A matter of timing

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John McPhee had a nice piece about fact-checking in a recent issue of the New Yorker which included this anecdote:

The worst checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. In the words of Josh Hersh, “It really annoys them”. Sara [a retired New Yorker fact-checker] remembers a reader in a nursing home who read in The New Yorker that he was the “late reader” in the nursing home. He wrote demanding a correction. The New Yorker, in its next issue, of course complied, inadvertently doubling the error, because the reader died over the weekend while the magazine was being printed.

John McPhee, “Checkpoints”, New Yorker, Feb 9&16, 2009.

Later: Julian Barnes (who wrote the magazine’s ‘Letter from London’ for years) had a nice essay about the New Yorker’s fact-checkers in one of his books. Now where did I put it?

Obama’s antitrust nominee: “Microsoft is so last century”

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From Microsoft’s local paper.

According to Bloomberg News, Christine Varney, who President Barack Obama has nominated to be the next antitrust chief, is not so concerned about Microsoft’s market position.

“For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem,” Varney said at a panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute in June, according to the Bloomberg report. The U.S. economy will “continually see a problem — potentially with Google” because it already “has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising,” she said.

“When all our enterprises move to computing in the clouds and there is a single firm that is offering a comprehensive solution,” Varney said, “you are going to see the same repeat of Microsoft.”

Varney’s view is clearly good news for Redmond, which already seemed to be in favor with the Bush Justice Department. Google and Yahoo abandoned their advertising deal last fall after the Department of Justice said it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block it. Microsoft had lobbied against the deal.

Thanks to Rex Hughes for spotting it.