Aceh Print

I love this column in HuffPost by Peggy Drexler: The High Cost of Low Information . With so much information out there, sometimes it's easier to stick with the sources we're comfortable with. How do we fight the lethargy? The From the Editors column in the latest AARP Bulletin ( You Be the Reporter ) encourages voters to get informed. Among the tips: 2. Differentiate among news, opinion and advertising. As Stony Brook professor Jim Klurfeld says, “Evaluate sources. Evaluate sources. Evaluate sources.” There’s a difference, for example, among the Congressional Budget Office, the Heritage Foundation, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. 3. Be aggressive. Being a good news consumer today is hard work. On the Internet, rank and popularity of a story do not necessarily mean reliability. This is hard work, even for professional journalists. But our future depends on it.

New video game lets players kill Woodward and Bernstein . Is this part of the anti-media conspiracy, or what? In New Yorker. Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines . From the Online Education Database. Have heard of only a few of these.... 15 journalists' outstanding personal sites , from 10,000 Words. Not one here I'd seen before. Good stuff. 10,000 Words . Hadn't seen this before, but it's "Where journalism and technology meet". Looks useful, with guides to online tools, shooting video, recording audio, lots more. Including one explaining that text is the foundation of journalism: ...good text will always be the foundation of any website, news or otherwise. Text is what pulls in search engines and, in turn, visitors. If they don't like what they are reading, whether it be a story, blog post, or caption, they won't return. On that note, over at Web 2...Oh really , from Craig Stoltz: five lessons from a year of blogging . Last recommendation: Write short and u...

When things aren't going well, Americans need to find a bogeyman to blame it on. The 'communists' were an easy target in the 1950s and 1960s, with a real menacing country to blame. After the end of the Cold War, things got murky. There were always hippies and left-wingers, race baiters and internationalists. Lately, though, the focus on 'Liberals' has been becoming toxic. All someone has to do is suggest Obama has a liberal, left-wing record and it becomes exaggerated to 'extreme left-wing, socialist'. The 'greens' are responsible for gas prices because they've destroyed America's ability to extract all the oil we want. 'Liberal' has become an offensive political charge. How in the world did this happen? The fruit of this hatred: the man who went into a church in Knoxville yesterday firing a shotgun, killing two and wounding seven more. Why? The police reported this morning it was 'hatred of the liberal movement'. (Knox Views...

I've been out of town and hoped to update the blog during my trip but didn't see anything to blog anyway. I've been avoiding politics and there hasn't been much research news, but now that the political season is heating up even more, I expect it's time to start doing some politics links here. Watch for those. Some things I've noticed, though: In some really bad news, Genie Tyburski has announced she's shutting down The Virtual Chase . The website and weekly newsletter are incredibly helpful for legal researchers as well as news researchers, and it will be missed. Tyburski will keep the website open for several months, but is willing to hand it over to another legal librarian/researcher. Any takers? New from Google, a website/blog/wiki blend called Knol (for unit of knowledge). This site makes it easy for writers to post long articles on subjects they have expertise in. So far the articles have a heavy medical lean, such as this excellent guide to Type 2...

For lovers (and seekers) of statistics, Shirl Kennedy has put together a nice list at Resourceshelf of Niche Statistics . Among the unusual stats collected here, links to lots of the Department of Defense's personnel stats, a great resource that isn't easily found by searching (and plagued by occasional URL changes). But I'm most impressed by the great list of sports business statistics posted by an Econ professor at U.Mich: Sports Business Data . Directories of this sort of thing have come and gone over the years and sometimes the only things you can find are pay services, so this should be really welcome to any researcher needing sports data. Also linked on Resourceshelf today, the National Archives' collection of historical documents being shared with the new World Digital Library . Included, images of the Declaration, Constitution, and other major docs, as well as photographs by great American photographers like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange....and, well, Nixon mee...

Ocean Conservancy Releases Report On Reef Management: How Florida and National Park Service Marine Reserve Policies Undermine Efforts to Protect Coral Reef Ecosystems . Turns out that Biscayne National Park is in worse shape now than it was when it was created in 1980. FWC and NPS have taken no action to fulfill their obligations to protect coral reef ecosystems in Biscayne National Park since they began reviewing their management plans in 2002. "Biscayne National Park once had some of the most spectacular coral reefs in Florida. The native communities they support desperately need our immediate action"... During our years boating and snorkeling southern Biscayne Bay and the offshore reefs, we watched this happening. By the time we left Florida, it wasn't fun to look at the ruined reefs any more, here or in the Keys. And this: NOAA Report States Half of U.S. Coral Reefs In "Poor" or "Fair" Condition . So sad. And, from Public Employees for Environment...

That's what this MSNBC report calls librarians, specifically librarian (and former newspaper reporter) Carol Kreck, who was ticketed for holding a "McCain=Bush" sign outside a town hall meeting. ProgressNow has the video , plus an appeal for Kreck's defense fund. ( Updated: ) but wait! the wingers have found out that, yes, she is a former reporter! and may be connected to Progress Now! So obviously she's a bad person and deserves whatever she gets (one commenter here wondered why she wasn't tased). Arghhh. More bad press for the McCain campaign: MojoBlog's shocked reaction to McCain's calling Social Security a 'disgrace'. This is not the first time that McCain has hinted that he will follow in Bush's Social-Security-dismantling footsteps. More here and here (McCain's Ignorance about Social Security Is the Real "Disgrace") .