Toward the end of an article on the Boston Marathon bombing comes the claim, "Anecdotes suggest that Mr. Tsarnaev became more religious in the last several years and may have embraced more conservative Islamic ideas."

I prefer the terms "radical Islamist ideas" or "extreme Islamist ideas" or "miltant Islamist ideas." But if a journalist or his editors are in the determined mindset of pinning this bombing on conservative ideas, it sure looks like they will find a way to do it, one way or another.

Toward the end of a dispatch about an American arms sale to Israel comes the claim, "The United States has promised Israel $3.1 billion in military financial assistance in this fiscal year, the highest amount ever."

It's funny to observe these rare instances when the Times is willing to use nominal dollar amounts to declare that something is "the highest amount ever." On plenty of other issues, such as domestic spending on health or welfare, or tax revenues, the Times insists on adjusting for inflation (using the consumer price index, which is a whole nother story) or on framing the expenditure or revenue as a percentage of GDP. This is a framing issue worth keeping an eye on. The Times doesn't say tax revenues are at the highest ever, because it wants to raise taxes and discredit those who want to cut them. But it does say aid to Israel is at the highest ever, because it wants to reduce that aid (and to discredit those who fault President Obama for chilling the U.S.-Israel relationship, at least on the government-to-government level).

A "Memo From Brussels" about American defense spending and Europe's includes the following passage: "France says that by 2014 it may cut deeper still — to just 1.3 percent of G.D.P., down from 1.9 percent this year. By comparison, the United States spent 4.8 percent of its G.D.P. on the military in 2011."

Comparing 2014 or 2013 to 2011 is an apples-to-oranges comparison. If the Times wants to compare the United States and France, it should compare what the U.S. spent in 2011 against what France spent in 2011, or what the U.S. says it will spend in 2014 against what France says it will spend in 2014, or what both countries are spending in 2013.

As it turns out, according to this spreadsheet from the White House Office of Management and Budget (the Times article, typically, doesn't provide either a source or a hyperlink for its statistics) — the White House says that national defense spending as a percent of GDP was actually 4.7 in 2011, not the 4.8 the Times claims. For "this year," or 2013, the estimate is 4.1 percent. The estimate for 2014 is 3.7 percent, and for 2018 is 2.8 percent. So it is not only Europe that is projecting defense spending will shrink as a percentage of GDP.

From Paul Krugman's column today:

Mr. Ghayad then did an experiment, sending out résumés describing the qualifications and employment history of 4,800 fictitious workers. Who got called back? The answer was that workers who reported having been unemployed for six months or more got very few callbacks, even when all their other qualifications were better than those of workers who did attract employer interest.

So we are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans.

And let's be clear: this is a policy decision. The main reason our economic recovery has been so weak is that, spooked by fear-mongering over debt, we've been doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says you shouldn't do — cutting government spending in the face of a depressed economy.

I'm no expert on the scientific method, but it seems to me that the experiment Professor Krugman describes doesn't prove what he suggests it does. To do that you'd have to run the same experiment involving the 4,800 fictitious workers in either two different countries — one with high government spending and one with lower spending — or at two different times, one with high government spending and one with lower government spending — and see if the results differed. Maybe Professor Krugman is correct, and if the government spent more money, employers faced with a choice between a worker who had been unemployed long-term and one who hadn't been would instead choose the one who had been unemployed long-term. But I'm skeptical of that.

Maybe what Professor Krugman means instead is that if the government spent more money, the economy would be so hot that there wouldn't be any long-term unemployed people. But if that is the case, how is the experiment even relevant?

The description of the experiment to which the Krugman column links includes the sentence, "Extended unemployment benefits appear to be contributing to the long-term unemployment challenge, and the rolling back of extended unemployment benefits should increase incentives to work." But the Krugman column ignores that aspect of the issue. It blames joblessness on "cutting government spending," rather than on the perverse incentives of paying people not to work via long-term unemployment benefits.

Finally, I'd like to know (the Krugman column doesn't say) what committee on human subject research approved mailing out 4,800 fictitious resumes? Were the hiring managers to which the phony resumes were directed compensated for the time they spent reviewing them? If I were a shareholder in a company, a taxpayer in a government, or a donor to a non-profit, I'm not sure I would want my employee's time wasted reviewing job candidates that turn out to be the product of the imagination of some experimenting economist. Maybe the whole thing was carefully approved and the participants were volunteers who signed informed consents, but it would be nice to know more about this. The Times article doesn't help.

The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times, about the suspected Boston Massacre bombers, includes the following passage:

Some Republican lawmakers want President Obama to declare Dzhokhar Tsarnaev an "enemy combatant," putting him into military detention and questioning him at length without a lawyer.

But the administration has said terrorism suspects arrested inside the United States should be handled exclusively in the criminal justice system, and gave no sign it intends to do otherwise in Mr. Tsarnaev's case. Moreover, there is no evidence suggesting that he is part of Al Qaeda; the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists.

A separate article that appears inside the paper uses the same formulation: "while the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalized American citizen, is a Muslim, there is no known evidence suggesting that he is part of Al Qaeda. The United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists."

While this assertion that "The United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists" is so important that the Times repeats it, it's not clear that it's either relevant or accurate. First, what matters isn't so much whether the United States is in an armed conflict with the non-Al Qaeda Muslim extremists, but whether the non-Al Qaeda Muslim extremists are engaged in an armed conflict with us, which, at least in this particular case, they sure seem have to been (as those Marathon spectators now missing legs can attest). Second, though there may be "no known evidence suggesting he is part of Al Qaeda," he might have been inspired by Al Qaeda bomb manuals, magazines, or YouTube videos. Third, this concept of the United States being engaged in an armed conflict with "all Muslim extremists" is a straw man. We can be, and in fact are, in armed conflict with some non-Al Qaeda Muslim extremists, for example, the Taliban, without being in armed conflict with all of them (for example, Hamas).

None of this is an argument on the part of Smartertimes for handling this American citizen as an enemy combatant, especially in the absence of a congressional declaration of war. But given that in both Times news articles this claim about the United States being "engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists" is being made without attribution to any government official or outside expert, it struck me as slightly off key.

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman finds another tax to raise: "A tax on prepared food, but not on raw ingredients, is another good idea," he writes.

It's a good idea if your idea of job creation is hiring new government bureaucrats to decide whether a food is "prepared" or a "raw ingredient."

Peanut butter? Unbleached white flour? Bread crumbs? Those baby carrots that come in a plastic bag? Frozen peas? Canned chickpeas? Canned diced tomato? Vanilla extract? Roasted almonds? Raw almonds? Raisins? Yogurt? Cottage cheese?

What about the idea that taxes exist to raise revenue for the government, not as a backdoor means of dictating to people to behave one way (cook your own food) or another way (buy prepared food)?

A news article in the Times begins:

WASHINGTON — A panel of former senior American officials and outside experts, including several who recently left the Obama administration, issued a surprisingly critical assessment of American diplomacy toward Iran on Wednesday, urging President Obama to become far more engaged and to reconsider the likelihood that harsh sanctions will drive Tehran to concessions.

This is a great example of the Times not simply reporting the news but advising readers about how they should feel about it, in this case, surprised. In fact there is nothing surprising about the Iran Project calling for more diplomacy with Iran; that's what the project was set up to do. The key participants issued more or less the same advice in a New York Review of Books article published in 2008 and in another article published in the same publication in 2009.

That, five or four years later, the same people are giving the same advice on Iran policy is not news, it's olds. It certainly is not surprising. The Times article says the report was "issued by the Iran Project," but it offers readers no explanation of what the Iran Project is, or who funds it. If it were a right-leaning group the Times might describe it as "anonymously funded," but since the group is calling for a softer line on Iran the Times is incurious about its sources of funding.

The claim that a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary knowingly sold faulty artificial hips for use in hip-replacement surgery has gotten lavish coverage in the Times, including a front-page news article, a news article on the front of the business section, an editorial, and a news analysis in the Sunday Review section. But when a jury rejected the claim, it merits only a short article inside the business section. A jury in another similar case had a different verdict, but at a certain point, if the courts don't agree with the editors, the readers are owed a more complete narrative that corrects the story.

A front-page Times article about authors and agents sidestepping traditional publishing houses and choosing instead to self-publish reports:

While self-published authors get no advance, they typically receive 70 percent of sales. A standard contract with a traditional house gives an author an advance, and only pays royalties — the standard is 25 percent of digital sales and 7 to 12 percent of the list price for bound books — after the advance is earned back in sales.

In my limited but direct experience, where it says "12" in that sentence the more accurate number would be "15."

A Times article on an initial public offering by the Fairway grocery store chain reports, "Strategically placed employees, wearing 'Do you have a food question today?' aprons, stand ready to help customers find Sicilian sea salt, dried prunes or a pork tenderloin."

Dried prunes are a redundancy; as William Safire used to say, call the Squad Squad. If the prune weren't dry, it would be a plum.

A Times article about hedge fund manager "pay" turns out not to be about "pay" at all but rather in part to be about the increase in the value of the investments of hedge fund managers. Though the headlines speak of "lavish paydays" and "huge pay," the text of the article includes passages such as:

While Mr. Shaw ceded control of the funds' management several years ago, he still has a large amount of money invested in the firm, which helped him to earn $530 million last year."

and

Even though Mr. Simons, 74, hasn't handled the day-to-day management of the firm for three years, he landed in the fourth spot on the list with a payday of $1.1 billion last year, partly on the large sum of money he has personally invested in the firm's funds.

The Times article goes on to state: "The highest-paid hedge fund managers all took home considerably more than the top-paid chief executives of public companies."

That's both unknowable and inaccurate. Unknowable, because the Times has no way of knowing how much the top-paid chief executives of public companies earned last year in terms of the paper gains on their investments, not all of which are necessarily publicly disclosed. And inaccurate, too: the lowest-paid of the highest-paid hedge fund managers on the Times top-ten list is said to have "walked away $380 million richer last year." This manager of course has not "walked away"; he's still managing his investments, which could go down in value just as they went up in value. But the Forbes list of top billionaire gainers for 2012 includes Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, whose wealth increased by $5 billion (probably related to his Microsoft stock) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose wealth increased by $4 billion (probably related to his Facebook stock). Four billion and five billion are both more than $380 million.

In other words, if the Times is going to compare compensation of hedge fund managers and chief executives of public companies, it should do so by applying the same criteria consistently. If the Times is going to include for the hedge fund managers the increase during the year of the value of the managers' investments, then, for the sake of a genuine comparison, it should do the same for corporate executives who are substantial shareholders in their own companies.

An article in the business section of the Times reports that three venture capital funds have teamed up to look to fund applications for Google Glass, the glasses with some mobile computing functionality built in that are forthcoming from Google:

On Wednesday, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz announced the Glass Collective, an investment partnership. The three firms said they had agreed to share every pitch from start-ups related to Glass, so each firm would have the chance to invest.

It is an efficient way for software and hardware developers to get their ideas in front of three prominent venture capital firms and to jump-start developers' creativity in thinking about ways to use the new hardware, said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures. The fund, which operates separately from Google, invests up to $250,000 in this type of early-stage start-up.

It is also a way for the firms to make sure the deal flow of the best ideas comes to them first. They are trying not to miss out on wearable computing, which many analysts say could be the next big wave of tech investing.

The article quotes John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and Bill Maris of Google Ventures, but it doesn't quote a single software or hardware developer or entrepreneur who might be seeking funding rather than offering it.

The one-sided sourcing of the article translates into an unasked, and unanswered question — is it possible that this "collective" might actually be bad for entrepreneurs, because instead of competing for the chance to fund these ventures by offering better deal terms to the entrepreneurs, the venture capitalists are all working together and all offering the same terms, take it or leave it.

The New York Times Sunday metropolitan section comes with a left-leaning column but not a right-leaning one. The latest from the left-wing columnist, whose name is Ginia Bellafante, is this:

I would propose another form of cross-subsidization called the You Don't Need to Live in a $50 Million Penthouse Tax, which would require anyone buying a property for more than $10 million (of which there are currently about 280 listed in The Times) to pay a percentage of that cost to an affordable-housing fund. And then commit, in writing, to never complain about it.

The column doesn't mention the relevant fact that there already is a "mansion tax" on real estate transfers in New York of 1 percent on residences sold for $1 million or more. The proceeds are not dedicated exclusively to "affordable" housing, but some of them are spent on that.

An article on the front of the Times "Review" section about taxes claims, "The United States does not have a particularly progressive tax system, ranking in the bottom half of the world, alongside nations like Italy and Turkey."

That's not accurate. Clive Crook, a centrist journalist, wrote in the Atlantic, a center-left publication, last year:

Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.)

Before you ask, this ranking takes account of employee-side payroll tax as well as the federal income tax.

The center-right economist Greg Mankiw, a regular Times contributor and the chairman of the Harvard economics department, has also written about this issue.

The Times has a fascinating dispatch on the case of a doctor, Cyril Karabus, who has been held in the United Aran Emirates against his will for seven months.

The article says that "Officials in the United Arab Emirates did not return telephone calls seeking comment."

Well, telephone calls are nice, but if you really want a comment, there is nothing as good as an in-person visit. One fine opportunity would have been this week's 50th birthday party for MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Joe Scarborough, which, according to Mike Allen's Politico Playbook, was "hosted by Yousef Al Otaiba, ambassador to the U.S. from the United Arab Emirates." At least two Times columnists, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Steven Rattner, were invited to the party. There were plenty of other journalists there, too, and if the case of Cyril Karabus was raised, it didn't make the report of the party in Playbook.