" Two weeks ago while visiting a friend who covers conflict in South America I was privy to a conversation between two experienced conflict journalists, each with more than a decade of experience. One was considering going to Syria. What followed was a very intense conversation that focused on logistics, fixers, money, outlets, and equipment. And this was a guy who has been published everywhere and regularly been caught in heavy gun battles between opposing forces. Nothing was taken lightly. Every potential setback was weighted.

" Citizen journalists have contributed many stories of value, especially with the Occupy movement. But journalism is still a skill. Grainy iphone footage does not a journalist make. And Syria is NOT an occupy protest. Your failure to prepare can lead to other people getting killed. Even if you are prepared, it can lead to people being killed. 13 Syrians were killed trying to help get Paul Conroy out of Syria. "

" Wertheim's entire thesis in this article is that we shouldn't dismiss cranks like Carter (and, I infer, Simoncini, Clark, Young, and Milgrom) because:

- There are quite a lot of them (argumentum ad populum)
- Math is really hard.
- Learning the necessary background knowledge to do modern science is also really hard.
- Science is complicated; so there must be something wrong with it
- Science is a religion that should be available to all, just as Martin Luther wanted Christianity to be available to all through his translation of the Bible.
- Outsider scientists feel "alienated" by scientific explanations and science as practiced. "

" It is almost as though Assange realized that the Internet alone is not competent to “check and verify” a huge volume of un-contextualized secret documents. Only people with expert knowledge of Afghanistan and of the operating procedures of the U.S. Army will be able to read those documents and separate the meaningful from the meaningless. Likewise, only people with an earned reputation for trustworthiness can have their interpretation of the leaks accepted by the public at large. And, it even seems, only institutions with the resources to keep their websites up and running during periods of heavy traffic can manage to disseminate the leak at all. "

"Paul Maidment, chief editor of Forbes.com, tendered his resignation, while new ‘chief product officer’ Lewis Dvorkin called an on-the-record meeting to announce a bold new online strategy for the company. ... That Forbes.com will soon be opening its doors to 1000s of unpaid contributors and that [rather than commissioning quality in-house journalism] “Forbes editors will increasingly become curators of talent”."

@BenjaminLind @kylleran Bah, physics has already solved that question with a power law model.

"“I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life researching how much genetic variability there is between populations,” said Dr. Altshuler... it is so clear that the economic and social and educational differences have so much more influence than genes.""

lol... just lol

"It would be fascinating and useful to know what the institutions and mechanisms are which lead some to the production of reliable knowledge, and others to the production of eccentric crap, and what the intermediate stages are."

"In 2000 Watson shocked an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, when he advanced his theory about a link between skin colour and sex drive. ... "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture."

"[Watson] said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”."

"Remember that really important people with really important ideas don't have time for grammar or spelling. Also try interesting use of punctuation!!!!, CAPITALization and text color. When you EMPHASIZE things people will inevitably take your more serious

"An increasing number of academics - many of whom have helped edit the resource to maintain informal quality control - are concerned that Wikipedia is becoming a stronghold for cranks"

Kudos to Richard Schickel for noticing - and sticking his neck out to point out - the difference between having the means to comment and having insightful comments to make. N.B. the viciousness of the condemnations from promoters of participatory hype.

"It was a catastrophic performance, mainly because the blogger required continual correction on points of fact. He thereby illustrated blogging's central characteristic danger. ... You need no competence to join in."

"NCSL claims that term limits result in "legislative brain drain." How dismissive of lawmakers and voters alike! In fact, many citizens have the knowledge and skills required to be legislators — and to be voters."

"a book dealing with the questions it and others have raised about 9/11 has been published. It's called "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts" put together by the editors of the magazine, Popular Mechanics."

"many defenders... aggressively reject any suggestion that projects like Wikipedia give special rights to expertise... It beggars belief that anyone could seriously think [experts] are no more credible or reliable a source of information than anyone else"

"...a view that is echoed by many academics and former contributors, including Larry Sanger, who argues that too many Wikipedians are fundamentally suspicious of experts and unjustly confident of their own opinions."

"the bloggers are basing their comments on photos posted on the Web in compressed jpeg form, with little true detail possible." ... "Many bloggers appear ignorant of time-stamping and the fact that photos are often posted on Web sites out of sequence. "

"His hero is the guy without any expertise who can see through the palaver of elites. There's no need to accumulate expertise through years of study or experience, because the Internet has become the great repository of knowledge and experience."