Scrapbook
Scrapbook Caught Padding Their Wikis Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia at en.wikipedia.org, is a marvel of cyberspace. Its 952,833 articles (as of the afternoon of February 3, 2006) contain...
...But in a seemingly contradictory finding, the poll claims that only 35 percent of Iraqis want the Iraqi government to ask U.S...
...Actually, maybe we're all better off not knowing...
...According to the Sun, Meehan, at $4.8 million and counting, has raised more money than any of his colleagues in the House...
...Luckily, such vandals are rare, limited to a tiny group of hackers, nerds, character assassins, and...
...Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act when it was initially passed and a dream candidate for the far left, led all choices, taking in 30 percent of 11,117 respondents...
...One possible explanation is that the attacks are not prompted by a desire to bring about an immediate withdrawal but to put pressure on the U.S...
...Many Americans, though usually not a majority, continue to support the decision to remove Saddam Hussein...
...While site administrator Markos Moulitsas allows that the count isn't "a scientific poll of the Democratic Party rank and file, at 11k+ results it's a pretty darn accurate poll of the sentiments of the Daily Kos community...
...And it's interactive...
...Others were embarrassing or malicious (or both...
...Interestingly, 41% of those who support attacks do not favor a near-term withdrawal...
...Most would agree that the numbers are alarming, even if, as it happens, only 23 percent "strongly support" such attacks...
...Iraqi Mood Swings A flurry of polls conducted in recent days asked the American people about their support for the war in Iraq...
...Polls Apart In its January 31 straw poll of readers' preferences for the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, the Daily Kos reaffirmed just how far outside the mainstream the influential left-wing website's readership remains...
...And lots was left out, too...
...But there is also this year a new $10,000 collegiate award for the undergraduate whose journalistic work best reflects the themes that animated Breindel's writing: a love of country and of democratic institutions as well as the act of bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism...
...Both changes had been made by people using computers on the House of Representatives network...
...Which is a nice way of saying that it doesn't at all reflect the sentiments of his party's base...
...There are, of course, several reasons for concern, not least of which is the continued violence on the ground in Iraq...
...Iraqis were asked whether they agree with language from an Arab League declaration that "terrorism should be rejected...
...And many Americans have concerns about the war in Iraq and prospects for democracy there...
...But there is also this: When there is "good news" from Iraq, the mainstream press often chooses not to report it...
...Hillary Clinton, at 33 percent...
...It's easily searchable...
...The breakdown: 13 percent of Sun-nis, 91 percent of Kurds and 98 percent of Shiites...
...On January 27, the Lowell Sun, a local newspaper in Massachusetts, reported that staffers for Martin Mee-han, the Democratic congressman who represents Lowell, Lawrence, and the other towns that compose that state's 5th District, had gone into Wikipedia and altered their boss's online entry...
...By looking at internal data, they were able to compile a list of over a thousand changes that had been made to the encyclopedia by computers with congressional IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses...
...The encyclopedia's 878,309 registered users (also as of last Friday) are able to edit just about any entry, introducing new facts and conclusions, additional articles and hyperlinks, on a regular basis...
...For another, 68 percent believe that the current Iraqi government is legitimate and 64 percent think their country is headed in the right direction...
...Problem is, registered users are also able to insert misinformation and slander into Wikipedia, and to delete facts they don't like...
...For further information about this new award, please contact Germaine Febles at 212-843-8031 or gfebles@rubenstein.com...
...The most popular choice in the AP poll...
...Specifically, the Sun revealed, Meehan's chief of staff had asked an intern to substitute the entire existing entry with a new one that erased any mention of the congressman's broken term-limits pledge (he once promised he would serve in Congress for no longer than 8 years...
...More than three-quarters of Iraqis polled—77 percent, to be precise— believe the hardships have been worth it...
...You'll have to glean them yourself from the full results at worldpublicopinion.org...
...Congress...
...Some of the changes were "clarifications" in the Meehan mold...
...The Sun's reporting made the good people at Wikipedia curious...
...Indeed...
...troops to withdraw within 6 months, but 47% approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces...
...Sounds like news to us...
...Yes, said 97 percent...
...But what especially caught our eye was the response to this loaded question: "Thinking about any hardships since the U.S.-British invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it or not...
...he's just begun his 14th year), "as well as information about his huge campaign war chest...
...Many computers have a unique IP address, which acts sort of like an Internet footprint...
...New Breindel Award We mentioned in this space last week the annual Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism, a memorial to longtime New York Post editor and columnist (and Weekly Standard contributor) Eric Breindel, who died in 1998 at the age of 42...
...While there is a certain amount of ambiguity as to what, exactly, constitutes "terrorism" to the average Iraqi, the results of another question seem equally encouraging...
...But don't look for any of these findings in the Knight-Ridder write-up...
...so that it will eventually leave...
...Makes you wonder what other websites have been visited by computers registered to Congress...
...Troops, Poll Finds," Knight-Ridder reporter Drew Brown writes about the results of a survey conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland: "According to the poll's findings, 47 percent of Iraqis approve of attacks on American forces, but there were large differences among ethnic and religious groups...
...She received only 3 percent of the vote in Kos's straw poll...
...That kind of usage, plus the fact they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action," Stephen Potts, a former government ethics officer, told Sun reporter Evan Lehmann...
...Here is how the poll analysts attempt to explain the seemingly discrepant findings: Naturally the question arises why it is that only 35% want U.S...
...This less-than-convincing explanation of the strange findings is glossed over in the Knight-Ridder story...
...Its 952,833 articles (as of the afternoon of February 3, 2006) contain valuable information on an incredible variety of scientific, historical, artistic, cultural, economic, and political topics...
...troops to leave "within 6 months...
...Virginia Republican Eric Cantor's entry was changed by someone on the Hill to read that he "smells of cow dung," and Senate majority leader Bill Frists's had been altered to say that he was "ineffective...
...The most recent national poll by the Associated Press/ IPSOS of Democratic primary voters shows Feingold getting all of 1 percent of the vote...
...The latest example comes from the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain...
...Under the attention-grabbing headline, "Nearly Half of Iraqis Support Attacks on U.S...
...er, members of the U.S...
...For one thing, 66 percent of Iraqis thought the recent elections were fair, including 77 percent of Kurds and 89 percent of Shiites...
...Results were mixed...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 21
