At the New York Times, Perilous Task of Innovation in a Digital Age

From Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, at the New York Times:

CRUISES. Conferences. New forms of advertising. Fancy multimedia storytelling.

The Gray Lady, as The New York Times has long been known, isn’t as sedate as she used to be. The company is innovating like a house afire. Or let’s turn the metaphor around: With the house of print burning down, The Times is quickly building something new, hoping to have a permanent place to live in the digital age.

The innovation is necessary. After all, print advertising — the lifeblood of The Times — has long been in decline. Last year, in a major milestone, consumer revenue (mostly from print and digital subscriptions) surpassed advertising revenue, both digital and print. In the old days, print advertising alone brought in about 80 percent of all Times revenue.

The old business model is fading, and the new one hasn’t quite arrived. The Times is journalistically strong and is profitable, but its future is far from certain. As necessary as innovation is, it comes with risks — ethical risks, journalistic risks and, if those should be compromised, business risks.

Here is a look at what is happening, and some of the implications.

Continue reading.

I have no interest in going on an "Old Gray Lady Cruise" with Charles Blow or Thomas Friedman --- no matter how vehemently Ms. Sullivan pitches these as "ethically sound."

Other than that, all this "innovation" is about finding new advertising revenue (IMHO). I don't know, but I'd bet the Times might want to think about tightening up its paywall. This is the one newspaper I'd subscribe to if I couldn't navigate past the subscription barrier. But since the newspaper allows reading to access the site through Google and social media (like Twitter), I simply cut and paste articles into the Safari browser until articles load. I will continue to do that as long as it's an option. The Wall Street Journal also allows Google access to article behind the paywall. The tradeoff for publishers is to allow readers to access the papers through search and social sharing. But no doubt tighter paywalls would force people to pay to click. Other papers, like the Independent and Telegraph in the U.K., limit page views and then lock you out after you've maxed out. But I won't pay for those newspapers. On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times also slams the door once you've reached your monthly limit. Google is no help, but I'm a print subscriber so I'm able to read unlimited articles.

If a newspaper is good people will pay to read it. And as the markets continue to consolidate there will be a winnowing of the main sources of news that people will pay to read. This is the demographic that the New York Times needs to attract --- those who will pay. So, start by thinking about who's paying for the product. Increase those revenues along with advertising and I expect the model will be sustainable over the long term.

Lucy Pinder for Sunday #Rule5

Here's your Sunday roundup.

Some video, "Lucy Pinder, Nuts Mag, 6 Aug. 2013," and "Lucy Pinder, Nuts Mag, (part 2) 6 Aug. 2013."

And she's on Twitter here.



And around the horn with Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is a wonderful jungle that will be wiped from the face of the map because someone used hair spray, you might just be a Warmist."

Also at Proof Positive, "Friday Night Babe: Kirsten Haglund!" And see "Best of the Web Linkaround."

At Daley Gator, "Rule 5 Link Fest."

Plus, at Bob Belvedere's, "Rule 5 Saturday: Satinee Capona."

More from Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, "Friday Pinup."

Dana Pico has "Blondes with Bullets."

And check 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Hot Pick of the Late Night," and "Girls with Guns."

At Knuckledraggin', "Your Good Morning Girl," and "Camel Toe!!!"

A View From the Beach, "Rule 5 Saturday - Let's Have Another Brazilian, Fernanda Tavares."

At Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart: Nichole Boerner."

More from Cousin Odie, "Alligator Shoes ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

Also from Double Trouble Two, "Sexy Reds .... ;-)." And from Angry Mike's 'Hood, "The Young And Hot...…………"

Still more from EBL, "Oktoberfest München 2013."

Check out Good Stuff's as well, "HOT! GOODSTUFF'S BLOGGING MAGAZINE (116th Issue)."

And from Subject to Change, "Guns/Girls."

Postal Dogs has, "Joanna Krupa isn't fooling me." And Soylent has, "Auburn Awesome: Shaun Tia."

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPGIRLS PLAYING IN BEDS OF THE DAY."

Yet more from Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "This Stupid Week, No Rest for the Wicked Edition."

Check Wine, Women, and Politics as well, "Sunday Babes."

Laughing Conservative has "Adrianne Pulacki."

At Animal Magnetism, "Rule Five Bikini Friday News."

And finally, at the Last Tradition, "Rule 5 Sunday – Elizabeth Taylor."

THANKS TO THE OTHER MCCAIN FOR THE INSPIRATION!

Blue Cross Dumps Mad Jewess Woman

Nationwide, no doubt 100s of thousands are receiving these cancellation notices.

See, "The Mad Jewess Has Been Discontinued From Her Insurance/Heath Care. Thanks Obama."

And from earlier this week, "The #ObamaCare Death Toll Rises."

#USC Fires Lane Kiffin

It was only a matter of time, as I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

At LAT, "USC fires Lane Kiffin as football coach":

Beauty. “@InsideUSC: I'm told Lane Kiffin told the bus to wait but then #USC administrators told it to go back to campus without him”

— Lane Kiffin's FIRED (@FIRELaneKiffin) September 29, 2013

Fired in the parking lot. Almost poetic if you ask me. #USC means business. #ByeByeKiffin

— Lane Kiffin's FIRED (@FIRELaneKiffin) September 29, 2013

Lane Kiffin, who has coached USC’s football team since 2010, has been relieved of his duties, Athletic Director Pat Haden announced early Sunday.

Kiffin was fired hours after the Trojans lost to Arizona State, 62-41, at Tempe, Ariz. The loss dropped the Trojans’ record to 3-2 overall and 0-2 in the Pac-12 Conference.

Kiffin, who succeeded Pete Carroll as coach, had been under fire since the end of last season, when the Trojans fell from being ranked No. 1 to finishing with a 7-6 record. USC has lost seven of its last 11 games dating to last season.

Kiffin, 38, compiled a 28-15 record at USC. His best season came in 2011, when the Trojans finished 10-2.

The NCAA hit USC with some of the most severe penalties in college football history months after Kiffin was hired. The penalties were related to former Trojans running back Reggie Bush and included a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships over three years.

Haden recently appealed to the NCAA to restore some of the scholarships. The request was denied.

In a four-paragraph news release announcing the move, USC said Haden would hold a news conference Sunday afternoon. It was not known what time.

More at that top link.

And see, "It's a horror show in Devils' lair as USC falls to Arizona St., 62-41."

Also at Daley Gator, "USC fires noted douche bag."

How Blackberry Failed to Adapt

At Toronto's Globe and Mail, "Inside the fall of BlackBerry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt":

Late last year, Research In Motion Ltd. chief executive officer Thorsten Heins sat down with the board of directors at the company’s Waterloo, Ont., headquarters to review plans for the launch of a new phone designed to turn around the company’s fortunes.

His weapon was the BlackBerry Z10, a slim device with the kind of glass touchscreen that had made Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. the dominant names in the global smartphone market.

But one of RIM’s directors was frustrated by what he saw, and spoke out, according to one person who was in the room. There is a cultural problem at RIM, he told the group, and the Z10 was a glaring manifestation of it.

The speaker was none other than Michael Lazaridis, the genius behind the BlackBerry, the company’s co-founder and its former co-CEO. Minutes earlier, he said, he had spoken with Mr. Heins’s newest executive recruits, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief operating officer Kristian Tear.

Mr. Boulben and Mr. Tear had dismissively told Mr. Lazaridis that the market for keyboard-equipped mobile phones – RIM’s signature offering – was dead.

In the board meeting, Mr. Lazaridis pointed to a BlackBerry with a keyboard. “I get this,” he said. “It’s clearly differentiated.” Then he pointed to a touchscreen phone. “I don’t get this.”

To turn away from a product that had always done well with corporate customers, and focus on selling yet another all-touch smartphone in a market crowded with them, was a huge mistake, Mr. Lazaridis warned his fellow directors. Some of them agreed.

The boardroom confrontation was a telling moment in the downfall of Research In Motion.

Once the giant of the smartphone business, RIM, which was renamed BlackBerry Ltd. in the summer, is now on its knees. The company reported a $965-million (U.S.) fiscal second-quarter loss Friday, primarily because of a massive writedown of Z10 phones that sit, unsold and unwanted, about eight months after they first hit the market. The company is cutting 4,500 jobs, 40 per cent of its work force, in a desperate bid to bring costs in line with plummeting revenue.

Investors, who have lived through the destruction of more than $75-billion of the company’s market value over the past five years, are still wondering how BlackBerry managed to blow its runaway lead and became a bit player in the smartphone market it invented.

An investigation by The Globe and Mail, which included interviews with two dozen past and present company insiders, exposes a series of deep rifts at the executive and boardroom levels.

Those divisions hurt the company’s ability to develop products just as it faced its greatest challenge from more nimble and creative rivals – and contributed to the downfall of Canada’s biggest technology company...

Lazaridis' cultural disconnect seems simply unreal.

More at the link.

RELATED: At the New York Times, "Quick, Hide the BlackBerry, It's Too Uncool," and "BlackBerry's Future in Doubt, Keyboard Lovers Bemoan Their Own."

'(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66...'

So my mom's visiting and she's wearing a "Route 66" shirt: "Get your kicks..."

And I'm tryin' to find a Chuck Berry live clip, but it's a dearth.

In any case, here's some Nat King Cole, who was the first to record the Bobby Troup song, in a fine video clip. This takes you way back:



A Chuck Berry recording is here.

And some Rolling Stones here.

More blogging later...

House #GOP Seeks Health-Law Delay as Shutdown Looms

Shut it down, I say.

Screw the Democrats. They'd rather negotiate with Iranian terror-sponsors than our own democratically-elected Members of the House of Representatives.

The Wall Street Journal reports, "House GOP Seeks Health-Law Delay: Condition For Funding Brings Federal Government to Brink of Shutdown Tuesday."

And at Lonely Con, "Harry Reid Says Senate Will Reject New House Bill Funding Government":

House Republicans are (surprisingly) not backing down on the Obamacare/continuing resolution fight. Unfortunately, neither is Harry Reid. The House has a new bill funding government and delaying the implementation of Obamacare for one year. They also have a bill that will fund the military in the event of a shut down. Reid says the Senate will reject the bill.

Yes, because "tea party anarchists."

Screw 'em. Prepare for the shutdown.

Hey, BuzzFeed Gets Its India Reynolds Fix On!

Well, the uber viral website catching up to American Power on India Reynolds blogging.

Quick Saturday #Rule5

Linking a few fellow babe bloggers.

At Daley Gator, "DaleyGator DaleyBabe Tatiana Jaye," and Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "Pretty Girls on a Thursday, Snow Bunnies Edition."



More at 90 Miles from Tyranny, "Girls With Guns."

And at Knuckledraggin', "Your Good Morning Girl."

More at Pirate's Cove, "If All You See……is a horrible waste of chocolate, the same chocolate that will be destroyed by someone turning trees into cabinets, you might just be a Warmist."

Plus lots more babe blogging at the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Monday."

I'll have more later...

"Only those who share the partisan Democrat views of James Fallows, in other words, are avoiding the 'failure of journalism.' Fallows would have us believe that 'what is going on' is not a routine exercise in budget brinksmanship — something to which we have become accustomed as a ritual of divided government — but rather an 'internal crisis' exclusive to the Republican Party..."

From Robert Stacy McCain, "James Fallows, Eminent Fool, and the Surprising Vindication of John C. Calhoun":

The current phony crisis, in which Sen. Harry Reid has declared that the House must approve the Senate’s spending bill or else the government will shut down, has inspired The Atlantic‘s James Fallows to an extravagant exercise in rhetorical excess:

In case the point is not clear yet: there is no post-Civil War precedent for what the House GOP is doing now. It is radical, and dangerous for the economy and our process of government, and its departure from past political disagreements can’t be buffed away or ignored. If someone can think of a precedent after the era of John C. Calhoun . . . let me know.

This is as absurd and inappropriate as it is ignorant. To find a recent precedent, we need only go back to the 1990s, when the budget impasse between the new Republican majority in Congress and President Clinton led to a (partial) government shutdown. Or, really, we might consider the extraordinary process by which Reid and Nancy Pelosi shoved ObamaCare through the legislative grinder — “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it,” as Pelosi infamously said — as more truly “radical, and dangerous for the economy and our process of government” than anything Republicans in Congress are doing now.

Having deliberately ignored the made-for-TV dramatics, I am not the least alarmed by this phony crisis, which is neither particularly new nor remotely frightening. Democrats and their comrades in the media (Fallows was a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter) are dishonestly characterizing opposition to ObamaCare as “extremist,” per se.

This is the exact opposite of truth: It is ObamaCare itself that is truly “extremist,” a measure that could only be rammed through Congress with late-night arm-twisting sessions. Were the 34 House Democrats who voted against ObamaCare in March 2010 “extremists”? Or were the millions of voters who elected a Republican House majority in the 2010 mid-term landslide “extremists”?

James Fallows is a partisan Democrat who evidently does not even read conservatives, and who declares illegitimate any reporting that takes seriously the claims of the president’s Republican opponents...

Fallows is a bald-faced liar (and a Democrat-partisan hack, but I repeat myself).

Continue reading.

IMAGE CREDIT: "Do Not Challenge the Emperor," via Erick Brockway on Twitter.

Rick Perry at CPAC St. Louis 2013

Via Nice Deb, "Video: Rick Perry Rocks the House at #CPACSTL."

Why Academics Hate Diana West

I'm getting a kick out of this.

Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov have a long essay on Diana West's American Betrayal at Big Government, "WHY ACADEMICS HATE DIANA WEST."

Recall that when I met Diana at the book signing in Los Angeles, I mentioned to her that I'd be especially interested to see the response to her research from professional historians. I suggested that her thesis was "bold" and that academic historians would react strongly. Little did I know how strongly, especially in the case of nutjob Ron Radosh. Diana got a kick out of recalling our exchange this morning on Twitter.

If you haven't read it, visit Amazon to pick up your copy, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character.

Hot Shots Calendar Film Shoot

The lovely Hot Shots ladies.

Bruce Schneier on NSA and Snowden Documents

See, "NSA Spying Is Making Us Less Safe" (via Instapundit).

More at Schneier blog, "Senator Feinstein Admits the NSA Taps the Internet Backbone."

(I'm sure readers will recall my personal position on all of this. I think Snowden's a traitor, although that doesn't mean I'm unconcerned with the never ending growth of the Orwellian state. Security vs. liberty. There's a right balance. Getting there requires citizen participation, not treason, to beat back government secrecy.)

N.S.A. Examines Social Networks of U.S. Citizens

Big Brother keeps getting bigger.

At NYT, "N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens":

WASHINGTON — Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

N.S.A. officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort, including people involved in no wrongdoing. The documents do not describe what has resulted from the scrutiny, which links phone numbers and e-mails in a “contact chain” tied directly or indirectly to a person or organization overseas that is of foreign intelligence interest.

The new disclosures add to the growing body of knowledge in recent months about the N.S.A.’s access to and use of private information concerning Americans, prompting lawmakers in Washington to call for reining in the agency and President Obama to order an examination of its surveillance policies. Almost everything about the agency’s operations is hidden, and the decision to revise the limits concerning Americans was made in secret, without review by the nation’s intelligence court or any public debate. As far back as 2006, a Justice Department memo warned of the potential for the “misuse” of such information without adequate safeguards.

Continue reading.

Victoria Arlen Not Paralyzed Enough

At the New York Times, "Swimmer Is Fighting a Ruling: She Is Not Disabled Enough":

EXETER, N.H. — Racked by sudden spasms in her shoulders, back and hands — the things she most relies upon to offset her paralyzed legs — the American swimmer Victoria Arlen failed to qualify for the final in the 100-meter breaststroke at the Paralympics last summer. But she persevered in the freestyle, going on to become one of the competition’s breakout stars. When Arlen returned home to New Hampshire with four medals and a world record, Exeter threw her a parade.

But Arlen’s glittering Paralympic career is now in jeopardy. This summer, she became enmeshed in a dispute with the International Paralympic Committee over an issue fundamental to her identity and to the complicated, often ambiguous science behind Paralympic competition: whether she is disabled enough even to qualify as a competitor.

Days before she was due to swim in the world championships in Montreal in August, she was ruled ineligible because, the committee declared, she had “failed to provide conclusive evidence of a permanent eligible impairment.”

Arlen, 19, spent three years in a vegetative state because of an autoimmune disorder and woke in 2010 with paralyzed legs and other symptoms of the neurological condition transverse myelitis. She said she was being punished because of her doctor’s belief that there was a chance that her condition might improve.

“Being penalized for maybe having a glimmer of hope of one day being able to walk again is beyond sad,” Arlen said in an interview at home. In a follow-up e-mail, she said: “To have trained so hard this past year and come so far only to be humiliated and targeted by the I.P.C. for reasons unknown baffles me.”

For its part, the committee says it had no choice. “According to the rules, athletes have to provide evidence of permanent impairment to compete in the Paralympics, and we do not have satisfactory confirmation of that,” said Peter Van de Vliet, the committee’s medical and scientific director.

A Difficult Task

Classifying disabled athletes — sorting them into classes according to the type and severity of their disabilities — is immensely complex, often subjective and among the toughest tasks the Paralympic committee faces. Some cases, likes those involving congenital limb deformity, are straightforward. But others, like neurological illnesses with fluctuating multiple symptoms like the one afflicting Arlen, are not.

“If you’re classifying an amputee, either they’ve got a leg or they haven’t, and in 12 months, they still won’t have a leg,” Van de Vliet said. “But when you get to these types of wheelchair athletes, it gets tricky.”

Officials are not suggesting that Arlen is lying, but the Paralympics is becoming increasingly competitive, and there are many cases of athletes exaggerating or faking disabilities. The committee is still haunted by the saga of Monique van der Vorst of the Netherlands, who won two silver medals in handcycling at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics. She was paralyzed when she competed, apparently having muscular dystrophy. But two years later, after 13 years in a wheelchair, she walked again. She was given a new diagnosis: conversion disorder, a psychiatric condition in which patients suffer inexplicable neurological symptoms.

The committee allowed van der Vorst to keep her medals, ruling that she had not deliberately misled them. But later it emerged that perhaps she had. Reports surfaced in which even van der Vorst said there had been times when she could stand and walk while competing as a Paralympian.

“What would be the reaction of competitors who had raced Victoria if, in a few years, she was able to walk?” Van de Vliet said.

The committee often reclassifies athletes and places them into different competition classes, depending on the severity of their impairments. It has declared athletes ineligible before, including some who have simply misinterpreted the rules. Recently, Van de Vliet said, a Jamaican competitor showed up at a competition with a note from his optician saying “this man has a visual impairment, but when he wears his glasses, everything’s fine.”

The committee sent him home. Van de Vliet said, “It was a particularly sad case.”

Arlen’s situation is different, in part because she is such a high-profile athlete. After the International Paralympic Committee ruled her ineligible, her case became a cause célèbre, with sympathetic reports on “Good Morning America” and other outlets. New Hampshire’s governor and two senators publicly criticized the committee’s ruling.

Photogenic, poised, articulate, bitterly disappointed, a television natural (she also models and works as a motivational speaker), Arlen makes a formidable opponent for the Paralympic committee. It is impossible to hear her story — about being a star child athlete who suddenly grew weaker and weaker and sicker and sicker until she became incapacitated; about her years in a vegetative state and her family’s search for medical answers; about how she woke and had to relearn to talk, read and eat; about how she resolved to be a Paralympic swimmer; about her triumph last summer — without feeling sympathetic.

“She was brought into the Paralympic movement by people who knew about it and told her she could be good at it, and she trained and did everything she was asked to do,” Arlen’s coach, John Ogden, said in an interview. “She has been emotionally scarred and traumatized by this. I am so disappointed in the Paralympic movement right now, I can’t even tell you.”

But it is hard to ignore the committee’s arguments that the matter is far from simple.

A bureaucratic clusterf-k.

Let the lady compete, for crying out loud. She aint' fakin'.

More at the link.

Single Head Shot Takes Out Two Syrian Rebels

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Not for the Squeamish."

'The Tide of War is Receding' — Well, Not So Much, Actually

A must-read leader, at the Economist, "The new face of terror":

A FEW months ago Barack Obama declared that al-Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”. Its surviving members, he said, were more concerned for their own safety than with plotting attacks on the West. Terrorist attacks of the future, he claimed, would resemble those of the 1990s—local rather than transnational and focused on “soft targets”. His overall message was that it was time to start winding down George Bush’s war against global terrorism.

Mr Obama might argue that the assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi by al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate, the Shabab, was just the kind of thing he was talking about: lethal, shocking, but a long way from the United States. Yet the inconvenient truth is that, in the past 18 months, despite the relentless pummelling it has received and the defeats it has suffered, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have staged an extraordinary comeback. The terrorist network now holds sway over more territory and is recruiting more fighters than at any time in its 25-year history (see article). Mr Obama must reconsider.

Back from the dead

It all looked different two years ago. Even before the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaeda’s central leadership, holed up near the Afghan border in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, was on the ropes, hollowed out by drone attacks and able to communicate with the rest of the network only with difficulty and at great risk. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), its most capable franchise as far as mounting attacks on the West is concerned, was being hit hard by drone strikes and harried by Yemeni troops. The Shabab was under similar pressure in Somalia, as Western-backed African Union forces chased them out of the main cities. Above all, the Arab spring had derailed al-Qaeda’s central claim that corrupt regimes supported by the West could be overthrown only through violence.

All those gains are now in question. The Shabab is recruiting more foreign fighters than ever (some of whom appear to have been involved in the attack on the Westgate). AQAP was responsible for the panic that led to the closure of 19 American embassies across the region and a global travel alert in early August. Meanwhile al-Qaeda’s core, anticipating the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan after 2014, is already moving back into the country’s wild east.

Above all, the poisoning of the Arab spring has given al-Qaeda and its allies an unprecedented opening. The coup against a supposedly moderate Islamist elected government in Egypt has helped restore al-Qaeda’s ideological power. Weapons have flooded out of Libya and across the region, and the civil war in Syria has revived one of the network’s most violent and unruly offshoots, al-Qaeda in Iraq, now grandly renamed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

The struggle to depose the Assad regime has acted as a magnet for thousands of would-be jihadists from all over the Muslim world and from Muslim communities in Europe and North America. The once largely moderate and secular Syrian Free Army has been progressively displaced by better-organised and better-funded jihadist groups that have direct links with al-Qaeda. Western intelligence estimates reckon such groups now represent as much as 80% of the effective rebel fighting force. Even if they fail to advance much from the territory they now hold in the north and east of the country, they might end up controlling a vast area that borders an ever more fragile-looking Iraq, where al-Qaeda is currently murdering up to 1,000 civilians a month. That is a terrifying prospect.

No more wishful thinking

How much should Western complacency be blamed for this stunning revival? Quite a bit. Mr Obama was too eager to cut and run from Iraq. He is at risk of repeating the mistake in Afghanistan. America has been over-reliant on drone strikes to “decapitate” al-Qaeda groups: the previous defence secretary, Leon Panetta, even foolishly talked of defeating the network by killing just 10-20 leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The general perception of America’s waning appetite for engagement in the Middle East, underlined by Mr Obama’s reluctance to support the moderate Syrian opposition in any useful way has been damaging as well.

A second question is how much of a threat a resurgent al-Qaeda now poses to the West. The recently popular notion that, give or take the odd home-grown “lone wolf”, today’s violent jihadists are really interested only in fighting local battles now looks mistaken. Some of the foreign fighters in Syria will be killed. Others will be happy to return to a quieter life in Europe or America. But a significant proportion will take their training, experience and contacts home, keen to use all three when the call comes, as it surely will. There is little doubt too that Westerners working or living in regions where jihadism is strong will be doing so at greater risk than ever. The final question is whether anything can be done to reverse the tide once again.

Continue reading.

Hacked and Pilfered iPads Expose Epic Folly of LAUSD's $1 Billion Technology Program

I didn't think too much of this at first, but as details of this epic idiocy emerge, it's increasingly difficult to comprehend.

So neat in theory, giving students iPads for their work ---- no doubt many of whom whose families would be unable to afford such devices. By now though, students have hacked the security features to facilitate personal browsing and 71 iPads from the pilot program have been stolen. This could be the biggest taxpayer boondoggle in the history of urban education in the U.S.

See, "71 iPads issued to students have gone missing, LAUSD says," and "LAUSD halts home use of iPads for students after devices hacked."

I found this comment on the policy while trolling the Times' website yesterday:

This iPad project clearly doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. And so far, it's only the slightest scrutiny that's taken place.

But the question now is how can we trust these buffoons who've spent two years developing this plan?  They're committing $1 billion of taxpayers' money for technology that will probably need to be replaced in five years.  Nobody at LAUSD has been able to say what happens at that point.  When these devices need to be upgraded, how will the district pay for that?

In the Phase I iPad rollout, several different forms were sent to parents, the spanish version of which was labeled "incomprehensible" at yesterday's ad hoc committee meeting.  Nobody at LAUSD knew for sure whether parents would assume financial liability for devices beyond Apple's 5% warranty.

What kind of people decide to spend $1 billion while failing to work out even the most basic details of this plan?  If I as a teacher performed my job this amateurishly, how long do you think I'd be allowed to teach?  Supt. Deasy; his bureaucratic henchmen; board members Galatzan, Garcia, and Zimmer, all of whom have publicly backed this deal; and UTLA, which for the umpteenth time has seen fit to stand on the sidelines watching the parade of incompetence pass by - all of them should be held accountable.

We deserve better.

Lobo Gris at 11:58 AM September 26, 2013

More, "Letters: In LAUSD, iPads become toys."

Russian Media Protests Detention of Journalists With Greenpeace Activists

Screw Greenpeace.

At the New York Times, "Russian News Sites Protest Detention of Journalists With Greenpeace Activists":

A Russian court on Thursday ordered that 22 members of the Greenpeace team that protested Arctic drilling by trying to scale a state-run oil rig may spend up to two months in detention in a Murmansk jail, while investigators decide whether to charge them with committing an act of piracy.

Among the activists were two journalists: Kieron Bryan, a British videographer who formerly worked for The Times of London, and Denis Sinyakov, a well-known Moscow-based freelance photographer, whom their colleagues and international organizations say have been jailed for merely doing their jobs. Mr. Sinyakov is a former Reuters photojournalist who has been granted behind-the-scenes access by protest groups including Pussy Riot and Femen.

Reporters Without Borders called on the Russian government to release both photojournalists. And more than a dozen independent Russian media sites responded to the detention of Mr. Sinyakov with a literal blackout: covering all the images on their sites with black squares on Friday as a sign of protest.

More at the link.

But like I said. They're enviro-terrorists. Screw 'em.