Again: For the second year in a row, Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, earning 30 percent of the vote. The Texas congressman, known for his libertarian views, ran for president in 2008 but was never a serious contender for the GOP nomination. My understanding is that the correlation between “who wins CPAC” and “who wins GOP nomination” is near zero, right? Or perhaps the correlation is actually negative. Sarah...

At over 30 pages in print (26 on the web) and 23,000+ words, Lawrence Wright’s massive investigation of The Church of Scientology, The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology, is a long read. And a devastating expose. Haggis, an academy award-winning screenwriter and director who was a member of the Church he now calls a “cult” for 34 years, rose through Scientology’s levels of study “All the way to the top.” When a church of Scientology in San Diego sided with...

Nitsuh Abebe got up at five-thirty yesterday morning for the release of the new Lady Gaga anthem, Born This Way. Gaga’s first new song in over a year, it shot straight to Number 1 in 21 countries. Bound to have Pride crowds dancing from coast to coast and around the globe come summer, the single does not disappoint: [W]e’d already seen the lyrics to “Born This Way,” and I can’t even tell you how skeptical they made me. “You’re black, white, beige, chola descent / You’re Lebanese,...

Nick Kristof retweets this cellphone video of police pushing back protesters today in Algeria: Thousands of police flooded the Algerian capital of Algiers Saturday. The BBC’s Chloe Arnold, “It feels as though every policeman in the country has been drafted in and given riot gear.” Reports from AP, CNN, NPR and The Guardian.

Overheard at last night’s Big Party at CPAC, co-sponsored by Andrew Breitbart and GOProud, Sophie B. Hawkins to Michael Steele: “I’m not a conservative,” said Hawkins, “but I’d like to [expletive] Sarah Palin.” Steele reacted quickly. “Well, she’s very attractive,” he said. For your Friday night listening pleasure, one of Sophie B.’s biggest hits, from 1992, Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover:

Today was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ last day on the job. “Obviously,’’ the president joked, “Gibbs’s departure is not the biggest one today.’’ A parting gift: When President Obama delivered the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, he borrowed a pale blue tie from his press secretary Robert Gibbs, who has since gained a reputation for his love of pastel-colored neckwear. On Friday, Mr. Gibbs’s last day on the job, Mr. Obama surprised...

Haroon Siddique liveblogging Mubarak’s resignation: Mubarak picked an auspicious date to resign. On this day 32 years ago the Iranian revolution took place when the Shah’s forces were overwhelmed. And 21 years ago today Nelson Mandela was freed by the apartheid regime in South Africa. Via.

An Economist poll finds: A huge majority of Americans, more than two to one once don’t knows have been excluded, support the legalisation and taxation of marijuana. Even without excluding the don’t knows, a clear majority favours treating the drug equivalently to tobacco and alcohol. The data (see chart) reveal some interesting patterns. In every age group, more people favour than oppose legalisation. Predictably enough, the young are very strongly in favour, but babyboomers are almost as strongly...

Jeffrey Van Camp counts down the reasons why Microsoft is soooo last century. Number 3: Unfortunately, Windows is not a part of this growing smartphone ecosystem. While Microsoft continues to tinker and perfect Windows 7, it is largely the same operating system as it was when it was first released as Windows 95… For the longest time, its familiarity was one of Windows’ strongest traits, but the tide of the market has turned against it. As touch-based tablets continue to rise in popularity,...

In a lovely New Yorker essay, Adam Gopnik looks at the ever-expanding literature explaining why books no longer matter, now that it’s the internet that’s transforming our culture. The typical flavors — the eulogistic, the alarmed, the sober, and the gleeful — he reduces to three: All three kinds appear among the new books about the Internet: call them the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Ever-Wasers. The Never-Betters believe that we’re on the brink of a new utopia,...

I.B.M.’s Watson, named after IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, is an artificial intelligence program running on approximately 2,500 parallel processor cores, each able to perform up to 33 billion operations a second. Designed to answer questions posed in natural language, Watson will play “Jeopardy!” next week against the show’s top two living players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Neil Weinberg imagines life in a world where we carry around Watson’s decedents in the palms of our...

UPDATE: Lest we misunderstand, the Vatican clarifies, “One cannot speak in any way of ‘confession by iPhone.’ ” ——- “I invite young people above all to make good use of their presence in the digital world,” said Pope Benedict XVI in his World Communications Address on January 24. Some App developers in Indiana took the Pope up on his word. From the iTunes store description: Designed to be used in the confessional, this app is the perfect aid for every penitent. With...

The NYTimes: Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light. That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy...

David Kato, considered a founding father of Uganda’s nascent gay rights movement, was beaten to death with a hammer a couple weeks ago. Kato’s name and face appeared on the front page of the tabloid Rolling Stone’s infamous “hang them” issue. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton issued statements condemning the killing. A melee broke out at the funeral when the pastor conducting the ceremony lashed out against homosexuality. Kato’s friends had to bury him...

Keith Olbermann, recently departed from his MSNBC “Countdown” perch, will announce his next TV gig tomorrow. Rumor has it to be Current TV: Neither Mr. Olbermann, his representatives, or executives from Current TV would comment on the move, but they did not deny that the channel, which counts former Vice President Al Gore as one of its founders, will become at least one partner in Mr. Olbermann’s future media plans. One of the people with knowledge of the plans said Mr. Olbermann would...

Half of America was watching. Bill Carter: And it wasn’t a squeaker. The game surpassed last year’s Super Bowl by 4.5 million viewers. That game, on CBS, reached the pinnacle of American television viewing by hitting 106.5 million total viewers, just half a million more than what had been television’s perennial audience champ, the finale of the series “M*A*S*H,” in 1983, which attracted 106 million viewers. And of course, the Super Bowl numbers only include viewers watching in homes; they...

WaPo: A planned trip to Switzerland this week by George W. Bush was canceled after human rights activists called for demonstrations and threatened legal action over allegations that the former president sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and several European human rights groups said they were planning to file a complaint against Bush and wanted Swiss prosecutors to open a criminal case against him once he arrived in the country. Here’s...

I’ve been busy in recent weeks putting together a symposium on The Future of the Book. It’s past. It was a success… I’m relieved. For it, I did a presentation titled, “Is Book A Verb? The Social Future of the Book.” In it I posit that we are in the midst of moving from a Literal Tradition of sharing and passing on culture to a Social Tradition. I used Prezi, the zooming online presentation program. The students really liked it; some of the adults complained of...

And Arianna will run it: Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone. By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her...

In this AP video, he explains his decision to go into space. Reuters: At a news conference on Friday, Kelly declined to discuss details of his wife’s condition. But he said he was planning on her being at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center for the targeted April 19 launch of Endeavour’s two-week mission, NASA’s last scheduled shuttle flight. “She’s made progress every day,” Kelly said. “I have every intention that she’ll be there for the launch....

After a five-day internet shutdown, President Hosni Mubarak said he would seek re-election. And apparently turned the internet back on: Reports from bloggers and Egyptian twitterati have confirmed that the Internet has been restored in Egypt by the country’s major Internet Service Providers ISPs. The decision has yet to be clarified as whether it is a single sided decision from the major telecom operators in the country or if the government has finally caved in to global pressure to restore the...

Jeff Ely on possible unintended consequences from Egypt cutting off communications networks: The decision to get out and protest is a strategic one. It’s privately costly and it pays off only if there is a critical mass of others who make the same commitment. It can be very costly if that critical mass doesn’t materialize. Communications networks affect coordination. Before committing yourself you can talk to others, check Facebook and Twitter, and try to gauge the momentum of the...

Republicans apparently plan to continue their symbolic leadership style with yet another gesture. What better symbol to underscore their retro-orientation than the tried-and-true same-sex threat to marriage? The Hill: House conservatives say they will pursue legislation that would ban gay marriage in the nation’s capital. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), told The Hill that he will push for a vote on the controversial issue in the 112th Congress....

Paul Krugman on ABC’s This Week Roundtable: KRUGMAN: [T]he whole competitiveness thing is a bad metaphor… The country is not a corporation. You know, a CEO who manages to lay off a large part of his workforce and increase profits is a success. Well, America has managed to lay off a large part of its workforce and profits are hitting new records, and that is not a success. So these are not similar. The idea that we are reassuring blue-collar workers by appointing to a not very important,...

Stephen Colbert’s brilliant summary is funny, insightful… and duly mocking: The Tea Party-backed Republican majority on The Wake County Board of Education in Raleigh, NC, has thrown out one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts. In the 1970s, city and suburban districts were merged into a single, sprawling 800 mile district that set out to achieve racial integration. In 2000 the policy shifted to an economic integration goal. The district tried to achieve its diversity...