Much ado was made last week over the fact that for the first time in four years, the Walkman outsold the iPod in Japan for that one week’s sales. The only real reason to make note of such a thing is either (a) to report that Walkman is overtaking Apple as the leader in the DAP market in Japan, or (b) report the facts in context.

Unfortunately, many media outlets reported the false story (a) and glossed over or completely ignored the relevant context (b). For example, the stories in Consumer Affairs and The Post Chronicle both fail to mention that iPhone sales are not included in the count. Other stories, like those in Engadget and CNet note that the iPhone is not counted and even that Apple was planning on releasing new iPods soon–but they still did not seem to take note of the central fact explaining the numbers.

The general consensus was that Sony is nipping at Apple’s heels and is giving them a run for their money–one story even said that the Walkman was “striding past” the iPod. This because for one week, the Walkman sold 43% of DAP units and Apple sold 42.1%.

None of the non-Mac-oriented sites I found covering the story provided the full context: that for the week reported, Apple was clearing the distribution channels of iPods; new units were not being stocked, and consumers were well aware that within a week or two, they could get better models for the same or even a cheaper price. Well, of course Apple’s sales dipped. Duh.

Proof of this come with the new week’s sales figures: Sony’s sales fell to 32.1%, and Apple’s sales rose to 58%.

So much for striding.

Now, several weeks ago, there was a similar effect in the other direction: Apple was lauded for taking the #1 spot for cell phone sales in Japan. Apple fans expressed approval for this point, but also noted caution–it was the week after the iPhone 3GS was released, so figures were bound to be higher than normal. And sure enough, in following weeks, the iPhone ranking slipped.

However, ironically, in the week where the iPod Nano and Touch made the big news, the iPhone also climbed back up. During August, Apple took 3 of the top 20 spots in cell phone sales, with the 32GB 3GS topping Apple’s showings in the #7 spot. This week? The 32GB 3GS is #1 again, with the 16GB at #7 and the 8GB 3G at #14. Sony had phones at the #5 and #15 positions, as well as many spots down the list. And Apple may gain even more as the last of the 2-year contracts end and more people are free to switch to the iPhone. (That’s what one of the people in my office is doing–waiting to join the other six of us who have the iPhone already. And no, I wasn’t responsible for any of the purchases. For a change.)

This in a country where Sony and other domestic brands are supposed to have an overwhelming advantage, and where the public supposedly “hates” the iPhone.

TPM reports on how government should work: when law enforcement raids a suspected terrorist threat, they keep it quiet, waiting until they know what’s going on to release any details. Reasonable from many standpoints, including the all-important security perspective.

This was not the case under Bush. Every arrest, no matter how stupid and harmless the perps, was heralded by a huge media blitz and paraded by the administration as a security coup for political reasons, a few times even at the expense of actual security. It sometimes took only a few days to realize that they had arrested complete losers and bozos, or that the plot was unworkable or futile, but by then the public had been appropriately frightened into supporting more of Bush’s policies, and the media was less interested in detailing how the “terrorists” were nothing of the sort.

Funny how that hasn’t happened even once in the past eight months. Wonder what changed.

Over the summer, Sachi and I have again been subjected to neighbors smoking. With reasonable temperatures out there, we like to leave the balcony window open and get some fresh air into the apartment. The problem is, the wind comes in from the north, and the neighbor immediately to our north frequently comes out onto his balcony to smoke. Closing our balcony door when he starts is no solution; by then, the stink has permeated our apartment, and it’s too late. We’d ask him to stop, but we’re pretty sure that he wouldn’t.

And when you think about it, what he’s doing is kind of asinine. The reason he goes out onto his balcony to smoke is so he does not stink up his apartment. So instead, he stinks up ours. How nice.

Yes, there was a frenzied right-wing political war waged against Clinton–but against Clinton, the right wing had actual (if flimsy) legal grounds on which to attack him (Whitewater, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, etc.). And though there were outrageous conspiracy theories, they were believed only by a few people on the fringe; you had to look pretty deeply into the crazies before you found people who actually believed that Clinton ordered the killings of 48 people.

Yes, there was a frenzied left-wing political war waged against Bush–but against Bush, the left wing had actual (and not at all flimsy) legal grounds on which to attack him (violating the 4th Amendment, ordering torture, lying to start an illegal war, and so on). And though there were outrageous conspiracy theories, they were believed only by a few people on the fringe; you had to look pretty deeply into the crazies before you found people who actually believed that Bush was behind 9/11.

The frenzied right-wing political war against Obama is something completely new. There is no legal justification, as Obama has broken no laws and suffered no scandals; there is simply nothing there. He has only been in office less than one year, and has not had time to do anything worth protesting against–his stimulus bill spent less money than Bush blindly handed over to the banks in his last year in office, and Obama’s health care plan has none of the fearsome attributes that the right wing is lividly bellowing about. And as for the conspiracy theories, they exceed the worst ever applied against Clinton and Bush combined–that Obama is secretly building concentration camps and aims to slaughter millions of elderly people, for example–these are believed by a significant number of conservatives, numbering in the millions, probably double-digit percentages of the party membership. Add to that the fact that there is now a popular news network, unashamedly biased and willing to spread outrageous lies, dedicated to taking down this president.

With the theory about Bush and 9/11, at the very least there was a sensical motivation for Bush fueling the conspiracy–Bush benefited hugely from 9/11, shooting his approval ratings through the roof and giving him carte blanche to push through his political agenda. To believe that Obama wants to kill off seniors to save money or that he’s building concentration camps to imprison and slaughter his political opponents is, to put it lightly, a tad less believable.

No, The Crazy is out in force, and the attacks against Obama are without precedent. We’ve entered a new political age: furious, crazed, out-of-control opposition, based on little more than sheer hatred. There is a significantly-sized group of white people out there who feel entitled to power and control and became used to having that over the past eight years; people who believe that they are the victims of the very racial discrimination and religious persecution that they themselves commit. Now they have lost that power, but worse, they have lost it to a black man leading the liberal party which they have come to despise. This is something new.

While IE8 is still languishing in the backwaters of browser incompatibility (scoring dead last with the Acid3 test and being the slowest browser out there), Apple is forging ahead with the future of browsing without Microsoft’s permission. Already Safari has all kinds of special CSS animations, but 3D animations are on their way via the WebGL project. Watch what’s possible, keeping in mind that these are not video files but actual 3D rendering performed by Safari’s WebKit:

This is leading up to 3-D gaming directly in your browser.

Seriously, how? I cannot understand anyone who is not.

The core of the Republican Party has become a group of children who just make up anything that they want and then angrily insist it’s true.

They have become a party of deluded conspiracy theorists. Whereas it was once a fringe thing to believe in stuff like Bush planned 9/11, where you would be lucky to find a fraction of a percent who believed such stuff, now sizable numbers of people in the Republican Party instantly believe every wild-eyed, fantastical accusation made by any right-wing pundit and politician, no matter how absurd or impossible.

All that is needed is for one pol or pundit to say something, like Joe Wilson shouting “You lie!” about Obama’s debunking of the illegal immigrant lie, and suddenly hordes of conservatives jump on board with him, echoing his words, making his erroneous and asinine outburst their new gospel. All Sarah Palin has to do is write about “Death Panels” on her Facebook page, and instantly millions of these birther-truther-tenther fanatics know it is god’s own truth.

60,000 to 70,000 of them show up for a march on Washington D.C., and suddenly it’s 2 million people and any other claim is a conspiracy to downplay their ability to mobilize the faithful.

Meet the new GOP: a party of six-year-olds, except without the social graces, mathematical abilities, or critical-thinking skills usually inherent in such a group.

I just added Twitter to my blog. Too bad my handle, “Blogd,” was already taken (a Spanish-language Twitter), so Blogd1 will have to do. I’m going to reserve it for (a) stuff that’s happening that I want to share with friends and family, and (b) quick thoughts that might not be enough for a blog post. The feed will show up at right, and you can follow the header link to the main Twitter page.

Next, I’ll have to figure out how to use Facebook better.

Update: Turns out that you can install Twitter as an “application” on Facebook–now any tweet I send will post to Facebook automatically, though it won’t include photos directly (just by the Twitter Photo link). Still, that’ll save some time, and allow me to be active on both.

Someone found a fish off the British Jersey coast which sported a particularly nasty parasite. The parasite enters through the fish’s gills and latches on to the base of the tongue, living off the fish’s blood and mucus. The tongue eventually atrophies and falls off, and the parasite takes the place of the fish’s tongue. The parasite is like something out of an Alien movie, looking like a cross between the worst parts of an insect and a prawn, complete with more claw/legs than any creature should have.

For a completely disgusting gross-out picture of the parasite residing in a fish’s mouth, click through to this link. Via Pharyngula.

It’s time for Aki Matsuri, or Fall Festivals in Japan. I have noticed the lanterns going up around shrines, and this afternoon a couple of omikoshi (portable shrines) were carried along the streets by a few groups of kids with their families and community volunteers. I can still hear the double whistle-blows coming from a distance as the groups continue to cover the neighborhood streets. Think of it as kind of a Japanese version of street caroling.

For a taste of Japanese street revelry, play the sound file (hopefully you can see it) while checking out the photos I took from the 21st floor as they passed by on the street below.

Joe Wilson made a stir this week when he shouted “You lie!” at President Obama during an address to Congress. He shouted the (false) accusation when Obama made the (correct) statement that the health care plan he seeks does not provide coverage for illegal aliens.

So, what is ironic? Six years ago, Wilson voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (PDF). In that bill, Title X, Subtitle B, Section 1011 allows for “reimbursement of emergency health services furnished to undocumented aliens.”

In other words, Wilson voted for having taxpayer dollars pay for health care for illegal immigrants.

Oops.

Harlan Drake

James Pouillon (Flint Journal photo)

In Michigan, an anti-abortion activist was shot and killed by a man who reportedly took issue with his protests (see the details below). While not completely analogous with incidents like the shooting of George Tiller, it is just as wrong, just as much an act of evil, and should not in any way, shape, or form be condoned–nor should it be ignored by the pro-choice crowd, allowed to pass without actively condemning this or any other act of violence on grounds even approaching those of belief, or action related to belief–political, religious, or otherwise.

That said, it should also be noted that this is most likely not even close to equalling or canceling out violence encouraged and committed by the pro-life extremists. Already, Randall Terry has jumped in front of the microphones and declared, “May God grant him a Martyr’s Crown,” referring to the slain anti-abortion activist, promising to speak more on this at length; one can expect him to get as much mileage out of this as he possibly can. But even at this early time, it is pretty clear that what happened here is very different from the Tiller case.

First of all, the shooting was not isolated; the killer, one Harlan Drake, a truck driver from Owosso, Michigan, shot two people and planned on shooting a third. After killing James Pouillon, an man who long protested against abortion by carrying graphic signs showing dead fetuses, Drake went on to shoot Mike Fuoss, a gravel pit owner who reportedly had employed Drake’s father at one time. After being captured, Drake confessed that he planned to kill a third man, James Howe, a local realtor who had dealings with Drake’s mother. It appears that Drake, far from being on an ideological crusade, simply had personal grudges against all three men. In the case of Pouillon, it might not even have been about abortion per se; early reports have Drake saying that “he didn’t like the graphic nature of the activist’s sign, saying an image of fetus shouldn’t be around students.” Pouillon often carried his signs around local schools, as well as other locations, and reportedly upset and annoyed a great many people with his “aggressive tactics,” often having things thrown at him from cars.

It is not even known what Drake’s politics are. Reader comments on news stories and in political forums are filled with right-wingers salivating at the prospect of discovering Drake to be a “registered Democrat” (a label they take glee in applying to every criminal suspect ever named), an “Obama volunteer,” and a “liberal activist.” An early look at the case, however, does not seem to indicate any real political connections; unlike Tiller’s shooter Scott Roeder, Drake was not known as an activist in the abortion debate, and the two other planned shootings had nothing to do with the issue, either. It would appear that Drake might just as easily have shot a homeless man or Jehovah’s Witness whose actions he didn’t like instead of Pouillon.

Second, and more relevant on a larger scale, Drake did not carry out his actions in an atmosphere of widespread extremist incitement and provocation by a vocal activist community. Pouillon had not been singled out and vilified by high-profile pundits and activists who called him a Nazi, a killer, and worse; there were no calls for “something to be done,” no publicizing of Pouillon’s home or work address. In short, not a single person, to the best of my knowledge, made any statement of any kind which might have goaded Drake into killing Pouillon.

Nor was this one in a string of killings, nor was it any way a part of a larger campaign to terrorize anti-abortion activists, despite Randall Terry’s attempts to play the victim in exactly this manner, as if this were only the latest in a string of murders of anti-abortion activists at the hands of rabid pro-choicers. (How quickly right-wingers love to “turn the tables” and at the first provocation claim to be victims of the very wrongs they take pride in committing.)

All of these mean nothing in the immediate tragedy of Pouillon’s and Fuoss’ murders, which in themselves are part of a horrible wrong at the personal and local level; I would not think of taking away anything from that. However, at the level of national discourse, where one can fully expect pro-lifers to take full political advantage of this crime, these facts are highly significant and must be discussed, lest they be distorted and used to justify or excuse what is quite frankly a large and highly organized terrorist campaign.

For someone like Randall Terry, who praised and even lionized the politically-motivated murderer Scott Roeder, to use this incident to play up his own terrorist plans, is obscene beyond imagination.

Even if, against all early appearances, Drake was politically active on the left, even if he was involved in the pro-choice movement, even if the murder of Pouillon was his primary goal and the other planned killings incidental, and even it the shootings were intended to cow the pro-life movement–again, contrary to all initial appearances–even if all of those were true, this would still not be in any way exculpatory in reference to the decades-long pro-life campaign of violence against abortion doctors and workers, nor would it come in any way close to equalling what the pro-life movement has been guilty of, nor would it be anything that the pro-life community could use to ignore, excuse, or otherwise play down the egregious crusade of brutality they so desperately wish to legitimize.

Apple is developing a rather involved set of CSS attributes which allow for some pretty nifty effects on web pages with pretty minimal coding. One that I found out about a while ago was rounded corners for table borders (Firefox has its own version of this, as it has for many of the effects; I do not know nor care what IE8 has).

But recently, a lot more has been added, including some pretty nice animation effects. You have to be using Safari to see them, but they’re pretty nifty. Chrome recognizes them as well (at least on the Mac), though the animation is less smooth on that browser. The ones I’ve been playing with allow for slow movement along a path, spinning, and fading in and out–as well as combinations of any of those. You can even define how they work–if they start or end fast or slow and stuff like that.

To see what I’m talking about, go to my home page and hover the cursor over the table headings, as well as the “Bb” (“Blackboard”) logo on the right. And for a little bonus, see if you can find the tiny little speck between the 2nd and 3rd table columns–just to the left of the Doonesbury link. If you can manage to hover the cursor over that, you’ll see a little homage to a 60’s TV show.

It seems like there is a bunch of these new effects lurking like Easter eggs, waiting for you to stumble over them; sometime I’ll have to see about finding a master list of these somewhere, I’m sure such a thing must exist.

Among the new CSS facts I learned: one can identify more than one CSS class within the quotes after a single style attribute–just separate them with spaces.

If you know CSS basics and want to learn these, then visit here and here.

Great to see Obama calling out the Death Panels, Illegal Alien insurance, and government-funded abortions as lies. Not just “misrepresentations” or “distortions,” but flat-out lies.

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

It badly needed to be said at exactly so prominent a venue.

And I love the “prominent politicians” reference. Bite it, Palin. If only the media would have half the guts to hold her and anyone else who spreads this lie to the facts, not giving them any slack until they admitted that it was false.

Amazing. One can fully expect Republicans to attack Obama in the most hideous terms possible, but to disrespect the office of the president at an event of the highest order in our government? A Republican actually had the gall to heckle the president during an address to Congress. Representative Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) actually shouted “You Lie!” during Obama’s address, when Obama called out the lie that the bill before Congress would not grant health care to illegal immigrants.

In case you were wondering, it was Wilson who lied; Obama was 100% correct. In fact, the bill not only does not give illegal aliens health care, it specifically forbids exactly that.

Yes, I know this is humdrum stuff in countries like the U.K., but in the U.S., it violates protocol to an aggressive degree. It was bad enough that Congressmen sported signs on their laps in protest of what the president said, but the shouting during the speech went far beyond the acceptable grumbling or even booing we’ve had in the past. As outrageous as right-wing activity has been at late, from high-level politicians fabricating outright lies to protesters shouting down disabled people and bringing assault rifles to town hall meetings and bearing presidential death threats–this behavior by Congressional Republicans goes even further, considering the sacrosanct nature of the event and the venue itself. One can only wonder to what they will sink to next.

John McCain at least had the decency to call out Wilson, demanding that he apologize; however, McCain (who hurled far worse epithets at Obama on the campaign trail) nor any other Republican gets an ounce of credit for such criticism–indeed, any Republican who doesn’t take a dim view of what Wilson did deserves criticism themselves. After all, take into consideration how they would have reacted had a Democrat shouted that to Bush, even if it was fully and richly deserved.

If Republicans want to set a proper tone, then they themselves will call for a vote of censure against Wilson. I doubt, however, that they have that much class.

Update: After a great deal of pressure, Wilson apologized, claiming that he let his “emotions get the best of” him. Andrew Sullivan (amongst many others) points out that even in the British Parliamentary system, where shouting during a PM’s address is common, saying “You lie!” is not allowed, and could result in suspension. Back in the U.S., the right wing blogosphere is hailing Wilson as a hero, maintaining the falsehood (confirmed as false by Factcheck.org) that illegal aliens will be covered at taxpayer expense. On the other side of the aisle, Rob Miller, Wilson’s Democratic opponent, raised $200,000 overnight (average donation: $40); Wilson beat Miller in the last election by the smallest margin in the district in 20 years, and could lose his seat next year over this. And Wilson wasn’t the only Republican showing disrespect; in addition to the lap-signage mentioned above, Republican John Shimkus walked out on the speech just before it ended.

Paul Cox has a very good, easy-to-read post on the Public Option and why it’s a great idea.

The Public Option:

• saves money by not advertising like private insurers do;
• saves money by not having as high administrative costs as private insurers do;
• saves money by not taking profits like private insurers do;
• passes these savings directly on to you, the consumer;
• and finally, the obvious: it’s an option, you can ignore it if you like.

And this is really what shows up the non-thinkers who oppose socialized medicine: they recoil from such plans solely because of fears that are not only false but are laughably so, fears of socialized medicine leading to a socialist government (which is kind of like fearing that community centers will lead to communism) and because they have this deluded idea pounded into their heads by the right wing that the government screws up everything it touches. Because Social Security, Medicare, the Interstate Highway System, the Space Program, and all those other government programs were such huge failures. The major failures in government come primarily when the right-wingers get their hands on an organization, pilfer its resources, riddle it with corruption, and appoint agency leaders who are proactively opposed to the agencies’ principles.

What amazes me is that all of these people who oppose the Public Option seem so afraid that a dollar will be added to their taxes that they’re willing to shell out five dollars to private industry instead. By eliminating the Public Option, they are essentially saying that they want to pay for advertising for insurers, they would rather pay extra for less-efficient private administrative costs, that they think it’s somehow cheaper for them to add large sums of money to their premiums that will pay for nothing except profits to shareholders or bonuses to executives.

The best thing about the Public Option–one of the main ideas behind it–is that it stands to slash health care costs so much that private insurers will be forced to streamline their administrative systems to become more efficient, cut their profit margins to reasonable levels, and fight to find ways to save money for their customers. How evil!

And then there’s the “fear” that the Public Option will be so cheap that private insurers won’t be able to compete, and they’ll fail. Then all we’ll have left is that evil Public Option!

One can only hope.

Look at this vile, evil statement made to schoolchildren by the President of the United States:

“Let me know how you’re doing. Write me a letter — and I’m serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address.”

Ack!! Not only is he indoctrinating children to achieve his political agenda, but he’s collecting their addresses as well for an enemies list!! Death squads will be sent to their homes to murder their grandmas!!! Nazi socialist PIG!!!

Oh, wait. That quote was from President Bush (41) talking to school kids in 1991. Completely different case. Never mind.

It’s a common enough theme. The Pope is doing it now, blaming atheists for the world’s environmental problems:

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

So, people are ruining the Earth because the don’t believe in god, which naturally means they will become materialistic and in so doing destroy the environment. Said the leader of a small city-state famous for accumulating massive amounts of wealth.

Even if you ignore the irony of the Pope blaming others for being materialistic (do you have any idea how much good could be done if the Vatican sold off its assets and used it to help people?), you are still left with the highly questionable chain of logic which claims that atheism causes “egoistic possession” which in turn leads to the environment being destroyed.

Over the years, I have encountered several conservative Christians who argued against environmental causes, pointing to scripture as the reason: “fill the earth and subdue it,” said god to man. I have encountered several religious people who see this as free license to cut down the forests, exterminate species, decimate fish stocks, deplete resources: god gave these to us to do with as we please. Many see the physical Earth as something that will be used up when Armageddon comes, so not to worry. Not all, of course, but the people who deny that there’s anything wrong, or the people who say that nothing needs to be done, happen most often to be the faithful.

Atheists, on the other hand, tend to be environmentally aware; Daniel Florien points out that he cannot recall meeting an atheist who was not in favor of protecting the environment, and I have to admit to a similar impression. Hardly all non-believers are activists in this, but the tendency is toward recognition of scientific findings and a sense of responsibility. Since non-believers don’t see a land of milk and honey after this one, they tend to be more focused on keeping the world we have in better shape.

The thing is, what the Pope is now saying about non-believers has all too familiar a ring to it; where religion screws up, they quickly turn and accuse atheism of worse. Ask a religious person about the horrors of war caused by belief, and they will quickly bring up Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, claiming that their atheism was responsible for more deaths than all religious atrocities put together. Of course, it does not even matter that Hitler was not an atheist or that Stalin and Mao were; the important fact is that atheist beliefs did not lead to the deaths they caused, and therefore their beliefs were irrelevant. One might as well blame all of those deaths on the Eastern hemisphere, or tight collars. When religion is blamed for violence, it is the direct result of religious dogma causing that violence. The Crusades and the Inquisitions were excellent examples of this, albeit just a few of the countless historical slaughters carried out in the name of religion, spurred on by religious beliefs and animosities. When Stalin killed, he did not do so in the name of atheism, nor did he act that way because of any atheist precept or line of reasoning. None of that, of course, stops religious people from bringing up Stalin, Hitler, and Mao when the question is not even one of comparing belief systems, but of defending their own.

All of this stems from a feeling of righteousness–not earned, not reasoned, but simply bestowed–or so they imagine. Of being the chosen ones, and everyone else goes to hell. It’s not just that they feel they’re right, they feel that their being right is the only possible way that there is. That all good things come from god, and that if you don’t embrace god like they do, then these things are not possible for you. And they don’t seem to understand how offensive this is to others. They instead simply see wrongness elsewhere, and cast the blame in that direction.

Take environmental issues: one huge element of this is overpopulation, a great deal of which comes from Catholicism itself and its insistence that contraception cannot be used. Even if the Pope never rescinds this, if he were at least able to recognize it as part of what causes environmental problems, it would at least add credence to his views. But instead he dwells on imagined evil by people he does not at all understand, people who believe differently from him, and therefore can not be good. Rather than at least look dispassionately at the real causes, he instead takes the opportunity to apply his bias and blame those who disagree with him on the flimsiest of logical threads.

Somehow I don’t see Norm Coleman doing things this well. Just explaining the facts. Granted, the Tea Party people there are listening respectfully while disagreeing–a refreshing sight after seeing so many examples of people shouting down any opposing voice.

A good editorial on the Obama school speech, from Texas no less.

There is a rather significant danger in believing what you read without questioning it. I don’t know how many times I have encountered people who forwarded “facts” which were patently untrue. One over-the-top example we see today is the “Death Panel” claim, one of many claims made by the same crowd (Obama is creating death camps, Obama wants to indoctrinate kids with socialist propaganda, etc.) which millions of Americans are lapping up and believing without any question. Not that it doesn’t happen on both sides, of course, but currently the right wing is winning the prizes for volume and depth.

Most of the time, such things are far more subtle. We have a certain point of view which we feel strongly about. When we hear or read something that contradicts this, we will tend to dismiss such reporting out of hand, often without bothering to find out if it’s true. When we encounter something which supports what we want to believe, we will likely accept it without question. Goodness knows I’ve certainly been guilty of both in the past, and probably will be in the future, though I do try to avoid it if I can (being aware that it’s possible is the first step).

For example, take a report today from Talking Points Memo blog. Josh Marshall is on about a Republican gubernatorial candidate, and makes the following statements over several blog posts:

In 2002 he struck a motorcyclist while driving in the wrong direction on a one way street.

NJ Gov. candidate Chris Christie, when asked for comment about the 2002 accident in which he hit a motorcyclist while driving the wrong way on a one way street.

…NJ gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie hit a motorcyclist while traveling on a one-way street, but was not ticketed.

Reading this, one imagines the man driving his car and striking a motorcyclist head-on, likely causing serious injury, making the fact that he was not ticketed seem outrageous. I was set to be all indignant and stuff, maybe to pick this up for my own blog and show up another Republican for what he is. But I followed the links and read what was quoted directly from the police report:

Christie was driving a rented BMW sedan and apparently had lost his way when he attempted to turn right onto a street that was one-way in the other direction, according to the police report. A motorcyclist, Andre Mendonca of Elizabeth, was riding towards Christie, and both men saw one another and put on the brakes, police said. Christie’s vehicle came to a stop, and the motorcycle then “fell on its side and slid into his vehicle,” according to the police report.

While Marshall’s repeated use of words like “hit” and “struck” and “collision” could perhaps be considered technically true, they are just as misleading as Christie’s own statement that “the motorcycle hit me.” When you read that someone driving the wrong way down a one-way street “hit” a motorcyclist, it gives the impression of something quite different than what the police report expressed. Christie did do something worthy of criticism–he went the wrong way down a one-way street, caused an accident, and was not even ticketed–but it is not nearly as bad as the cursory reports on TPM make it sound. Describing the incident as “causing an accident” would be a more accurate way to report it–but if I just believed the report on TPM and reprinted that, I’d be opening myself up for a rebuttal attack that would make me look bad.

Speaking of police reports, the recent case of Henry Louis Gates Jr. is another excellent example of believing what you read. I accepted the officer’s report about what the 911 caller said–and that was a big mistake. Turns out the officer made stuff up in his report, making the caller seem like a racist when it was far more likely that any bias came from the officer himself. Sometimes you can find yourself believing stuff from sources you disagree with, when the matter is aside from central issue or facts you are contending. We believe a lot of stuff on faith even when we don’t want to believe it, like that Democrats are tax-and-spenders while Republicans are good for the economy, or that liberal protesters spat on Vietnam vets on the airport tarmac as they returned home.

Another example of believing what you want to believe from a different venue: here in Japan, a guy named David Aldwinckle, who became a naturalized Japanese citizen, is an activist for foreigner’s rights in Japan. He goes after the big and the small, fighting discrimination and corruption, and has made a bit of a name for himself in the gaijin community here. Recently, he blogged about receiving a message from a guy who claimed that his father, a 74-year-old American tourist, was arrested for possessing a pocket knife when he went to a police box and asked for directions. The story was one of those outrageous ones that are so often true about Japanese police officers treating non-Japanese improperly. The problem was, Aldwinckle was reporting it as fact, when all he had was an unsubstantiated report from a reader whom he apparently did not know at all. At the time of reporting, he clearly had not corroborated the story.

When a reader asked that caution be exercised before accepting the story as fully true, and asked for corroboration and/or the other side of the story, Aldwinckle treated it with disdain, and when the Japan Times, a full month later, did corroborate the story, Aldwinckle made another post announcing “SITYS” (See, I Told You So), calling for the “nasty” people who doubted the story to “capitulate.” The thing is, while his initial belief was eventually upheld, he was still dead wrong to simply believe it without supporting evidence; he could just as easily have been made a fool of.

You’ll probably find no end to examples of this kind of thing when you sit back and really think about it–times when people you oppose and people you admire have done it, and when you have done it as well. Sometimes it’s egregious, and sometimes it’s minor and subtle.

The broad lesson, however, is very clear: don’t believe everything you read, especially if it is what you want to hear. Find the sources, get to the original facts, and learn as much as you can before you accept something and present it to others in your own arguments.