[Posted by Karl]

More to the point, Wired gets even in a two-part article by EIC Evan Hansen and Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen.  The latter writes:

On Monday, Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald unleashed a stunning attack on this publication, and me in particular, over our groundbreaking coverage of WikiLeaks and the ongoing prosecution of the man suspected of being the organization’s most important source. Greenwald’s piece is a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness.

That’s the tip of an iceberg that includes an undisclosed conflict of interest and more than one major factual error.  But is it breathtaking?  Perhaps the folks at Wired never noticed until now that inaccuracy, sophistry, hypocrisy, free-floating rage and undisclosed conflicts are Greenwald features, not bugs.

Significantly, Hansen and Poulsen include Salon in their critique.  Granted, if Salon was serious about maintaining some minimum level of integrity, they wouldn’t have brought Greenwald on board in February 2007, as he had already been exposed as a egomaniacal sock-puppeteer.  It is nevertheless a timely reminder of that lack of standards on the part of both Greenwald and Salon.

P.S. — Remember, it’s only conservative media that makes things up. The establishment media told you so.

Update: Greenwald responds, displaying most of the qualities Wired listed in their reply. For example, Wired noted that one of Greenwald’s columns was based on a NYT story that was incorrect on a key point — and obviously so to anyone who bothered to read Wired’s reporting.  Greenwald’s latest reply ignores this.  Wired noted that Greenwald initially failed to disclose that he was trying to secure an attorney for Bradley Manning.  Greenwald’s response is that he eventually disclosed it, when he started trying to raise defense funds for Bradley Manning. Better late than never — and twice as funny, given that one of Greenwald’s big complaints is that Wired’s Poulsen is too close to his source.  Regarding a litany of other inaccuracies, Greenwald’s response is essentially that he relied on other reports (as he did with the incorrect NYT story).  Yep, tough to see how Wired could call that journalistic laziness.  Greenwald’s main effort here appears to have been e-mailing Polusen — and expecting a response — on Christmas.  You see, it’s Poulsen’s fault that he did not see the warning in Greenwald’s Twitter feed on Christmas Eve.  The one useful point Greenwald makes is that people at Wired took him seriously before their own ox was gored, which was the subtext of my snarky postscript.

Update x2: Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounsell writes, “What still remains a mystery to me is what, exactly, Greenwald thinks is being covered up here.”  That earned him a Greenwaldian response via Twitter, in which GG explains he’s just interested in the truth (having just written at length about his ongoing support for Manning and repeated attacks on Wired’s big source).

–Karl

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; please send any tips here.]

Via The Blaze we get this high quality take down of the study allegedly showing that Fox Viewers are the most uninformed.  I did my own fisking of it, here, but bluntly Lee Doren has completely outclassed me.  There isn’t much I said that he didn’t, but there is a ton he said that I didn’t.  Nice show:

Meanwhile in related news, the Washington Post is now “misinforming” readers the exact same way Fox has by explaining that Obamacare is increasing costs, but not increasing coverage by very much.

Update: By the way, liberals, isn’t the crass politicization of this kind of social “science”–where liberals put out bogus study after bogus study claiming that liberals are smart, normal, well educated and well-endowed, but conservatives are dumb, psychologically screwed up, ignorant and so on–fatally undermining your argument when you get to global warming? I mean you say, “The Science! tells us that there will be no more winters. And the Science! also says that you are an idiot. Don’t you dare question the Science!” It’s a dumb argument. First, there are plenty of conservatives who know they are not any of the things this supposed social science claims all or most conservatives are, so after hearing the science! lying to insult them, how receptive do you think they will be to the Science! on another topic? And second, you would tend to think the Science! might teach you that “listen to me, you moron!” is not the most persuasive argument even when it is true (and it obviously isn’t, here).

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; please send any tips here.]

First the set up.  Via Deadspin we get a typically ridiculous “nastygram” (aka cease and desist letter) from 1974, written to the Cleveland Stadium Corporation, from way back in 1974.  They are asserting that fans throwing paper airplanes can cause injury and inform them that if any occur, they will sue (so setting them up for suit, basically):

And then the response from their corporate counsel (and trust me do not drink fluids as you read this):

As a lawyer who constantly gets and occasionally sends nastygrams, I wonder if that actually worked.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

(Half man, half bear, half pig... all terror!)

For starters, Investor’s Business Daily has another example of devastating analysis of the unscientific nature of global warming climate change claims:

This is a big problem for those who see human-caused global warming as an irreversible result of the Industrial Revolution’s reliance on carbon-based fuels. Based on global warming theory — and according to official weather forecasts made earlier in the year — this winter should be warm and dry. It’s anything but. Ice and snow cover vast parts of both Europe and North America, in one of the coldest Decembers in history.

A cautionary tale? You bet. Prognosticators who wrote the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, global warming report in 2007 predicted an inevitable, century-long rise in global temperatures of two degrees or more. Only higher temperatures were foreseen. Moderate or even lower temperatures, as we’re experiencing now, weren’t even listed as a possibility.

Since at least 1998, however, no significant warming trend has been noticeable. Unfortunately, none of the 24 models used by the IPCC views that as possible. They are at odds with reality.

Karl Popper, the late, great philosopher of science, noted that for something to be called scientific, it must be, as he put it, “falsifiable.” That is, for something to be scientifically true, you must be able to test it to see if it’s false. That’s what scientific experimentation and observation do. That’s the essence of the scientific method.

Unfortunately, the prophets of climate doom violate this idea. No matter what happens, it always confirms their basic premise that the world is getting hotter. The weather turns cold and wet? It’s global warming, they say. Weather turns hot? Global warming. No change? Global warming. More hurricanes? Global warming. No hurricanes? You guessed it.

Indeed, in today’s Best of the Web, we learn about how Judah Cohen is declaring that the cold winter weather is because of global warming…  I mean climate change… er, Manbearpig:

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