At the end of today’s Good Morning America story on Gaddafi’s tent, anchor Diane Sawyer observed, “I’ve been in Gaddafi’s tent. In Libya. And it’s perfumed, you should know.” I guess that’s why we pay her the big bucks. And perhaps that’s what’s wrong with television news, says Michael Massing: While doing some recent research on the news business, I came upon this remarkable fact: Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire...

The big tech news Monday was that Netflix announced a winner in its infamous contest to improve the accuracy of its recommendation algorithm, Cinematch, by 10 percent. The $1 million Netflix Prize was offered three years ago. The race ended in a mathematically statistical tie. Under the contest’s complex rules the winners beat the second place team by only 23 minutes: The Netflix contest has been widely followed because its lessons could extend well beyond improving movie picks. The researchers...

The Center for Class Action Fairness: Costco, along with other fuel retailers, has been sued over the way it measures gallons of fuel in some states. The putative class plaintiffs have settled the case–for zero dollars for the class, and ten million dollars for the attorneys… If you also find the settlement objectionable, and are looking for an attorney to assist you with your objection, please do not hesitate to contact me. Via Ted Frank.

From ReadWriteWeb, In Exactly 100 Words: The Real-Time Web is a paradigm based on pushing information to users as soon as it’s available – instead of requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates. It can be enabled in many different ways and can require a different technical architecture. It’s being implemented in social networking, search, news and elsewhere – making those experiences more like Instant Messaging and facilitating unpredictable...

The other day Matthew Yglesias pointed to the Treehugger for a good summary of a new report finding Contraception Five Times Less Expensive Than Low-Carbon Technology in Combating Climate Change: The report concludes that when taken purely as a method of reducing carbon emissions, family planning is far more cost-effective than the current leading low-carbon technologies. Between 2010 and 2050 each $7 spent on basic family planning can reduce emissions more than a ton; to achieve that same level...

Some areas in this region of climate change skeptics have received as much as 20″ of rain since Friday. Three Interstates are closed. There are detours around detours. There have been six deaths of drivers swept off roads by water. And a 2-year-old was swept out of his father’s arms in the rushing current: Just months ago the region was suffering from a massive, two-year drought that left rivers and lakes more than a dozen feet below average… Meteorologists said the rain is caused...

This is all over the blogosphere today. It’s ridiculous on it’s face. Do we agree? The speaker is Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) chief of staff Michael Schwartz. His topic is “the new masculinity” in a breakout session at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday. Andrew Sullivan says, “His interlocutor is Pat Fagan, of Heritage, who once described using contraception as turning heterosexual sex gay.” Our own Michael Stickings calls Schwartz The Craziest Conservative of the...

In recent weeks a friend has been suffering a severe bout of asthma. With him in mind I perked up when I heard the story of Jasper Lawrence — “a modern-day entrepreneur whose passion for hookworms stems from lifelong battles with allergies and asthma” — in this fascinating Radio Lab hour on parasites. Lawrence believes he has been able to keep his asthma and severe allergies in complete check through the use of hookworms as a Helminthic therapy. He now harvests hookworms from...

And not even 1 calorie per hit. From CBS Sunday Morning and The Tomorrow Show. Mo Rocca on the past and future of candy… RELATED: Sweet Old World, The humble origins of American candy dynasties.

Electric cars are quiet. That’s a potential problem for pedestrians and cyclists. The LATimes: Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set for release next year will emit a “beautiful and futuristic” noise similar to the sound of flying cars — or “spinners” — that buzz around 2019 Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller based on a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel. “We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make...

If you, like me, missed Micheal Pollan’s OpEd in the NYTimes last week, it’s worth a read: No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still...

Georgia congressmen Sanford Bishop and David Scott are both ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats. And both are being put to the test by the raging health care debate. McClatchy Newspapers: While both men say they’re comfortable balancing the fiscal conservatism and strong support for the military that the Blue Dog Coalition advocates with the black caucus’s socially progressive platform — which includes pushing for a strong public health option — the health care debate has made it tough for them...

Happy Friday! A collection of kisses from the Boston Globe: A kiss – a simple act that can convey a diverse array of meanings. A kiss can be intimate and private, or meant for public display, it can convey love and affection, or simply provide comfort. Its use as a greeting is under fire in our current climate of H1N1 fear, as the French government has begun encouraging citizens to forgo “la bise”, their traditional cheek-to-cheek kiss, for health reasons. Gathered here are 33...

ToyBots CEO Shervin Pishevar says of the device: It’ll be “bigger than Facebook.” It grows: No real animals were hurt during the filming! When I’m an old codger I expect a relational robot will watch over me; he’ll be my friend, bring me my pills, take my blood pressure and call 911 in an emergency. Pishevar’s TechCrunch visit was in reaction to being dissed by Michael Arrington for not dreaming big enough: In my humble opinion (which was shared by one of the...

Max Cleland’s new book, Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed, and Karl Rove, has an October 6 publication date. The AJC’s Political Insider, Jim Galloway, has been paging through it: Cleland rose in Georgia politics in large part because of that irrepressible grin and a persona that beamed indefatigable optimism. No little grenade was going to stop him. “Heart of a Patriot” (Simon & Schuster, $26) has much of the dark stuff that “Strong at...

David Hume Kennerly sees fakery: The Sept. 14th Newsweek cover line — “Is Your Baby Racist?” — should have included a sub-head, “Is Dick Cheney a Butcher?” Featured inside the magazine was a full-page, stand-alone picture of former Vice President Dick Cheney, knife in hand, leaning over a bloody carving board. Newsweek used it to illustrate a quote that he made about C.I.A. interrogators. By linking that photo with Mr. Cheney’s comment and giving it such prominence, they implied something...

Over at The Corner, Abigail Thernstrom has about had it with the white racist chorus: It’s a sad and dangerous moment in American politics. As Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford has written, “self-serving individuals, rabble-rousers, and political hacks use accusations of racism . . . to advance their own ends.” Those accusations provoke “resentment rather than thoughtful reaction.” Is that what Democrats want? The American public did not and would not have elected...

I’m surprised to read that Pew finds the Internet has actually shifted more power to the educated, well-to-do citizens already engaged in the political process: In a survey conducted in late August 2008, Pew found that only 8 percent of people with a household income of less than $20,000 had participated in two or more online political activities—emailing their representatives, donating money through a political campaign or group’s Website, or signing an online petition—in the past year,...

NOTE: “Kenya” in original title has been changed to “Kanye”. – TS Last night, for his bad manners at the VMA. Terry Moran let it slip in a tweet… Now, an ABC spokesperson explains to POLITICO what happened: “In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before...

Dr. Jim Yong Kim will become the 17th president of Dartmouth College next week. A guest on Bill Moyers’ Journal last Week, Kim is an internationally recognized physician and humanitarian. His goal at Dartmouth is to tell young people that “a few committed souls can change the world.” Yong says that in his 25 years working in global health what he’s learned is that the fundamental challenge the American health care system faces is not about finding new drugs or new treatments....

Announced today at the TechCrunch50, a new visual way to display Google News: The name “Fast Flip” comes from the idea that with this visual look, you can easily flip through the news. If you find an article you like that looks interesting, you click through to read it, if not, just flip left or right to go to another. And it is fast. Really fast. If you do like an article, there is a “like” button, similar to that functionality on FriendFeed and Facebook (the smiley face is built into the...

Jake Tapper: This afternoon at his house on the Eastern Shore in Maryland, Powell had an apparent heart attack, a family friend said. The former press secretary for President Jimmy Carter was the CEO of the PR firm Powell Tate. He was 65.

Jeralyn on last night’s MTV Music Video Awards: The MTV-VH1 Music Video Awards were tonight. They sure have changed. Madonna, looking relaxed, calm and very pretty, opened the show with a quiet and actually quite moving speech in tribute to Michael Jackson [link]. After noting they were born the same year, she mentioned she lost her mother when she was a young girl. But she says Michael he got the short end of the stick: She lost a mother, he lost a childhood. She also talked about how “we”...

No transcript yet: “The video shows a still of bin Laden while the audio statement plays. There is no video footage of bin Laden or of anything else, aside from the graphics surrounding his still. There is no media footage or footage from other groups,” IntelCenter said. The group described the release as “an address to the American public” and said bin Laden typically releases such a statement annually around September or October. While we wait for more… Tony Karon...

Tyrone notwithstanding, like Stephen Colbert, I don’t see race.