Fact checking is popular

Memo to David Gregory
[Via Balloon Juice]

Fact-checking can be a good business strategy (Greg Sargent):

Has anyone else noticed that the Associated Press has been doing some strong fact-checking work lately, aggressively debunking all kinds of nonsense, in an authoritative way, without any of the usual he-said-she-said crap that often mars political reporting?

I asked AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier about this, and he told me something fascinating, if not all together unexpected: Their fact-checking efforts are almost uniformly the most clicked and most linked pieces they produce.

Journalistic fact-checking with authority, it turns out, is popular. Who woulda thunk it?

I’ve heard various theories about David Gregory’s refusal to allow fact-checking on “Meet the Press”, but none of them make sense to me.

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The most clicked and the most linked. Real facts are actually newsworthy. Who woulda thunk it, exactly!

It has taken them this long to figure out that a lot of folks just want the facts. Well, at least some journalists seem to have the right idea.Perhaps there is hope for some of the news media after all.

NAS books on climate change

Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change
[Via New from the National Academies Press]

Reducing vulnerabilities to impacts of climate change that the nation cannot, or does not, avoid is a highly desirable strategy to manage and minimize the risks, says the book, Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change. Some impacts–such as rising sea levels, disappearing sea ice, and the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events like heavy precipitation and heat waves–are already being observed across the country.

The book notes that policymakers need to anticipate a range of possible climate conditions and that uncertainty about the exact timing and magnitude of impacts is not a reason to wait to act. In fact, it says boosting U.S. adaptive capacity now can be viewed as “an insurance policy against an uncertain future,” while inaction could increase risks, especially if the rate of climate change is particularly large.

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Advancing the Science of Climate Change

The compelling case that climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities is based on a strong, credible body of evidence, says Advancing the Science of Climate Change, one of the new books in the America’s Climate Choices series. While noting that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never “closed,” the book emphasizes that multiple lines of evidence support scientific understanding of climate change.

The core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations, the book says.

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Limiting the Magnitude of Climate Change

Substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require prompt and sustained efforts to promote major technological and behavioral changes, says Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change, a new book from the America’s Climate Choices study. Although limiting emissions must be a global effort to be effective, strong U.S. actions to reduce emissions will help encourage other countries to do the same.

In addition, the U.S. could establish itself as a leader in developing and deploying the technologies necessary to limit and adapt to climate change.

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Published by our National Academy of Science, these three books detail where the science is and what needs to be done. You can download the summaries for free and also read the books online for free. Somewhat cumbersome but much cheaper than the price of the books.
You can download short reports for each: Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, Advancing the Science, and Limiting the Magnitude of Climate Change. Read them and understand how we are going to solve this difficult problem. The sooner the better.

Another cool iPad app for meetings – Keynote

Keynote (with laser) by Richard Gayle

Meetings are the place where I am seeing huge benefits for the iPad, especially if multitasking comes on board. Another area is presenting information, especially in small working groups.

I’ve used Keynote for many years and love it. Keynotes for iPad is not as mature but, after some adaptions, makes a quite good presentation app. I expect it will get better as it matures.

But it is so easy to set up the iPad to a projector, with the connection key. And run through slides. In a smallish group, say 15 or less, it helps maintain an informality that really helps move things along.

Plus Keynote has an included laser pointer! If you hold your finger down on the screen for a few seconds, a red, circular ‘laser’ dot appears that you can move around to underscore the points you are making.

Man, I am looking forward to the time when the Keynote app is really mature enough for very large, theater-style presentations – okay it is now but I want it to be as powerful as the desktop application. That will take a little bit of time.

Anyway, laser pointers are a necessary part of most scientific presentations. Where they are often poorly utilized – usually just random swirling by the presenter – and have a shirt battery life.

Not with Keynote. This laser will always precisely circle around exactly what you want and the battery life is not something to worry about.

Great use for iPad and why SoundPaper is a wonderful app

SoundPaper by Richard Gayle

I’ve been getting a little more comfortable with where my iPad comes in really useful and where I still need my laptop. I’ve found one place where it makes a big difference – in meetings. And with the right apps, the meeting completely changes.

Meetings are now a place where I can place my iPad anywhere at the table, tae up little room and do a better job of taking notes and participating than with a large laptop, tethered to the nearest plug.

I normally sit in many meetings, taking notes with my laptop, and using my iPhone to record the meeting. Now iTalk is a fine app for the iPhone or iPad but I always had a little bit of a problem finding the sound bites that connected to my notes, especially after a few weeks.

No such problem with SoundPaper. This iPad app not only records the meeting but also uses typed notes in the app to bookmark the recording. So you can jump to any part of the spoken record simply by tapping the notes you took at the same time.

It is now incredibly easy to find specific parts in the voice record. In fact, all I have to type is a few words when something really interesting comes up. Then later, I can hear exactly what was said. I can spend more time actively listening and participating, without having to worry about keeping my notes complete.

But where SoundPaper really excels is moving my notes and recording off of the iPad. I may lose the synchronization of sound with text but the app makes it so easy to archive and rework this material on a laptop or desktop computer.

I can email myself the notes and sound. But this app has an even better way to get the notes and sound over to my laptop or desktop – through direct Wifi Transfer!

Tap my iPad and it creates a local web page that I can access using any browser. I get a page that permits me to download either the sound, which ends up in iTunes, or the notes. All without making any sort of hard connection between the iPad and the computer.

Yes, I lose the sync, but I can transfer files via WiFi! No USB connection!

I wish every app could do this. Why don’t the iWork apps? This seems like a really great way to get around one of the few problems with the iPad – moving files between the iPad and another computer.

Anyway, now I can use a single device to take notes and to record the meetings I am in. No more lugging around a laptop to meetings. There are a few things that could make this a better tool:

1) Multitasking (Come on iPhone OS 4). If I have to grab a document in another app, SoundPaper pauses the recording. I’d love it to remain recording while I am looking for another bit of information during the meeting.

2) Rich Text formatting. It would be great to be able to add bold, or italics.

3) Outlining formats – being able to organize the notes as one goes (say for different speakers) could make it a little easier.

So, using an app like SoundPaper helps the iPad become a wonderful meeting tool. Much easier to work with than a large laptop and I do not need to worry about the battery giving out during a meeting, or sitting near the plug!

How about those copiers at FedEx/Kinko’s?

by krossbow

That old copier still holds a picture of your backside
[Via Ars Technica]

The Federal Trade Commission wants to make sure the public knows an important truth: if you photocopy your butt on a modern copier, it’s probably still there, safe on the copier’s hard drive. It exists there along with medical forms, financial documents, and that list of gang members your police department was just about to arrest.

CBS News did a story last month on secrets kept by digital copiers. Most digital copiers produced in the last five years archive copied documents on internal hard drives, and those hard drives are easy enough to obtain once the copiers are resold or their lease expires. By examining the hard drives of several used copiers, CBS found “a list of targets in a major drug raid” from the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit. It also scored Social Security numbers, medical documents, and “$40,000 in copied checks.”

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Now, I know that the hard drives on these copiers is not very big and that it is used to spool very large jobs, etc. But do commercial coping companies have a policy for wiping the self serve copiers they have?

(Yes, I’m too lazy to look at their sites to dig that out.)