Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Kind of ironic that Ben Stein played Kevin’s science teacher in The Wonder Years.

An investment group that owns 138 sage-covered acres above and to the left of the 45-foot-high, steel-and-concrete H put the land up for sale last month for $22 million.

This is obviously a golden opportunity for someone to, you know, add a few more letters to the hillside. The letters ‘F’, ‘U’, ‘C’, and ‘K’ come to mind.

Can’t the studios just fire them all and move on already?

There is an interesting article today at NewsBusters about two “journalists” attempting to justify this discrepancy in reporting.

This question was posed to Robin Wright: “Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention?”

Not necessarily. The fact is we’re at the beginning of a trend — and it’s not even sure that it is a trend yet. There is also an enormous dispute over how to count the numbers. There are different kinds of deaths in Iraq.

There are combat deaths. There are sectarian deaths. And there are the deaths of criminal — from criminal acts. There are also a lot of numbers that the U.S. frankly is not counting. For example, in southern Iraq, there is Shiite upon Shiite violence, which is not sectarian in the Shiite versus Sunni. And the U.S. also doesn’t have much of a capability in the south.

So the numbers themselves are tricky.

Don’t want to jump the gun, huh? Right. What about an increase in casualties?

KURTZ: But let’s say that the figures had shown that casualties were going up for U.S. soldiers and going up for Iraqi civilians. I think that would have made some front pages.

STARR: Oh, I think inevitably it would have. I mean, that’s certainly — that, by any definition, is news. Look, nobody more than a Pentagon correspondent would like to stop reporting the number of deaths, interviewing grieving families, talking to soldiers who have lost their arms and their legs in the war. But, is this really enduring progress?

We’ve had five years of the Pentagon telling us there is progress, there is progress. Forgive me for being skeptical, I need to see a little bit more than one month before I get too excited about all of this.

So, casualties going up is “news”, but casualties going down is something to be skeptical about. It’s almost as if they want us to lose.

As always, read the whole article.

What happened to the historical programming? The History Channel used to show enough Victory at Sea reruns to sink a ship, but now such programs are nowhere to be found. Instead, we have shows like Modern Marvels and Mega Movers. These are both good shows, but I don’t consider them appropriate for a channel named History. Modern Marvels in particular seems to have run out of subjects with historical context (the Brooklyn Bridge, Hoover Dam, etc), and has moved on to other subjects like sewers and mines. Sewers and mines might be interesting from a geeky perspective, but not from a historical perspective.

Last night, the History Channel ran shows on Star Wars’s 30th anniversary. Again, both were interesting shows from a geeky perspective, but neither was particularly related to history. However, my major objection is this: yesterday was Memorial Day! Aren’t shows about Star Wars rather inappropriate on Memorial Day? I would have preferred Victory at Sea.

The grizzled leader of our heroes, Sgt. ‘Scream’, complains that they are stuck there holding the cordon so some stupid general 75 miles away can look good on TV. And so the soldiers hunker down for a 36 hour siege while the brass in Baghdad cow-tow to the Mainstream Media and negotiate with the terrorists.

In the real war, the commanders on the ground would have returned fire and shot the building full of holes before anyone watching Al Jazeera on the satellite in Baghdad could figure out what was going on.

In the real war, as evidenced by Fallujah and other cities, the mosque would have been shot up and probably destroyed. The following day, the media would be grilling the generals about how they killed an Al Jazeera reporter and destroyed a mosque. The media would complain loudly, the Arab media would scream bloody murder and the anti-war left would demand that Sgt. ‘Scream’ and the fire team be investigated for war crimes because they killed terrorists who were offering to surrender.

That is what would happen in the real war.

But ‘Over There’ is a Hollywood production being filmed in the Mojave Desert and in drama, and the heroes have to be right and vindicated. But showing the reality war and how the media operates in war is not what Hollywood wants.

Why am I not surprised? Hollywood not only gets it wrong, they get it wrong intentionally. Weasels.