What Do They Know?

The Iran election protests are everywhere.

Remember Eason Jordan's "The News We Kept to Ourselves"? Here's what I want to know: what do the major news agencies know about Iran and the ruling regime that they haven't reported? Are reporters from these agencies tracking the regime's behavior now, and if so are they reporting it? All of it?

Housing Starts Fall Again

Martin Crutsinger of AP reports:

A modest rebound in single-family home construction in April raised hopes Tuesday that the three-year slide in housing could be bottoming. But with the supply of unsold homes bulging, foreclosures rising and prices falling, no broad recovery is expected until next spring at the earliest.

You know, it's funny: we saw articles yesterday (Bloomberg) reporting that Q1 housing starts would rise, and this would provide further evidence the recession has bottomed out. But today's crop of articles make little mention of recession.

Nor should they. This little episode shows two areas where reporters need to do a better job:
1. Stop giving so much emphasis to predictions, especially in a volatile climate like the current financial crisis and recession.
2. Separate fact (housing starts gained/fell) from analysis (the economy has therefore recovered/bottomed out/worsened).

UPDATE: Lucia Mutikani of Reuters reports (emphasis mine):

New U.S. housing starts and permits dropped to record lows in April, while retail sales fell last week, according to reports on Tuesday that tempered optimism the nation's recession was drawing to a close.

Here's how she led yesterday's article, predicting good housing start news:

U.S. homebuilder sentiment jumped to its highest level in eight months in May, a private survey showed on Monday, supporting views that the three-year housing slump might be close to an end.

So Monday she thinks the recession will end soon, based on a prediction of increased housing starts. The next day, the prediction turns out (somewhat) inaccurate, and...she tempers her optimism.

Check out this graf from today's article, near the middle:

Analysts said that while the decline in starts suggests the recession has yet to run its course, it should help the housing market work through a huge stock of unsold existing homes and lay the foundation for a recovery from a three-year slump.

"This is essentially a good thing. It means supply will eventually come back in line with demand. Home builders have adopted an appropriate risk aversion stance," said Joseph Brusuelas, an economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Why didn't she report this yesterday? As long as there's a "huge stock of unsold existing homes", who in their right mind thinks housing starts are going to significantly improve?

Also missing from today's or yesterday's article is any acknowledgment of the impending wave of foreclosures due to hit the market this month or next.

From the Weird News Files

You can take away their freedom, but you can never take away their transvestites?

Perhaps the U.S. Army should consider replacing its body armor and combat boots with evening gowns and high heels.

(Via Instapundit.)

Chrysler For Sale

Chrysler is up for sale.

Who's going to buy the struggling auto company? It would take someone with very deep pockets and an almost altruistic sense of business.

How about Al Gore?

I personally think that's a great idea. Gore has said he doesn't want to run for political office, that he wants to focus full-time on global warming. What better way to achieve his objective than to turn around a half-dead dinosaur of the automotive age, and transform it into the leading eco-friendly industrial business in the world? If nothing else he'd have a dynamite mission statement.

(Hat tip Instapundit.)

HAR1

Glenn Reynolds linked to this Freeman Dyson interview. Dyson seemed to be particularly excited about something called HAR1. This is a small patch of human DNA that has experienced significant evolution since the human and chimp species diverged from their common ancestor six million years ago. Dyson doesn't mention there are 48 other DNA regions that have also changed in the last six million years, just not as much as HAR1.

The research team that discovered the region don't know yet what that particular patch of DNA actually does. But it seems to be related to brain development.