If you don't know a breadboard with LEDs from a bomb there is NO HOPE you can understand any new technology.

It is really sad that a place where the east coast version of Silicon Valley once existed, Route 128, is now home to such technical ignorance.

Two strikes.

First the Cartoon Network devices that looked NOTHING LIKE bombs.

Second these LEDs in a star outline that looks NOTHING LIKE a bomb.

One more and they will have to move MIT.

The problem with a statement like "Cunningham used water siphoned directly from the polluted Potomac River" is that it is most likely false. The inclusion of a falsehood in any news story even of an "anecdote" variety casts doubt on the entire story. Misspellings cause the same sort of problem for the reader, if the reporter didn't get the obvious correct what else is wrong in the story.

Siphons can move a liquid uphill but the endpoint of the siphon MUST be lower than the source of the liquid. Unless the hot tub was below the water line of Cunningham's boat a siphon would not work. The news photos of the boat depict a cruiser type craft where the deck is considerably above the water line.

Additionally the word siphon has some negative connotations associated with it that relate to theft. Think about how siphon relates to stories about gasoline and money.

My personal feeling is that the writer used the word siphon to make Cunningham seem sleazier while not knowing how siphons work. This is a "double dose" of bad reporting which is quite harmful to objective journalism.

An editor should have simply removed the word siphon from the sentence. Lord knows the story was putrid enough for me to enjoy until I hit the reference to the unlikely.

It not it is close.

I seem to recall the al-Sadr MPs quiting last month over the quashing of just such a bill. Anyway it looks like it is moving again:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051000387.html?hpid=sec-world

www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=13369

When a tool like Mitch McConnell utters it as a talking point you know the fix is in...

"If you haven't read the amazing 2003 speech by former MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield -- one which Digby unearthed this week and which caused Banfield to be fired -- I highly recommend it. While the speech contain some vital insights about how television news operates, the fact that it led to her firing is, for all the reasons Digby highlights, even more revealing than the speech itself about the state of our media."

This item at the bottom of Glenn Greenwald's April 30th post made my day. She appears to have the elements that could improve the Signal to Noise Ratio of any TV show.

Her speech is a long read but well worth it. The links are below. If nothing else consider these two sentences:

"Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their targeting the market of cable news viewership, that I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news. Cable is for entertainment, as it's turning out, but not news."

digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/truths-consequences-by-digby-since.html

www.mediarelations.k-state.edu/WEB/News/NewsReleases/banfieldtext42403.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashleigh_Banfield

"Look at a map of the world based on satellite photographs taken at night and you will see that light emissions from the United States, in particular the east coast of the country, are far higher than from anywhere else. Most of this light is still produced by antiquated Edison-style incandescents."

Most of the light visible from space is produced by various HID lamps used in outdoor lighting. High-intensity discharge lamps (sodium, mercury vapor and metal halide) at up to 200 lumens/watt are much more efficient than incandescents at around 20 lumens/watt. Fluorescents are around 45-100 lm/W depending on type. Current white LED prototypes are about the same as low pressure HID at 200 lm/W. In terms of efficiency 200 lm/W is only converting 27% of electricity used into visible light. See the table at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighting_efficiency

It would be hard to say if more total lumens are produced by which technology but incandescents are normally used indoors for small spaces like homes. If you want to light a large area it is simply too expensive to do it with incandescents and has been for some time.

3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction.

All of this attention to Cho is PORN!

His multimedia suicide note is PORN!

And it isn't even good porn...

If one honestly looks for a cause to the tragedy at VPI the lion's share would be apportioned to the media. Thirty years ago when I started in journalism we didn't report bomb scares or print suicide notes. By the time I left TV news 10 years ago it was common practice to do both, live if possible.

Mr. Seung-Hui sent a multi-media suicide note to NBC news and it is now being replayed constantly on every possible media worldwide. How many people will die over the next several years at the hands of those imitating his images and thoughts?

There are many ways to kill lots of people and guns don't even come close to the most effective methods for mass murder. The key to preventing this type of needless slaughter is to not make it so appealing to those looking to be "remembered" for their time on earth.

Guns are not going away but responsible media is already gone.

Writers like Mr. Shapiro need to realize that the 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with the tragedy at VPI. Crazy people do crazy things. Unless we as a society are willing to either isolate or care for the crazies this sort of violence will continue.