An article on page B3 of today's New York Times paraphrases "John L. Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University."
"But, he said, radical movements have often drawn in middle-class people whose convictions led them into violent illegality. Among such people, he said, were the men who assassinated President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1979," the Times reports.
In fact, as one distinguished Smartertimes reader noticed this morning, Sadat was assassinated not in 1979 but on October 6, 1981. It's not clear whether the error was introduced by Mr. Esposito or by the Times, but in any case, it was apparently not caught by an editor before publication.
Electronics: Another astute Smartertimes reader, Bill Schweber, the executive editor of an electronics design magazine, writes this morning to comment on an article on page B2 of today's New York Times about Global Positioning Systems. The Times writes, "Its small antenna sends signals to a satellite, which automatically determines the coordinates of an airplane in flight."
Writes Mr. Schweber, "This is completely wrong. The GPS system works the reverse way: the handheld unit receives signals from several satellites, and based on these signals, internally performs calculations that determine where the receiving unit is. There is no signal from the GPS units to the satellites. The Times has both the direction of signal flow wrong and the function of the satellite versus the handheld unit wrong." Plus, one might add, the number of satellites -- Just "a" satellite isn't enough.
The site HowStuffWorks.com confirms Mr. Schweber's account: http://www.howstuffworks.com/gps1.htm