Years ago, a friend of mine used to regularly listen to right-wing talk radio. (I imagine that he still does.) I was often a passenger in his car, and there usually had to listen to this programming as well. What I heard drove me up a wall. These commentators didn't usually target people with whose views I agreed, but they routinely misrepresented the arguments that were used by their opponents, made ridiculous universalizations or near-universalizations about the motivations of these opponents, and pretended that the only alternatives to the views of the political left were those of the political right. And the abiding emotion was hate.

For the past few days, I have been visiting my parents. Nearly every evening, they watch MSNBC, and I catch some of it whenever I visit them. What I hear drives me up a wall. The commentators of MSNBC don't usually target people with whose views I agree, but they routinely misrepresent the arguments that have been used by their opponents, make ridiculous universalizations or near-universalizations about the motivations of these opponents, and pretend that the only alternative to the views of the political right are those of the political left. And the abiding emotion is hate.

For example, during this latest visit, I heard Rachel Maddow mocking William Kristol as ostensibly claiming a few weeks into the invasion of Iraq that the war was won, when what Kristol had actually said was that every battle had been decisively won. Were I now to claim that, a few weeks into the American Civil War, every battle had been decisively won by the Confederacy, I would plainly not be claiming that the Confederacy had won the war.

(Maddow was more generally concerned to pretend that the neoconservatives were trying to reposition and to repackage themselves as supporters of the war policy of the Obama Administration. The truth is that, in actual practice, this policy far more closely resembles that of the later Bush Administration than it does the policy described during the Obama candidacy. The neoconservatives, then, don't have to reposition much, though they plainly need to repackage if they are to regain active influence, since their persons and past organizations are anathematized.)

On top of being bothered by all this hate and misrepresentation in-and-of-itself, I am bothered that my father seems to be at least amused by this rubbish, and that my mother sort-of waves-away the fact that there's a stream of misrepresentation, and refuses to acknowledge that the hate is on a par with that of right-wing talk radio.

I end-up closing myself into the principal guest room, away from the television but also then away from my parents.

Amendment (2009:04/10): My father stated, last night, that while my mother likes Rachel Maddow, he finds Maddow unpleasant. Now, if only he would reject some of the other folk on MSNBC.

A pH change of .24 of the oceans is definitely cause for concern. However, the natural pH of seawater is 8.2, well into the alkaline range, and reducing that by something between .24 and .45 would mean that the ocean were still in the alkaline range (though quite worryingly less). So the headline here

and much of the rhetoric within the body of the article is just rot.

As to the suggestion that the pH will be lowered by as much as .35, it comes from the IPCC, so caveat lector.

(Underscore mine.) Not much point in preparing for things that have already taken place or are happening now.

As is its wont, the Beeb gets things quite wrong:

The race hasn't heated-up; it has slowed-down as a result of the CERN accident, giving Fermilab a chance to catch-up and possibly win.

Speaking of the Beeb getting things wrong (this time for lack of ethical bearings), here's and interesting (if somewhat lengthy) critique of Earth: The Climate Wars:

One of the functions of the 'Net has been to demonstrate that the typical British journalist doesn't know English any better than does the typical American journalist.

[Up-Date (18:43PST): The word ancestor has been replaced with descendant.]

Here's an example of a wretched journalistic practice:

One should not begin with a news story with a lie, and then correct it. The head-line here doesn't refer to a post-war record. A head-line is often the only part of the story read, and almost always the first part of the story read. So people with no sense of history — because their educators in the school system and in the main-stream media don't impart one to them — are filled with anxiety and rage. The emotional effect lingers even after the correction is given, and some never get the correction.

The economic news has been bad, but it simply doesn't compare to that of the Great Depression — which itself shouldn't be seen as necessarily our worse down-turn. (Those who uncritically presume that it was should look into the Depression of 1837.)

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One should, BTW, be careful to distinguish amongst different statistics:

• the number of jobs lost,
• the unemployment rate,
• the employment rate,
• changes in these rates.

Note that the article acknowledges that the unemployment rate is not at a post-war high; it has, rather, climbed faster than at any time previous in the post-war period. The unemployment rate itself was worse at the end of the kinder, gentler Administration of GHW Bush.

Second, when there is job creätion as well as job loss, people may lose jobs but spend relatively little time unemployed. (Being dismissed from a job is still a stressful experience for most people, but not necessarily equivalent to being materially impoverished.)

Finally, the unemployment rate is not simply the complement of the employment rate. The unemployment rate, which tries to measure the number people who are seeking employment and unable to find it, is a fairly junky statistic. On the one hand, it doesn't count people who would choose to work if the were offered a job, but who have just given-up hope of finding one; and it doesn't count people who are under-employed, wanting full-time jobs but only able to secure part-time employment. On the other hand, it does count people who aren't sincerely seeking employment, but are going through the motions of seeking a job so that they can continue to collect benefits from programmes that require them to seek employment. The employment rate is simply the percentage of people of working age who have jobs. It has problems — including that it counts under-employed people — but it's less junky that the unemployment rate.

And, since the Councilman's party affiliation is mysteriously not given in the story, one might google

"Steve Lipski" (democrat | democratic | republican)

This time, I was amused to find that many of the first hits are exactly about the failure to report his party affiliation. I was also amused to find his declaration

Yes, I am a Democrat, but I have always put people before politics.

as urinating on the crowd suggests that he puts some peculiar things well ahead both of people and of politics.

A couple of things to note about this story:

First, we yet again have the BBC confusing a rate of change with the thing changing, The last time that I took note of such confusion from them, they were confusing the growth rate of GDP (ΔY/Δt) with the change in that growth rate (Δ²Y/Δt²). This time, they've turned around to confuse the growth rate of GDP (ΔY/Δt) with GDP (Y) itself. (If they maintain the earlier confusion, then by transitivity they confuse Y with Δ²Y/Δt².)

The Eurozone economy isn't growing 0.2% more slowly than before; its production is shrinking at a rate of 0.2%. (GDP is not itself a growth rate of under-lying wealth, because the vast majority of what is produced is consumed, rather than saved.)

A second thing to note is that the BBC is referring to the Eurozone as on the verge of a recession, while America may already be in recession. The brute fact is essentially the same across these two economies — one quarter in which production declined — but the Eurozone is made to seem on the cusp while America is presented as perhaps already well-in.

Also, it takes increasing amounts of money to buy stuff. And prices are going up.

Here, from the BBC, is a bit of rot:

Policy makers will begin their two-day meeting later amid signs that economic growth has stagnated, or even shrunk.

Okay, stagnate means to become unchanging; which is to say that stagnant growth would be a constant growth. Some might perhaps hope for ever-accelerating growth, but most people would be happy with constant growth at, say, 3% to 4% per annum.

There is indeed some concern that the rate of growth has shrunk, but what really concerns people is the possibility that the rate of production (rather than of growth) may have shrunk.

Journalists are just constantly confusing underlying values, first differences, second differences, and so forth. In this case, GDP (or something like it) is our x, growth is Δx/Δt, and the change of the rate of growth is Δ²x/Δt². A stagnant rate of growth would imply

whereäs the fear is that Last year, the Beeb similarly confused the inflation rate with the price level:

The latest inflation rate — or Consumer Prices Index for December as it is formally called — was known to the Bank of England before it made the decision last Thursday to raise interest rates to 5.25%.

(The initial version of the story was even worse, having the title Cost of living at 11-year high. Various parties tried to tried to get the Beeb to fix things, but they just couldn't wrap their heads around the matter.)

This confusion of underlying values and differences is illustrative of the more general problem that the mass of journalists and the mass of their editors just have no understanding of economics, and couldn't sensibly inform the typical reader even if they wanted to do so (and I seriously doubt that they want to do so).