bottleneck. Enter (again) concentrator photovoltaics, which use less of the stuff by having an array of mirrors concentrate sunlight onto tiny (one millimeter square) high-efficiency compound photovoltaic targets. Technology Review has a quick and accessible read on the technology.

Inspired Yet?

Adding to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s problems, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are working the black church circuit in Connecticut, getting out the vote for Ned Lamont. Why them, you ask, and why now?

Well, the standard excuse would of course be, "it’s a tight race, and every vote counts." The problem, though, is that there's nary a racial angle for this demagogic duo to exploit now that Lieberman has a cloak of protection from a recent visit by the First Black President. This means the race cards will remain in sleeves, hats, and loafers.

This also leaves Sharpton and Jackson out of character, flipping through the antiwar play book for inspiration. They have found none, as The New York Post reports:

"I was disappointed that every time we came out of the huddle, it seemed like my friend Joe had the other team's uniform," Sharpton said, calling Lamont "a man I don't know as well, but he's on the same team."

Oh, yeah, that’s motivating. Are you feeling 30 percent turnout? No?

Anyway, a poll out today shows the one-dimensional Lamont a surprising 13 points ahead among likely Democratic voters, so maybe every vote won’t count after all. Still, I don’t think it’s the anti-war rhetoric from these two that’s doing it.

Where Terrorists are “Activists”

It’s time for another trip into the reverse universe of The Washington Post, so cue the heroic music:

In the alleys, people carried the weak and the old on their shoulders or cradled them like children. Hezbollah activists helped evacuate 80-year-old Mariam Saghir, her foot crippled, on a ladder turned into a stretcher. One of the activists carried a walkie-talkie, another a pistol. Someone then brought an orange stretcher, propping her head on two bags stuffed with her clothes.

"How much farther?" she pleaded. She rolled to the side, flies gathering on her face. "I want to stay here."

"We're almost there," one of the men reassured her.

At least it’s internally consistent: 1.) Good is evil; 2.) Up is down; and 3.) Terrorists who invite shelling on their human shields by firing rockets from residential areas are “activists” because they help people around the body parts and teddy bears.