By mistake on purpose (waddayagonnado'boutit?)

• February 17, 2006 | 7:32 PM ET

Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy — Jay Rosen is saying that it's wrong to think that Dick Cheney meant to handle the story a certain way but made an error and ended up with a mess.  In fact, Cheney made no mistakes in executing his own plan for how to handle the situation, a plan consistent with how he and the White House have been treating the national press.

Bloggers have been complaining about a complacent, press-release relaying press corps for years, so it's curious that some of those same bloggers would be upset that Cheney didn't play to that system to announce the details of his accident.  Would bloggers really have been more satisfied with an official press release from the Vice President's Office, read to them with sober sincerity by a compliant press corps?  It's understandable that the White House would appreciate the convenience of being able to address an assembled group of reporters, but if that's not the case, then have White House reporters essentially taken themselves out of the game?

It's an interesting exercise to imagine what a new system of reporting would look like and what that system would mean in terms of the transparency of our democracy.  I was expecting Rosen to conclude his essay by pointing at the distributed reporting and analysis that has come to be associated with blogs.  Instead he leaves the question open-ended.  How should the press deal with a White House that does not believe in the previously accepted system of information dissemination?

Related:

• Media To Ramp Up Efforts To Track Cheney
• David Gregory (NBC's Chief White House Correspondent) weighs in on the events of the week.
• Kelly O'Donnell (NBC White House Correspondent) Cheney's Accident:  Why All The Fuss?

Other Cheney stuff I clicked:

Man who laughs at Cheney's hunting accident gets shot in hunting accident (that's the whole story).

Peter Daou:  A Challenge to Rightwing Bloggers Who Blame the Media for the Cheney Mess — You'll recall that Daou is leading challenge by liberal bloggers to the conservative criticism that the media has a liberal bias.  In this piece he produces a lengthy list of story coverage with non-liberal spin (what he calls "narrative").  I loathe the media bias debate, but not more than I'm impressed when a blogger produces this much research to make a point.

The hunting accidents center

On the ride home from work I talked to a guy who complained about all the stories that weren't covered because of the focus on Cheney's shooting.  I'm going to go hunt down links for those in a few minutes, but I know that the story of Sadam Hussein audio tapes is one that a lot of bloggers, particularly those who haven't given up on the search for WMD in Iraq, think did not get its due.  (Newsweek had a bit on them this week.)

Anti-fur activists apparently have a new tactic.  Instead of splashing fake blood on people wearing fur coats, they're hitting them with "flour bombs."  (Better action photo)

There's a surprising amount of attention directed at marketing blogger Steve Rubel taking a position with a large firm.  Steve writes a popular blog and I think he's a pretty popular guy in the real world as well (I spoke on a panel with him once) but I think part of why so many people have noticed this move is that it's seen as a watershed in big marketing firms embracing online strategies.

Commuter Click:  In John they trust - "South Pacific villagers worship a mysterious American they call John Frum - believing he'll one day shower their remote island with riches."

What a computer can tell about you when to connect to it.  Clip board contents was a surprise to me.

The economics of prostitution — "Wives, in truth, are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises--like fine wine."  The real point of this article seems to be to revel in how many offensive statements are produced when a woman's life choices are framed in an economic context.

Buzzword watch:  "Grazing" or more specifically, "Feed grazing."  I clicked this, but the better starting point is probably here.  I'm not sure why the shift to agricultural imagery, but they're basically talking about surfing the Web.  "Recently, the term grazing has been adopted to describe our efforts at finding information on the Web."

Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing — If you're not already doing these things then following these rules will probably seem like working at writing, but it's still good advice.

Want a second opinion?  One Simple Rule for Improving Your Writing — He actually goes on to offer more rules, but the one he's referring to is speak in an active voice.

This story of a woman who turned out to have two sets of genes would make a great plot twist for a murder mystery.

Return of the flying car —  "Terrafugia is aiming to build a vehicle that will fly at 120 miles per hour and get 30 miles a gallon in the air. (It will also get 40 miles per gallon on the freeway and 30 in the city)."  It has retractable wings.  It sounds like you'd be able to just take off from a regular road, but I imagine there are regulations against doing something like that.

Speaking of "looks good on paper" transportation solutions, 'Antigravity' Propulsion System Proposed  (The story comes from a site called Technovelgy, "Where science meets fiction.")

Why we're publishing the new Abu Ghraib photos — As you may be aware, the argument has been that if the Mohammad cartoons are too inflammatory to publish, why is it OK to publish the (new) Abu Ghraib photos?

Speaking of unpublished Abu Ghraib photos, BlackFive has some he'd like to see get more press attention.  They're recent photos of U.S. military at Abu Ghraib doing positive things like handing out food giving medical care, etc.

Things you don't want Google to find — Illustrated examples of personal and confidential information you can find with simple Google searches.

Finally a video recut that isn't about making two actors look gay.  This is two Oprah shows recut to make it look like Oprah's accusing Tom Cruise of being a liar.

The Skeptics' Circle is a round-up of junk science debunking by bloggers.  The 28th edition was published yesterday.

Vietnam man handles three decades without sleep — No real answers as to how it's possible or how to duplicate it.

I saw Letterman mention this last night, so it might be common knowledge at this point, but Batman will take on al Qaeda in the new graphic novel from Frank Miller.

Gizmodo held a contest for songs using the sounds of crashing hard drives.  See if the samples don't trigger in you a Pavolvian sense of dread.  (Oh no, I should have backed up.)

Geeks in love

Robot moved by a slime mold's fears — They mold doesn't like light and they've figured out how to have the mold communicate that to a robot so the robot doesn't like light either.  Find Sarah Connor indeed.

I didn't realize Valentine's Day has deeper roots than the Catholic Saint for which it is named.  "The Lupercalia was an annual Roman festival held on February 15 to honour Faunus, god of fertility and forests."

Speaking of Valentine's Day, these are too late for this year, but too funny not to pass along:  Star Wars Valentine's cards.

A real, if somewhat small, Transformer.

The site for the movie Snakes on a Plane doesn't have a trailer yet, and general consensus is that it doesn't need one.  What more do you need to know?

PodBop is an awesome idea, though it's not working well for me right now.  You give it a city and it tells you what bands are coming up in your area and puts together a podcast of their music so when you look at the listings it's not just a bunch of silly names, you would actually have some familiarity with (even an interest in) bands passing through your town.

Donald Rumsfeld doesn't use e-mail.  The suggestion is that it puts him out of touch, but I'm thinking it might make him more efficient.  How much more would you get done if you weren't deleting little e-mails all day long?

Ford Invents Hybrid that is *300% more efficient* than Toyota Prius — This is the first time I've heard of a "hydraulic hybrid."

Teddy Bear MP3 holds an album — Remember when the Bare Naked Ladies put out an album on a memory stick?  I bet the recording industry could score a win with albums as collectable, mp3-playing figurines like this Teddy Bear or like the custom modded flash memory sticks we see online all the time.  Kids would walk around with the latest cool album on their keychain.  Obsessives would need to buy the limited edition figurines.  I'd definitely prefer a shelf full of figurines to a shelf full of CDs.

Top ten best sci-fi films that never existed — This is a bit of a "wouldn't it be cool if..." type of essay, but who doesn't like that?

• February 16, 2006 | 2:20 AM ET

I had a busy day today, so just a quick entry to keep things fresh:

The secret cause of flame wars — The answer is that people are really poor at interpreting the correct tone in text.  "At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations."  For this reason, I was a little nervous posting an all-Cheney entry yesterday.  People come to political stories like that with so many preconceptions and expectations, the result is usually a mailbox full of flames and rage.  I'm pleased to say that this time there was remarkably little of that, in spite of the wildly divergent opinions expressed.

$1,000 for an ice cream sundae?  It's called The Grand Opulence Sundae and the only thing more disturbing than the fact that you're meant to eat 23k gold leaf is that they sell one every month.

In what must surely be the most bizarre coincidence ever, it was just the other day that I was reading about gold leaf pills which pass right through and... well, I guess it's some kind of statement about "luxury culture."  Could this really be a trend??

Speaking of making statements about consumerism, "about 50 teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals in the Bay Area have made a vow to not buy anything new in 2006 -- except food, health and safety items and underwear."  Reminds me of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.

Speaking of not spending money, The Festival of Frugality rounds up blog posts about money-saving tips.

Speaking of blogs about money, I also clicked a list of all of this week's money carnivals.

Speaking of blog round-ups, this is the first time I've seen a collection of comic book blog entries.  I've seen Web comics before, but nothing that would include themes like, "examining the Invincible Iron-Man, the embodiment of America and Capitalism in comics."

On the subject of cartoons, critics of Muslim rioting over the Danish newspaper cartoons often list the number of other groups who don't riot when they're offended.  Rioting scientists is a worthy addition to that list.

Speaking of things people take seriously enough to riot over it, maybe people who go to the movies more often than I have seen the trailer for this NASCAR parody already, but it's new to me.

Lifehacker relays the idea of a caffeine nap in which you sleep for 15 minutes immediately after drinking a cup of coffee.  The idea is that you double your energizing money.

In his State of the Blogosphere, part 2, Dave Sifry takes a look at how blog traffic (actually, what he calls "attention") follows a power curve, with a few blogs getting a lot of traffic and lot of blogs getting a little traffic.  He also talks about "the magic middle."  "The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links."  It's on this basis that he introduces their new "explore" categories (we clicked that already earlier this week).  Note also that they've added an authority filter to their searches.  I'm finding that helpful for weeding out spam and generally getting at the good stuff.

The Beastles - Beastie Boys/Beatles mash-up.  If the Beatles were funky and the Beastie Boys had melody.

Commuter Click: The mountain man and the surgeon — Comparing the wealth of an unemployed sixty-something who lives in a trailer in eastern Kentucky and a Congolese doctor with 28 years experience.  (Poor in a rich country versus rich in a poor country)  I see some fascinating points as a skim this piece.  I'll print it out for tomorrow's commute.

We've seen how sites like Pandora use your musical preferences to suggest other music it thinks you'll like.  Now BlogCode proposes to do something similar with the blogs you read.

The Prion Anomaly — "These tiny, eccentric proteins are challenging a central paradigm in molecular biology: that genes are the sole unit of inheritance."

"Four tech experts battle over which is the best browser -- Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Opera, or Maxthon.  We take you on a visual tour of each, then let you make the call."  This is really long, but thorough if you've been wondering how these browsers compare.

I was talking to a co-worker the other day about the record player with the USB cable on it and he mentioned that there was a laser vinyl reader on the market that can read your old record without a needle.  Behold.

I'm pretty sure this is spam, but the product is interesting and so is the video.  A girl on a motorcycle crashes into a car that's skidding out of control.  The cool part is that the whole thing is recorded on her helmet cam.  By page two of the message board mentioned below the video she explains that it's from HelmetCamera.com and costs 1300-1400 bucks (?!) for the whole setup.  Spam or not, it's not a bad idea.

Video of the Day: LED throwies — Jake at Gothamist explains that they're "little balls of LEDs that can be thrown and stuck to walls."  (Song name with link is in the comments section.)  Here's how to make them.

Other than the celebrity sightings submitted to Gawker Stalker, citizen journalism isn't something usually associated with celebrity gossip making this photo of Tommy Lee post-butt kicking somewhat unique.

• February 14, 2006 | 7:41 PM ET

The story of Vice President Dick Cheney shooting a hunting colleague in the course of aiming at a bird strikes me as more funny than scandalous, so long as the victim, Harry Whittington remains alive and with a positive prognosis.  Of course it's always serious when someone gets hurt, but it's hard to escape the forehead-smacking absurdity of the situation.

The Wall Street Journal has a lengthy round-up of jokes from late night TV.  (Crooks and Liars with the Daily Show clip.)

What else I clicked:

YTMND gives the story the usual treatment.

Ten ways Dick Cheney can kill you actually pre-dates this whole hunting incident.  (And do not miss the link here to make a fake CNN story about the shooting.)

Cheney hunt game  (I think the fact that you can't win is part of the joke.)

Visual aids for hunting.

There are a lot of lists and references being made to who people would like to see go hunting with Dick Cheney.  I rounded up a few, but then felt funny about all the links calling for people to be shot in the face and chest, so just take my word for it.  I have a feeling "go for a hunt with Dick Cheney" is going to be the new "take a long walk off a short pier."  Here's one guess at who Dick Cheney wishes he took hunting with him.

Not to leave all the fun to the left, Republican bloggers are enjoying a joke bumper sticker that reads, "I’d Rather Hunt With Dick Cheney Than Ride With Ted Kennedy," again emphasizing, or rather, de-emphasizing the significance of this story.

For all the joking, somehow the White House's joking about it feels off-color to me, though knowing the president's fondness for nicknames, he's bound to pick up on the "Fudd" meme spreading quickly.

To my mind, one of the reasons the press is so preoccupied with the details of the shooting is that they're a little embarrassed at how poorly they've been able to assemble the facts of the story.  "Several newspapers today carried wildly different accounts of the aftermath of the Saturday incident in which Vice President Cheney shot a hunting companion at a ranch in Texas."

So to be sure, this is a media story as much as anything, and certainly if you're a Dick Cheney supporter who doesn't see much remarkable about a hunting accident, that's exactly what the coverage of this shooting is all about.  JunkYardBlog's experience hunting supports his feeling that this whole story is not worth making a big deal about.

But while JYD advises "it usually is the shootee’s fault in a hunting accident," Josh Marshall draws the exact opposite conclusion from his interviews with hunters.  (Marshall, never one to let an explanation go by without scrutiny is now questioning the plausibility of the medical description of the shot.)

Slate, which is chock full of analysis of the story puts the question of whether Cheney made a mistake to the Explainer column.

From the available information it sounds like Whittington is to blame for not announcing his intention to return the group, so Cheney would have known to look out for him.  The piece ends, however, with the note that Whittington was wearing one of those bright orange hunting vests, which Cheney would have had to not see in his line of vision.

(And speaking of orange clothes and the media taking the story personally, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank has drawn come criticism for his clothes on Olbermann last night.  (Universal criticism of the aesthetic, partisan criticism of the appropriateness.)

A lot of people are pointing to Paul Begala's explanation of hunting customs and how they fit with the official story.  I don't know anything about hunting, but his description sounds like it makes sense even if he is a harsh critic of the Bush administration.

If you want to the real obsessiveness of online expertise in action, check out the pdf of a Talkleft reader's mathematical analysis of buckshot distribution over distance.

Speaking of the nitty gritty of the case, The Smoking Gun has already posted the police report.

Given the degree to which this story is as much about the media as it is about the actual events, contentiousness between White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan and the White House Press Corps is making for a secondary story on its own.  Read the Abbot and Costello routine that is yesterday's and today's press briefing to understand why that is.  (We've got the video of yesterday's exchange on page two of our main story.)  In particular, a bit of a spat between NBC reporter David Gregory and McClellan in something called "the morning gaggle" is drawing a lot of attention (mostly by Bush supporters, led by Matt Drudge, angry over Gregory's telling McClellan not to be a jerk).

Curious to see what the Corpus Christi Caller-Times was doing given all the attention they're getting for being the first to report the story, I found this video demonstration (ahem) of how birdshot at 30 yards from a shotgun would hit a person.

In yet another angle to the story, some bloggers have picked up on a report that "the group killed at least 417 of the birds."  Some are critical of the unsportsmanlike nature of hunting stocked quarry, others are put off by the slaughter of that many birds.

On that note, it's not surprising to find gun and/or hunting fans who don't appreciate the light this story casts on their sport.

It probably makes sense that Jim Brady would have some hostility to express in the wake of a gun incident, but I was a little surprised to read this item since I would have through Brady and Cheney are former co-workers with some degree of collegiality between them.

For that matter, Marlin Fitzwater, who served as press secretary for Reagan and Bush I has harsh words about Cheney not being more public about the incident.

As much as some bloggers on the left want to encourage the idea that the shooting is a metaphor for other Bush administration issues, particularly the war in Iraq, I don't see how that justifies all the coverage.  It's poetic, but ultimately doesn't make me care more about the matter.

What will make this more than a water-cooler story is if there's any legal action involved.  The analysis by the NBC News folks makes that seem unlikely but FireDogLake finds some precedent that could make it hard for the story to just fade away.

The news editors here at MSNBC.com are acutely aware of the amount of discussion taking place over this story and are interested in hearing your impressions.  Use the mailbag below for that.

• February 14, 2006 | 12:55 PM ET

Before we get to today's entry, I've been meaning to catch up on some highlights from the mailbag.

Re: The Times Op/Ed piece on bottled water.

Here's a point they missed. People are drinking more water because they're told they require X amount for proper health, usually on the order of 8 glasses per day.

It is true a person needs this much water, but they don't need to drink this much water.

The original nutritional recommendations put out by the US government said that a person needs 1 milliliter of water for every calorie they consume. For your typical over-eating American subsisting on 2000 calories per day, this means they should consume 2 liters of water.

But the recommendations note that the vast majority of the necessary water will be had from the food. On average the food we eat is 2/3 water. A glass of water with each meal should be sufficient.

-- Dennis

Will replies:  Thanks Dennis, that's a good point.  Speaking of overeating Americans, another factor in the water craze is the belief that drinking water helps flush fat from the body.  I remember this entering the conventional wisdom when I was in college and suddenly every gal on campus was toting a big bottle with a lemon wedge stuffed into it.

Why'd you link to a theology joke if you didn't get it? I didn't think it was particularly funny (not that I found it at all offensive), but it's a reference to the miracle of Jesus walking on water (and then allowing his disciple, Peter, to do it). In the joke, the first two men "walk on water," leading us to believe they have a special relationship with God. But they've just found some stepping stones.
—Brenda Coulter

Will replies:  Hi Brenda, I linked to it because it showed up in my daily surfing as something seeing attention from folks online (bloggers or taggers or raters) and it passed my filter tests for exclusion.  It bothers me that the only time religion or theology are mentioned in the media are when an extremist says or does something stupid, so I try to include items that are of interest to that community when I come upon them.  I'm familiar with the story of Jesus walking on water, but that doesn't make this a very funny joke.  But check out the work in this next letter and suddenly everything makes sense:

Speaking of comedy, it's probably a reflection of my general heathenism that I don't get this theology joke.  But since it's not every day that I actually run into a theology joke I figure it ought to be shared.

The three men mentioned in the article are Theologians from this century.  As I did some research on it in wikipedia.  Rudolph Blutmann would teach the new testament that although Jesus did live, most of the stories are myth's to teach Christian morals and ideas.  That's why he fell in the water.  He doesn't believe Jesus actually walked on water..  Now the other Karl Barth believes in the theology.  He has faith, and faith proves all the stories in the bible true.   He walked on the water because it was an act of faith.
—G

Will replies:  Outstanding work!  Paul Tillich is the other one named in the joke.  Of course the only way to understand the joke is to understand the people named in it and I'm embarrassed that I didn't do so myself.  It's also really refreshing to see the idea that there can be multiple interpretations of religion when so often we see religion caricatured as absolutist and fundamentalist.

I recut a trailer for the movie "Heat" starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. I did this last November, before everyone else started in on this fad.

Check it out if you want a laugh.

• .mov
• .wmv

Regards,
Matt

Will replies:  Thanks Matt, I'm running into movie trailer re-cuts all over the place.  I saw one for the movie Seven the other day, again with a gay theme.  It felt a little forced.  I'm not sure if there's a lesson about homoeroticism in movies or if the only lesson is that any two men can be made to look like they're in love with some soft music and selective quotes.

Hey Will,
I too, was wondering where these Muslim demonstrators were getting all their Danish flags. (In fact, I drew (poorly) this cartoon.)  Thanks for posting the article about that Gaza shopkeeper.  I smell an investment opportunity!  A Flags2Burn Superstore chain?
Best,
Adam

Will replies:  HA!  I can't believe I forgot to buy stock in lighters!

Regarding "findsarahconnor"

This may explain it!

—Nikki

Will replies:  Nikki, thanks, that's great!  There's nothing more gratifying than being let in on an inside joke, even if "inside" is probably stretching it a little since there are probably hundreds of thousands of Farkers who know it.  For folks trying to remember what this is about, on the 7th I made a parenthetical note about this phrase on the end of an otherwise straight news link.  At first I thought Nikki was sending me something I already knew about who Sarah Connor is, but if you scroll to the end of that entry:

The joke revolves around headlines referencing the field of robotics or, less often, Arnold Schwarzenegger and hints that both groups should not be trusted as they might try to take over the world.

In this case, the joke was about Google taking over the world.

Hey Will,
That 12 year old you featured in your video of the day is indeed a kick ass drummer; but as I'm sure you'll hear from people more knowledgeable than me, the true test of a great drummer is how well he meshes with the band. The solo comes during, not before. Do a search on Buddy Rich just as one example. I wish the kid well and you too.
—John

Will replies:  John, boy is that the truth.  I once played in a cover band with an abysmal drummer.  In the middle of the set we'd break for his solo, everyone in the bar would go crazy while he beat the crap out of the set and then we'd go back to meanderingly timed Hootie covers.  Ah, the good old days.  Anyway, I think this kid (Tony Royster, Jr.) is the real deal.  He's pretty acclaimed, and his site has some song samples that aren't just solos.

Two links I clicked on today, that really made the morning fly by.

• Words Overheard
• Optus Tennis Challenge

—Shawn

Will replies:  (Shawn sent me these last week, so if you're his boss and reading this, he's not goofing off on a Tuesday morning.)  Thanks Shawn, I think that Overheard site is based on Overheard in New York, which has been popular for a few years.  Fair warning to Clicked readers, the tennis game is dangerously absorbing.

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