THIS SOUNDS GREAT

"Some 750,000 blogs and other user-generated content will soon show up on Yahoo! News search pages, presented right alongside news from mainstream media. But is Yahoo! taking another big step in the blurring of lines between professional media and grassroots journalism? The company is testing a new search tool that includes results from thousands of mainstream media outlets, and a separate results column for blogs, its new My Web social search and pictures posted to the company's Flickr photo service.

"Traditional media don't have the time or resources to cover all stories," says Joff Redfern, a director in Yahoo! Search. "We want to offer an alternative perspective on news outside of what the mainstream media has to offer." In a prepared statement, Neil Budde, general manager of Yahoo! News, says the company wants to fuse professional journalism with so-called citizen journalism to provide a fuller spectrum of content to its members. Still, Yahoo! is clearly sensitive to the dangers of blurring the lines between professional and amateur journalism. Results from 6,500 of Yahoo!'s content partners (mainstream media) will be displayed on the left side of the page. On the right side, clearly demarcated, will be relevant blog-search results. Below that, MyWeb and Flickr results will be listed. "We will make sure there is enough differentiation and demarcate where the [content] is coming from," says Redfern. "Part of the goal here is to learn from consumers and publishers, he added, noting that blogs aren't necessarily cannibalizing mainstream media. "Sometimes this stuff gets positioned as a zero-sum game, but it's not."

How will Yahoo! determine which search results to display in its blogs column? That's a closely guarded secret. Yahoo! is loath to give content providers the tools that might help them game the system for better visibility. The company won't discuss specifics but says that blog-search results are based in part on the popularity of the blogs within MyYahoo, as measured by a computer algorithm. "If we've got more people subscribed to a blog, there is presumably more credibility to its reputation," says Redfern.... Initially, only blogs registered with the MyYahoo RSS directory--there are about 750,000 today--will be searchable. Bloggers will soon be able to apply to Yahoo! Search to add their blog to its index, even if it's outside the MyYahoo universe".

As Michelle Malkin shows at length, even the conservative "Old Media" hate blogs so this will be a bitter pill for them. Michelle also mercilessly exposes the lies of the MSM about the Toledo riots. A vast riot by blacks was reported as being the work of whites! Thank goodness half a million people a week read her.

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ELSEWHERE

I have always thought that GWB is a genuinely decent man who follows the advice of his Lord and does good deeds without announcing them from the rooftops (Matthew 6:1-6) -- unlike the patently psychopathic Bill Cinton or the cracked Al Gore. I have heard various reports of GWB's private good deeds but this story about how the Presidential security detail have experienced him and his predecesors seems to be the most comprehensive account yet. Note that Snopes have been trying to pick holes in the story since June but have not yet succeeded. It reminds me of this wonderful story about Ronald Reagan -- another decent man for whom the Left had nothing but abuse.

Keith Burgess Jackson has REALLY got it in for the despicable Brian Leiter now. I am looking forward to the fireworks.

Conservative Anglicans to expand their influence: "Sydney Anglicans plan to offer refuge to dissidents of rival churches in a move critics warn would poison its relationships with the wider church, trigger legal injunctions and threaten the position of the archbishop. In its most contentious proposal before this year's synod, the powerful Sydney Anglican Diocese last night voted to set up a framework by which like-minded congregations of other evangelical churches and Protestant denominations can officially link up with the diocese. The Dean of St Andrew's Cathedral, the Very Reverend Phillip Jensen, has identified rebel congregations of the Uniting Church who are opposed to gay ministry, and ethnic congregations, as those who might be interested in "fellowship". But critics have warned that the affiliation could be the backdoor means by which the conservative diocese creates a network of like-minded churches outside Sydney, expanding its influence well beyond its boundaries. The move would be likely to fuel tensions between the diocese and the six other NSW bishops, and the wider Anglican Church, about the right to "plant" churches in neighbouring jurisdictions".

Another message from Eleanor French Spreitzer: "PETA, WHEN DO YOU LEAVE???? Hey Peta: Don't forget to see the "Great Wall of China" while you're over there. What am I talking about??? Well, surely an army of you is on your way to China after seeing on the news that they are feeding live Water Buffalos to the Lions at the zoo. Yes, Peta, they are putting live Buffalos right in the cages with live Lions and then standing around to watch the fun. What are you going to do about it? Speaking of animals - maybe you are too CHICKEN to go over to China and straighten out such mindlessly cruel people. A lot easier to push the choir around - right?????"

There is a good quiz here that tests your knowledge of the great Australian slanguage. Don't worry if you get them all wrong. They give you the answers at the end. I got two out of 20 wrong myself and I pride myself on my knowledge of Australian expressions. There is a huge number of them.

"Paradise Now": Antisemitic movie co-financed by German authorities: "Paradise Now" is the first openly anti-Semitic film I've seen in the German cinema. Joseph Goebbels would have praised in glowing terms the fact that the German taxpayer ponied up an essential contribution to the production costs. The materials for discussion of the film in German schools authored by a federal authority from the Central Office for Political Education (BPB)would have met with his grinning approval.... While the Palestinians, without exception in the German version, speak at length in flawless German, there's only one place in the whole film where an Israeli speaks a sentence - German, but with an unpleasant accent..."

Last Friday I put up pictures of some original Nazi posters from the 1930s which showed how Leftist the appeal of Nazism was. The post was a bit ruined because for most readers the pictures did not come up. The place I sourced the pix from seems to have chronic bandwidth problems. I have now however re-posted the exhibition as a separate file, using one of my own sites as the picture source. Click here to see it as it should originally have appeared.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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