Clearly, people who took umbrage at Clint Eastwood’s debate with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention aren’t taking it sitting down. Here’s the latest artistic counteroffensive: Beside the life-sized cardboard cutout of Eastwood keeping watch over Glendale, people have started to add empty chairs.

As someone who has long enjoyed Eastwood’s movies, all I can say is I wish this were happening to Chuck Norris instead.

Research and development in space exploration is one of the best investments the American taxpayer makes, year after year. I always cringe when I hear about proposed cuts to NASA, because if anything, funding should go up.

I knew the list of NASA-related achievements included LED, freeze-dried food, solar energy, and a lot of computer technology. But I have to admit, I didn’t know they were responsible for those banana hammock Speedo swimsuits I have to see at the beach. But now, thanks to this site, I do.

Here’s how these guys did what they did, and what they wanna do now.

A former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve tells us why we need less austerity and more stimulus.

Here’s a key takeaway:

“America’s infrastructure needs are so huge, and so painfully obvious, that it’s mind-boggling we’re not investing more. The U.S. government can now borrow for five years at about 0.75% and for 10 years at about 1.7%. Both rates are far below expected inflation, making real interest rates sharply negative. Yet legions of skilled construction workers remain unemployed while we drive our cars over pothole-laden roads and creaky bridges. Does this make sense?”

No, it doesn’t. And it sure doesn’t to my family back in New Jersey, many of them un- or under-employed because there’s no construction work.

A recent poll shows that a majority of small business owners polled lean conservative — but plan on voting for Obama. What’s their number one issue? Health care. Hm.

The Obama Administration’s proposed budget would decimate the Mars Program and planetary science, canceling the planned missions for 2016 and 2018. Late last week, Congressman Adam Schiff, whose district includes the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, grilled the head of NASA about it in an effort to grab some attention and maintain funding.

Schiff posted a bit about this on his Facebook wall, including a link to the hearing, and I was pleased to see he mostly got a lot of support. He also got at least one response of the sort I’ve come to expect:

“I don’t understand you. The USA has NO MONEY. Mars has been there for millions of years and we be there for millions more. What on earth is so important that you totally bankrupt the country right now? You need to wake up sir. Stop spending money you don’t have and quit gutting the constitution. I know its late in the game, but when you begin to be responsible? When will you start representing the voice of your district?”

Given that the response was overwhelmingly positive, and given the makeup of his district (a lot of scientists and tech people), I think he IS representing the voice of his district.

There are many reasons to support the space program, but here are just a few: it creates jobs, it creates new technologies that create new jobs, it furthers interest in science and math education, it dovetails with our history as a nation of explorers, and it’s the right thing to do. And then there are always all those unforeseen benefits. Here’s just one example, of how space research actually led to improvements in firefighting technology. And here’s another — and take it for what you will — without the development of technologies necessary to send people to the moon, we wouldn’t have personal computers or miniaturized computing, and you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now. So think about it this way: When you support space funding, you’re indirectly paying for this blog. Thanks!

I suspect this issue is going to dog Mr. Romney.

In which Mike Daisey still doesn’t get it.

Given the strategy of his response — deflection — I’m thinking he has a future in politics.

Here’s a link to the “Retraction” podcast of This American Life.

It’s painful to listen to all around.

The podcast includes two interviews with Mike Daisey, and in one his facts are taken apart stitch by stitch by a reporter from public radio’s Marketplace show, a reporter who lives and works in China and who has toured the very factory Mike Daisey talked about, and who knows that the facts shared are not true. Yes, Mike Daisey lied about what he found. Evidently, he did not find children making Apple products. He did not interview as many people, or tour as many factories as he said. He wholecloth appropriated the story of a factory accident that happened 1000 miles away. He said that the factory had guards with guns, which it didn’t. He did not interview a man whose hand had been turned into “a claw” who had never before seen an iPad, even though he’d made his living assembling them. All these things, plus more, are fabrications, and Daisey cops to it. I don’t like what Mike Daisey did here, and I share Ira Glass’s outrage and barely sheathed anger at being lied to.

It’s also painful to listen to the last segment of the show — in which an actual reporter is interviewed by Ira Glass about the actual working conditions of the factories in China where Apple products are manufactured. Many of the sort of abuses that Mike Daisey made up exist in actuality. According to this report, Apple has made some course corrections — in eliminating child workers, for one — but there’s still work to be done, and I hope they mandate it quickly. They need to establish stricter standards and insist upon them.

I hope that two things come out of this sad story. One is that, ultimately, factory workers in China and elsewhere get better working conditions. The second is that we all take this as yet another reminder that lying — whether you’re Mike Daisey, or James Frey, or Richard Nixon, or Bill Clinton, or Jayson Blair, or Janet Cooke — is wrong.

 One story I’ve been following all day is this one: that public radio’s “This American Life” has “retracted” the episode they ran several weeks ago culled from Mike Daisey’s monologue show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” because it contains fabrications. Here’s This American Life executive producer Ira Glass’s statement on their blog. Here are some excerpts from that statement:

We’ve learned that Mike Daisey’s story about Apple in China – which we broadcast in January – contained significant fabrications. We’re retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth. This is not a story we commissioned. It was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s acclaimed one-man show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” in which he talks about visiting a factory in China that makes iPhones and other Apple products. …

Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn’t excuse the fact that we never should’ve put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake….

During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.

“At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”….

Mike Daisey’s response, essentially, has been that his show is theatre, not journalism. That response hasn’t satisfied BusinessWeek, among others. I have playwright friends who’ve been emailing me with pretty much the same rationale. Here’s a response (edited together from several emails) from a very talented, literate, thoughtful playwright friend:

 But isn’t Mike Daisey giving a fictional portrayal of real events?  He is a character in his own play. Even if he had never been to China, he’s not making up what goes on over there. He’s just telling it effectively (in my view).

I guess this incident makes me feel particularly vulnerable, because I feel like I would have done the same thing – I would have crafted a compelling story from the facts I was exposed to, so that I could best get my message across. I don’t consider it lying, I consider it good storytelling.

I agree that branding Daisey a liar gives Apple cover to hide behind. But they already claimed to be changing their practices, rather than proclaiming their innocence, so I hope this comes too late for that.

But here’s the interesting question to me – because I agree with you, misrepresenting facts or disregarding them is detrimental to whatever cause you are trying to advance – but if you are just doing what I do as a playwright, which is taking something that I know is true and structuring it and manipulating it so that it has the highest impact, in order to get the result I want, and that makes a big corporation like Apple change, then why is that bad? How does that make Daisey’s emotional manipulation of his audience worse than James Cameron’s or Arthur Miller’s? I guess it gets to the question of, what is truth, really? Isn’t it more than a series of facts?

I would argue that his show is entirely true. It may not be factual, but it’s true.

In Titanic, James Cameron is giving a fictional portrayal of real events.

In The Crucible, Arthur Miller is doing the same.

I once wrote a play about Hieronymus Bosch. Given the dialogue alone, I think it’s clear that I just made it up, and even if it isn’t clear, I didn’t pass it off as being “true” or built upon the facts of my recent trip to 15th century Brabant.

But Mike Daisey’s show has Mike Daisey saying, I went to China and here’s what I saw.

And it isn’t true.

Mike Daisey didn’t say he was giving a fictional portrayal. He said, essentially, that his first-person show was a show about the facts of his trip to China.

And that’s where all the problems come from.

Moreover, as Max Fisher writes on The Atlantic’s website, the problem with this story is now that the story is “Mike Daisey’s lies,” when the story should be — and had been — inhuman work conditions in China. Now the story is directed in the wrong direction, and now all the facts of what all of us had taken as an expose, have been challenged.  Which gives cover to Apple.

I’m glad Mike Daisey took on this issue and spread it. I wish he had stuck to the facts of his encounters.