The only thing missing from your wrap-up on "balance" and "centrism" as it applies to book reviews was to quote from (for example) the Publisher's Weekly review of Coulter -- assuming there is one -- or any of her ilk.

It would be the absolute clincher for your argument to show that reviews of people like Coulter didn't call her "shrill" and "partisan" (or words to that effect).

Of course, it wouldn't completely destroy your argument if Coulter's reviews (again, for example) were of a similar tone to the ones you quoted. But it would mean that your chosen example (book reviews) was somewhat weak. What if it's simply the truth that all "political" books are treated with that sort of I-didn't-really-read-this cod-seriousness? Never assign to malice what can be explained by incompetence, etc.

I couldn't find -- in an admittedly cursory and non-exhaustive search -- MSM reviews of right-wing screeds that were _not_ similar in tone to PW's of you.

Here's a selection from a random website (notably, I couldn't find any "major" publication's reviews of Coulter):

Unless wildly naïve, Coulter must realize that this shtick is a great asset to her ideological enemies. In her role as a political shock-queen (like Howard Stern in a marketable, pop-tart form), she energizes Democrats and hamstrings Republicans.

Ouch!

I await links to MSM reviews of Coulter that are NOT similar to Glenn's examples, or alternatively (to prove the lesser point) reviews of Glenn that are as cutting and dismissive as the one I produced of Coulter.

"Chinese food" can be divided into roughly five (or eight, if you're really into it) "cuisines" that are as different from each other as Italian is Indian.

Of course, over hundreds of years, there has been a lot of cross-pollination and you sometimes get two different food histories claiming the same (popular) dish, but if you persist in talking about "Chinese food" as some monolithic entity you're really giving away that you know next to nothing about the subject.

The simplest example to illustrate this is to mention that, in China's northeast, when eating genuine local cuisine, I'm almost never served rice. Northeastern cuisine is wheat (and other grain) based. There goes a bunch of assumptions right there.

It's good to see the inauthenticity of "American-Chinese" food challenged, but unfortunate that given such a perfect introduction, the very different multiple authentic Chinese cuisines are not even introduced.

Beware, too, the "I've been to China so I know Chinese cuisine" expert. Unless you ordered, yourself, in Chinese, it is almost certain that the food was sugared up in the kitchen because "that's what foreigners like". Yes, even at "expensive" restaurants. Yes, even when your Chinese business contact was ordering for you.

(Of course, even among urban dwellers, people with enough money and connections are able to get away with having more than one child.)

Of course, you are merely spouting what you've been told so often it must be true, without checking it first.

What could you possibly mean by "get away with"? Unless you secretly bore the child at home, and planned on it never getting a passport, driver's license, bus pass, or attending school, no-one could possibly "get away with" it.

To save you actually being a journalist and doing research, here's what happens if you have a second child in China, as an "urban dweller" (ie. someone with a big-city residence permit or "hukou"):

You'll be fined. And it will be difficult and expensive to get a residence permit for the second child. That's it. No-one goes to jail. Excess children are not separated from parents. No "2nd child detector vans" roam city streets.

The residence permit is what prevents (to take a positive slant on it) enormous Indian-style or African-style or South-American-style slums at the edges of China's large cities. That's because the residence permit is what allows you to attend government schools/hospitals etc.

That's not the same as people being prevented from "freedom of movement". It just that their access to government services outside their "home" area is limited. Not denial, but discouragement. Young 20-30 somethings with university degrees work anywhere they can, and eschew the limited protection of access to public insurance, and buy private cover, or have none.

Now, anyone can have their own opinion on residence permits (the Chinese government realizes the current system doesn't work well and is scrambling for a replacement) and anyone can have their own opinion on reproductive "rights".

But please, if you're writing articles about these issues as they apply to China, a little more rigorous fact-checking could be in order.

>>>>then you're looking at President John McCain for the next four years -- with all of the disasters that brings with it.

>>If that happens, then we deserve it.

Was it de Tocqueville who said that in a democracy the people get the government they deserve?

I'd love to get an authoritative source for that oft-quoted aphorism.

Unlike the supermen heroes penned by some of his contemporaries (Heinlein, Asimov, etc.) Clarke almost always gave us human beings -- flawed, jealous, believable -- interacting in his future landscapes.

Which I think was actually much more important than his "predictive" technologist powers.

I really hope that the "Rendezvous With Rama" film -- due in 2009 -- is a fitting tribute to this titan of science popularization and science fiction.

Clarke was often quoted as saying that one of the things that made him proudest was the number of astronauts and scientists who attributed to him powerful motivation for their lifelong love of science.

Goodbye, Sir Arthur.