Author: N.Z. Bear

Folks:
I’ve moved another step forward with the Easongate page here at TTLB. I’m now showing individual posts as well as blogs. Check out the Easongate page and the new post listing page.
At the moment, this is by no means a comprehensive listing. I am parsing blog’s XML feeds, so if a blog has “index.xml” available, it should be picking up any Eason Jordan posts, but if there’s no feed, it won’t find anything. I’ll be continuing to evolve/enhance this functionality to broaden the reach and try to capture as many posts as possible.
Unlike most of the Ecosystem functions at TTLB, this page actually will update throughout the day as new posts are found. So check back early & often.
I would ask that you please do NOT e-mail me with pointers to your own posts that aren’t listed: as I mention, I will be enhancing the automated scripts to cast a wider net, but I simply don’t have the personal bandwidth to try to manually add posts that were missed; sorry.
General feedback / reactions / suggestions are welcome as always, however. Enjoy!

Bill Roggio of dropped me an email earlier yesterday and asked if there might be a way to track how many blogs are talking about the Eason Jordan controversy. I thought it an interesting technical problem to solve (for a worthy endeavour), and gave it a shot.
You can see the results here: http://www.truthlaidbear.com/easongate.php
As of this morning, it looks like 438 blogs currently mention “Eason Jordan” on their front page, with a total combined Average Daily Visits of at least 721,687.
A few caveats:
– These stats only capture weblogs registered in the TTLB Ecosytem, so the count is likely somewhat higher in reality
– Only blogs which have public SiteMeter counters have their “average daily visits” included in the total
– The “Combined average daily visits” statistic needs to be handled carefully. I’m sensitive to not distorting what that number really means, so please do NOT say anything like “according to TTLB, over xxx,yyy people are reading about Eason Jordan”. We can state the total combined # of average daily visits, but we have no clue how many “visitors” — i.e., people — there are. I had to whack the NYT for this, and I want to make sure I don’t encourage the same kind of mistake myself.
And my perspective on the actual issue? Quite simple: Davos should release the tape, as many others have requested. Then we can all make a fair and well-informed judgement of whether Mr. Jordan deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the door…

And there was much rejoicing
Last week started on a high with reactions to the remarkably successful and relatively peaceful Iraqi elections lighting up the blogosphere. Iraq the Model, standard-bearer for the nascent Iraqi blogosophere, up the triumphant mood:
How can I describe it!? Take my eyes and look through them my friends, you have supported the day of Iraq’s freedom and today, Iraqis have proven that they’re not going to disappoint their country or their friends…Could any model match this one!? Could any bravery match the Iraqis’!? Let the remaining tyrants of the world learn the lesson from this day.
Those in search of first-hand coverage from Iraq were not disappointed. Cigars in the Sand provided direct photo coverage from Baghdad; Friends of Democracy offered a host of Iraqi correspondents covering the election. Other in-country blogs included I Should Have Stayed Home… and Iraqi blogs The Mesopotamian and Life in Baghdad. And as always with a major event, many roundups could be found, including these from Arthur Chrenkoff, Jeff Jarvis, and of course, Glenn Reynolds.
Targeting Eason Jordan’s Targeting
CNN chief Eason Jordan spent the week in a position familiar to the likes of Dan Rather and Trent Lott: with a large blogosphere-shaped target on his back. Rony Abovitz, blogging at the World Economic Forum, released the hounds on Jordan with a startling accusation:
During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.
Tuesday, Captain Ed, Little Green Footballs, and Power Line picked up on the report, and it was all downhill for Mr. Jordan from there. On Wednesday, self-described “recovering TV reporter-turned-blogger” Rebecca MacKinnon confirmed Abovitz’s account, (“I was in the room and Rony’s account is consistent with what I heard”), lending significant credence to the story given her own disclaimer that “…Jordan happens to be my former boss who promoted me and defended me in some rather sticky situations after my reporting angered the Chinese government…”
Jordan himself released a clarifying statement (“To be clear, I do not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists in Iraq. I said so during the forum panel discussion. But, nonetheless, the U.S. military has killed several journalists in Iraq in cases of mistaken identity.”) and CNN rolled out a backpedalling e-mail declaring that “Many blogs have taken Mr. Jordan’s remarks out of context.”
The problem, however, is that no official transcript has been produced of Jordan’s remarks, nor has any audio or video recording been made available — yet. But that may change shortly, as blogger Sisyphus indicates that the World Economic Forum has responded to his request for a copy of the session videotape.
Thus far, the mainstream media has all but completely ignored the Jordan story, but that too is changing. The Washington Times ran a brief piece Friday, and Hugh Hewitt, who has done much to keep the story alive on his blog, appeared on the Chris Matthew’s Show Saturday and raised the issue, prompting — and predicting that “will break in the major media over the weekend”. Perhaps a litte over-optimistic, but with high-powered bloggers such as La Shawn Barber on the case and a new blog devoted solely to the controversy, one wouldn’t want to be in Mr. Jordan’s shoes.
The Week in Blog is a new weekly feature at The Truth Laid Bear. Check back every Monday morning for a roundup of the stories that resonated throughout the political blogosphere over the past week.

Well, things may have seemed a bit quiet around here lately, but trust me: it’s been busy behind the scenes!
Over the past five weeks, I’ve put an intense focus on improving the stability, performance, and maintainability of the Ecosystem. And I’m happy to say that the heavy lifting is just about done.
Here’s the scoop:
Self-Service
The self-service interface has now been completely reworked and is fully operational. You can now request a change to your blog’s URL; request that two blogs be merged together; or for a blog to be removed entirely from the Ecosystem. It all starts on your blog’s details page: look for a new link right up near the top labelled ‘Request a change to this blog’. The prompts will lead you through the process, and output a snippet of code which, when placed on your blog’s template, will convey the change to the Ecosystem.
Why not just have the change happen online? Security. By requiring that all changes be initiated by code within a blog, I can assure that only the owner of a blog can actually initiate a change. That prevents abuse, but still allows me to automate the process. And that means much faster processing of requests.
For the next few weeks, I will still be manually reviewing and approving changes to ensure that all the functionality is working properly, so expect a few days processing time. But after that I’ll flip the code to fully automated, and the turnaround will be immediate, with results being displayed after the next nightly scan.
Performance & Stability
In addition to the usual tweaks here and there, I’ve implemented two changes which I believe have provided significant and noticeable performance improvements.
First, I’ve implemented gzip compression on all pages. I have to say, this was about the easiest performance fix I’ve ever seen — I’d recommend that any blogger worried about their bandwidth bill or site performance go ahead and do it. If you want to give it a try, it literally involves just adding a single line of code: check out Scriptygoddess’ instructions
Secondly, I’ve turned on query caching in the MySQL database. This is also huge: it means that the most commonly executed queries (pulling up Glenn’s statistics, for instance) are now cached and their access time is much faster.
The only not-so-good news is that sadly, I have still not been able to fix the mysterious exploding apache thread issue. But, I have developed a cron job which checks to see if a thread has gone rogue every minute, and if so, kills it off. So while the problem isn’t fixed, the impact is dramatically reduced. (And of course, I’m still way open to suggestions if you have ideas how to solve the root cause).
E-mailed Change Requests
I have made a significant dent in the long queue of e-mailed requests for Ecosystem changes. I’m now down to “only” a little less than a hundred to go. I will continue to work the queue down to zero, but if you have sent a request and haven’t heard back from me, you might try the self-service interface, as it is likely that you can accomplish whatever it was you were asking that way. Otherwise, patience, and I will get to you soon.
Spring Cleaning in January
In addition to the e-mailed requests, I’ve developed a number of scripts which have allowed me to hunt down blogs which are duplicates, idle, or simply defunct. Over the past weeks I’ve cleaned out a rather large number which fell into one or another of those categories.
Going forward, I will be tracking blogs that go ‘idle’. Blogs that have been idle (absolutely no updates at all) for 30 days will be suspended — which means they won’t show up any more, but their data won’t actually be lost. If your blog is suspended and you were just taking a break and are back, just drop me a line and I’ll re-activate it.
What this also means is that if you have moved your blog to a new URL and are no longer updating the old one, you can also just wait: the old blog entry will automagically disappear after 30 days.
Next Steps
The good news is, now that I’ve made progress on the basic blocking-and-tackling of stabilizing the Ecosystem, I can turn my energies back to the fun stuff: developing new functionality for the Ecosystem, and oh, yeah: blogging!
Stick around; I certainly will be…

Forlorn over the utter pointlessness of kicking John Kerry around anymore, Kaus has been filling that particular void in his life by jumping ugly on Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post and host of CNN’s Reliable Sources.
Mickey has consistently criticized (mocked, really) Kurtz for failing to say even a word about the contoversy surrounding CNN chief Eason Jordan’s allegation that U.S. troops have deliberately killed journalists in Iraq.
The delicious twist, of course, is that Mickey himself is now an employee of The Washington Post since the paper acquired Slate last month.
So Mickey is actually now criticizing the media reporter — and by association, the leadership of — his very own employer. Co-incidentally, the very same activity which he is beating up Kurtz for failing to do in his coverage (or lack thereof) of his paymaster Eason Jordan at CNN!
One must respect a man who so boldly leads by example. “Come on, Howard,” the subtext of Kausfiles taunts, “Questioning the competence of your bosses is fun! All the cool kids are doing it.”
Publishers and editors with a strong tolerance for such things should contact Mickey at mickey_kaus – at – slate.com …

When I telephoned a woman named Boxer in New York last week, I wondered who might answer. A DNC flack? A hack posing as a journalist? Someone paid by The New York Times to craft hatchet-jobs on Iraqis who dare to express thanks to America for deposing Saddam? Or simply a lazy writer with some confused ideas about fact-checking and objectivity? Until she picked up the phone, she was just a ghost on the page.
The mystery began last month when I went online to see what the mainstream media considered quality journalism. I stumbled into an ideological snake pit. Out of a list of three major networks (Fox doesn’t count: get over it) and about as many major dailies, I picked The New York Times because I keep hearing about that damned crossword puzzle of theirs.
It delivered more than that. The newspaper, which is quite upbeat about reporting all the bad Iraq news that’s fit to print, had provoked a deluge of intrigue and vitriol. People posting messages on “web” “logs” accused the paper of irresponsibility, laziness, and — common theme, here — irresponsibility again.
Abruptly, the Times had managed in a single story to crystalize everything sordid and depressing about American journalism today. I was determined to get to the bottom of the story, and determined to continue using the first-person voice, no matter how irritating it was and how hackneyed it made my piece sound. And so I set off to Times Square in search of the real story.
Turns out that the Times has decent security at that front door of theirs, though, so I wandered down the street a bit and found that over on 8th Avenue, a conspiracy theory had emerged about the Times on the corner of 8th and 42nd.
One of the guys who “owns” that corner, a colorful fellow named “Mouth” who makes up in keen insight what he lacks in teeth, had some questions for the Times. He wanted to know whether someone in the Zombie Leprechaun Conclave (or someone close to it) was funding it. And what about those newfangled “color” photos on the front page? Did the Zombie Leprechauns “have a shadow role in promoting them”?
Odd.
The questions boiled down to whether The New York Times was “incompetent”. Incompetence occurs when a supposedly professional operation actually doesn’t bother checking facts, shuns anything resembling fairness or objectivity, and publishes lazy pieces that advance their internal editorial biases while flaunting a blissful disregard for reality and truth.
Sarah Boxer, inexplicably still at the Times, tried to quell some of the doubts: “Hi, I would be happy to answer your questions, as you do raise some valid questions.” To the question of the Zombie Leprachaun connection, she responded: “All I remember is that we get a pot of gold from a creepy looking little green guy every month.”
That did not quiet the suspicions on 8th Avenue. A man answering to the name “Queen Britney The Second” reported that his “mental harmonic energy transmissions were always returned rather rudely” by The New York Times. His conclusion? The newspaper is “a refuge for Leprachaun Zombies, Leprachaun Zombie sympathizers, and associated people who look more than a little bit like Leprachaun Zombies.” He added, “I hope some serious attention will be brought to bear on this ‘New York Times’ and reveal it as a fraud.”
What kind of fraud? One guy who offered to let me taste his shoelaces suggested that the newspaper is actually published by humans who are coached by the Leprachaun Zombies on what to write. Another, in support of that theory, noted the Times’ suspiciously enthusiastic support for New York’s annual St. Patties Day Parade. A third man (or woman; not sure, really) observed that coaching wasn’t necessary. All the Leprachaun Zombies would need to do to influence the Times was to get the endorsement of the Democratic party and the Valentine editorials praising flesh-eating, shamrock-loving little people would come rolling in.
The 8th Avenue group pointed out that the Times was getting lots of attention, while media organizations that actually, you know, have a concept of decency and fairness, have gone unsung. Surely the Times did not represent the mainstream of American thinking?
Using a phone number written on a cocktail napkin that a past-his-prime waiter at Tavern on the Green provided me, I got in touch with Sarah to see what in the world was going on. And last week I finally go to talk on the telephone to Sarah Boxer, a tired hack who once learned how to be a journalist with integrity but said, “I don’t look at myself as one now.”
Why did she write such utter crap? When was she going to expose the Zombie Leprachauns that control the Times?
She was surprisingly frank. The Times had changed her. When her time with the Times began, she said, “People surprised me with their warmth and how much they cared about actually getting the truth from their news.” But as time passed, she said, “I felt that hey, they’re not the ones paying my salary: the Zombie Leprachauns are. So screw ’em.”
“Me and my journalistic colleagues”, she said, “we generally agree on the important things about reporting: spelling; grammar; having a killer lede.” But there is one important difference: “Other journalists think checking facts and not floating unsubstantiated rumors that might get people killed are an important part of journalism. I have my questions.”
Now that seems genuine.

Late yesterday I re-enabled everything on the site, including status display code, so everyone should be seeing their actual Ecosystem level on their blogs again. At this point, I still have not been able to isolate why I see Apache child processes exploding in memory size.
But, I have a cron job running that checks every minute to see if one has, and restarts Apache if needed. So the end result is the problem is masked, but not solved. So, assistance is still welcome; see this post for the full details of the problem…

Folks:
Here’s the latest on the performance problems I’ve been tracking. It turns out that it doesn’t appear to be directly related to load of the status display. The following is the technical details of what’s going on: I’d very much welcome any Apache or PHP gurus’ input on how I might proceed to debug the problem.
The basic issue is that a few times a day, an Apache httpd child processes suddenly explodes in memory size and consumes all available memory. The behavior is sudden, not gradual: within a few seconds or a minute the process swells to several orders of magnitude larger than its usual size.
Listed below is a ps aux; the first httpd is a ‘normal’ one, the second is the problem child:
nobody 23166 0.0 0.1 17572 2148 ? S 16:06 0:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
nobody 23167 1.4 63.7 2245624 1315584 ? D 16:06 1:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
Generally only a small number of child processes display this behavior: often just one at a time.
The system setup is Linux with Apache 1.3.33, PHP 4.3.10 and MySQL 4.0.22-standard. I am not running mod_perl.
The vast majority of traffic on the site is PHP scripts, some of which access the MySQL backend. I strongly suspect a problem in one of the scripts, but have not been able to identify specifically which one. I added the ‘%P’ variable to my Apache log file and am now able to identify the specific requests that the Apache child process which explodes was handling prior to the error, but thus far no pattern has emerged (different scripts appear last each time). I suspect that the last entry I see in the log is the last successful request, not the one that causes the problem. (I am aware of log_forensic, which I learned would provide log output of a request *before* processing, but my skills are not sufficient to make me feel comfortable rebuilding my Apache server to include it at this time).
I am working around the issue with a cron script that checks if a child process has exploded and then restarts Apache if needed; this helps to mask the issue but is obviously not a fix. I have considered setting max_requests_per_child to a non-zero value but based on my understanding I doubt it would help (given that this is not a gradual leak but a case where the process goes wild in the middle of a request).
I recognize that it is unlikely that this problem can be diagnosed-at-a-distance, but would welcome suggestions on debugging tools and techniques which might help me narrow down the problem area. In particular: other than log_forensic, is there a way to truly see what that child process was doing when it went rogue?
Any and all suggestions are appreciated…
Update 1/16: Thanks again to all who have suggested additional debugging techniques. I tried a few of them this morning and have gathered additional data. None of it has provided an “aha!” moment to me as yet, but I will post it here so more skilled gurus than I can examine.
Output of lsof for rogue httpd process pid 10990
Output of ‘strace -q -f’ for rogue httpd process pid 10990
Output of ‘cat /proc/PID/maps’ for rogue httpd process pid 10990

Folks:
I’ve been attempting to chase down some performance issues around these parts for quite some time now. I am coming to believe that the Ecosystem status code which I provide for folks to put on their blogs may be the root cause of the troubles.
The problem is that, if you have the status Javascript code on your blog, every single time you get a hit on your site, I get a hit on the database here. And these days, it is becoming difficult to convince my server to stand up under the strain.
So: for the moment, I have altered the Javascript status code to simply return a message such as the following:
Profile
in the
TTLB Ecosystem
The ‘My Profile’ link will go to your details page. This still gives you a direct link to your details page, but avoids a hit on the TTLB database, which was the big problem (I think).
I’d welcome feedback on this change: is this a major disappointment? I need to make a decision as to how much it is worth investing to save that one feature, so I’d appreciate responses/thoughts.
Thanks all…
-NZB
Update 1/13: Thanks for the feedback, all, and please keep it coming. A bit more information: I seem to have tracked the problem down to a sudden loss of memory on the server, which seems to be caused by a single Apache thread suddenly going wild and grabbing a huge amount of available memory. Anybody with thoughts on why that might happen, please chime in!

My Tech Central Station column is now up, and provides some hard data examining traffic statistics at top political weblogs leading up to and after the election.
On a related note, if your weblog is registered with the Ecosystem and you have a publicly-visible SiteMeter counter, check your details page and you will now see a second graph, which shows your average daily visits over the past month.

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Wow. Recognizing that what we’re experiencing is nothing compared to a genuine natural disaster like South Asia’s tsunami, I still have to say, it’s raining like a sumbitch out here in Southern California.
After making the dubious decision to go out this afternoon on some errands, I quickly realized that it was pouring rain harder than I’d ever seen in down here in the sunny OC. And we take our sunshine seriously in these parts: it’s like, mandated by statute.
Anyway, being a geek, I wanted to know just how much rain we’ve gotten so far in 2005, and how that compares to our annual averages. As it turns out, we’re at 4.29 inches as of Sunday night (and climbing) according to Weather Underground. Based on historical averages, it would take until February 13th to accumulate that much rainfall — and we’ve done it in nine days. (See chart).
And, our total average annual rainfall is only 12.81 inches. So we’ve received over a third (33.5%) of our total rain for the year in the first week and a half.
Yikes…
Update 1/10/05 am: Revised to reflect the final total rainfall for January 9th and added percentage of annual average…

As a part of interest in promoting Sumatran coffee as a method for helping the long-term recovery of the tsunami-affected region, I reached out to several coffee-focused websites and forums and asked for their input and suggestions.
As it turns out, Kenneth Davids of Coffee Review was just finishing a roundup of Sumatran coffee, including reviews of 12 coffees (2 of which are Fair Trade offerings from Aceh province). Drop by Coffee Review and find yourself your next brew!

Kevin McCullough notes that Army Maj. Michael Cohen, a doctor who blogged the aftermath of the Dec. 21 mess-hall bombing, been ordered to shut down his blog.
Cohen’s site now contains the following message:
I have some very unfortunate news. Levels above me have ordered, yes ORDERED, me to shut down this website. They cite that the information contained in these pages violates several Army Regulations. I certainly disagree with this. However, I have made a decision to turn off the site pending further investigation as to whether or not I have violated these Army Regulations.
I’d welcome thoughts on this, particularly from those in or from the military…

Thanks to all who have submitted requests for Ecosystem cleanup items. Just wanted to let everyone know that progress is being made, even if it isn’t immediately visible. Over the past week I’ve devoted quite a bit of effort to improving a lot of the behind-the-scenes validation and tools that I use to keep things running smoothly, and will soon start crunching through the list of cleanup requests. One step at a time…
NZB

Gearing up to gear down for a quiet celebration with Lady M of the New Year.
There are many things I’m resolving for the New Year, not all of which are suitable for sharing in the bloggy world. So if you seek introspective, comprehensive lists of resolutions, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ll give you one, though, and I encourage you to take it up as your own:
I resolve to be less of an asshole to those who don’t deserve it, and more of one to those that do.
Happy New Year all. Blog safe, and I’ll catch you in 2005…

Those of you paying close attention will notice that I have a new blogad running on the site, which points to Command Post’s very helpful directory of agencies and charities that provide ways to help in South Asian relief efforts.
I created the ad in response to a request from Miklos at Blogads to donate the space to run an ad submitted by Unicef. I liked the idea of donating ad space for the relief efforts, but didn’t like specifying one single charity — particularly Unicef, which hasn’t exactly had a squeaky clean record in the past.
So, I created the generic ad you see as an alternative. If you are a blogger and want to run it yourself, it is a simple matter to re-create the ad to run on your site using your BlogAd offer code (if you don’t know how, ping me and I’ll help). Or just create your own ad and point it to the Command Post’s directory page.
However you can help to put those who want to help in touch with the groups that will let them do so is a good thing. So go do it, and thanks!

I occasionally get “op-eds” sent to me from the Rand Institute, and generally ignore them (like I do most of the low-grade think-tank spam I receive). But today’s submission caught my eye:
U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims
By David Holcberg
As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday’s tsunami in southern Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper, especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are suffering through no fault of their own.
The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government’s to give…
Sigh. The piece continues on in quite predictable fashion to decry the government for “doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them” and declaring the altruism that justifies such confiscation as “a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.”
Really, you couldn’t have written a better satire of classic Randthink if you tried. (Actually, you could: this piece would be rejected as too over-the-top if it wasn’t for real).
Okay, here’s a quick slice and dice:
First, “the government” is elected, and if the taxpayers don’t like their money being spent on charities, they have every opportunity to vote them out of office. So stop bitching about “the government.”
Second, Mr. Holcberg seems completely oblivious to the notion that perhaps it is in the selfish best-interest of the citizens of the United States to help ensure that the people of South Asia are not starving, dying, and generally living in misery. Might we entertain for a moment the idea that large populations of destitute, desperate people (as opposed to healthy, properous ones) are just a bit more likely to lash out at the United States and the rest of the world? You don’t have to accept a poverty-causes-terrorism argument (which I don’t) to grant that the United States would be safer and better off in a world rid of desperate, miserable populations who can be easily swayed by radical and dangerous ideologies of hatred against America.
Anyway, that’s about all the time this one is worth. The piece doesn’t appear to be online, so I’ll put the full text after the break. Read if you dare.
PS: Irony alert: why does the Ayn Rand institute have a page asking for volunteers?

Continue reading “Ayn Rand Institute on South Asia: Selfishness as Stupidity”

I spent a lovely Christmas with Lady M and my side of the family, which proved a nice break from both the Day Job and the usual bloggy grind.
But now: it’s time to get back to work.
So, to ensure we start 2005 off right, I’m going to be devoting some effort this week to cleaning up the Ecosystem. This will involve a lot of behind-the-scenes work, but I’m also extending out an offer to those poor souls who have something — anything — amiss with their entries that they’d like me to personally correct. Consider this an open invitation in the holiday spirit: if you title=”N.Z. Bear”>send your request to me this week, I’ll do my damndest to make sure it gets taken care of promptly.
If you’ve already sent me a request/reminder in, say, the last 3 weeks, I’ll go back and address those as well. Any older than that and I’d ask that you re-send me a message and let me know precisely what you need done.
Hope you all had a good holiday and are looking forward to a happy New Year…
NZB