Welcome to Wired News’ 2006 Foot-in-Mouth Awards program. You, the readers, have sent us your picks for the lamest quotes from or about the world of technology during this eventful year. We have selected the “best” of those and present them to you now.
Daily Archives: December 26, 2006
Photos of the Year 2006
The NYT has posted its Year in Pictures, featuring images of war, politics, sports, and more. It’s amazing how quickly events can fade from our (or at least my) consciousness, often just months after they occur.
MSNBC has some terrific galleries from this past year. (Bet you’ve never seen a bull doing a headstand before.) See also Time’s collection.
Market Risk Perception vs. Popular Perception
THE YEAR 2007 will begin with a vast divergence between the popular view of global risks and the risks as priced in financial markets. While the commentariat has been more alarmed about the state of the world than global markets for some years, the gap increased in 2006 as markets became more serene and everyone else grew more anxious.
The headlines and opinion writers focus on how the U.S. is badly bogged down in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; on an increasingly unstable Middle East and dangerous energy dependence; on nuclear proliferation that has already occurred in North Korea and that is coming in Iran; on the potential weakness of lame-duck political leaders; on record global trade imbalances and rising protectionist pressures; on increased levels of public and private-sector borrowing combined with record low saving in the United States; and on falling home prices and middle-class economic insecurity.
Frank Stanton Obituary
ith the 1960 Presidential election approaching, Dr. Stanton persuaded Congress to suspend the “equal time” provision in the Federal Communications Act. That made it possible for the networks to televise debates between the Democratic nominee, Sen. John F. Kennedy, and his Republican rival, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, without including candidates of smaller parties. The debates signaled the arrival of television as a dominant force in presidential politics.
Dr. Stanton bore much of the criticism when Washington objected to CBS News’s coverage of the war in Vietnam, though he denied a frequently told tale that President Johnson had telephoned him at home to curse him for broadcasting a report by Morley Safer showing Marines burning down peasant huts in Cam Ne.