Monday, March 14, 2005

Poll results

Kos has Bushes approval ratings on Iraq:

AP/Ipsos poll. 3/7-9. MoE 3.1%

Approve 45

Disapprove 53

Gallup. 2/25-27. MoE 3%

Approve 45

Disapprove 53

And Social Security:

Washington Post. 3/10-13. MoE 3%. (1/31 results)

Do you approve or disapprove the way Bush is handling social security?

Approve 35 (38)

Disapprove 56 (55)

Those numbers are surprisingly similar to the most recent AP/Ispos poll.
Ipsos. 3/7-9/ MoE 3.1% (2/22-24 results)

Do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling Social Security?

Approve 37 (39)

Disapprove 56 (56)

Cyberkinetics

Morning Edition on operating a computer with your thoughts.

And on why you get a song stuck in your head.

David Ewing Duncan, who reported the first piece, has an article on the same topic, Implanting Hope, on TechnologyReview.com. Wired has the Mind Control story too. The brain-computer interface in the story is the BrainGate Neural Interface System developed by Dr. John Donoghue of Cyberkinetics, Inc.

I still don’t know which I’d prefer, to port my brain over to the Web, or have enough augmentation that I become more machine than man. Either is a brave new evolutionary frontier that suits me just fine.

Estrich v Kinsley

I like them both and wish they weren’t fighting, but the problem is real:

In the first nine weeks of this year, women penned 20.5% of the [LATimes] op-ed columns, not including staff editorials, which do not carry bylines. That compared to the New York Times, with 17% women writers on its op-ed pages and the Washington Post with 10%.

Her reference to Kinsley’s Parkinson’s disease ("people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment and your ability to do this job") is not the only thing that pushed her across the line into caricature.

She seemed near tears in an interview, saying she never intended the fight to get so personal. She blamed the operators of her website for improperly posting comments about Kinsley’s mental health and contended she didn’t think e-mails to Drudge and others in the media would get into the public domain.

Fodder for a South Park episode if you ask me.

Blackmail

At a weekend dinner, President Bush…

...offered a new reason for overhauling the Social Security system. Raising the name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush said, “We have to fix it or Rumsfeld may never retire.”

Oh. A joke? Never mind.

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“This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”
~ George W. Bush at the Al Smith Dinner, New York City, Oct. 19, 2000.
Via dubyaspeak.com