A woman opens an old steamer trunk and discovers tantalizing clues that a long-dead relative may actually have been a serial killer, stalking the streets of New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A beer enthusiast is presented by his neighbor with the original recipe for Brown's Ale, salvaged decades before from the wreckage of the old brewery--the very building where the Star-Spangled Banner was sewn in 1813. A student buys a sandwich called the Last American Pirate and unearths the long-forgotten tale of Edward Owens, who terrorized the Chesapeake Bay in the 1870s. These stories have two things in common. They are all tailor-made for viral success on the internet. And they are all lies. Each tale was carefully fabricated by undergraduates at George Mason University who were enrolled in T. Mills Kelly's course, Lying About the Past. Their escapades not only went unpunished, they were actually encouraged by their professor. . . .
A Wikipedia page exploring the historical significance of the word “Forward” as a socialist rallying cry has made it the subject of dueling snarks from assorted would-be Wiki editors and vandals. Within hours of the Obama campaign’s slogan unveiling, the online page had its first edit since November 2011. ”Forward is the official slogan of the Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012,” the simple entry read. But nothing in Wiki-land is simple, especially when the name “Barack Obama” is sandwiched between references to “Avante!, organ of the Portuguese Communist Party” and “Voorwaarts!, organ of the Communist Youth Movement (Netherlands).” Apples and oranges, a persnickety editor claimed around 1 a.m. Tuesday: “The Obama campaign is not a publication, socialist or otherwise.” And with the click of a mouse, the Obama connection disappeared — for nearly 14 hours, at least. . . . The next edit seemed earnest enough. . . . . Within four minutes, that, too, was gone. “Obama’s campaign slogan,” another editor sniped, “is irrelevant to an entry on Forward as a generic name for socialist publications.” . . .
Influential sections of the Israeli-right and Palestinians are set to clash in the virtual world of Wikipedia, the internet-based free encyclopaedia which depends on contributions by its readers.
Abed A-Nassar, chairman of the Association of Palestinian Journalists, has called on Palestinian institutions to prepare for the conflict, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
Mr. Nassar's call for a "public relations war" follows a report in the newspaper that Israeli settlers had organised a class to train supporters to register and edit Wikipedia pages, so that the "Zionist" viewpoint could be better projected in cyberspace.
The course had been launched in order to sway domestic and international public opinion in favour of the organisers by encouraging Wikipedia contributions in Hebrew and English.
"The idea is not to make Wikipedia rightist but for it to include our point of view," Naftali Bennett, the director of the Yesha Council of Settlements, was quoted as saying.
In 2008, Mr. Bennet had resigned as the chief of staff of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The Internet is not managed well enough, and Israel's position there is appalling. Take for example the Turkish flotilla [to Gaza]. During the first hours we were nowhere to be found. In those first hours millions of people typed the words Gaza-bound flotilla and read what was written on Wikipedia,"
Mr. Bennet observed. The Yesha Council has announced a prize for the "best Zionist editor", a person who would generate the most "Zionist" changes in Wikipedia over the next four years. The winner would receive a hot-air balloon ride over Israel, Haaretz said. . . .
Looks like the folks at Wikipedia were prepared for the worst when it came to Rush Limbaugh. Actually they were a little too well prepared.
Shortly after the news broke that the conservative political radio talk show host was hospitalized, Wikipedia updated his page – and pronounced him dead. . . .
Canada's Financial Post tries to correct a tiny fraction of the inaccuracies introduced at Wikipedia.
How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles By Lawrence Solomon
The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.
The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.
The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.
The Medieval Warm Period, which followed the meanness and cold of the Dark Ages, was a great time in human history — it allowed humans around the world to bask in a glorious warmth that vastly improved agriculture, increased life spans and otherwise bettered the human condition.
But the Medieval Warm Period was not so great for some humans in our own time — the same small band that believes the planet has now entered an unprecedented and dangerous warm period. As we now know from the Climategate Emails, this band saw the Medieval Warm Period as an enormous obstacle in their mission of spreading the word about global warming. If temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago than today, the Climategate Emails explain in detail, their message that we now live in the warmest of all possible times would be undermined. As put by one band member, a Briton named Folland at the Hadley Centre, a Medieval Warm Period “dilutes the message rather significantly.”
Even before the Climategate Emails came to light, the problem posed by the Medieval Warm Period to this band was known. “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” read a pre-Climategate email, circa 1995, as attested to at hearings of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. But the Climategate transcripts were more extensive and more illuminating — they provided an unvarnished look at the struggles that the climate practitioners underwent before settling on their scientific dogma. . . .
At about 1:20 into the clip CNN's Rick Sanchez falsely claims that Rush Limbaugh said: "Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark." Of course, CNN uses a picture of Rush at what must have been his highest weight level ever, assuming that the picture wasn't also doctored.
MADDOW: When you get called racist by the guy who says the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. should get the Medal of Honor, consider yourself honored. Also, nauseated.
The above clip from MSNBC contains such statements as:
Rush Limbaugh is an unreconstructed racist. They don't want an owner who has said that slavery was a good thing because it made the streets safer.
[Limbaugh's] open publicly stated contempt for people with dark skin.
The media's source for these quotes? Wikipedia. The original posting has been corrected, but James Taranto has pointed to this site which recorded them.
African Americans
I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.[3/14/03]
Now this just blows me away
Was there any excrement, any shamelessness in any form, above all in cultural life, in which at least one African-American would not have been involved? As soon as one even carefully cut into such an abscess, one found, like maggots in a decaying body, often blinded by the sudden light, an African-American. [2/21/03]
James Earl Ray is the man who killed Martin Luther King Jr.
You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed. [4/23/98]
Arabs
As I said yesterday, truce is an old Arabic word. Goes way, way back in Islamic-Arabic culture, and it means, “We will get you later.” [4/16/04]
If Limbaugh were to sue CNN and MSNBC, his removal from the St. Louis Rams bid would let him claim some damages. Others who have attacked Rush over these false quotes include the Atlantic (here and here)
BILL O'REILLY: The reason that Limbaugh is not going to be able to buy into the NFL is because a bunch of made-up stuff became legend, and he got hammered.
WARREN BALLANTINE: OK, we won't look at the made-up stuff. Let's look at him playing "Barack The Magic Negro", and we're going to say that's just funny, that's just a joke, that's not racial either. It is racial to real black people.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Hey Warren, you were saying my argument was a red herring. Maybe you should do some research, go back and find out that it was an article written by a black person, headlined "Barack The Magic Negro."
BALLANTINE: He made it a song and played it on his show.
WILLIAMS: So what? He was making fun of it.
BALLANTINE: You can go back to the porch, Juan. You can go back. It's OK.
O'REILLY: All right guys: good debate, good-spirited debate.
