News Sources

Recently my sister asked where I was getting my information on the turmoil currently ravaging the Middle East and North Africa, so I decided to put together a list of my typical go-to news sources and regular reading.  Enjoy!

United States:

New York Times (New York, USA; Center Left): http://www.nyt.com

Wall Street Journal (New York, USA; Center Right): http://www.wsj.com

Washington Post (Washington, USA; Center Left): http://www.wapo.com

Washington Times (Washington, USA; Right): http://www.washingtontimes.com

Politico (Internet, USA; Both): http://www.politico.com

General International:

The Economist (London, UK; Center Right): http://www.economist.com

International Herald Tribune (New York, USA; Center Left): http://www.iht.com

BBC News (London, UK; Center Left): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

Middle East/Africa:

BBC News – Mid-East (London, UK; Center Left): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/middle_east/

BBC News – Africa (London, UK; Center Left): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/africa/

Al Jazeera (Doha, United Arab Emirates; Centrist): http://english.aljazeera.net/

Haaretz (Tel Aviv, Israel; Left): http://www.haaretz.com

Europe:

BBC News – Europe (London, UK; Center Left): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/europe/

The Telegraph (London, UK; Center Right/Conservative Party): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Deutsche Welle (Berlin, Germany; Center Left): http://www.dw-world.de

Moscow Times (Moscow, Russia; Center Right/Reformist): http://www.moscowtimes.com

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (New York; USA; Center Right/Reformist): http://www.rferl.org

Asia:

Times of India (New Delhi, India; Center): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

ABC (Sydney, Australia; Center): http://www.abc.net.au/news/

The ones I probably read the most often out of this list are, in no particular order, The Economist (Paper), BBC News (Online), New York Times (Mobile Web/Paper) and the Wall Street Journal (Paper).

Net Neutrality To Be Proposed by FCC

According to the WaPo, the chair of the FCC is working on a proposal to enforce net neutrality regulations.  Now, much has been said across the internet about this.  You’ve got your free marketers, stating that it’s an infringement on basic market principles, and your net geeks stating that it’s protecting the consumer’s rights.  I’m not entirely convinced either way, and an argument can be made for both sides easily.

I have of late tended to come down on the side of net neutrality, though.  I’m wary of government telling people how to conduct business, but we must also face the fact that certain providers are nigh on monopolies in many of the markets they serve, namely Comcast.  This would indeed prohibit them from showing favoritism in what internet content consumers access, and will help avoid a multiple fee level internet akin to cable television.  I can certainly see a need for this, too.  A good analogy would be a phone company creating situations so that calls between subscribers and non-subscribers of their service (i.e., someone from Verizon calling AT&T or Sprint) would have lower quality calls than in-network calls (i.e., Verizon to Verizon or AT&T to AT&T).  This would obviously not go over too terribly well.  But the difference in this is that there truly is competition amongst telephone providers in the age of the mobile device, whereas much less competition exists currently in broadband internet markets.  At my apartment I have three options: dialup or ISDN, Comcast cable, or satellite.  Of the three of those, the only viable option is Comcast.

On the flip side, it just serves to extend the hand of the FCC into another aspect of daily life.  Their rules regarding censorship and broadcasting in the United States are already controversial, and it could easily evolve into that in regards to what is transmitted across the internet.

So, as with so many things, the free marketeer conservative in me is at odds with the technology nerd.  I am hesitant to throw out a current evil for one that will quite likely become worse in the future, but something has to be done to reign in certain companies that provide services such as internet access.

WikiLeaks

It seems as though everyone is talking about this new WikiLeaks story, so I figured that I should put my two cents into the pot.  Perhaps this is a bit hypocritical of me, since I am writing about it here, but the more I hear about WikiLeaks, the more I tire of it.  The New York Times seems to be doing nothing but running story after story on the diplomatic communiques, and NPR has been wringing their hands for the last few days about it.  Frankly, all of these “huge allegations” are pretty standard knowledge to anyone who has ever studied international relations or diplomacy.  Obtaining intelligence on foreign leaders and officials, even seemingly unimportant and irrelevant data, is, and should be, standard procedure.  In addition, secret diplomatic communication is something that is protected by treaty agreements between almost every nation that has diplomatic relations with another.  It’s hardly the big bombshell that it’s being made out to be by every media outlet.

The details of the communications are the only thing new in these, and it’s nothing even that surprising.  It’s more of a curiosity than anything, albeit one that can place sources of intelligence at very serious risk. I have to wonder if WikiLeaks  has no real concept of what they’re doing, or the danger that releasing this can pose to individuals’ lives for no real value. They claim to want to protect individuals, but their redaction efforts are amateur at best, and do very little to protect the sources of this intelligence.

In my opinion, it’s quite obvious that this is nothing more than a political smear campaign against the US for doing the exact same thing that everyone does, and that the US must do to stay on the same level diplomatically as other nations. If they were really interested in changing the world and making diplomatic interaction more overt, then they would have done something other than point this big digital finger at one country and cry foul.  As if making diplomatic interaction more over was necessarily even a good thing.

It does show that we need to be much more careful in how we handle high level sensitive intelligence, though.  It appears as though many people handling this intelligence are junior enlisted members of the military that have little or no education in such matters, experience in handling it, or the knowledge or respect of its importance.  Is this a deeper problem in our military, giving individuals too much access to too much information at too low of a pay grade?  Or is it cultural? I’m not sure.  Whatever the cause though, it must be remedied and it must be remedied quickly, otherwise people may die because of this information being leaked to irresponsible muckrakers like Julian Assange.

Tweeting the Election

In case you didn’t notice the tweets to the right, follow me over on Twitter @nfutvol. Thought about blogging it, but Tweeting is just more efficient for this purpose.

Vote, But Vote Wisely

Today is election day here in the United States, and it promises to be one of the more interesting in our history.  I encourage everyone to go out and perform their civic duty of voting.  Take a few minutes out of your day to go cast your ballot, it’s how you can make a direct difference in how our country operates.  I also encourage everyone who votes to vote wisely.  Do not vote for an individual based purely on party affiliation, be it Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, or any of the others.  Vote based on the individual and how you feel they will represent you in office.  Don’t make your decisions based on political ads and campaign slogans, either.  Do your research, find out what they think.  If they have a voting record, take a look at it.  Look at how effective and realistic the policies that they have supported have been.  I don’t care who you vote for.  Just don’t cast an uneducated vote.  You owe it to yourself and your country to learn more.

Propaganda!

My good friend and professor of politics at the University of Virginia – Wise, Eric Smith, just started a new project to go along with a course on propaganda he is teaching this year: a blog on the study of propaganda, Teaching Propaganda.  I’m certain this will prove to be one interesting work-in-progress.

China Sets New Rail Speed Record for Regular Service

From Gizmodo:

Traveling at 415km/h, Shanghai’s latest bullet train has smashed the previous record held by the country last year, by 21km/h. It services the Shanghai to Hangzhou route, which are about 202km apart.

It may be super speedy, but according to locals it’s going to be super pricey too, with the fares costing double what normal trains cost. But what price is getting to the destination in half the time it normally would take? Seemingly, 100 Yuan (about $15) for a first-class ticket. Sounds like chips to us, but apparently a fare on the slower train is around $7 in price—a much more palatable price.

Commuters must wait until late October, which is when the new line will open, and when women standing on train platforms with wet hair will suddenly feel the whoosh of a train whizzing past, drying them out. [IB Times via PopSci]

UPDATE: This is the world record for high-speed train travel, which differs from conventional rails. The record holder there is the French TGV, which traveled 574.8km/h on a test run.

So, they’re able to go around 125 miles in less than half an hour.  That’s about the distance between Philadelphia and Washington.  If one were to take the Acela Express train (the United States’ only high speed rail service, and it barely qualifies as that) from Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station to Washington DC’s Union Station, you’d be spending a little over an hour and a half on board the train, assuming you didn’t get caught in one of Amtrak’s many delays.  That’s seriously the best we can do?

Google Earth vs. Reality

When even cities like Nashville have fully developed skylines in Google Earth, you know that software is going places.  Compare this screen grab with a recent panoramic photo I took from a hill in West End.  The vantage points are approximately the same locations.

I for one would love to see some of this data ported into the next iteration of Flight Simulator.  Yeah, I’m a dork…

Titanic Revelations

Even after almost 100 years, new revelations about the RMS Titanic continue to surface, and this time not from hard evidence, but rather from the first-via-third person accounts of the ship’s second officer.  According to Second Officer Lightoller’s granddaughter, the steersman turned the wheel the wrong direction when the iceberg was spotted, causing the ship to strike it.  After being struck, the representative of White Star Lines convinced the captain to continue steaming ahead instead of halting, which increased the flow of water into the gaping hole in the side of the ship.  Lightoller claimed that had the ship halted, it would have stayed afloat until the RMS Carpathia arrived on scene to rescue survivors, potentially without loss of life.

Why You Need Dropbox

Imagine this situation: You’re at work, you’ve just downloaded a few files.  For whatever reason, you need those files on your home computer, or would like to access them at a remote location.  Oops, you forgot your flash drive, too, or your company’s security policies don’t allow them.  What are you to do?  Simplest answer: Dropbox.  Dropbox allows you to sync up selected files by simply placing them in a folder on your desktop or via a link in your right-click menu to the cloud, making them accessible anywhere you have an internet connection.  What makes it better is the fact that anywhere you have installed Dropbox on your personal computers (or even mobile devices, I have it on my Android phone), the files instantly appear in the Dropbox folder.  The free service comes with 2GB of space, which should be more than enough if you don’t plan on permanently storing files there.  If you do plan on doing that, then you can upgrade to various levels for small monthly fees starting at around $10 for 50GB.  Interested in downloading it? Use this link (I get 250MB extra for everyone that uses my referral!): http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTQ3NTY3Mzk