U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today threatened Dick Wolf, the producer of the top-rated television program, Law and Order, with confinement in the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for “providing terrorists and organized crime with classified information that will make it easier for them to frustrate the efforts of United States officials investigating their deadly actions.” While the Attorney General stopped short of accusing Wolf of treason, he implied that the government might seek penalties associated with that crime.

At issue is an episode of Law and Order that aired in March in which Detective Nina Gafney and Detective Ed Green (played by Milena Govitch and Jesse L. Martin, respectively) discussed using the “Good Cop, Bad Cop” routine to break down a suspect. After some banter, the two decide that Detective Gafney will be the “bad cop.” The ploy meets with limited success.

At a press conference, Attorney General Gonzales expressed outrage that this investigative technique was exposed by the media. “Now terrorists will know that the bad cop’s meanness, the slamming of his fist onto the table, the outright refusal to get the terrorist a Mountain Dew or even a cup of coffee, all that will look like play-acting,” Gonzales said. “And when the good cop comes in, the terrorist will play along, get the soda and the cigarette, but not give up any valuable information in order to bond with the investigator.” Gonzales claimed that this technique now is “null and void” and that Dick Wolf “has brought comfort to our enemies and has made America less safe.” He added, “This is the type of thing that gets people sent to Guantanamo. Or worse.”

Asked about the popular series 24, Gonzales responded with praise. “Now there’s a show that sends a positive message to our enemies,” he said. “We will stay up all night to hunt you down, especially if you kidnap our comely Canadian daughters.” [Tags: politics television humor]

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Trevor Cook and Paull Young have started an anti Astroturfing campaign. As you know, Astroturfing is the creation of a phony grassroots (hence the name) movement by hiring people to pretend to be just plain janes and joes out talkin’ up their favorite product.

Astroturfing corrupts conversations. It is a bad bad practice.

[Tags: pr trevor_cook paull_young astroturfing]

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Pew Internet has a new report on a national survey of bloggers. It’s the usual great stuff from Pew.

Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs – a significant increase since the fall of 2005.

37% say their favorite topic is their life and experiences. 55% blog under a pseudonym. 52% blog to express themselves creatively. Only 27% say they blog to influence how other people think. 87% allow comments. Only 18% say they have an RSS feed.

Bloggers are racially and genderly diverse.

34% consider their blog to be a form of journalism. 56% spend time fact checking. (Let’s assume that the 56% includes the 34%, or else much merriment shall ensue.)

Lots and lots in the survey…

[Tags: blogging blogosphere pew]

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Teletruth has sent a letter to the judge considering the Bell0AT&T-MCI merger suggesting that because Bell companies never delivered on their commitments to deploy optical fiber —despite the fact that “customers paid over $200 billion for networks they never received” — perhaps the judge ought to have some concerns about this latest merger. [Tags: telecom teletruth fiber_optic broadband]

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Here’s the Couchsurfing mission statement:

CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding.

On June 27, they suffered a catastrophic crash and had no adequate backup. (Insert smug “tsk tsk” here.) You can read how the community not only rallied but created Couchsurfing 2.0 in the process… (Thanks to Mike O for the link.) [Tags: couchsurfing]

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My wife and I went to Susur for our anniversary meal after it was recommended by our friends and the hotel concierge. Everyone, including the waiter there when he was greeting us, pointed out that the chef has been on Iron Chef, a show where you compete by making five courses out of a specified set of ingredients such as a yam, an octopus sucker, and the first flatulence of a new-born lamb. Apparently, being on Iron Chef is taken very seriously.

Everyone at Susur gets the tasting menu, which means you get whatever the irony chef cares to give you. We went for the five-course vegetarian meal. When the waiter kindly asked if we had any dietary restrictions, I unleashed the dogs of war: No fish, no mushrooms, nothing sweet, and I don’t much like vegetables. Nevertheless, over the course of 2.5 hours, Chef Susur amazed. Each course, starting with the entree and then working down in size until you get to dessert, was some startling combination of ingredients, carefully narrated by the server in a French accent so thick that when he asked if we wanted more bread we thought he was asking if we wanted more wine. Some of the courses had multiple pieces, so the waiter would take a good seven minutes describing the component parts: “The paler one is a comfit of Brazilian pear puree, run twice through the small fingers of a boy who sings alto, topped by a black olive puree marinated in the juice of two pomegranite seeds blessed by the Dalai Lama, ringed by a wreath of mint leaves plucked from the side of an imaginary mountain.” Absolutely delicious, though, and well worth the $60, if you’re in a splurgey mood.

This morning we went to Ontario Place to walk around, but found out when we got there that it’s $34 each to ambulate. So, we hiked along the lake for free, and then walked up the connecting series of underground malls that have emptied the streets of people. It’s a Big Dig for shoppers, albeit without any fatal ceiling collapses that we know of.

Now I’m in the airport, downloading gazilliondreds of emails, punishment for having a good time with my wife. That’ll teach me. [Tags: toronto travel restaurant susur canada]

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I’m getting IP but not DNS with both the hotel cable modem and the various open wifi points I’ve encountered. I think my XP settings are right. Other than getting a Mac, anyone have any suggestions? (Terse and typo’ed because typed on a Blackberry.)

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My wife and I are in Toronto for a couple of days as a belated anniversary present to ourselves. My wife hasn’t been back since we finished U of T in 1979; business has brought me back every few years or so. I love Toronto.

We just talk a walking tour of places we lived during our seven years here, although we skipped the one at Dupont and Avenue Road ( yes, it’s called Avenue Road). We think we got close to locating the three houses we lived in — two were coops with three other people and one was just her and me — in the Annex (Manning St., Follis, Barton). But we’re not quite sure. And it doesn’t actually matter much to either of us. There’s nothing magical about the particular row houses we were in. although being in the same neighborhood does bring back some remembrance. Mainly it’s been an opportunity to refresh memories before they vanish, like playing a song every few years to make sure you can still do it. “What was the name of the law student who lived with us for a semester or two?” “The one who cooked eggplant and bleu cheese casseroles?” His name is gone but the lease on his stinky casseroles has now been renewed.
The neighborhood has changed. What had been the first homes for Mediterranean immigrants, replacing Eastern Europeans who had moved up and out, now have different occupants. The little Greek and Italian cafes and gift shops on Bloor have been replaced with Korean stores. Because it remains a port for the newly landed, the language is new but the streets are still spotted with clumps of extravagant flowers, and sunny with hope.

Tonight we’re having dinner with an old house mate. Tomorrow we’re going to wander down to the Philosophy Department where we met in a remedial epistemology class. We’ll do some more tourist-y things. Tuesday morning we come home. (The hotel’s Net connection is on the fritz, so expect intermittent bloggery.)

Did I mention that I love Toronto?

Delicious veggie restaurant: Vegetarian Haven on Baldwin.

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Dana Blankenhorn talks up Pete Ashdown‘s long shot candidacy against Orrin Hatch, particularly since Ashdown is a FON (Friend of the Net). He’s a cool blogger, too. And he’s trying out a policy wiki page, where there are some fascinating — and provoking — discussions going on. (You can donate money here.) [Tags: politics pete_ashdown]

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Ninety-nine “top” Harvard professors are calling for the ceation of a new coordinating committee with the power to hire 75 science faculty for research that doesn’t fit comfortably within a single established discipline, according to an article in the Boston Globe today. The committee would also have the power to allocate funding for inter-disciplinary projects.

Disciplines are ways of knowing held apart by models, methodologies and the power of incumbency. Without ’em we wouldn’t know how to know. But, we also recognize there’s something artificial about the distinctions introduced by disciplines: The chemistry and the biology of animals are united in the actuality of the animal, as are its math, astrophysics and string theory. The space between the disciplines is useful to explore not only because it is, by definition, what the disciplines ignore, but also because it reminds us that we are the ones who have brought discipline to the unitary cosmos. We don’t do so arbitrarily — astrology is not a science — but neither is there only one way that works. [Tags: harvard everything_is_miscellaneous interdisicplinary science]

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