Strategic Reserve

Starting a few days ago news stories started cropping up about the illegality of Marmite in Canada and that stores were being forced to abandon their stocks of the product.  

Almost as soon as these stories began appearing I jumped into action.  Before long we were in a store whose stocks had not yet been compromised and I grabbed four tubs of this black gold.

I'm hoping that these four will be enough to keep me going until the situation can be resolved.

My hunch wasn't that crazy after all

Some of you may recall that a few weeks ago I wondered what would happen to the enforcement of prostitution laws after the Supreme Court's important ruling striking several provisions.  In particular, I was curious how police forces and prosecutors would respond to the context of what were likely to be unsuccessful prosecutions of a law still technically in effect for the coming months.

Turns out that at least in Saint John they just won't be enforcing prostitution laws until the federal government addresses the court's requirements.

I can't help but wonder how many other jurisdictions in Canada are taking the same approach?  I would imagine that most would rather not make it so clear that they won't be enforcing prostitution laws even if they won't be.

How Will This Work? or Did the Supreme Court Pull a Fast One?

Yesterday the Supreme Court of Canada found (ruling is here) that a number of provisions criminalizing aspects of prostitution trade (apparently selling sex for money itself isn't illegal in Canada) were contrary to provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Instead of immediately declaring the offending provisions illegal the court gave parliament a year to enact new provisions before the current provisions will become inactive.

I can't help but wonder if suspending the declaration that these provisions are unconstitutional for a year isn't something of a fiction?  Are these provisions not basically already dead?

Even if the laws are still theoretically in force has the highest court in the land not just provided a perfect defense for anyone for anyone charged under these rules?  Maybe more to the point, would a prosecutor ever consider bringing charges once the Supreme Court of Canada guaranteed there to be no chance of a successful conviction?

And maybe this part is a stretch, but are the police going to be inclined to even arrest people using these provisions if the chance of prosecution is slim?  Might many police forces decide to use their resources on more promising endeavours until this matter has been clarified with either new law or a clear lapsing of these provisions?

And as laws tend not to apply retroactively, might the period of time from yesterday until a new law is passed or the provisions clearly lapse be something of a Wild West/Renaissance for prostitution in Canada?

I'd be really curious to know if there's something about this ruling that I've missed or if some part of my analysis is way off because as it is I can't yesterday's ruling isn't much more significant than has been previously suggested.

And I should also note that it would seem to me that a similar situation might arise every time the Supreme Court finds a provision unconstitutional but suspends the implementation of their order.  Is the suggestion that the law is still in effect (despite zero chance of a successful conviction) so powerful to continue to discourage the behaviour in question, whatever that behaviour might be, or is the delay really as much of a fiction as it seems?

Going on a Bieber Hunt (not)

So my worst fears have been confirmed by CBC - Justin Bieber (and his monkey) won't be appearing in Regina for this year's Junos.  Bummer.

Don't worry - I'll still be going celeb spotting at the airport tonight.

Now I'll just have to take photos of everyone and then check my results against Google Images to see if I managed to see anyone famous.

Or maybe I'll just pick up Jeannette and call it a night.

A Few Quick Notes 596

-After a few days in the -35 zone we've moved back into slightly more reasonable temperatures.  Though I don't think we actually made it above zero today, with the help of the sun it was warm enough that we actually had a little slush to contend with as we were making our way home from work.    Hopefully this will be frozen by the time I have to head back to work tomorrow morning.

-You know what's great about this time of year?  It's great that when I drive to work it's not pitch black.  It's strangely comforting to know that you're not arriving at work an hour before sunrise.  And it's not bad that the sun doesn't set until about an hour after the workday ends either.

-After work on Friday (at least I think it was Friday) I received a very strange robocall that seemed to be about electoral redistricting in Saskatchewan.  Just about the only thing that I could make out was that the call supposedly came from 'Chase Research.'

Turns out I wasn't the only one in Saskatchewan to get such a call and that these calls have now been the subject of a number of media reports, including this one.

-Somehow, after years of trying, I've finally managed to get Jeannette to listen to a few of my regular podcasts.  The new This American Life has now become a shared Sunday ritual (instead of one I shamefully engaged in alone whenever I could sneak a listen).  And over the past few weeks I've managed to sneak in RadioLab, 99% Invisible, and the always informative Inside Jobs Podcast.  For whatever reason I haven't quite managed to draw Jeannette into my Jordan, Jesse GO!/Stop Podcasting Yourself web.

-I made eight small raspberry tarts tonight.  Now that they're out of the oven I have no interest in eating them.  Maybe by tomorrow morning I'll rustle up some kind of willingness to sacrifice my health so that these guys don't end up sitting on the counter and spoiling.  

What a tough life I lead.

Cameron - 2

Neil - 0

And we wonder why people are confused

I love that by reading multiple headlines/news stories one may be more confused about the nature of a situation than if they had just read a single story.  I think a great example of that is in the midst of happening in Halifax presently.

It seems that Halifax's mayor, Peter Kelly, is on his way out as the executor of a long-contested estate.  The CBC's headline for their story conveying the details is:

Halifax Mayor to step down as estate executor

On the other hand, the Coast - the independent weekly that first pushed the story of the mayor's challenges as executor, has the following headline:

BREAKING NEWS: Peter Kelly removed as executor of the Mary Thibeault estate

The CBC's headline gives me the impression that Kelly had some choice in the matter while the Coast's headline seems to suggest that Kelly had no choice in the matter.  These differences seem significant to me, or am I reading more into the headline differences than I should?

A Few Quick Notes 591

-We're in the midst of another hot and humid day in Ottawa.  As we keep creeping further into September I keep tricking myself into thinking that we'll soon be past such days - but they keep on coming.

-Our squirrel keeps coming back, though it's damage from this morning's visit wasn't as bad as a few visits.  I guess I really need to consider ramping up my cayenne use if I want to got a few days without these guys visiting and tearing everything up.

-So it turns out that the Quebec election was pretty eventful.  Not only did the PQ do a little worse than expected (along with the CAQ), the Liberal outperformed expectations.  At the end of the day the PQ managed only four more seats than the Liberals (and they were about nine seats short of majority territory).  Maybe most impressively, the PQ, the Liberals, and the CAQ all received less than 1/3 of the total vote - though the Liberals and PQ were close with 31% each.

And the least expected development of the night was likely the shooting that occurred at the PQ election night party.  Fortunately I had called it a night by the time this happened so I didn't trick myself into thinking that I should watch the coverage as the details of the shooting emerged.

-Aside from the sinkhole coverage, the big news from Ottawa today is that by 2014 there should be a AA team based here.  While I'm a little bummed out that we'll have to wait another season, I'm definitely looking forward to attending some minor league baseball.

-So if you're looking for some ongoing courtroom drama consider following the case regarding Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford.  It seems that if this conflict of interest based case goes against Ford he could find himself out of a job in the near future, or at least that is one interpretation of the possible outcomes.

It's not a surprise if it was advertised months ago

At about the time I was preparing to move to Ottawa (February 18th, to be precise) my father sent me a job ad for a job at elections Canada.  The basic ad included in the paper made it sound as though I might be at least semi-qualified for the position.  Of course, when I read the full job description on the Elections Canada site I was pretty sure I was nowhere near qualified to become the Commissioner of Elections Canada.

Now, about three months after the job was posted, the successful candidate has been announced (and because I've signed up for Elections Canada's news updates I received an email hours ago).

Just recently the Ottawa Citizen's story on the appointment was released.  I was quite surprised by one of their early paragraphs.

But in a surprise announcement Thursday, Elections Canada said Corbett had retired and been replaced by Yves Côté, the former associate deputy minister of Justice.

 At least to me it seemed hardly surprising that such an announcement was made given the months that have passed since the post was advertised.  Maybe they were using the word 'surprise' to refer to the successful candidate?

Despite the fact that I don't think that the early part of the story makes it clear that their 'surprise' relates to the appointee rather than the existence of an announcement, they do go on to paint a rather uninspiring picture of successful applicant.  In their profile a picture is painted of an individual disinclined to challenge the powers that be.

Anyway, whatever the case may be as far as the Citizen's use of the word 'surprise' may be this new Commissioner is going to have his hands full with the sizeable investigations currently underway by his office.

An amazing thing about this Magnotta affair...

...is that each story seems to include a series of different photographs of the suspect.  I'm sure I've now seen dozens of glamour shots of this guy and I haven't been doing anything more than reading the standard media coverage of the story.  One can't help but wonder when the well of unused photos will run dry, if ever.

This ever changing array of glamour shots of the suspect just makes an already bizarre and horrific story even more bizarre and horrific.

If that's all the re-writting you're going to do why don't you just re-post the press release?

A few minutes ago I noticed an Ottawa Citizen article about an Russell Peters' upcoming appearance in Ottawa.

Not surprisingly, it was noted that the quotes attributed to Peters' came from the press release.  The rest of the 'article' doesn't appear to be so upfront about its origins.

I was a little bit surprised to see that the 'article' mentioned that

The tour will feature ... video cameras and screens for an up-close and intimate show that will capture his signature audience improv in an arena setting.

Did a newspaper article really just include a passage about a modern stadium show having video cameras and screens?  Is the author assuming that the audience hasn't seen such a show in 20 years?

And what about that part about "his signature audience improve," is that the kind of phrasing that would normally appear in a newspaper article about an upcoming show?

Anyway, a few of the passages in the article caught my attention.  They just didn't read like an article - they read like a news release.  In the end I thought I should try to find the news release mentioned in the article and compare it to the Citizen's article.  Turns out they are pretty similar.

Here's a pretty good example of the copy-paste journalism employed in this instance.

As the article puts it:

Peters has given away more than $1 million over the past several years to various charities, from the Brampton Civic Hospital to Heart House Hospice, Gilda’s Club, the MS Society and a scholarship at his former high school (The Russell Peters North Peel Scholarship) to send a deserving student to college. The scholarship is now in its third year.

And as it appears in the original press release:

Peters has given away more than a million dollars over the past several years to various charities, from the Brampton Civic Hospital, to Heart House Hospice, Gilda's Club, the MS Society and a scholarship at his old high-school, TheRussell Peters North Peel Scholarship to send a deserving student to college.  The scholarship is now in its third year.

Similarities like these can be found throughout the article.  Paragraph after paragraph has been basically lifted from the press release.

There are a few aspects of this practice that I don't understand.  First of all, isn't this basically copyright infringement?  If it isn't, does it mean that I could I re-write the Harry Potter books as the Larry Sotter books and sell them for $5 less and make billions? Or maybe just remove all of the Oxford comas?

Secondly, isn't there something of a moral issue here.  The newspaper is presenting the content as though it is a piece of journalism.  I'm sure media studies types have a better way of framing the issue, but to represent something as journalistic output that is really nothing more than a modified press release seems, at the bare minimum, a little misleading.

Thirdly, isn't this just hugely inefficient?  If the paper thinks that the press release content is valuable, but not valuable for independent reporting, why not just re-post the original press release as a press release of interest?  Why spend the time and money to hire someone to make a few minor stylistic changes that can't possibly be significant enough to eliminate any copyright-related issues?  In an era when newsroom cuts are rampant, this seems a particularly strange practice and an area ripe for modernization and reform.

A Few Quick Notes 574

-While today was beautiful, it was nothing like yesterday's mid-twenties masterpiece when we reached something approaching weather perfection.  It was a pleasure to have the chance to live through such a beautiful day.

-I guess I'm now 8 for 24 in this year's RUTRTW contest.  Unfortunately at least three of these wins have been for 'donuts,' and I have no idea what to do with the winning rims.   If someone wants them maybe I could mail them out all at once or one at a time depending on demand.  Anyway, if you think you might be interested in up to three free donut rims leave me a comment and I think about how to proceed.

-At least my record isn't 0 for 68, which how bad the RCMP's was when it came to picking Canadian politicians with connections to the USSR.  You can find the CBC's story on the topic here.

-The NDP leadership convention has not started.  And while I didn't pay too much attention to the first few months of the race, over the past few days I have been enjoying watching the final manoeuvres.  I will also be curious to see who is eventually selected to be the leader and how the preferential voting system ends up working out.

Today while thinking about convention coverage I thought to myself that I would 'watch it on Twitter,' and then realized that that is likely how I will follow the convention.  It's kind of amazing that reading a series of short updates is sufficiently engaging and informative that I would consider doing this.

Something, something Robocalls

This morning I read a very underwhelming column on the developing robocall scandal by the Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson.  Not only does the column include the questionable claim "As a general rule, politicians never openly lie, because the consequences of being caught in one just aren’t worth it," but it also seems to back much of the official Conservative position on the Robocall Scandal somewhat uncritically.


One of the claims of the Conservative party that seems to have been accepted whole-heartedly is that

people who have worked at senior levels on election campaigns, but who prefer not to be identified, say that voter suppression tactics are stupid because they’re inefficient. It is more profitable on election day to mobilize your vote than to try to discourage your opponent’s.

What evidence do these unnamed campaign workers or Mr. Ibbitson have to support this position?  My gut feeling was that it was at least plausible that voter suppression could be very effective in some circumstances - and particularly in circumstances that were not all that dissimilar from those associated with the current Robocall Scandal.

A little time online lead me to a few neat articles about robocalling and voter suppression.  One that dealt more with the regulation of robocalling in the US does detail a few of the ways in which robocalls have been used both legitimately and illegitimately.  I was particularly amused by the following quote, which is quite pertinent to the Super PAC-era politics currently ongoing in the US:

The NRCC spent almost $20,000 to pour hundreds of thousands of robocalls into the district in New Hampshire. Because the calls were independent expenditures, they could not be coordinated with nor ap- proved of by the incumbent Republican candidate. Even after Congressman Bass asked for the calls to stop, the party committee refused, saying that cessation would require illegal coordination.

Another article more explicitly on voter suppression through the distribution of misinformation found that such tactics could suppress voter participation, particularly among those segments of a population with limited political knowledge/education.  Though these findings are preliminary,  they do hint at the potential effectiveness of a widespread campaign of misinformation.

I am not trying to lay the blame for the Robocall Scandal at the feet of any particular entity or absolve other groups, but trying to suggest that when we hear claims about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of things like voter suppression campaigns that we try to assess the validity of these claims before accepting or rejecting them.  In some cases the validity or inaccuracy of such claims can change the way the whole situation is perceived.

Was something lost in translation at the border

Last night I took a few minutes the results from the Michigan and Arizona primaries come in.  In both cases Romney received a plurality of the votes, though in Michigan the margin was pretty narrow.

Given recent stumbles by Romney and the fact that Michigan is where Romney grew up many suggested that success there would be particularly important.  So now that he has 'won' in Michigan I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the coverage (mainly through their choice of headlines) and see how they have interpreted a similar set of facts.  In the following cases I looked at the most prominent story in these organization's news sections - it's possible that there is additional coverage with a different take on things in a dedicated election coverage wing of the website/organization.

The New York Times' headline was:

Romney Regains Stride With Victories in 2 States

I think it is fair to say that the tone of their article is summed up in the following passage:

His victory over Mr. Santorum here in Michigan was far from commanding, but it was most likely sufficient to dampen the rising clamor from across the Republican Party about his ability to win over conservatives and connect with voters. The tussle with Mr. Santorum highlighted ample concerns about Mr. Romney, but his win spared his campaign from deep turmoil. 

 NPR's leading primary related headline is:

Santorum and Co. Left to Mourn What Might Have Been In Michigan

 Immediately the focus on the significance of the loss for Santorum rather than the significance for the 'winner,' Romney, is apparent.  This emphasis is particularly clear in the first paragraph:

Rick Santorum and his campaign will likely look back on Michigan's 2012 primary not only as a heartbreaking loss in the battle against Mitt Romney but also as a historic lost opportunity.

USA Today's headline isn't too different in tone from the New York Times:

Romney campaign breathes a sigh of relief after Michigan win

A USA Today 'blog' story on the primaries take a slightly different tack, noting the proportionality of delegate distribution in Michigan:

Romney, Santorum to split Michigan delegates

Fox News seems to hedge their prediction bets with the uninspiring:

Romney wins Michigan, Arizona primaries

The seem to be suggesting that Romney's candidacy is still not out of the woods and that this whole Super Tuesday thing might be the real proving ground.

Mitt Romney, after fending off Rick Santorum in his home state of Michigan, is fast-approaching the biggest test so far of his volatile front-runner status: next week’s Super Tuesday contests where 419 delegates are up for grabs.

There seems to be a strange parallel between the Fox News headline and the headline used by the Washington Post:

Mitt Romney wins Arizona, Michigan primaries

The Washington Post also seems less inclined to suggest that success in these two contests have turned around Romney's campaign.

Romney’s victories on Tuesday are unlikely to solve the larger problems that have held back his campaign. Even after months of work and millions of dollars spent, he has not won over a vast swath of Republicans. 

The most surprising headline that I have yet seen comes from the Globe and Mail.  For some reason they seem to have interpreted last night's events as being bad for Romney:

Narrow win in home state of Michigan clouds Romney's chances

And they don't beat around the bushes with this strongly worded first paragraph.

Mitt Romney’s tortuous path to the Republican presidential nomination took another detour into rocky territory on Tuesday with his thin win in a contest he should by rights have owned. 

Obviously these are just a few of the many thousand headlines that have been written as a result of last night's primary results.  But as you can see, depending on your source, things are either looking great for Romney or things are looking bad for Romney or Santorum.  It's impressive that a single event can lead such widely varying news output.

Cameron: 42
Neil:0

A Few Quick Notes 566

-Though at times chilly, today was another beautiful day.

-Being 1 for 6 in this year's RUTRTW contest, which is my current position, might be a good point to stop.  I guess this it is unlikely that I will stop at this point, but it's at least a good sign that I'm thinking about it, right?

-I tried to take a picture of myself today.

I think I was probably about 60% successful.

-This whole robocall thing keeps on chugging along.  What a bummer that this kind of thing happens.

-We now only have two and a bit days left in this blog-off thing and Neil is still yet to make an appearance.  What's up with that?

Cameron: 40
Neil: 0

Presumably this is how to make an editor's day

First you send out a horse cop on an icy day.

Have the horse slip, causing the cop to fall off of the horse.

Then have the horse run off for a few minutes.

Then have one of the responding car cops get in a wreck on their way to the scene.

An editor can then use the headline: Halifax cop falls off horse, responding officer involved in collision

Oh, and this same series of events could probably be used to ruin a chief of police's day.

Cameron: 35
Neil: 0

A Few Quick Notes 563

-We had another crisp Winter's day in the Valley.  Apparently tomorrow is supposed to be rather nasty with some snow and rain and temperatures just a few degrees above freezing.

-This afternoon Rebecca drew my attention to an easy to misinterpret headline from CBC: Fiddling Bishop Dies in Charlottetown.  Wasn't anyone on double entendre patrol when this story was posted?

-For dinner tonight I made myself a massive tofu stir-fry.  Sadly, I learned that I can even overeat foods that are basically healthy.  I feel pretty gross.

-The bread I baked yesterday definitely tastes a little like cardboard.  I guess it's good that I made only one loaf.  On the other hand, it's too bad that the one loaf that I did bake is incredibly dense and probably weighs twice as much as a normal loaf.

-Back to work.

Cameron: 32
Neil: 0

Halifax sleep-watcher caught?

CBC Nova Scotia recently tweeted:

Barry Sinclair charged with five counts of voyeurism and two counts of break and enter in south-end Halifax. #cbcns

Does this mean what I think it means?  Have they finally caught the South End Halifax sleep watcher?

Unfortunately, they don't yet have a fully story relaying the significance of the tweet (and either confirming or refuting my assumptions).  I am hoping that they have one soon.  Whether or not this is sleep-watcher related I also hope that the whole sleep-watcher situation is resolved sooner rather than later.  It's hard to believe that the sleep-watcher thing has been going on for years without a satisfactory resolution.

Update: A story on the case from October, 2011 can be found here.

Update: An earlier tweet from the CBC reporter covering the police press conference seems to confirm my suspicion that they are dealing with the sleep-watcher issue:

Waiting for police chief Beazley to explain arrest of alleged sleep watcher. #cbcns

Cameron: 28
Neil: 0

Life in Halifax, Nofuna Scotia

As part of his continued effort to justify the use of the moniker "Nofuna Scotia" the HRM chief of police has recently blamed bars and alcohol for high crime rate in Halifax.

As the Metro story puts it:

HRM drinks too much and Halifax Regional Police Chief Frank Beazley says he has the assault statistics to prove it.

He told the municipality’s police commission on Monday there’s way too much easy access to liquor in this town. Many people sit at home and drink heavily before going out late to the bar and pounding drinks until 3 a.m.

“If I could take the alcohol out of this, I could plummet the number of assaults in HRM,” he said.  

Beazley added that several of the 3,202 assaults last year involved people getting drunk and going home to beat a family member.

The access, hours the bars are open and the density of liquor establishments downtown combine to cause real problems.

“Why do we need that many bars in that one area of the community that require so many resources to police it?”

While I am sure it is the case that some number of Halifax's crimes were committed by people who had recently been drinking in bars, do we know that access to alcohol really lead to all that many crimes - or do criminals just happen to also be drinkers?   Do other communities with bar districts face similar problems?  If not, why not?

And is the chief of police really suggesting that some number of legally operated small businesses be closed or have their capacity to collect revenue severely restricted?  Might there not be other steps that we can take before this one?

And I am curious if the chief's suggestion that if he "could take the alcohol out of this, I could plummet the number of assaults in HRM" is accurate.  An interesting story from the Guardian today seems to suggest that people will go to great lengths to secure intoxicating substances in the face of prohibitions.  At least in the UK an ever-changing array of legal synthetic drugs seem to be popular at the moment.  And of course not much is know about these synthetic drugs and what kind of long-term impact they might have on their imbibers.  And should one not think about the risk of encouraging such a development be worth by changing alcohol rules?


Cameron: 26
Neil: 0

I am not sure who's more to blame

I don't understand why some media outlets continually choose to cover non-stories and then insist on turning them into negative stories.

I currently disgusted with a CBC story that deals with student speculation about parking limitations at MUN even though a new 870 space parking structure that opened today.

Maybe the most troubling aspect of the story is that most of the student opinions are nothing more than speculation.  The students quoted in the story simply don't know if there will continue to be parking problems once the new structure opens or if it may actually alleviate parking congestion around campus because the facility just opened today.  And even if all parking problems aren't resolved with the addition of this structure, are things not better than they were yesterday?

The tone of the story is also troubling.  Instead of focusing on the fact that the university is actually trying to alleviate student and staff concerns about parking this story adopts a negative tone and doesn't even really acknowledge the improvement to the parking situation that will arise because of this structure, which one might have expected to be the primary focus of the story.

To some extent, the way the story is framed here it all feels a little circular.  Wouldn't the natural response to these student concerns be the construction of a few parking garage?

Oh, and another problem is reporting on a real story but omitting the context and the pertinent details so most people reading will think it's a non-story and miss the significance of the whole thing.

Recent CBC coverage of the Labrador City housing shortage has done a great job of this.  Today's story about changes to the social housing eligibility income cap does a particularly great job of painting only a partial picture of the situation.

A story yesterday about bus accidents in Halifax was infuriating because they went so far as to request information about each Metro Transit bus accidents but then failed to put the numbers in a context that would allow one to reasonably judge whether or not the accident rate was reasonable or not.  With just a little more work this could have been a great story, instead it was likely more harmful than helpful as it sowed seeds of confusion rather than seeds of clarity.

Finally, some coverage of an issue close to my heart

For some time I have been concerned about the contemporary mainstream media practice of including content that journalists know to be untrue in their stories.  The situation frequently arises when a public figure says untrue and is then quoted, without a qualifying statement, by the media outlet.  To feign ignorance or simply fail to deal with such untruths, at least to me, seems to undermine the utility of the whole venture of journalism.

For quite a while I have had the sense that this is an issue that has been completely sidestepped by the mainstream medeia.  They just aren't interested in dealing with the issue and challenges that would be sure to crop up if such an approach were to be adopted.

My opinions on the issue aside, it seems that today an editor at the New York Times finally wondered if their readers were interested in having reporters actually try to alert readers of known falsehoods or claims of questionable validity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, at least based on an assessment of the article's highest rated comments, readers do seem to be interested in having their news sources call out politicians when they tell lies.  Most people seem to think that a news source isn't much of a news source if it doesn't accomplish this basic task.

Anyway, though the story was only posted this morning more than 250 comments have been logged and commenting further commenting has now been halted.

I suspect that they have attracted more of a response to this piece than they expected.

Anyway, I am curious to see how the paper responds to this uproar (as the editor's piece leaves the impression that they knowingly include false statements that they make no effort to correct in their paper on a regular basis).  Given the immediate web uproar surely at least a follow-up comment will be made?

On the Media lead me to this response to the original NYT piece.