The green stripe at the top of Iran’s flag has been removed when the flag was displayed at recent official ceremonies. This totalitarian state is now willing to desecrate its national symbol to avoid displaying the color of the green wave revolution.

Ruling in fear is not ruling.

From the link:

Radio Free Europe reports:

[I]n at least two official ceremonies in recent days, images of that flag have been used where the green color has been replaced by blue. The move has led to speculation that the Iranian government is trying to get rid of the green in the Iranian flag because it’s a symbol of the opposition movement that has been challenging the disputed reelection of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

… the government is helping kill commercial news media. It couldn’t possibly be years of stagnant practices and an unwillingness to meet the digital era head on when it had the chance years ago. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to add most commercial news media outlets enjoyed, then expected, unsustainable profit margins and had issues facing that reality as well.

The release:

Financial crisis in news: Government financial support of news media continues steep decline

WASHINGTON, January 28, 2010 — Government financial support that has bolstered this country’s commercial news business since its colonial days is in sharp decline and is likely to fall further, according to a report released today by the University of Southern California’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Because these cutbacks are occurring at the height of the digital revolution, they will have an especially powerful impact on a weakened news industry.

Public Policy and Funding the News is a unique effort to begin examining how involved the government, at all levels, has been in subsidizing news throughout American history to foster an informed citizenry; and what this support has meant for publishers, journalists and news consumers. The report analyzes some of the financial tools that government has used to support the press over the years — from postal rate discounts and tax breaks to public notices and government advertising. The report documents cutbacks across a range of sectors and presents a framework for the consideration of policy options to place the industry on more secure financial footing.

“It is a common myth that the commercial press in the United States is independent of governmental funding support,” says Geoffrey Cowan who co-authored the report and is USC Annenberg School dean emeritus and director of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP). “There has never been a time in U.S. history when government dollars were not helping to undergird the news business to ensure that healthy journalism is sustained across the country.”

“Certainly, the U.S. has never supported news-gathering the way some European and Asian countries have,” said David Westphal, report co-author, former Washington Editor for McClatchy, current CCLP senior fellow and USC Annenberg executive-in-residence. “The point here is that it’s time all of us, outside and inside the industry, realize that tax dollars support the American news business, and those dollars, which throughout our history have been critical in keeping the news media alive, are now shrinking quickly.”

The late 1960s marked a high-water mark of government support for the news business. The postal service was subsidizing about 75% of the mailing costs for newspapers and magazines, roughly $2 billion in today’s dollars. Today, however, publishers’ mailing discounts for their printed news products are down to 11% or $288 million.

Paid public notices, government-required announcements that give citizens information about important activities, have also been lucrative for newspaper publishers, providing hundreds of millions in revenue to publications ranging from local dailies and weeklies to national newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal.

For example, in a four-week study, researchers found that the government was responsible for the most purchases, by column inches, of ad space in the Journal. And the newspaper wants more: in 2009 they battled Virginia-area papers in a move to get their regional edition certified to print local legal notices.

This public notice income is especially important to weekly and other community newspapers, accounting, in 2000, for 5 to 10 percent of all revenue. But now, proposals are pending in 40 states to allow agencies to shift publication to the Web.

Tax breaks given to news publishers are likely to decline because many are tied to expenditures on paper and ink and cash-strapped states are seeking to find new sources of revenue. Federal and state tax laws forgive more than $900 million annually for newspapers and news magazines, with most of the money coming at the state level.

Some additional excerpts:

• In 2009, federal, state and local governments spent well over $1 billion to support commercial news publishers
• The cumulative effect of reducing these government subsidies is not the primary problem afflicting the news business today. At most, government assistance has dropped by a few billion while newspapers alone have lost more than $20 billion in revenue in the last three years. Yet, government support represents a critical element of economic survival.

• Policymakers cannot afford to be mere spectators while these changes flash by. American government does not work very well if citizens do not have a reliable supply of news and information. What is playing out in the news business is a vital national interest

Public Policy and Funding the News offers a framework to pursue options currently under consideration, including 1) Allowing newspapers to become non-profits; 2) Tax credits for taxpayers who subscribe to newspapers; 3) Expanded federal investment in digital technology and infrastructure, including broadband access; 4) An antitrust law timeout to allow publishers to form a common strategy; and 5)Significant new government funding for public radio and public television.

As policymakers debate these and other proposals, Cowan and Westphal offer the following principles:

• First and foremost, do no harm. A cycle of powerful innovation is under way. To the extent possible, government should avoid retarding the emergence of new models of newsgathering.
• Second, the government should help promote innovation, as it did when the Department of Defense funded the research that created the Internet or when NASA funded the creation of satellites that made cable TV and direct radio and TV possible.
• Third, for commercial media, government-supported mechanisms that are content-neutral – such as copyright protections, postal subsidies and taxes – are preferable to those that call upon the government to fund specific news outlets, publications or programs.

“We live in an era of profound technological change that threatens many forms of news media. We do not favor government policies that keep dying media alive. But we do believe government can help to provide support during this period of transition,” says Westphal.

###

A complete copy of the report is available online at http://fundingthenews.org/. The website also features supplemental research papers on eight specific areas: postal rate subsidies, tax policy, broadband expansion, international broadcasting, government funding of public broadcasting, public notice requirements, copyright laws and antitrust regulations. In addition, the authors have collected an online directory of proposals for government intervention and links to public hearings and other activities on these issues.

About the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy

Based at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy conducts research and organizes courses, programs, seminars and symposia for scholars, students, policymakers and working professionals to prepare future leaders in journalism, communication and other related fields. CCLP focuses its activities in two areas: 1) The Role of Media in Democracy and 2) Communication Leadership. Current projects include: Public Policy and the Future of News; New Models for News; The Constitution and the Press; Media and Political Discourse; Children’s Media and Ethics; Women and Communication Leadership; and Photographic Empowerment.

And surprisingly it’s stratospheric water vapor. Water vapor in a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere seems to have a strong effect on surface temperatures, and might be the explanation for both the rapid rise of the 1990s and subsequent dire predictions for global temperature in the short term. All the more reason to let science do its job of reasoned skepticism, and not turn into political dogma.

From the first link:

Water vapor is a highly variable gas and has long been recognized as an important player in the cocktail of greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and others — that affect climate.

“Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study.

Since 2000, water vapor in the stratosphere decreased by about 10 percent. The reason for the recent decline in water vapor is unknown. The new study used calculations and models to show that the cooling from this change caused surface temperatures to increase about 25 percent more slowly than they would have otherwise, due only to the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

An increase in stratospheric water vapor in the 1990s likely had the opposite effect of increasing the rate of warming observed during that time by about 30 percent, the authors found.

Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller in cold blood last May, apparently thinks vigilante justice against a man performing a legal medical procedure is a moral and socially just act.

It’s not. He is simply a murderer. A murderer who admits to planning, and preparing for, the killing of a law-abiding citizen over what he considered a moral crime. We have a word for people like that — terrorist.

From the link:

On the first day of defense testimony in the two-week-old trial , Mr. Roeder’s lawyers revealed that they wanted the jurors to take into consideration Mr. Roeder’s motive: his growing opposition to abortion, which he deemed criminal and immoral, and his mounting sense that laws and prosecutors were never going to stop Dr. Tiller from performing them.

“From conception forward, it’s murder,” Mr. Roeder testified, when asked his perspective on abortions. “It’s never up to man to take life,” he said, adding later, “only in cases of self defense or defense of others.”

A little Space Shuttle humor …

The attachment point on the Space Shuttle’s 747 transport.

(Hat tip: FlyingPhotog)

Given Salinger’s minuscule literary output his reputation has probably been overstated for years, but what he did give to the world was great, great writing.

He sought, and found, anonymity for the balance of his life.

From the link:

J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

Also:

Mr. Salinger’s literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel “ The Catcher in the Rye,” the collection “ Nine Stories” and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: “ Franny and Zooey” and “ Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.”

A free listing option is coming in a couple of months.

From the link:

EBay is about to shake up its pricing structure again, introducing an option that allows sellers to list up to 100 items for free each month if bidding starts under a buck. If the goods don’t sell, eBay collects no fee.

The changes, which will take effect March 30, will affect nearly every transaction on eBay’s marketplace.

… and that sounds like a good thing.

Via KurzweilAI.net:

Insectlike ‘microids’ might walk, run, work in colonies

Physorg.com, Jan. 27, 2010 Insectlike “microids” — robots the size of ants that move their tiny legs and mandibles using solid-state “muscles” — have been modeled by Jason Clark, an assistant professor of electrical, computer and mechanical engineering at Purdue University. The microids could have significantly better dexterity than previous microscale robots, while having the ability to “scavenge vibrational energy” from the environment to recharge their power supply. He also envisions the possibility of thousands of microids working in unison and communicating with each other to perform a complex task. (Jason Clark) Read Original Article>>

At the New Republic, Michelle Cottle reviews Frank Luntz’s, “What Americans Really Want…Really: The Truth About Our Hopes, Dreams, and Fears“, and pretty much nails down the entire Luntz shtick. Luntz it a pollster who made/makes his fame driving the GOP message. He’s had very real successes to point to, but I’d argue those successes stemmed more from creating a single message that party leaders force-fed down the ranks and enforced message discipline on than the content of the message itself. Luntz works in banalities that would shame Chance the gardener/Chauncey Gardiner.

For Luntz, of course, these answers are jewels that provide a window into man’s true soul. But Luntz’s analysis of the data is awash in revelations most generously described as unstartling. Do we really need Frank Luntz and his methodologies to tell us that moms do most of the food shopping in your average American household?  That in recent years there has been a rise in the popularity of organic food?  That younger employees don’t have the same sense of company loyalty as did earlier generations?  And how about this paradigm-shattering observation: “Blackberrys improve the speed of communication, but the devices don’t necessarily improve the quality of communication.” (The helpful italics are his.) Thumbing through Luntz’s dissection of our hopes and dreams, the exclamation that leaps to mind most often isn’t “Aha!” so much as “Well, duh!”

The heavy hand of a totalitarian state takes the life of its own citizens with the gall to protest a stolen election:

Iran hanged on Thursday 2 of 11 people who had been sentenced to death on charges stemming from unrest following last June’s flawed presidential election, according the ISNA news agency in Tehran.

It does sound like the mullahs are ruling in a state of fearful panic of their own populace and all that newfangled technology (my bolded text):

On Jan. 15, Iran’s national police chief declared that the era of “mercy” was over and that the authorities would begin cracking down more harshly not only on street protests but also on anyone who used cellphones and e-mail messages to publicize them.

As part of its broad effort to quell protest, the government has shut down opposition newspapers and blocked Web sites, and has grown increasingly frustrated with the protesters’ continuing ability to elude its restraints.

The police chief, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, said those who used e-mail and cellphones to organize protests would be punished even more severely than the protesters themselves.

… the iPad is about to start breathing down your neck.

From the link:

The Kindle DX is the same size as the iPad. It has a black and white E-Ink screen, 4 gigabytes of internal storage, 3G access and costs $489. Meanwhile, the cheapest version of the iPad has a full-color touch screen, a powerful processor and graphics chip, 16 gigabytes of flash storage, Wi-Fi and sells for $499.

The cheaper iPad might not have 3G or the same battery life as the Kindle DX (up to 4 days), but on every other count it wins. It has both a gorgeous screen and vastly more functionality. And, while Amazon has established an excellent, easy way to buy books, iTunes, which already has some 125 million customers, will give it a run for its money.

Didn’t catch the SOTU (late bit of work), but sounds like a solid, and sober, speech.

Sully and his underbloggers at the Daily Dish put together — as always — a great roundup of opinion from around the blogosphere.

Here’s one from the left:

538:

Obama is making a lot of arguments tonight that the WH should have been making for months now.

One from the neutral sidelines:

Ambinder:

Most remarkable: Secretary of Defense Bob Gates applauded Obama’s words [on DADT]. And Americans saw him applauding, thanks to the director’s cut-aways. Which means that, for the most part, the military is on notice: the policy is ending, and ending very soon. Said Obama: “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. Because it’s the right thing to do.” One note: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chiefs didn’t applauded. But that’s the protocol. They don’t applaud by tradition.

And one from the right:

Mark Levin:

I have watched many, many State of the Union speeches.  This is the most partisan, least presidential of them all.  His rhetoric, his glances at the GOP side, and his almost mocking tone at times — not to mention his over-the-top dissembling about the deficit, among other things — will not, I predict, improve his position with the public.  Nor should it.

Update 1/28/10 — Here’s a link to the full text of the speech.

The two have quite the tempestuous relationship. In many ways hyper-targeted advertising can help consumers and certainly advertisers prefer to spend money on people who might actually use the pitched product/service/etc. At the same time there are legitimate concerns about online privacy rights, and how data about your online habits can be used and misused.

This article outlines a reasonable middle ground for the moment, and offers a visual clue to web users on when they’ve been selectively targeted for certain ads.

From the link:

Trying to ward off regulators, the advertising industry has agreed on a standard icon — a little “i” — that it will add to most online ads that use demographics and behavioral data to tell consumers what is happening.

Jules Polonetsky, the co-chairman and director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an advocacy group that helped create the symbol, compared it to the triangle made up of three arrows that tells consumers that something is recyclable.

The idea was “to come up with a recycling symbol — people will look at it, and once they know what it is, they’ll get it, and always get it,” Mr. Polonetsky said.

Most major companies running online ads are expected to begin adding the icon to their ads by midsummer, along with phrases like “Why did I get this ad?”

And, the symbol:

The icon will be used in online ads that go to users based on demographics

Who’d a thunk this last October when this thing was jammed through Congress.

From the link:

Guess what? The federal government will make money on bailing out the banks.

According to new numbers issued today by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, a key part of the much-loathed Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, has become a profit center for the U.S. government.

The CBO projects the government will ultimately make a profit of $7 billion from assisting the banks: $3 billion from the Capital Purchase Program, in which the government propped up banks by purchasing preferred stock; $2 billion from helping Citigroup (C, Fortune 500); and another $2 billion from helping Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).

In other words, the banks are on track not only to pay taxpayers back all the $200 billion plus we’ve lent them, but put a dent — albeit a small one — in our enormous budget deficits.

I blogged against the massive bank bailout and basically threw up my hands by the time ARRAS came around. I’m happy to report I was completely wrong at the time. TARP and subsequent stimulus may not have been the best possible solution (there’s no way to know, find out or even guess), but it’s not a failure and could even be provisionally considered a success. Reducing the budget by a penny would be a success for the program in my book.

Security is certainly the most prominent concern going right now with cloud computing. Having a long memory of dodgey connectivity using dial-up and even DSL lines, just making certain I could get to my data, services, et.al. in the cloud remain something of a personal concern.

From the link:

The hype around cloud computing would make you think mass adoption will happen tomorrow. But recent studies by a number of sources have shown that security is the biggest barrier to cloud adoption. The reality is cloud computing is simply another step in technology evolution following the path of mainframe, client server and Web applications, all of which had — and still have — their own security issues

Security concerns did not stop those technologies from being deployed and they will not stop the adoption of cloud applications that solve real business needs. To secure the cloud, it needs to be treated as the next evolution in technology not a revolution that requires broad based changes to your security model. Security policies and procedures need to be adapted to include cloud models in order to prepare for the adoption of cloud-based services. Like other technologies, we’re seeing early adopters take the lead and instill confidence in the cloud model by deploying private clouds or by experimenting with less-critical information in public clouds.

Both the Spirit and  Opportunity have provided an amazing amount of science from Mars. Even though Spirit is no longer mobile, it still has missions to accomplish.

From the link:

NASA has spent several months trying to free the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit from a sand trap. Now, engineers are calling it quits. After six years of exploration, and significant scientific discoveries, the rover will remain a stationary science platform.

“Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., in a press release.

Assuming it survives the upcoming Martian winter, the rover will continue its scientific endeavors for several months to years.

This view from the front hazard-avoidance camera on
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the position
of its front wheels following a backward drive on Jan. 23, 2010.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Oh, man.

From the link:

Less than two years after the housing market collapsed, the U.S. economy is threatened by a new bubble in asset prices. This time, four billowing balloons are hovering: two commodities — gold and oil — stocks, and government bonds.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that last week’s 5% drop in the S&P, and the recent sell-off in oil, remotely makes them fairly valued, let alone bargains. Equities and commodities, as well as Treasuries, which actually rallied as stocks dropped, still have a long way to fall. The reason: They’ve already seen huge run-ups that put their prices far above their historic averages, and far above the levels justified by fundamentals.

Via KurzweilAI.net — It really is fun watching to see where the next big advancement in computing comes from. Optical computers, quantum computers, something we haven’t even heard of yet? One thing is certain, computers will continue to become more and more powerful for the foreseeable future.

Spasers set to sum: A new dawn for optical computing

New Scientist Tech, Jan. 25, 2010 The “spaser,” the latest by-product of a buzzing field known as nanoplasmonics, based on plasmons, may lead to building a super-fast computer that computes with light. Plasmons, which are ultra-high-frerquency electron waves on a metallic surface, overcome the speed limits of the wires that interconnect transistors in chips, allowing for converting electronic signals into photonic ones and back again with speed and efficiency. Read Original Article>>

… is getting a ton of play around the blogosphere today. There’s plenty of cries of capitulation from the right, there’s opining the move is a knee-jerk reaction to Brown winning in Massachusetts, and the Obama-leery left is fairly predictably apoplectic.

You can find a pretty good roundup of opinion on the announcement here at the Daily Dish.

Of all the various takes out there, this from Bruce Bartlett seems to strike closest to my thoughts:

More recently, economist Paul Krugman warned that the Fed’s talk of an early “exit strategy” from easy money sounds suspiciously like that which led it to tighten prematurely in 1936. He believes that the good economic news of recent months does not yet constitute proof that a sustainable recovery is underway and that the danger of a relapse this year is strong as stimulus spending wanes.

Nevertheless, the pressure to at least begin the process of normalization is overwhelming. The Fed has talked openly about new procedures to soak up the bank reserves it has created even as those reserves remain largely idle and unlent. And even Democrats and organizations affiliated with them are urging Obama to get the budget on a sustainable path as soon as possible. John Podesta and Michael Ettlinger of the liberal Center for American Progress recently argued that the primary budget (spending less interest on the debt) should be balanced as soon as 2014, with full balance by 2020.

I’m not terribly worried that Congress will reduce the deficit too quickly; too much of the budget is on automatic pilot or effectively off-limits. Entitlement programs like Medicare will continue to grow for years to come and there is no way that defense spending can be reined in as long as we continue to fight two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the likelihood of new domestic security spending in the wake of an aborted terrorist attack on Christmas day. And it’s far more likely that Congress will appropriate new stimulus measures than cut back on those already enacted.