Berkman Buzz: May 17, 2013

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Islawmix calls for better fact checking, less sensationalism re: Muslims in the news

You have most probably heard by now that three Emirati men were allegedly thrown out of a cultural Janadriyah Festival by the Saudi religious police (pl. mutawaeen) for “being too handsome.” Most reports, however, have claimed the three men were actually deported from the Kingdom, itself, for their ‘seductive' lure that was apparently going to send the attending women into an incontrollable hormonal flux. Fementertainment blog, Jezebel, was amongst the first to reveal the identity of one of the alleged Emirati men, Omar Borkan Al Gala – a photographer, model, actor and poet. The internet went into self-fanning mode as several images of the young man went viral and thousands clamored to follow him on social media websites. Unfortunately, no one in the English press bothered to actually fact check the story.

From Islawmix, "The Man Too Handsome for Saudi Arabia Who Wasn’t" About Islawmix | @islawmix

Thanks, @oso, for a thorough, fair and helpfully critical review of Rewire. http://t.co/7UvoDjMXre >—Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz)

Ethan Zuckerman critiques Charlie Mann's Atlantic story on energy, oil, and methane hydrate

Charles Mann offers a big story in the latest issue of the Atlantic. It’s 11,000 words, and it’s based around an audacious premise: the end of energy scarcity. The peg for the story is Japan’s ongoing research on methane hydrate, an amalgam of natural gas trapped in water ice that occurs in oceans around the world. If methane hydrate can be harvested, Mann tell us, the global supply of hydrocarbon fuels are virtually unlimited. This, he argues, would have massive geopolitical and strategic implications, as the history of the twentieth century can be read in part through the lens of wealthy nations without oil seeking the black stuff in less developed lands.