Thursday, October 09, 2003

Iowa Market Predicts CA Recall. These little markets can be fun.  I have a prototype working, and will be revising it in the future with members of the Ministry, but in the mean time, Brad Delong notes that it did a great job of predicting the CA recall: Actual Iowa Electronic Markets for recall 54.3% 53.5% against recall 45.7% 44.5% Schwarzenegger 46.8% 47.0% Bustamante 32.4% 30.1% 11:54:07 AM     | comment [] | trackback []

Punish the Accuser. I find it astonishing that one of the most widely-read bloggers, InstaPundit, is suggesting that the proper reaction to the Plame Affair, and subsequent requests for a criminal investigation of the Adminstration, is to fire George Tenet.  Reynolds doesn't think we should find and prosecute the person who leaked the information; he thinks we should fire Tenet for having the temerity to challenge the administration.  And if I read one more right wing idiot write that, "it just doesn't make sense -- there's no point in outing Plame because the damage was already done"...it is phenomenal that you simply cannot comprehend the notion of a chilling effect.  Are we more or less likely after the Plame incident to have anyone with information detrimental to the Administration be somewhat less receptive to coming forward?  The chilling effect is widespread. Much Administration policy has been based on their interpretation of intelligence information.  They have characterized that intelligence and paraphrased it for the public.  If they have been playing politics with that information that is an extraordinary offense, and something that the public must know.  Punishing Plame and Wilson slams the door shut on the possibility of discovering if the intelligence was something other than what Bush says it is. Before the war the Administration encouraged, strongly, the idea that there was classified information that they had in their possession, by which they knew that WMD were present in Iraq.  That was entirely logical; you wouldn't want to reveal your sources and methods.  Most liberals who were in favor of the war were willing to buy this -- they were willing to believe the Administration on this. So if they politicized, altered, spun the information...we have to know.  Free flow of information is how democracies operate best. 11:47:12 AM     | comment [] | trackback []

Piccolo Clock Action. This is something I played with this evening.  Note that if you are running IE and you haven't installed the Java 2 stuff, you'll need that...this uses the default APPLET tag, only the recent Javas support that on Windows.  Go to JavaSoft and pull the latest runtime and you'll be set. Ain't it cool? Check out Piccolo! 1:27:48 AM     | comment [] | trackback []