News bits...

[tangaroa]

• Paul Krugman has an eight page essay on how much of the study of macroeconomics has been dominated by pure capitalists who did not believe a recession could be possible.
• Obama gave an inspirational speech to U.S. schoolchildren. The larger news story is how much of the country freaked out about it (more on that). I am not comfortable with the general idea of any political leader getting free time to speak to a captive audience of schoolchildren, but Obama kept the speech nonpolitical and there is plenty of precedent in the U.S. for this sort of thing. The outrage in this case is based in partisanship, racism, or both.
• Before the 2008 Republican Convention in St. Paul, a group of protesters calling themselves the RNC Welcoming Committee published a comedy video parodying the Black Bloc whose violent antics have defined the U.S. media's portrayal of political protests. St. Paul police saw the video as an actual threat and arrested the protesters on terrorism-related charges. The video at that link is worth watching. The Center for Investigative Reporting provides more information about the case, and eight of the protesters are still facing charges.
• Some old-fashioned war correspondance from Michael Yon and Jonathan Landay provides detail on the situation in Afghanistan.
• The Scouts of Britain has banned Boy Scouts and adult leaders from carrying knives on camping trips. More: an attempted rebuttal statement by Scouts actually confirms the story. The published guidelines [PDF] say "Campsites are considered public places (when used for a camp) and so knives are not to be carried" and "knives of any sort should not be carried by anybody to a Scout meeting or camp unless there is likely to be a specific need for one."
• It is easy for data miners to discover a person's identity from shreds of information.
• A woman in Sudan who had earlier been charged with public indecency for wearing pants has been convicted of that charge. She will spend a month in jail rather than pay a fine.
• Weblogger P.Z. Myers placed #5 in Focus on the Family's list of "five media Leftists who distort Americans' views of the Bush and Obama Presidencies". Congratulations.
• Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has a blog. She is the translator who was fired from the FBI for alleging the existence of a Turkish intelligence presence in her area of work. There is also a National Whistleblowers Center to provide attention and legal referrals to U.S. government whistleblowers, and of course there's also WikiLeaks.
• The quotable James Nicoll on the television show 24: "Jack Bauer waterboards himself every morning just to be sure he isn't a mole."