or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
•
"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
January 27, 2009
Thanks, CBS
As John mentioned yesterday, 60 Minutes just ran a shockingly good piece on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. ("Shocking good" by U.S. standards, of course. In a normal country it would just be run of the mill journalism.)
The segment is embedded below. I strongly encourage anyone who cares about this issue to contact CBS and thank them for this, especially considering how much heat they're surely getting:
Tel: 212-975-2006
Fax: 212-975-2019
E-Mail: 60m@cbsnews.com, kev@cbsnews.com
Mail:
60 Minutes
555 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019
(Thanks to SteveB for the contact information.)
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at January 27, 2009 09:22 AMWait. Didn't The Great Real Estate Agent In The Sky give Jews the West Bank too?
Posted by: Bob In Pacifica at January 27, 2009 10:17 AMThis from the Anti-Defamation League:
"Bob Simon presented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in stark black-and-white terms, without context or history and ignoring its complexities."
You must be shitting me!
Posted by: Andrew at January 27, 2009 11:52 AMWow. "Everyone knows the settlements are illegal" is such an interesting response, aside from the fact that it's completely false.
I'd compare it with what the corporate media did before the Iraq invasion ("Opponents of the war are such a tiny minority, there's no point in reporting on their protests") and how the same media treat anti-war protests today ("Everybody knows that people are against the war, so what's newsworthy about another protest?")
Somehow, we went from "nobody's against the war" to "everybody's against the war", without ever passing through that special point where precisely enough people are against the war to justify reporting on the anti-war movement.
I think this means you can use the mean-value theorem to prove that opposition to the war is a discontinuous function.
Posted by: SteveB at January 27, 2009 01:47 PMI'd still like to know why the vast majority of Jewish 'settlers' in and on Palestinian lands seem to speak with an American accent.
Posted by: woody at January 27, 2009 03:09 PMSorry I had to burst in here.
SteveB the mean value theorem wouldn't be of an help. It's the intermediate value theorem that you want.
Anyway, carry on.
Posted by: math pedant at January 27, 2009 04:03 PM
