ESPN drops Hank Williams Jr. from 'Monday Night Football'

Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler.- Fox & Friends - 10/3/11

ESPN has dropped Hank Williams Jr. from opening Monday Night Football tonight after Williams' controversial comments Monday about President Obama.

Says ESPN, in a statement: "While Hank Williams Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize he is closely linked to our company through the opening to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result have decided to pull the open from tonight's telecast."

Williams, perhaps best known for his "are you ready for some football?" lead-in to ESPN's Monday Night Football, Monday compared this summer's so-called golf summit between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner as "one of the biggest political mistakes ever."

As Williams put it on Fox News' Fox & Friends: "It would be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli leader) Benjamin Netanyahu."

When asked on Fox to explain his analogy, Williams said Obama and Vice President Biden are "the enemy."

Although ESPN has a policy about its on-air personalities getting involved in politics, Williams has said he's interested in running as a Republican in 2012 for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee.

Predicting Apple’s iPhone announcement

Apple plans to unveil its new iPhone sometime this week.

There’s just no use to trying to predict what Apple will announce at an upcoming media event.

Apple doesn’t tease you for months with lots of little bits of information. And you’ll learn the actual facts soon enough. Given that Apple announces these events only a week in advance, one wonders why anybody would be interested in reading about this stuff or, worse, writing it, when you’ll be looking at the Actual Thing in no time at all. The words “mental disorder” come to mind.

It’s like spending the weeks between the announcement of Academy Awards nominees and the telecast obsessively trying to predict who’ll win.

Which is, admittedly, something I do.

And I don’t actually get paid to do that, either.

Let’s just move on.

Of course there’ll be a new iPhone

To answer the question I’ve been fielding daily over the past month: yes, of course there’ll be a new iPhone tomorrow. The text on the media invite for tomorrow’s event reads “Let’s Talk iPhone.” Which is in line with the traditionally oracular and prone-to-misinterpretation nature of these invites.

Admittedly, “Let’s Talk iPhone” could mean “Let’s talk about why we won’t be shipping a new handset until 2012. And by ‘let’s’ we mean Karl, the operations director who thought he was ordering the manufacture of 5.2 million handsets and instead received a box from Foxconn containing exactly 52; and by ‘talk’ I mean ‘stands at the end of the stage while we all take turns firing a paintball gun into his bare chest. Apple does not comment on unannounced products or directions but yes, we’re going to be aiming for his nipples’.”

But no. There’ll be a new iPhone. All along I’ve had a hunch that it would be a component upgrade and not a radical new design. I’m anticipating a device that looks almost exactly like the existing iPhone 4 and features the same processor as the iPad 2, an upgraded camera, and additional application memory.

If that’s true, then it almost certainly won’t be called the iPhone 5. I reckon that Apple’s saving that name for the first 4G model, which I reckon we won’t see until 2012. Today, for all practical purposes, Verizon is the only US carrier with a national 4G network. All other carriers’ 4G towers are like a well-regarded arthouse movie. You’ve heard of it, and you want to experience it, but it’s only in a few cities. Verizon 4G is like a Batman movie; at this stage, it should have its own series of collectible 32-ounce cups at Burger King.

Apple won’t release 4G iPhones until all subscribers can have a similar 4G experience. I also think Apple would rather sacrifice data speed for extended battery life. But I do fully expect an announcement that Sprint has become the third US iPhone carrier.

If the new iPhone retains the same basic design as the iPhone 4, it’ll help answer a basic question that’s puzzled me over the past year: is Apple happy with that glass back panel? It seemed like a fundamentally risky choice last year. Isn’t there a reason why no other phone is made that way?

I dropped my iPhone 4 onto a concrete patio a few months ago and yup, the back panel shattered. I don’t know what to make of that (other than: it’s stupid to bend over to pick up a package when your iPhone is in your shirt pocket). It might mean that yes, this glass panel is needlessly prone to damage. Or it could mean that the iPhone 4 was designed to transmit shattering shocks to a cheap and easily-replaced panel on the back instead of the phone’s expensive display on the front.

We’ll find out tomorrow, in some fashion. If the new iPhone looks just like the iPhone 4 but has something other than glass for its back piece, it’ll amount to Apple sheepishly admitting that the glass back was a mistake . . . or that the material had been chosen because it was the only solution to an utterly confounding engineering problem at the time.

There have been rumblings that Apple will release a budget model as well. Mmm . . . I don’t see it. The old-generation iPhone 3GS is still a hot seller at $49 and it’s tough to imagine Apple building anything substantially better for about the same amount of money. Nor do I see them upgrading the 3GS design to add value, unless it’s a deep under-the-hood feature like additional application memory.

What about features?

But back to that “Let’s Talk iPhone” line. Apple’s long been rumored to be pursuing advanced speech recognition features for iOS. Last year, they acquired Siri, a company that had a spiffy speech-to-search app for the iPhone. You could say “Where are They Might Be Giants playing tonight?” and your iPhone would respond “The Berklee Performance Center in Boston, at 7 and 10.” Cool stuff. And in early 2011 there was deep buzz that Apple was licensing Nuance’s speech recognition engine.

The butter on the muffin: as reported on multiple Mac news sites, developers with access to prelease editions of the iPhone’s next OS have dug deep into its resource files and found a new keyboard layout that includes a microphone button.

Some caution is called for, though. Apple has said exactly zip about speech recognition and even developers are completely in the dark. It’s clear that Apple is moving in that direction but it’s quite possible that Apple will release a new iPhone with enough processing power to handle speech recognition, and a new OS that’s wired up to accommodate such a feature, but will hold the actual feature back until the company feels it’ll truly make the iPhone rock out with its dock out.

iPod updates

Speaking of rock, this is the traditional season for iPod updates. Look for the iPod Classic to finally be sent to its eternal reward. There was a time in music history when a band with a musical saw could succeed; that time has passed. Music players with hard drives are in the same situation.

Look for the iPod Touch to become even more like an iPad Nano. You don’t hear much about the Touch but it’s a solid success; it delivers all of the advantages of the iPhone, without the monthly bills and two-year contract. I even know plenty of people who are willing to buy a $250 Touch to go alongside their $200 Android phones.

I’ve gradually warmed to the 2010‘s tiny “color postage stamp screen on a clip” style iPod Nano. I’m still absolutely terrified that it’ll drop off my shirt while I’m not using it and I won’t notice I’ve lost a $149 thing until all hope of retracing my steps and finding it is gone. But the 2010 Nano was clearly optimized for active sports, and its super-minimalist design lends easily to creative cases and mounts. I’ve been wearing mine as a wristwatch off and on for a month now.

But was the design successful? As with the glass back panel on the 2010 iPhone, we’ll have our answer tomorrow. If Apple comes up with something radically different for the 2011 model, it’s an admission that the previous Nano looked great on a whiteboard but proved troublesome in the marketplace.

And is this the year that Apple drops the iPod Shuffle? Your guess is as good as mine. There are plenty of other music players that do far more for $49 (such as, I dunno, actually show you the title of the song you’re listening to) but the Shuffle still has the one feature that matters: when you connect it to your PC or Mac, iTunes syncs it automatically.

Apple TV

It’s hard to guess what Apple could do to improve the Apple TV. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but you don’t follow up one revolution with another. Last year, Apple did what they needed to do: they transformed the product from a vaguely-defined home media hub/quasi-computer to an invisible little box that projects content from any source on your home network or via Internet streaming services into your TV.

A new CPU? More application memory? Sure, why not. If both of those things happen, I encourage wild speculation about the imminent availability of some form of third-party apps for this iOS-based device.

iOS 5 and iCloud - at last

That’s the end of the Fall Apple Event Rumor checklist. People will ooh and aah over this stuff. The true highlight of tomorrow’s event, however, will be the first extensive live-fire demo of iOS 5 and Apple’s new iCloud service. I’m guessing that they’ll be released at some date in the imminent near-future rather than tomorrow, but please do get out a Sharpie and underscore the word “guessing” on your screen there.

How big is Apple’s new cloud service? So big that they practically rewrote their entire desktop OS around it. I’d even wager that it’s one of the reasons why the 2011 iPhone is shipping in the fall instead of the summer, as was traditional.

The ultimate goal is to provide a completely seamless experience between your iPhone, iPad, and desktop. If an idea hits me while I wait to place my deli order, I should be able to tap out a lede sentence or two and a rough outline on the text editor on my iPhone and find that document on my desktop by the time I get to my office just a half a second later.

(Yes, I have a deli in my office. I lose the tax incentives on this property if I don’t keep part of the floor space as a working restaurant.)

iOS 5 itself will be revolutionary by its mere nature, though most of its new features will be longstanding items off of the “Why do Android phones do that so much better?” list. A new Notification Center, for example, creates a single, orderly bin to replace the slightly barmy old system, in which multiple texts and app notifications appear as a stack of dialog boxes that must be solemnly dismissed one by one.

iMessage will be a bit of a game changer. Essentially it delivers unlimited free texting and chat to any other iOS user. Most of the people I text with use iPhones and once everybody’s upgraded to iOS 5, I can consider discontinuing my text service entirely.

So that’s what I think we’ll see tomorrow. Take it all with a grain of salt. Just as with the Oscars, predicting Apple announcements is the gift that keeps on giving: first I get to write about what I think will happen, and then I get to write about what actually happened and why I was right even when I was wrong. Check back on Tuesday. I’ll be on the red carpet with my daughter Melissa, making meanspirited fun of the dramatic ballgowns being worn by the glittering celebrities of tech journalism.

As Amanda Knox walks free, now DNA evidence is on trial

The sensational acquittal of Amanda Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito should serve as a warning to prosecutors the world over who rely on hi-tech DNA evidence to make their case: be careful what you wish for.

Because it is clear that DNA, the very stuff of life, does not always provide the ironclad evidence that modern forensic scientists insist it does.

With no obvious motive, no independent witnesses and no confessions, the Italian prosecutors had to rely on genetic evidence found at the crime scene to convict Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito.

Amanda Knox freed on appeal after four years in jail, as DNA evidence was found be insufficient.

The original conviction, now overturned, relied on traces of Mr Sollecito’s DNA being found on the victim Meredith Kercher’s brassiere clasp, together with traces of DNA from both defendants being found on the knife allegedly used to slash Kercher’s throat.

Although there has been no explicit statement, it is clear that the appeal jury believed the defence case that this supposedly watertight DNA evidence was dubious at best, and downright fabricated at worst.

These are early days (and this case will be picked over for years), and one trial does not prove anything about the worth of any one forensic technique, but the Kercher case shows yet again that the ‘genetic fingerprint’ is as open to interpretation, bias and error as any previous means of placing a suspect at the scene of the crime and moreover proving that he or she did it.

In the case of the Kercher murder, the defence argued, presumably successfully, that there was no proof that Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito’s DNA was on the bra strap and knife, as the prosecution alleged.

This seems odd; surely DNA is either there or it is not? And isn’t every sample of human DNA unique?

Well, yes and no. Since the British geneticist Alec Jeffries pioneered the technique of forensic genetic fingerprinting in the 1980s, there is no doubt that hundreds of guilty murderers, rapists and thugs have been prosecuted successfully on DNA evidence (and a lesser number acquitted using the same technique). But it is not entirely failsafe.

There is, for a start, the issue of contamination, a factor it seems in the Kercher case. No one argues that the victim and the accused knew each other, were in the same places at the same time. Any object that was in their vicinity could easily contain traces of the DNA of everyone involved.

The police are supposed to guard against this, but, again, no system is entirely foolproof.

Knives and fabric samples are put in cellophane bags and sometimes someone will make a mistake, allowing two objects to touch each other for instance.

In this case it seems that the case made by the defence, that there were errors made by the police and investigating authorities regarding the analysis of forensic material was enough to sway the appeal court.

But in fact the potential flaws with DNA evidence run a lot deeper than that.

We often hear that ‘DNA evidence’ shows that the chances of a particular person being innocent are ‘less than one in a million’ or some even more outlandish figure.

Typically, a DNA sample found on a murder weapon will be said to match the DNA of the suspect to the extent that only one person in one million would have the same profile. Case closed?

Not really. This is the classic example of the ‘prosecutor’s fallacy’. If a particular genetic profile is held by one person in, say, one million this means that in a country the size of the UK (which has a population of 60m) 60 people will provide a perfect mach for the DNA on the knife.

Thus, all things being equal, the chances that the man in the dock being innocent are not one-in-a-million against, but 59-in-60 for; rather different.

It gets worse. DNA evidence puts a person 'at the scene of the crime'; it does not prove they committed the crime.

Several people have been wrongly convicted of murder or robbery in the US after their DNA was found at the scene of, say, a heist or grocery store hold-up when in fact they had merely been there along with hundreds of other people.

DNA evidence can be used to draw a false inference of a link between known criminal background, a particular crime and a suspect being in a particular location.

DNA evidence is not very time-sensitive: in the case of Madelaine McCanns tentative (and as it turned out spurious) DNA evidence 'placed' the missing girl’s body in the hire car used by her parents after she disappeared.

But of course this could have come, retrospectively, from her siblings, her clothes, her toys or her parents.

Worse still DNA evidence is highly subjective. In the US state of Georgia a man called Kerry Robinson was convicted a few years ago of gang rape: in an excellent New Scientist investigation last year DNA evidence from the crime scene plus Robinson's DNA profile was shown to 17 'blind' analysts with no contextual information: the 17 experts were hugely divided - 12 said the suspect could be excluded.

Close to home, Sean Hoey was cleared, in 2007, of the 1998 Omagh bombing.

This was the first time defence lawyers in the UK had successfully challenged 'infallible' DNA evidence in court, in this case spuriously showing that Hoey had touched the timers used to detonate the bomb. In this case, tiny amounts of DNA were 'amplified' to generate a dubious 'profile' which 'matched' that of the defendant.

‘DNA’ has taken on a spuriously totemic status in many courts, a sort of divine sword of truth against which no one mortal dare argue.

No one can doubt that genetic evidence is a hugely important and valuable addition to the law’s arsenal.

But it is not infallible, and is subject to the same biases and random human errors as any other form of evidence.

The Kindle Korner

Biden brother hospitalized over powder scare

The brother of Vice President Joe Biden says he was hospitalized overnight after a opening a package with an unknown powdery substance.

Francis Biden, 57, who lives in Ocean Ridge, Fla., told The Palm Beach Post that some of the white powder landed on his skin, so he called authorities who evacuated neighbors and closed off the street.

"I was the only one who came in contact with the powder so they kept me," he said. "I'm fine."

Remember that South Florida was one of the sites of the anthrax attacks of a decade ago.

From The Palm Beach Post:

OCEAN RIDGE — The envelope mailed to the Ocean Ridge home of Vice President Joe Biden's younger brother, which contained a suspicious white powder and caused a hazmat emergency Saturday, was apparently mailed from India.

Francis Biden, 57, said the package -- a manila envelope -- was retrieved from his roadside mailbox at about noon by his girlfriend, Mindy. It was addressed to him.

"She retrieved it, but I was the one who opened it," Biden said. "It was mailed from India."

Biden said the moment he opened it a white powder spilled from the envelope and onto his skin. He said he immediately called authorities, who evacuated neighbors from the immediate area and closed off the street for eight hours.

Biden and his girlfriend were taken to Bethesda Hospital. Mindy was released Saturday but Biden stayed overnight.

"I was the only one who came in contact with the powder so they kept me," he said. He was released Sunday morning.

"I'm fine," he said. He praised police, fire rescue and hospital officials.

The FBI announced Saturday that the powder appeared to be harmless.

Biden would not say what else was in the envelope along with the powder and referred questions to the FBI. He said he knew nothing more about the origins of the package.

SNL: Melissa McCarthy Doesn’t Hold Back as Host (Video)

The Emmy-winning actress doused herself with a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch, fell down a flight of stairs and got touchy-feely with both a scarecrow and a co-worker.

The actress is having a good year; she won her first Emmy award for her leading role on CBS’s Mike and Molly, and Bridesmaids, in which she plays up the gross-factor with SNL cast members past and present, struck box office gold.

It was her first time hosting Saturday Night Live—her “holy grail,” she told Jimmy Fallon last week—and Melissa McCarthy was a natural.

"It's truly her moment," CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler told The Hollywood Reporter for our cover story. Adds Peter Roth, president of Mike & Molly studio Warner Bros. TV, "This is the year of the McCarthy." It's a label he claims is richly deserved, adding: "Everything about her is relatable. You root for her; you want her to win."

Below are her top-five laugh-until-you-cry moments Saturday night.

1. Hidden Valley Ranch taste test: With a bad perm and a Spock sweatshirt, McCarthy played up the dowdy-yet-brazen character role she perfected in Bridesmaids. As Linda, McCarthy enthusiastically competes for a $50 gift certificate during a taste test for a new line of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing.



2. “The Lawrence Welk Show” parody: McCarthy and Kristen Wiig opened up the show with the always-hilarious parody of “The Lawrence Welk Show.” Wiig’s Junice (tiny hands, big forehead) is joined this time by her sister (McCarthy)—muscled arms, buck teeth and a penchant for scarecrows.



3. Opening monologue: McCarthy has expressed several times while preparing for Saturday night’s show that she was excited to host, and that joy is evident in the genuine speech she gave after the audience's warm welcome. While it was clear the crowd was happy to see her, McCarthy quickly told her children to get to bed: “Mama’s about to get inappropriate.” She then showed off her dancing skills with Wiig.



4. "The Comments Section" talk show: In this new talk show, internet commenters are invited on to be confronted for their mean-spirited or overly-opinionated comments on videos and stories. McCarthy’s character (username: Da Truf) was known for repeatedly posting her political opinions all over the web.



5. Arlene, the sexed-up office worker: McCarthy’s Arlene is not shy about her sexual desires for a co-worker (played by a straight-faced Jason Sudeikis). Hilarity ensues.



Unlike many of the regular cast members, it was evident McCarthy didn't even need the help of cue cards throughout the show. Bottom line: Don’t be surprised if you see her recurring one of these roles on a future episode of Saturday Night Live.

Van Jones Wants an 'American Autumn' Revolution

Van Jones, President Barack Obama's former "green jobs" czar and 9/11 truther, has a new project in mind. He proposes there should be an "American Autumn" that would greatly resemble the "Arab Spring."

In effect, Jones is proposing there should be a violent revolution against the U.S. government of the sort that has already toppled governments in Egypt. Tunisia and Libya and is not rocking other countries such as Syria. Who needs elections when millions of "progressives" can take to the streets and call for the overthrow of the constitutionally elected government?

There are a number of sweet ironies in this proposal, not the least of which the fact Jones is calling for his former boss, the president who was elected on a wave of "hope and change" coming from the left, to be turned out of office and, if he wishes to pursue his analogy to the fullest, placed on trial before a drum head court.

One of the problems involved in Jones' dream of a revolution is that he is not likely to get a response to his desire to be a latter day Lenin (or is it Abbie Hoffman?). Even the so-called "occupation of Wall Street" seems to consist of a small group of bored, leftist addled young people who are really looking for another excuse to get high and hook up.

The other problem would be what would happen if there suddenly started to be violence in the streets. Far from a revolutionaries storming the Capitol Building as if it were the Winter Palace, the result of these shenanigans might well be something Jones would not like, that being the election of a hard core conservative upon the promise of crushing the uprising.

The same thing happened in the 1960s, Outraged at the war in Vietnam and a number of other perceived injustices, groups of young people turned college campuses into battlegrounds. Having lost patience, the American people elected Richard Nixon with the idea that he would deal with "the kids" as a stern father would and should.

That may happen again. Though, in the case of Sarah Palin, it would be an irate mamma grizzly.