Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

The Appendices to the CBS Report release much better copies of the forged Killian memos than CBS previously released. It is strange that in September CBS would have put up such poor copies when it had better copies available. The new copies are Appendices 2A-2F here. For example compare the earlier CBS version of the […]

There are some interesting comments by Peter Tytell in Appendix 4 to the CBS Report. He concludes that Times New Roman was the font used, and does a careful analysis that tends to exclude the IBM Composer. Other Appendices are here.

Todd Zywicki mentioned the release of a study of sex, money, and happiness by economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald. When I followed the SSRN link he gave, it required $25 to download it. Instead, I went through my university’s online library card catalog, which directed me to a free link for university subscribers, so […]

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has a story by Corey Pein on Rathergate that seems to leave out quite a lot that might seem relevant to his argument. CJR came under early criticism for sticking its head in the sand when the story was breaking, thus missing one of the biggest stories of the year […]

Diplomad continues its string of reports on UN tsunami efforts in Asia. It seems that the UN is trying to take credit for US and Australian efforts: A colleague came back from a meeting held by the local UN representative yesterday and reported that the UN rep had said that while it was a good […]

Garry Wills was on the three-hour In Depth program on Sunday, Jan. 2 on CSPAN2. Jerome Sternstein, an historian and VC reader who saw the noon (ET) broadcast, tipped me off and I watched the midnight (ET) rebroadcast. Wills was in good form–thoughtful, interesting, impressive. What might be of interest to some Volokh Conspiracy readers, […]

Diplomad says so: Well, we’re heading into Day 7 of the Asian quake/tsunami crisis. And the UN relief effort? Nowhere to be seen except at some meetings and on CNN and BBC as talking heads. In this corner of the Far Abroad, it’s Yanks and Aussies doing the hard, sweaty work of saving lives. Check […]

1. The criticisms against Bush for not speaking sooner and for the US’s announcing too little at first were mostly premature, given that the admittedly small US governmental sum first committed for aid was not the final word. But some of the milder criticisms were partly merited, primarily because a quicker statement would have been […]

The Republican candidate for governor of Washington State, Dino Rossi, lost a close recount to the Democratic candidate, Christine Gregoire. Now Rossi is calling for a new election (tip to Kos). This is not the way to conduct elections. It didn’t work for Al Gore in 2000, whose image was tarnished for a run in […]

Rand Simberg has a good post on Intelligent Design (ID) (tip to Instapundit): How science works is by putting forth theories that are disprovable, not ones that are provable. When all other theories have been disproven, those still standing are the ones adopted by most scientists. ID is not a scientific theory, because it fails […]

I was away when the story broke about the National Research Council releasing its report on the effects of gun laws on violence, though I saw Stuart Benjamin’s nice post on it when I returned. The focus of Stuart’s comments were the report’s criticisms of John Lott’s work, though he also mentioned my role in […]

Frankly, I have been somewhat ambivalent in reading the criticism of the Associated Press (AP) for running photos of the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by terrorists in Iraq. Much of the discussion has focused on how much of a tip the AP photographer had; if he knew of an assassination attempt before it occurred […]

Ann Althouse reports on a man who walked around the Madison Capitol for six hours on Christmas Eve with a sign saying 1300, the approximate number of US deaths so far in the Iraqi War, which is not yet 2 years old. It is important to remember the lives lost, the families ruined, and the […]

I was one who agreed with CBS that the report on the forged memos should have been delayed until after the election (a position for which I took a little criticism). Further delays may still be justified if the investigators are responding to criticisms of their first draft–checking issues that were under-investigated in the first […]

There is a fascinating column by Victor Hanson Davis on the similarities between the Ents of Tolkien’s books and modern Europe (tip to Betsy). One of the many wondrous peoples that poured forth from the rich imagination of the late J. R. R. Tolkien were the Ents. These tree-like creatures, agonizingly slow and covered with […]