That stock market drop in China (and the shockwaves coming from it) made sense, and at the time I thought of it as simply a correction of a somewhat-overheated economy.
Now I'm not so sure. According to the BBC, the global markets are continuing to take hits- largely due to an exploding Japanese yen taking bites out of that country's exports, continuing questions about the stability of China, and other concerns about the state of the US economy.
Asia's regional economy wasn't the most stable thing to begin with. Now, I'm starting to get a little worried.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Hah! From Zero to Lack of Credibility in One Post
Like I said a few posts ago, I do retain some interest in Canadian liberal politics after the leadership battle. That means that, among other things, I read some Canadian blogs, including the always-interesting Calgrit.
In Calgrit's thread on the whole polling issue, as well as Jason Cherniak's, there has been a veritable carpet-bombing by one commentator by the name of Erik Sorenson. A quick scan of his site shows that the man has a serious hate-on for Stephane Dion.
Unfortunately, said quick scan also showed that he not only has no idea what a push poll is, he thinks David Suzuki is a terrorist.
Oh, and he also uses scare quotes for the Suzuki "foundation".
He's free to post wherever and whatever he wishes, of course. Still, I really don't think the Liberals should be taking political or policy advice from guys like this. File it in the round bin and move on.
In Calgrit's thread on the whole polling issue, as well as Jason Cherniak's, there has been a veritable carpet-bombing by one commentator by the name of Erik Sorenson. A quick scan of his site shows that the man has a serious hate-on for Stephane Dion.
Unfortunately, said quick scan also showed that he not only has no idea what a push poll is, he thinks David Suzuki is a terrorist.
Oh, and he also uses scare quotes for the Suzuki "foundation".
He's free to post wherever and whatever he wishes, of course. Still, I really don't think the Liberals should be taking political or policy advice from guys like this. File it in the round bin and move on.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Japan and the "Comfort Women"
Remember how I mentioned that Asia is a really tricky part of the world right now? Part of that is due to American mishandling of North Korea. Part of it is because of China and North Korea being, um, China and North Korea.
Part of it, though, is due to Japan's issues with its past. Things are improving, but every so often, you get something like this:
That said, it barely matters, and Japan shouldn't be splitting hairs on this. There is the possibility that they'll have to pay compensation, but the regional problems that this engenders are far worse than the costs of compensation. It's more about the conflict within Japan over their wartime record, and over what that means for Japanese identity itself. It's sort of like the continuing open wound that is America's history of slavery- people would prefer to move on and pretend it didn't happen and that it doesn't have effects to this day, but it does, and you really have to face it and accept it.
I have confidence that both Japan and the United States will face their history square-on. Many within both countries already do, and after all, if the Germans could face up to the Holocaust, then Japan and the US (and everybody else) can face up to their pasts too.
In the meantime, though, this inadvisable move on Abe's part is likely to spark outrage in the region. More of THAT, they don't need.
Part of it, though, is due to Japan's issues with its past. Things are improving, but every so often, you get something like this:
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said there is no evidence that women were forced to become sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II.Needless to say, Korea and China aren't happy, and neither is Congress. The annoying thing is that if you split hairs enough, Japan has a point. Girls were coerced, and the Imperial Army definitely procured these women, but many of them were forcibly coerced by locals or were "volunteers" (that didn't want to starve, but they weren't forcibly coerced.) It's difficult to prove that the Imperial army directly and forcibly coerced these women. That's why Japan can plausibly deny it.
He told reporters there was "no evidence to prove there was coercion", adding "we have to take it from there"...
..."There has been debate over the question of whether there was coercion," Mr Abe told journalists on Thursday.
"But the fact is, there was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested."
"That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there," he said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiitake later said the Japanese government did not agree with the US congressional resolution, but still honoured the 1993 statement.
The resolution before the US Congress seeks to reject the revisionists' moves by calling on the Japanese prime minister to "formally acknowledge, apologise and accept historical responsibility" for the comfort women.
That said, it barely matters, and Japan shouldn't be splitting hairs on this. There is the possibility that they'll have to pay compensation, but the regional problems that this engenders are far worse than the costs of compensation. It's more about the conflict within Japan over their wartime record, and over what that means for Japanese identity itself. It's sort of like the continuing open wound that is America's history of slavery- people would prefer to move on and pretend it didn't happen and that it doesn't have effects to this day, but it does, and you really have to face it and accept it.
I have confidence that both Japan and the United States will face their history square-on. Many within both countries already do, and after all, if the Germans could face up to the Holocaust, then Japan and the US (and everybody else) can face up to their pasts too.
In the meantime, though, this inadvisable move on Abe's part is likely to spark outrage in the region. More of THAT, they don't need.
Statistical Weighting in Online Surveying
Did a quick blurb over on Jason Cherniak's site in response to this entry on polls in Canada showing that the Conservatives are wildly ahead of the Liberals.
Cherniak's problem is that they were online surveys, and the Internet ain't exactly the most demographically representative place in the world. People pointed out (rightly enough) that you can fix that with weighting.
I responded in some detail, but it broke down to two things that bother me about online surveying:
1) The Internet's somewhat abstracted nature means that people may be less likely to either tell the truth or carefully consider their comments. Anybody who's read a blog (or Usenet, or a web forum, or pretty much anything here, really) knows that people often post at length and repent at leisure, because of the prevailing belief that nothing that goes on here really matters.
(That's at the root of good ol' Ted Barlow disease, which is bloggers quitting because they believe that what they write doesn't really matter. I can commiserate. But I digress.)
That could mean that people are less likely to respond carefully and honestly to a poll for the precise opposite reason that they lie on other polls: instead of being too concerned about what it says about them, they'll think it doesn't matter at all. They won't carefully consider the questions or their answer. They'll just vote for the rhinoceros party because it's funny.
2) Demographic problems can be avoided through weighting specific socio-economic groups. The problem, though, is that weighting can massively increase the likelihood that misrepresentation of those specific groups can take place. If you take a poll and there are something like two people from a specific small (but significant) group, no matter HOW you weight them you're going to have problems. If, for example, poor people on the Internet are disproportionately inclined towards conservatism compared to the poverty-stricken population as a whole, and they're overweighted, it's going to REALLY screw with your poll.
And, yes, conservatives really are overrepresented on the Internet. That's the reason this site was created, remember?
Oh, and 3) The respondees are inherently self-selected, even more than in phone and mail polls. You can't weight to correct for that, either.
I don't think phone polls are perfect, of course. Neither are mail polls (the response rate for mail polls is abysmal.) But I really, really don't trust online polling. Not when Zogby was doing it and it showed Kerry way ahead in 2004, and not today with Angus Reid doing it.
Cherniak's problem is that they were online surveys, and the Internet ain't exactly the most demographically representative place in the world. People pointed out (rightly enough) that you can fix that with weighting.
I responded in some detail, but it broke down to two things that bother me about online surveying:
1) The Internet's somewhat abstracted nature means that people may be less likely to either tell the truth or carefully consider their comments. Anybody who's read a blog (or Usenet, or a web forum, or pretty much anything here, really) knows that people often post at length and repent at leisure, because of the prevailing belief that nothing that goes on here really matters.
(That's at the root of good ol' Ted Barlow disease, which is bloggers quitting because they believe that what they write doesn't really matter. I can commiserate. But I digress.)
That could mean that people are less likely to respond carefully and honestly to a poll for the precise opposite reason that they lie on other polls: instead of being too concerned about what it says about them, they'll think it doesn't matter at all. They won't carefully consider the questions or their answer. They'll just vote for the rhinoceros party because it's funny.
2) Demographic problems can be avoided through weighting specific socio-economic groups. The problem, though, is that weighting can massively increase the likelihood that misrepresentation of those specific groups can take place. If you take a poll and there are something like two people from a specific small (but significant) group, no matter HOW you weight them you're going to have problems. If, for example, poor people on the Internet are disproportionately inclined towards conservatism compared to the poverty-stricken population as a whole, and they're overweighted, it's going to REALLY screw with your poll.
And, yes, conservatives really are overrepresented on the Internet. That's the reason this site was created, remember?
Oh, and 3) The respondees are inherently self-selected, even more than in phone and mail polls. You can't weight to correct for that, either.
I don't think phone polls are perfect, of course. Neither are mail polls (the response rate for mail polls is abysmal.) But I really, really don't trust online polling. Not when Zogby was doing it and it showed Kerry way ahead in 2004, and not today with Angus Reid doing it.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
A Small Addendum on the North Korea Thing
One of the reasons why this matters is because the United States didn't really live up to its promises to North Korea in the 1994 agreed framework. To be blunt, they were supposed to get light water reactors and enough know-how to run them, and that didn't really happen. It kind of sort of happened, but the United States dragged its feet, confident that it just needed to buy time until Kim Jong-Il's regime finally, inevitably, fell.
It hasn't fallen.
That's why things are so screwed up right now. That, and Japan's fierce (and understandable) outrage over North Korea kidnapping Japanese to teach Japan's language and culture to North Korean agents, but the basic justification is the North Korean "cheating" serving as a justification for America neglecting its own promises, thus allowing NK to charge that the deal was already broken.
Hindsite is 20-20.
(Or 20...19...18...17...)
It hasn't fallen.
That's why things are so screwed up right now. That, and Japan's fierce (and understandable) outrage over North Korea kidnapping Japanese to teach Japan's language and culture to North Korean agents, but the basic justification is the North Korean "cheating" serving as a justification for America neglecting its own promises, thus allowing NK to charge that the deal was already broken.
Hindsite is 20-20.
(Or 20...19...18...17...)
North Korea's Cheatin' Heart?
Maybe, maybe not. It would appear that the evidence that North Korea was "cheating" on its negotiated settlement with the United States during the 1990s is as sketchy as I had always thought it was. Apparently North Korea was, quite possibly, not pursuing a uranium-based bomb at all.
What bothers me is that now we've established a pattern. They're not just fools and liars, they appear to be serial fools and liars. I mean, does this sound familiar to anybody else?
Even worse is the effect this is likely to have on regional partners like Japan. Japan has pretty wholeheartedly thrown itself into supporting the American position on North Korea, but now we see indicators that Kim Jong-Il might not be the aggressor that the uranium cheating would imply. The whole situation of him getting screwed by the Americans and then responding in turn suggests that he is pretty much exactly as I had always suspected- terrified of losing power and willing to defend it, but neither mad nor overly inclined to gallivanting around the region. Because the Japanese have believed that he is an aggressor, though, they've taken steps that he (and everybody else in the region that dislikes Japan) is almost certain to find threatening in-and-of themselves.
An Asian security dilemma would be an absolute disaster, worse than anything going on the middle east. Everybody knows this, yet it seems like George W. Bush and his neocon cronies may have inadvertantly done their best to start one.
Worst. President. Ever.
(Edit: cred should go to Tapped for mentioning it first.)
The disclosure underscores broader questions about the ability of intelligence agencies to discern the precise status of foreign weapons programs. The original assessment about North Korea came during the same period that the administration was building its case about Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs, which turned out to be based on flawed intelligence. And the new North Korea assessment comes amid debate over intelligence about Iran’s weapons.The bolded part is what's key here. Intel agencies screw up all the time. Intelligence is a difficult game, especially when you have counter-intelligence activities that are often almost as sophisticated as the spies' work itself.
The public revelation of the intelligence agencies’ doubts, which have been brewing for some time, came almost by happenstance. In a little-noticed exchange on Tuesday at a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Joseph DeTrani, a longtime intelligence official, told Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island that “we still have confidence that the program is in existence — at the mid-confidence level.” Under the intelligence agencies’ own definitions, that level “means the information is interpreted in various ways, we have alternative views” or it is not fully corroborated.
“The administration appears to have made a very costly decision that has resulted in a fourfold increase in the nuclear weapons of North Korea,” Senator Reed said in an interview on Wednesday. “If that was based in part on mixing up North Korea’s ambitions with their accomplishments, it’s important.”
Two administration officials, who declined to be identified, suggested that if the administration harbored the same doubts in 2002 that it harbored now, the negotiating strategy for dealing with North Korea might have been different — and the tit-for-tat actions that led to October’s nuclear test could, conceivably, have been avoided.
The strongest evidence for the original assessment was Pakistan’s sale to North Korea of upwards of 20 centrifuges, machines that spin fast to convert uranium gas into highly enriched uranium, a main fuel for atom bombs. Officials feared that the North Koreans would use those centrifuges as models to build a vast enrichment complex. But in interviews this week, experts inside and outside the government said that since then, little or no evidence of Korean procurements had emerged to back up those fears.
What bothers me is that now we've established a pattern. They're not just fools and liars, they appear to be serial fools and liars. I mean, does this sound familiar to anybody else?
But David A. Kay, a nuclear expert and former official who in 2003 and 2004 led the American hunt for unconventional arms in Iraq, said he had found the administration’s claims about the North Korean uranium program unpersuasive. “They were driving it way further than the evidence indicated it should go,” he said in an interview. The leap of logic, Dr. Kay added, turned evidence of equipment purchases into “a significant production capability.”So. First they cook the intel on Iraq, then on North Korea. Now, somehow, they expect anybody to take them seriously on Iran? Hah.
Even worse is the effect this is likely to have on regional partners like Japan. Japan has pretty wholeheartedly thrown itself into supporting the American position on North Korea, but now we see indicators that Kim Jong-Il might not be the aggressor that the uranium cheating would imply. The whole situation of him getting screwed by the Americans and then responding in turn suggests that he is pretty much exactly as I had always suspected- terrified of losing power and willing to defend it, but neither mad nor overly inclined to gallivanting around the region. Because the Japanese have believed that he is an aggressor, though, they've taken steps that he (and everybody else in the region that dislikes Japan) is almost certain to find threatening in-and-of themselves.
An Asian security dilemma would be an absolute disaster, worse than anything going on the middle east. Everybody knows this, yet it seems like George W. Bush and his neocon cronies may have inadvertantly done their best to start one.
Worst. President. Ever.
(Edit: cred should go to Tapped for mentioning it first.)
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
So Much for the New Republic
If the Aspers are running it, it's going to be roughly as progressive as the National Review.
For all TNR's past issues, this is an unfortunate development for American progressivism.
For all TNR's past issues, this is an unfortunate development for American progressivism.
Oh-Em-Gee Soft On Terra!
I'm sure people have figured out by now that I'm not writing on Canadian politics as much as I used to. The liberal leadership race is over, and after all this time I'm still conflicted about what it says about the state of liberalism, as it was such an incredibly ideosyncratic exercise.
Still, I do have to ask this.
Why on EARTH does Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper think that yelling and moaning about how his opponents are soft on terrorists is going to work in Canada? Not only does it belie his (expensive) advice to not sound too American, but it's simply not going to have that great an impact on a public that does not share the United States' formerly laser focused concern about terrorism. Even in America the terrorist argument is weaker and weaker by the day, and the Conservatives are trying to use it on Canadians?
Cripes.
(And just as they were doing so well with those attack ads, too.)
Still, I do have to ask this.
Why on EARTH does Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper think that yelling and moaning about how his opponents are soft on terrorists is going to work in Canada? Not only does it belie his (expensive) advice to not sound too American, but it's simply not going to have that great an impact on a public that does not share the United States' formerly laser focused concern about terrorism. Even in America the terrorist argument is weaker and weaker by the day, and the Conservatives are trying to use it on Canadians?
Cripes.
(And just as they were doing so well with those attack ads, too.)
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Get Well Soon, Steve
Best wishes and hope for a speedy recovery to Steve Gilliard, who is going in for open heart surgery in order to clear up an infection from his last surgery. Steve's always been a reliable and eminently readable blogger, and here's hoping hey can get back to that as soon as health permits.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Somehow I doubt this will work
While it is, perhaps, laudible that Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent format, has gone legit, I somehow doubt that a service that doesn't even let you own the media you pay for is going to be successful, especially in the face of iTunes.
Plus, he's going to have to deal with the multitude of bittorrent traffic blockers that are out there nowadays. If his content gets through, the illegal content gets through, so no matter what happens he's going to have difficulty.
The worst aspect, though, is that as far as this article implies, the only media player that will play his files will be Windows Media Player. Those who, like myself, swear by third party media players will be out in the cold.
Good luck, Mr. Cohen. You'll need it.
Plus, he's going to have to deal with the multitude of bittorrent traffic blockers that are out there nowadays. If his content gets through, the illegal content gets through, so no matter what happens he's going to have difficulty.
The worst aspect, though, is that as far as this article implies, the only media player that will play his files will be Windows Media Player. Those who, like myself, swear by third party media players will be out in the cold.
Good luck, Mr. Cohen. You'll need it.
Short bit on RSS
After being roundly criticized in an earlier post for filling up someone's RSS feed with all this meta stuff (hope the new entries are more to your liking?), I fired up the ol' RSS reader and realized that all I'm serving out is headlines.
So I've switched to full feeds.
(Speaking of which, I'm not sure if I'm that fond of my reader. Any recommendations?)
So I've switched to full feeds.
(Speaking of which, I'm not sure if I'm that fond of my reader. Any recommendations?)
Oscar Post!
Not planning on going over it overmuch, but I do have to compliment (what the hell) President-Elect Gore and Mr. Guggenheim on their victory, and Forrest Whitaker for finally getting the recognition he has so richly deserved.
(Even if he didn't get that well-deserved Emmy for his turn on The Shield.)
Ditto for Scorsese and his wins for The Departed.
As for the Gore presidential thing... I personally think it's far, far less likely today than it was on Saturday. Honestly, since that would have been the best venue to announce, I suspect that he's not going to. I would like to be wrong on that, as I still think he would be an excellent candidate and a likely winner, but it feels like the Dem powers-that-be still can't get over the idea that everybody is to blame for electoral failures but themselves.
(Even if he didn't get that well-deserved Emmy for his turn on The Shield.)
Ditto for Scorsese and his wins for The Departed.
As for the Gore presidential thing... I personally think it's far, far less likely today than it was on Saturday. Honestly, since that would have been the best venue to announce, I suspect that he's not going to. I would like to be wrong on that, as I still think he would be an excellent candidate and a likely winner, but it feels like the Dem powers-that-be still can't get over the idea that everybody is to blame for electoral failures but themselves.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Iran launches rocket into space
So, it looks like Iran is able to launch rockets into space, according to the International Herald Tribune. They may just want it as a status symbol, but this isn't exactly going to defuse tensions with the US much.
Another Blogroll Entry
Upyernoz, while complaining that communities aren't movements, also pointed out that he linked to me for a good long time while I had never linked back.
My response, and correction is to your right. I'll freely admit that I didn't add as many people as I'd like. The reason's pretty simple- those links are hard coded, as I'd never gotten around to setting up and implementing a blogrolling account. Still, it was an oversight, as upyernoz is a decent blogger, albeit a little too inclined to defending "amnesty".
The offer remains: provided you aren't advocating killing off all the muslims or whatnot, I'll be happy to swap links. Not as a Kossack, or an Atriette, or a whatevertheheck people call themselves. As a blogger, and a liberal, and someone who believes that the internet can be a force for progressivism, provided we let it.
My response, and correction is to your right. I'll freely admit that I didn't add as many people as I'd like. The reason's pretty simple- those links are hard coded, as I'd never gotten around to setting up and implementing a blogrolling account. Still, it was an oversight, as upyernoz is a decent blogger, albeit a little too inclined to defending "amnesty".
The offer remains: provided you aren't advocating killing off all the muslims or whatnot, I'll be happy to swap links. Not as a Kossack, or an Atriette, or a whatevertheheck people call themselves. As a blogger, and a liberal, and someone who believes that the internet can be a force for progressivism, provided we let it.
Is this a bass-ackwards jab at us exiled Atrios blogroll members?
In a post that's supposedly about Jeff G. ("pasty"), Atrios posts up a blogroll from 2002.
You'd think that he'd, um, be a little less inclined towards such things, all things considered.
You'd think that he'd, um, be a little less inclined towards such things, all things considered.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Rescuing from the Memory Hole
Haloscan has a way of making things disappear, so I figured I'd respond to a comment Skippy made on the blog itself.
Here's what he said in response to this entry:
I don't disagree. Hell, I got purged too, albeit from a different site, remember? I'd always been kind of arms length, largely because of other commitments and the needs imposed by pseudonymity, but I like to consider myself part of the progressive community too.
(I'm not sure, but I believe I coined "conservatarian", so I'm even down with that whole Yes I Coined That Phrase thing.)
What Kos doesn't get is that he's a member of a community, not a leader of one. He (among others) have been seduced into to thinking that since their websites are sub-communities in their own right, they don't need to worry about the broader progressive community as a whole. Why worry about some guy with some random blog named "skippy" when you're creating this great big beautiful community? When you've got people falling all over themselves to provide content for your site in the form of those "diaries"?
Yet it is precisely that kind of community-building that the right seems to understand better nowadays. The point of blogroll linking is not merely creating a portable favorites list, but creating a shared community and shared sense of identity. If you share a link with someone, on some level you state "I am like them". Even when you link to conservatives, you inherently give them some degree of respect and shared identity; you state "yes, I think you're a putz, but I also think you're a peer. You can be both."
As we've seen, the shared progressive/liberal identity desperately needs this kind of reinforcement. because it is that lack of shared perceived identity that allows for self-proclaimed "centrists" to attack everybody to their left. If they thought "they are like me", they wouldn't do that, because they'd believe that every attack boomerangs back in some respect. They might privately say "shut up, putz", or might respectfully say "I disagree" in public, but wouldn't try to freeze them out.
Because they don't have that perception of shared identity, though, they keep on trying to score points on everybody to the left of them.
So, shared identity is at the core of a community. Here's the problem. By building and presiding over these communities, Kos (and Atrios, and Josh Marshall, and MyDD, and Arianna, and a lot of other "top-tier" folks) is reinforcing a division of identities and communities.
As I'd mentioned earlier, there is a fundamental distinction between a "diary" on a website like Kos and an independent blog. The former exists at the whim and will of the website's administrators; if somebody at Kos doesn't like a diary, they can take it down or even ban them. That power irretrievably prevents a shared identity between Kos and his diarists. He will always be more powerful than them, will always carry that identity of "community administrator/website owner", and they won't.
Yet, it goes both ways. Kos can never, ever be a Kossack. He can never engage them in a free and clear fashion. I'm sure he'd like to, but he cannot, because he owns that space. He can never be "one of the guys", no matter how much he'd like to. The same goes for Atrios and the Atriettes, Arianna and her various diarists and commentators, etc. Even if they can become administrators, that distinction will never go away; and if they become administrators, they too will become distinct from the userbase itself.
The situation is entirely different for, say, me and skippy. Even if Kos and Atrios and Glenn Greenwald no longer link to us, the fact remains that we are peers. I have a blog. Atrios has a blog. skippy has a blog. Kos has a blog. There is no proprietary relationship there; Kos can't kick me off his site, because this isn't his site. He can do whatever he pleases to my diary over there (which still exists simply as a funnel and introduction) and molest my comments over there to his heart's content. Were he to post a response here, I could log into Haloscan and do the same damned thing to HIS posts. And you know what? It wouldn't matter, because he has his own site too.
As much as Kos and Atrios might not want to, if they want to engage me and skippy, they must do it as peers, rather than as superiors. That's what a shared identity is built on, and that shared identity is what a community is built on, and that community is what progressivism and liberalism is based on.
And that, clearly, isn't what Kos and the top-tiers want anymore. For whatever reason, they've decided that they'd prefer to build their own little communities that they can preside over. They want Kossacks, and Atriettes, and whateverthehell people who post on TPMCafe and the Huffington Post call themselves. They want mutually exclusive communities of subjects, instead of a community of peers.
If they do link to other sites, they (apparently) want the power to pull that link at any time, for whatever reason, and to receive "amnesty" for it, no matter what it means to the community. They want to be able to extend and retract their favor, like Renaissance Princes, to whomever pleases or displeases them. Why do you think Atrios kept on going on and on about "helping out smaller blogs" They, bizarrely, appear to want to be patrons, not peers.
(And, yes, I'm aware that Kos wants his blog to be more "campaign focused". More the fool is he, if he thinks such a beast is even possible, let alone desirable. Retracting your favor for writing about the wrong thing is as much the game of a Prince as anything else.)
Say what you will about Instapundit. I probably have. He, at least, gets it. Every time he links to someone, he says:
"I'm a peer with this person. We're all part of the great conservative project together. Is he someone worth listening to, like myself?
"Indeed".
No, I don't know where this comes from. Maybe Kos et al spent a bit too much time hobnobbing with the Powers That Be. Maybe they're a little embarrassed about being lumped in with the lowly bloggers, and want to place himself above them. Maybe, with Kos, he wants to be able to tell Dean that he has an army of people who'll do what he says, so as to get the DNC's extended favor.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is that it's like cutting off your arms so that your legs seem more useful. It's foolish, it's silly, and it's the finest news the Republicans could ask for.
Here's what he said in response to this entry:
well, demosthenes (and thx for the link, and the support, btw), i'd further suggest that if you spend time (in my case, 5 years) participating in a community, only to be told that the community no longer supports you, but you are expected to keep supporting the community, it becomes emotionally masochistic to continue to do so.
to be really, really honest, on a personal level, if kos had just sent me an email explaining his change in policy vis-a-vis the blog's newly focused direction, with a small apology and and a "thanks for your support in the past i hope i can count on it in the future," i, on a personal level, would not be so bent out of shape.
but on a macro level, i am infuriated that kos especially spent the last 5 years garnering progressive support (not to mention writing talent and traffic), only to suddenly switch directions into a dnc blog w/o so much as a by your leave (plus, suddenly all the munchkins in the land of kos are spouting the party line that it's "his blog" and he can "do what he wants" with it, when his previous proclamations were all about citizens taking back government).
he pretty much used the populous approach to get himself a chair at the table. huey long would be proud.
I don't disagree. Hell, I got purged too, albeit from a different site, remember? I'd always been kind of arms length, largely because of other commitments and the needs imposed by pseudonymity, but I like to consider myself part of the progressive community too.
(I'm not sure, but I believe I coined "conservatarian", so I'm even down with that whole Yes I Coined That Phrase thing.)
What Kos doesn't get is that he's a member of a community, not a leader of one. He (among others) have been seduced into to thinking that since their websites are sub-communities in their own right, they don't need to worry about the broader progressive community as a whole. Why worry about some guy with some random blog named "skippy" when you're creating this great big beautiful community? When you've got people falling all over themselves to provide content for your site in the form of those "diaries"?
Yet it is precisely that kind of community-building that the right seems to understand better nowadays. The point of blogroll linking is not merely creating a portable favorites list, but creating a shared community and shared sense of identity. If you share a link with someone, on some level you state "I am like them". Even when you link to conservatives, you inherently give them some degree of respect and shared identity; you state "yes, I think you're a putz, but I also think you're a peer. You can be both."
As we've seen, the shared progressive/liberal identity desperately needs this kind of reinforcement. because it is that lack of shared perceived identity that allows for self-proclaimed "centrists" to attack everybody to their left. If they thought "they are like me", they wouldn't do that, because they'd believe that every attack boomerangs back in some respect. They might privately say "shut up, putz", or might respectfully say "I disagree" in public, but wouldn't try to freeze them out.
Because they don't have that perception of shared identity, though, they keep on trying to score points on everybody to the left of them.
So, shared identity is at the core of a community. Here's the problem. By building and presiding over these communities, Kos (and Atrios, and Josh Marshall, and MyDD, and Arianna, and a lot of other "top-tier" folks) is reinforcing a division of identities and communities.
As I'd mentioned earlier, there is a fundamental distinction between a "diary" on a website like Kos and an independent blog. The former exists at the whim and will of the website's administrators; if somebody at Kos doesn't like a diary, they can take it down or even ban them. That power irretrievably prevents a shared identity between Kos and his diarists. He will always be more powerful than them, will always carry that identity of "community administrator/website owner", and they won't.
Yet, it goes both ways. Kos can never, ever be a Kossack. He can never engage them in a free and clear fashion. I'm sure he'd like to, but he cannot, because he owns that space. He can never be "one of the guys", no matter how much he'd like to. The same goes for Atrios and the Atriettes, Arianna and her various diarists and commentators, etc. Even if they can become administrators, that distinction will never go away; and if they become administrators, they too will become distinct from the userbase itself.
The situation is entirely different for, say, me and skippy. Even if Kos and Atrios and Glenn Greenwald no longer link to us, the fact remains that we are peers. I have a blog. Atrios has a blog. skippy has a blog. Kos has a blog. There is no proprietary relationship there; Kos can't kick me off his site, because this isn't his site. He can do whatever he pleases to my diary over there (which still exists simply as a funnel and introduction) and molest my comments over there to his heart's content. Were he to post a response here, I could log into Haloscan and do the same damned thing to HIS posts. And you know what? It wouldn't matter, because he has his own site too.
As much as Kos and Atrios might not want to, if they want to engage me and skippy, they must do it as peers, rather than as superiors. That's what a shared identity is built on, and that shared identity is what a community is built on, and that community is what progressivism and liberalism is based on.
And that, clearly, isn't what Kos and the top-tiers want anymore. For whatever reason, they've decided that they'd prefer to build their own little communities that they can preside over. They want Kossacks, and Atriettes, and whateverthehell people who post on TPMCafe and the Huffington Post call themselves. They want mutually exclusive communities of subjects, instead of a community of peers.
If they do link to other sites, they (apparently) want the power to pull that link at any time, for whatever reason, and to receive "amnesty" for it, no matter what it means to the community. They want to be able to extend and retract their favor, like Renaissance Princes, to whomever pleases or displeases them. Why do you think Atrios kept on going on and on about "helping out smaller blogs" They, bizarrely, appear to want to be patrons, not peers.
(And, yes, I'm aware that Kos wants his blog to be more "campaign focused". More the fool is he, if he thinks such a beast is even possible, let alone desirable. Retracting your favor for writing about the wrong thing is as much the game of a Prince as anything else.)
Say what you will about Instapundit. I probably have. He, at least, gets it. Every time he links to someone, he says:
"I'm a peer with this person. We're all part of the great conservative project together. Is he someone worth listening to, like myself?
"Indeed".
No, I don't know where this comes from. Maybe Kos et al spent a bit too much time hobnobbing with the Powers That Be. Maybe they're a little embarrassed about being lumped in with the lowly bloggers, and want to place himself above them. Maybe, with Kos, he wants to be able to tell Dean that he has an army of people who'll do what he says, so as to get the DNC's extended favor.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is that it's like cutting off your arms so that your legs seem more useful. It's foolish, it's silly, and it's the finest news the Republicans could ask for.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
DRM Summed Up
(DRM is Digital Rights Management, by the by.)
From a random comment on an ancient Digg piece on DRM on the Xbox360 that I nonetheless loved:
"When i die do my digital rights die with me? Will my children be criminals for listening to music I paid to download?"
I had to think about whether that would be the case for a little while. I'm still not sure.
That sums up the issue, if nothing else does.
From a random comment on an ancient Digg piece on DRM on the Xbox360 that I nonetheless loved:
"When i die do my digital rights die with me? Will my children be criminals for listening to music I paid to download?"
I had to think about whether that would be the case for a little while. I'm still not sure.
That sums up the issue, if nothing else does.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Objectively Pro-Terrorism
The Republicans (and their online sycophants) loved using that term in 2003. Unfortunately, apparently they should have been looking closer to home, as it looks like a major Republican donor and member of the "White House Business Advisory Committee" was, er, funnelling money to Al Qaeda.
Oops.
(Original link was on Drink Liberally in New Milford.
Oops.
(Original link was on Drink Liberally in New Milford.
More Kos vs. Skippy
Why? Because it amuses me.
Skippy, completely unable to "let it go",had been told by "mo betta meta" that Kos himself actually defended his blogroll purge.
Skippy points out one major big of strange wrongheadedness that's popped up here: that since having a long blogroll supposedly diminishes the value of each link, that justifies the pruning. Skippy saw it as silly and vaguely Republican to try to limit choice, but I personally just see it as (oddly enough) bad economics.
Think about it. Each additional blog entry, assuming that Kos is right (and it's a HUGE assumption with no basis in fact besides its usefulness to Kos, Atrios, and all the other purging majors) may diminish the number of hits for each other blog entry slightly. Here's the problem: unless each new entry diminishes the number of outbound visits to other blogs by more than it generates in and of itself, you're still going to have a positive effect on the aggregate.
If a Kos link to Skippy generated a thousand visits a week, then the only way to justify it would be if it reduced the number of outbound visits on all the other blogs put together by more than a thousand. Considering he only has about, what, 32 links to other blogs, that's one HELL of an assumption. Honestly, it's ridiculous on its face, not even counting the need to compensate for the amount of ill-will that something like this generates, and the problems with google rankings that he continues to studiously, hilariously ignore.
Most of the rest of the Kos entry follows an old pattern: A bit of "if you want to be visible, post comments on Daily Kos, post diaries on Daily Kos... really, just shut down that ol' blog of yours and come join the Kossacks" coupled with "how DARE smaller bloggers question me! The PRESUMPTION! I will grind them into PASTE", along with a touch of the Logan's Run-esque idea that any blogger that has been around for too long and isn't Kos needs to go the hell away to make way for the "new blood".
(Yeah, I'd warn that "new blood" to watch their backs, except that Arianna Huffington and Brad DeLong, along with the rest of 90% of his blogroll, ain't exactly new to the scene. So he's pretty much just lying to save his ass.)
My favorite argument, though, is "No, I don't have a responsibility to help other bloggers. Let somebody else do it." Well, no, not by law or anything. But the idea that the big guy should help raise up the "little guy" is pretty goddamned important in most liberal circles.
Jon Swift was right: the weirdest thing about all of this is that the conservatives are linking like you'd think a liberal would, and liberals are linking like you'd think a conservative would. Maybe that's why the Republicans tend to do better in elections- individualistic rhetoric aside, they know what wins elections and debates, and it ain't "I got mine, Jack, so push off."
Kos got his. We get to push off.
Skippy, completely unable to "let it go",had been told by "mo betta meta" that Kos himself actually defended his blogroll purge.
Skippy points out one major big of strange wrongheadedness that's popped up here: that since having a long blogroll supposedly diminishes the value of each link, that justifies the pruning. Skippy saw it as silly and vaguely Republican to try to limit choice, but I personally just see it as (oddly enough) bad economics.
Think about it. Each additional blog entry, assuming that Kos is right (and it's a HUGE assumption with no basis in fact besides its usefulness to Kos, Atrios, and all the other purging majors) may diminish the number of hits for each other blog entry slightly. Here's the problem: unless each new entry diminishes the number of outbound visits to other blogs by more than it generates in and of itself, you're still going to have a positive effect on the aggregate.
If a Kos link to Skippy generated a thousand visits a week, then the only way to justify it would be if it reduced the number of outbound visits on all the other blogs put together by more than a thousand. Considering he only has about, what, 32 links to other blogs, that's one HELL of an assumption. Honestly, it's ridiculous on its face, not even counting the need to compensate for the amount of ill-will that something like this generates, and the problems with google rankings that he continues to studiously, hilariously ignore.
Most of the rest of the Kos entry follows an old pattern: A bit of "if you want to be visible, post comments on Daily Kos, post diaries on Daily Kos... really, just shut down that ol' blog of yours and come join the Kossacks" coupled with "how DARE smaller bloggers question me! The PRESUMPTION! I will grind them into PASTE", along with a touch of the Logan's Run-esque idea that any blogger that has been around for too long and isn't Kos needs to go the hell away to make way for the "new blood".
(Yeah, I'd warn that "new blood" to watch their backs, except that Arianna Huffington and Brad DeLong, along with the rest of 90% of his blogroll, ain't exactly new to the scene. So he's pretty much just lying to save his ass.)
My favorite argument, though, is "No, I don't have a responsibility to help other bloggers. Let somebody else do it." Well, no, not by law or anything. But the idea that the big guy should help raise up the "little guy" is pretty goddamned important in most liberal circles.
Jon Swift was right: the weirdest thing about all of this is that the conservatives are linking like you'd think a liberal would, and liberals are linking like you'd think a conservative would. Maybe that's why the Republicans tend to do better in elections- individualistic rhetoric aside, they know what wins elections and debates, and it ain't "I got mine, Jack, so push off."
Kos got his. We get to push off.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Best Thing I've Read All Week
A vignette from Second Life:
I honestly think this should be Second Life's new tagline.
On Help Island, a naked man is performing a slightly horrifying bump-and-grind in the middle of the landing site, and he won’t stop screaming into the chat channel. “Help me! Someone stole all my clothes and now I can’t stop dancing! I’ve only been here twenty minutes!”
I honestly think this should be Second Life's new tagline.
Happy Lupercalia! (Edit: ancient variant of furries "yiffing"?)
It's too bad that so many nifty old Roman holidays were sanitized. Just as Saturnalia sounds like more fun than Christmas is (and Christmas is pretty fun), Lupercalia beats the heck out of St. Valentines day.
Sacrificial rites, ritualistic whippings, drugs, an ancient variant of the modern "key club", and Werewolves? I'll take that over little candy hearts anyday.
Edit: I'm not sure, but some sources I've read said that part of the ritual involved young men running around in wolf skins to symbolize the she-wolf spirit that Romulus and Remus nursed from.
If that's true, then that whole thing of people dressing up like vaguely anthropomorphic animals for sexual purposes may be way older than any of us thought.
(Wonder how the Second Life crew are going to celebrate?)
Sacrificial rites, ritualistic whippings, drugs, an ancient variant of the modern "key club", and Werewolves? I'll take that over little candy hearts anyday.
Edit: I'm not sure, but some sources I've read said that part of the ritual involved young men running around in wolf skins to symbolize the she-wolf spirit that Romulus and Remus nursed from.
If that's true, then that whole thing of people dressing up like vaguely anthropomorphic animals for sexual purposes may be way older than any of us thought.
(Wonder how the Second Life crew are going to celebrate?)
Say What You Will About The Man's Linking Policy:
You gotta love a guy who, consciously or unconsciosuly, uses Battlestar Galactica slang when ragging on Hillary.
Most of the presidential candidates have gotten the "I fracked up the vote" stuff out of the way last year. It's not the most compelling tack to take -- if their judgment was so poor as to vote for the darn thing, why should we promote them. We talk about DC being a place where people fail upward. Do we really want to encourage that within our own party?Frackin' A.
But in any case, pro-war Dems who have unequivocally admitted their mistake don't have to offer tortured justifications for their war. They can honestly take Clinton pollster Mark Penn's advice...
Al Franken for Senate!
Yep, he's running in 2008.
I think he definitely has a shot. He's clearly trying to continue the legacy of Paul Wellstone's seat, so he won't need to compromise his liberalism, and has hometown cred. He's not quite as leftish as Wellstone was (one somewhat critical piece by Paul Hogarth noted that he supports NAFTA and was somewhat pro-Iraq in 2002). I honestly doubt that be a huge problem, considering Al's such a prominent Bush critic.
No, the most important issue is ensuring that he develops a strong relationship with the party apparatus in the state so that they feel like they have a say in his candidacy and his policies. High profile candidates have a way of overshadowing the bottom-up mechanisms that are the lifeblood of politics. He'll need to be careful to ensure that even if his celebrity gets him media exposure, he still takes the time to connect with the people who will be trudging around in October and November trying to convince other people to vote for him.
He does that, and I think the Senate will be a far more interesting place in 2009.
I think he definitely has a shot. He's clearly trying to continue the legacy of Paul Wellstone's seat, so he won't need to compromise his liberalism, and has hometown cred. He's not quite as leftish as Wellstone was (one somewhat critical piece by Paul Hogarth noted that he supports NAFTA and was somewhat pro-Iraq in 2002). I honestly doubt that be a huge problem, considering Al's such a prominent Bush critic.
No, the most important issue is ensuring that he develops a strong relationship with the party apparatus in the state so that they feel like they have a say in his candidacy and his policies. High profile candidates have a way of overshadowing the bottom-up mechanisms that are the lifeblood of politics. He'll need to be careful to ensure that even if his celebrity gets him media exposure, he still takes the time to connect with the people who will be trudging around in October and November trying to convince other people to vote for him.
He does that, and I think the Senate will be a far more interesting place in 2009.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Silver Lining
Thanks to the Marcotte issue, every Republican with even a tertiary connection with a conservative blogger will be a target for the same sort of criticism.
After all, I don't know if you've read the bile coming out of, say, the Loud Goat Fornicator (y'know, LGF) contingent lately, but it'd be simplicity itself to hang it around the other guys' necks.
(Of course, Republicans tend to draw on people from BS "institutes" and think tanks. Fortunately, if they're the David Horowitz style of 'scholar', it's even easier to ferret things out than with bloggers.)
After all, I don't know if you've read the bile coming out of, say, the Loud Goat Fornicator (y'know, LGF) contingent lately, but it'd be simplicity itself to hang it around the other guys' necks.
(Of course, Republicans tend to draw on people from BS "institutes" and think tanks. Fortunately, if they're the David Horowitz style of 'scholar', it's even easier to ferret things out than with bloggers.)
Good Marcotte Piece That Raises a Question...
I enjoyed reading this piece by Amanda Marcotte talking about the contradictions between the bilious attacks she's endured and biblical teachings.
(I was disappointed to read that she had resigned from the Edwards campaign. I have no doubt whatsoever that were she backing a Republican, the situation would be entirely different. I also have no doubt that this will do absolutely nothing to stop the right's attacks and accusations; they'll simply pull it out again and again to attack Edwards and ignore Amanda's resignation.
I don't think that this will help either the party or Edwards in the long run, as it'll simply embolden the smear artists, but it's Amanda's life.)
Anyway, she said something that intrigues me:
(I was disappointed to read that she had resigned from the Edwards campaign. I have no doubt whatsoever that were she backing a Republican, the situation would be entirely different. I also have no doubt that this will do absolutely nothing to stop the right's attacks and accusations; they'll simply pull it out again and again to attack Edwards and ignore Amanda's resignation.
I don't think that this will help either the party or Edwards in the long run, as it'll simply embolden the smear artists, but it's Amanda's life.)
Anyway, she said something that intrigues me:
In fact, from everything I understand, much of the history of Christian misogyny is one 2,000 year long backlash against early female power in the church.A quick question to my reader(s) out there: can anybody point to where this comes from? Amanda didn't cite anything specifically, and I'm not that knowledgable about this particular issue. Googling is an option, of course, but I figured I'd send it out there first.
A Useful Object Lesson
So, I assume everybody saw the AEI guy, Chris Horner on Jon Stewart. He was trying to claim that global warming is some kind of huge conspiracy. He didn't have much luck; Jon shut him down pretty thoroughly, and it wasn't exactly a huge moment in climate change policymaking.
That said, it WAS a great object lesson in that bugaboo of political discussion: talking points. Horner's comments were a textbook example of someone trying to obfuscate the issues by using deceptive talking points. Being textbook examples, I figured they'd be useful for a little friendly tutoring on both talking points and how to shut them down.
So beginneth the lesson.
Talking point the first: Global Cooling. He pulled out the idea that people have been going back and forth between saying that the Earth is cooling and the Earth is warming for a long time now. Like all good talking points, it included a specific and easily understood example: that people used the example of the Titanic, back in the turn of the century, to argue that the Earth is cooling. He then mentioned the idea that people thought that the Earth was warming back during the "dust bowl" period, then cooling in the 1970's, and now saying it's warming.
It's an effective talking point. It reveals a specific and abundantly silly example, and then quickly rattles off every switch subsequently, without even discussing the validity of the underlying ideas and science. He can't do that, because he's still pretty weak on that score, but by dropping that one example he can paint all the rest with the same brush.
How to shut it down? Simple: break down that connection. Jon Stewart did that by bringing up the science; that's how you break down the "we used to believe in global cooling" people too, by saying that the fact that that prediction was wrong does not mean much for the accuracy of this prediction. Indeed, if you know anything about science, you know that wrong predictions are part of the process, and the "global cooling" theory wasn't anywhere near as sound as global warming was. Once you've broken that connection, you can get to the science, and you're on far better ground. Fortunately, you can do it pretty much simply by mentioning the science, so it's not hard.
(If you wanted to mock it, you could say that we used to believe that there were only four elements. Should we chuck out atomic physics because alchemists were wrong then?)
Talking Point the Second: Jon asked how such a huge conspiracy to defraud the public about global warming could exist; were the scientists lying? Chris responded by saying "oh, no, not the scientists", but then started talking about how Enron was massively enriching itself through emissions markets. The goal here is to try to pull a reversal on global warming critics by claiming that they're the dupes of big, corrupt businesses, and used Enron as an example.
(One could call this the "guilt by association" trick. All of these use that theme of course, but this one focuses on name-dropping anything immoral even tertially related to the subject at hand.)
This is a kind of "defense through offense" talking point- he was preemptively insulating himself and his "side" against charges of being dupes of big business by saying that the OTHER guys are the dupes of even worse businesses. It plays on liberals' anti-corporate sympathies and makes them wonder whether maybe the (supposedly brave and individualist) anti-warming activists are simply "speaking truth to power". Of course, this is all wrong; Enron's failing was in deceptive accountancy, and has nothing at all to do with energy markets themselves.
How to shoot it down? Just press on the "uh, and this matters because..." idea, just as Jon did. All the organizations and scientists that AREN'T Enron have exactly as much credibility as they ever did, no matter what Enron did with their books. I don't even believe that highlighting Enron is necessarily a bad thing; it's intended as a quick, almost subliminal jab, and isn't supposed to be fully aired out. It's ridiculous, and even Chris knows it's ridiculous, so he tries to slip it under the radar. Pull it out, make fun of the "so, what, Enron's crooked accountants made all the scientists discover global warming" bit, and he'll lose credibility and likely get defensive... just as Chris did.
Getting defensive provoked talking point the third: "I heard this one guy say..." Chris, when pressed on the supposed communist nature of environmentalists, brought up a German environmentalist that said that "he wanted to see the day where you'd be punished more harshly for cutting down a forest than selling a child into slavery". Nasty stuff, right? Except for one thing: it's just one guy. You can find nuts supporting ANY cause, and Chris gave no indication that this guy was in any sort of leadership role. It's much like the other ones, in that it uses one specific case to tar a whole class of attitudes, but I see this as a specific type precisely because it's so common and allows for such a wide variety of uses. It's a VERY common and pretty effective rhetorical tool; people like it and journalists LOVE it when complicated issues are drilled down to interesting personalities, so they'll latch onto these personalities all out of proportion to their actual importance.
(Ferreting out comments for this purpose is the entire raison d'etre of MEMRI, by the way.)
Jon showed how to shut this down, too: point out that it's just one guy. Unless you can prove a bunch of people believe this or that he's in a real leadership position (ie, not a "community leader", but someone people actually derive opinion from) he's useless as any kind of an indicator. Again, doing this properly (with assertiveness and a touch of bemused humor) will play merry hell with the other guy's credibility; he'll try to save it by saying that this guy is representative, at which point he'll either go too far fighting back (as Chris did with a stupid Hitler comparison that torpedoed his credibility) or you can simply pull out somebody, ANYBODY else who has a different opinion, and all of a sudden their "representative" isn't representative of anything.
In any case, you get the idea. It's a good idea to keep an eye out for these sorts of games; when you find them, shut them down. Do it with humor instead of indigation, though. Jon is effective precisely because nobody can call him "shrill" and being castigated on his show doesn't give you the "politically incorrect" cred that comes from being criticized by a progressive in some circles. If you laugh at them, they'll realize you don't take them seriously; and above all else, these guys desperately want to be taken seriously.
So just laugh at them, while pointing out just how goofy their talking points are. THAT, they're not equipped to handle.
That said, it WAS a great object lesson in that bugaboo of political discussion: talking points. Horner's comments were a textbook example of someone trying to obfuscate the issues by using deceptive talking points. Being textbook examples, I figured they'd be useful for a little friendly tutoring on both talking points and how to shut them down.
So beginneth the lesson.
Talking point the first: Global Cooling. He pulled out the idea that people have been going back and forth between saying that the Earth is cooling and the Earth is warming for a long time now. Like all good talking points, it included a specific and easily understood example: that people used the example of the Titanic, back in the turn of the century, to argue that the Earth is cooling. He then mentioned the idea that people thought that the Earth was warming back during the "dust bowl" period, then cooling in the 1970's, and now saying it's warming.
It's an effective talking point. It reveals a specific and abundantly silly example, and then quickly rattles off every switch subsequently, without even discussing the validity of the underlying ideas and science. He can't do that, because he's still pretty weak on that score, but by dropping that one example he can paint all the rest with the same brush.
How to shut it down? Simple: break down that connection. Jon Stewart did that by bringing up the science; that's how you break down the "we used to believe in global cooling" people too, by saying that the fact that that prediction was wrong does not mean much for the accuracy of this prediction. Indeed, if you know anything about science, you know that wrong predictions are part of the process, and the "global cooling" theory wasn't anywhere near as sound as global warming was. Once you've broken that connection, you can get to the science, and you're on far better ground. Fortunately, you can do it pretty much simply by mentioning the science, so it's not hard.
(If you wanted to mock it, you could say that we used to believe that there were only four elements. Should we chuck out atomic physics because alchemists were wrong then?)
Talking Point the Second: Jon asked how such a huge conspiracy to defraud the public about global warming could exist; were the scientists lying? Chris responded by saying "oh, no, not the scientists", but then started talking about how Enron was massively enriching itself through emissions markets. The goal here is to try to pull a reversal on global warming critics by claiming that they're the dupes of big, corrupt businesses, and used Enron as an example.
(One could call this the "guilt by association" trick. All of these use that theme of course, but this one focuses on name-dropping anything immoral even tertially related to the subject at hand.)
This is a kind of "defense through offense" talking point- he was preemptively insulating himself and his "side" against charges of being dupes of big business by saying that the OTHER guys are the dupes of even worse businesses. It plays on liberals' anti-corporate sympathies and makes them wonder whether maybe the (supposedly brave and individualist) anti-warming activists are simply "speaking truth to power". Of course, this is all wrong; Enron's failing was in deceptive accountancy, and has nothing at all to do with energy markets themselves.
How to shoot it down? Just press on the "uh, and this matters because..." idea, just as Jon did. All the organizations and scientists that AREN'T Enron have exactly as much credibility as they ever did, no matter what Enron did with their books. I don't even believe that highlighting Enron is necessarily a bad thing; it's intended as a quick, almost subliminal jab, and isn't supposed to be fully aired out. It's ridiculous, and even Chris knows it's ridiculous, so he tries to slip it under the radar. Pull it out, make fun of the "so, what, Enron's crooked accountants made all the scientists discover global warming" bit, and he'll lose credibility and likely get defensive... just as Chris did.
Getting defensive provoked talking point the third: "I heard this one guy say..." Chris, when pressed on the supposed communist nature of environmentalists, brought up a German environmentalist that said that "he wanted to see the day where you'd be punished more harshly for cutting down a forest than selling a child into slavery". Nasty stuff, right? Except for one thing: it's just one guy. You can find nuts supporting ANY cause, and Chris gave no indication that this guy was in any sort of leadership role. It's much like the other ones, in that it uses one specific case to tar a whole class of attitudes, but I see this as a specific type precisely because it's so common and allows for such a wide variety of uses. It's a VERY common and pretty effective rhetorical tool; people like it and journalists LOVE it when complicated issues are drilled down to interesting personalities, so they'll latch onto these personalities all out of proportion to their actual importance.
(Ferreting out comments for this purpose is the entire raison d'etre of MEMRI, by the way.)
Jon showed how to shut this down, too: point out that it's just one guy. Unless you can prove a bunch of people believe this or that he's in a real leadership position (ie, not a "community leader", but someone people actually derive opinion from) he's useless as any kind of an indicator. Again, doing this properly (with assertiveness and a touch of bemused humor) will play merry hell with the other guy's credibility; he'll try to save it by saying that this guy is representative, at which point he'll either go too far fighting back (as Chris did with a stupid Hitler comparison that torpedoed his credibility) or you can simply pull out somebody, ANYBODY else who has a different opinion, and all of a sudden their "representative" isn't representative of anything.
In any case, you get the idea. It's a good idea to keep an eye out for these sorts of games; when you find them, shut them down. Do it with humor instead of indigation, though. Jon is effective precisely because nobody can call him "shrill" and being castigated on his show doesn't give you the "politically incorrect" cred that comes from being criticized by a progressive in some circles. If you laugh at them, they'll realize you don't take them seriously; and above all else, these guys desperately want to be taken seriously.
So just laugh at them, while pointing out just how goofy their talking points are. THAT, they're not equipped to handle.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Wanna Be a Writer?
Here Ya Go, courtesy of Charlie Stross, who details exactly what the writer's life is like.
A sample (of the lengthy but compelling piece):
(He does admit that there are positive aspects; you're doing what you love, for one, and its one of the few jobs where it's advisable to structure your work life around your social life, rather than the other way around. But it's not easy.)
Edit: Even if you don't want to read the entry, you MUST all read the comments. Everything from an embittered game designer to rants about the value of MBAs to wedding photography to S.M. Stirling being, well, S.M. Stirling. Anybody who remembers what Usenet used to be like will know what an entertaining show THAT is.
Gotta say: I really miss having incredibly long, intense, interesting comment threads like that. I should see if the old YACCS account is still up.
A sample (of the lengthy but compelling piece):
Somewhere in those several hours you will hopefully write something. Unless you're already an A-list writer who can pull advances in excess of $50,000, you'd better either pump out an average of 1000 finished (polished, edited) words of prose per working day, or go looking for a day job. There are roughly 250 working days in a year (I'm assuming you take a couple of days a week off, and have vacations and sick leave), so that's 250,000 words, which is about two ordinary-length novels and a couple of short stories. Some writers do a whole lot more than 1000 finished words per day; some do fewer. If you do fewer and you're at the low-to-middling end of the pecking order, you will not be able to earn a living at this career. Many writers do 250,000 words a year and still can't make a living. They may have part-time jobs, to make ends meet, or a full-time job and do the writing thing in the evenings and at weekends. It's a treadmill.So, uh, yeah. Enjoy!
In addition to writing you will:
pore over copy-edited manuscripts, correcting editorial mark-ups
write
grovel over galley proofs, looking for typos
write
keep track of your expenses and petty cash and do all the 1001 things that any small business person has to do to keep HM Revenue and Customs off your back
write
enthusiastically deal with the press and interviewers, no matter how small or obscure the outlet — publicity is always a priority unless you're big enough to hire a PR manager
write
deal with correspondence to your editor(s) and agent in a prompt, professional manner because if you ever get yourself a reputation for being difficult to work with you are so screwed ... (luckily editors and agents know that only lunatics and eccentrics want to be full-time writers, so no small amount of their time is dedicated to insulating you from the demands of other publishing folks, and vice versa)
write
persuade your bank to accept cheques drawn on currencies they've never heard of
write
learn more than you ever wanted to know about international double taxation treaties and the associated exemption forms
write
answer your fan mail (if you're lucky enough to have fans)
did I say "write" often enough? I meant "write, even when you're sick to the back teeth of it, when the current project is an interminable drag, when you can't even remember why you ever agreed to write this bloody stupid book, when your hands ache from RSI and your cat's forgotten who you are and your spouse is filing for divorce on grounds of neglect".
And that's just for starters.
(He does admit that there are positive aspects; you're doing what you love, for one, and its one of the few jobs where it's advisable to structure your work life around your social life, rather than the other way around. But it's not easy.)
Edit: Even if you don't want to read the entry, you MUST all read the comments. Everything from an embittered game designer to rants about the value of MBAs to wedding photography to S.M. Stirling being, well, S.M. Stirling. Anybody who remembers what Usenet used to be like will know what an entertaining show THAT is.
Gotta say: I really miss having incredibly long, intense, interesting comment threads like that. I should see if the old YACCS account is still up.
Monday, February 12, 2007
So You Know How Every Idiot Supporting Torture Uses '24'?
Yeah, apparently that's no coincidence. The writers over at Fox who create the adventures of SuperJack are, well, let's just hit the money quote:
Figures.
Surnow has been confronted again and again by real military personnel who have real interrogation experience trying to tell him that what he depicts on the show doesn't work in real life and is negatively influencing real interrogators in Iraq, but he can't be bothered to listen, busy as he is conferencing with the likes of Roger Ailes about future shows. So Jack keeps torturing.
Now, I'm pretty strident about freedom of speeech- even more so that I used to be. Surnow has every right to put out his show. But, of course, we now have every right to remind people about that "auxiliary wing".
(Me, I was done with 24 a while ago. If I want science fiction and superheroes, I'll choose Battlestar Galactica and Heroes; and if I want "gritty", I'll choose The Wire or The Shield. Vic Mackey's way more interesting as a torturer anyway.)
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who participated in the discussion, praised the show’s depiction of the war on terrorism as “trying to make the best choice with a series of bad options.” He went on, “Frankly, it reflects real life.” Chertoff, who is a devoted viewer of “24,” subsequently began an e-mail correspondence with Gordon, and the two have since socialized in Los Angeles. “It’s been very heady,” Gordon said of Washington’s enthusiasm for the show. Roger Director, show creator Joel Surnow’s friend, joked that the conservative writers at “24” have become “like a Hollywood television annex to the White House. It’s like an auxiliary wing.”So, yeah, 24 (which was once a pretty good suspense thriller) has slowly devolved into pro-war and pro-torture agitprop.
Figures.
Surnow has been confronted again and again by real military personnel who have real interrogation experience trying to tell him that what he depicts on the show doesn't work in real life and is negatively influencing real interrogators in Iraq, but he can't be bothered to listen, busy as he is conferencing with the likes of Roger Ailes about future shows. So Jack keeps torturing.
Now, I'm pretty strident about freedom of speeech- even more so that I used to be. Surnow has every right to put out his show. But, of course, we now have every right to remind people about that "auxiliary wing".
(Me, I was done with 24 a while ago. If I want science fiction and superheroes, I'll choose Battlestar Galactica and Heroes; and if I want "gritty", I'll choose The Wire or The Shield. Vic Mackey's way more interesting as a torturer anyway.)
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Saturday, February 10, 2007
A few new blogs added to the roll
Two belong to Martin Wisse, Wisse Words and Prog Gold. One is My Left Wing, because MSOC's rant about Kos was freakin' glorious.
Anybody else want on board this little ship, just drop a line.
Anybody else want on board this little ship, just drop a line.
Another question you should be asking...
I love Digby. Don't get me wrong. He's Edit: she, apparently, my mistake one of the best bloggers out there, and has been since he flew solo on his site. She deserves every hit he gets. I'm exceedingly proud that I'm as well-placed on her blogroll as I am, and try to comment on her site when I can.
That said, why is she on Kos' blogroll, when skippy isn't? Both are outspoken mid- to long-length pseudonymous web diarists. Both started around the same time, and neither are resolutely campaign-focused (which is what Kos was supposed to be all about with that blogroll, right?)
I'm not saying Kos should delink Digby (nor would I EVER,), but inquiring minds...
edit: I'd never actually asked about digby's gender- figured it was male from the male pseudonym. Error corrected, and if you see old posts that say "he", just chalk it up to the failure of standpoint feminism.
That said, why is she on Kos' blogroll, when skippy isn't? Both are outspoken mid- to long-length pseudonymous web diarists. Both started around the same time, and neither are resolutely campaign-focused (which is what Kos was supposed to be all about with that blogroll, right?)
I'm not saying Kos should delink Digby (nor would I EVER,), but inquiring minds...
edit: I'd never actually asked about digby's gender- figured it was male from the male pseudonym. Error corrected, and if you see old posts that say "he", just chalk it up to the failure of standpoint feminism.
If my point wasn't proven...
the fact that some random diarist, whom I'd never even heard of, decided to remove the tags "intro" and "kos" from my self-introductory diary entry on Daily KOS says everything I ever could have written about exactly how important, and how necessary, independent blogs really are.
To use some vulgarity in quoting a favorite character of mine, Warren Ellis' Spider Jerusalem: "No fucker rewrites ME."
To use some vulgarity in quoting a favorite character of mine, Warren Ellis' Spider Jerusalem: "No fucker rewrites ME."
Friday, February 09, 2007
Just For the Record
Pandagon's a great blog, and Amanda Marcotte a great blogger, no matter what reactionaries and opportunists say.
(Even, unlike skippy, they don't link to me yet.)
(Even, unlike skippy, they don't link to me yet.)
You Know When Something Has Become Disastrous?
When it provokes something like THIS. My God, I thought skippy was pissed. Maryscott O'Connor has torn a strip off Kos that will almost certainly NEVER heal. Among other things, she points out something that guys like Kos and Atrios (and their defenders) often miss; that the traffic from their blogrolls that they see as miniscule is actually vitally important to other, smaller sites in order to introduce new readers.
Clearly, there is no "Amnesty" here. There wasn't ever going to be. It was a fantasy or an excuse, but it never truly existed.
Me, I just have one question: why? Were I Atrios, at this point, I'd toss the whole kit 'n caboodle back up and simply divide them between "current reads" and "old friends" or the like. Ditto with Kos. No matter how you feel about "community building"...
(and if Kos thinks that not building a progressive community online is important as Maryscott implies, He. Is. Insane.)
...you have to at least realize that making progressive enemies for reasons that are utterly foolish and facile is unbelievably bad PR.
And, in many respects, the same goes double for Duncan/Atrios, who doesn't do all that single-site community building stuff on his blog that is still, at its core, the same Blogspot blog that it ever was. He can't pretend that he's building this giant Myspace-style community like Kos is, those 400 page long comments threads notwithstanding. Why did he even bother with this?
More importantly, barring a kind of wounded stubbornness that is unseemly in adults, why continue it?
Clearly, there is no "Amnesty" here. There wasn't ever going to be. It was a fantasy or an excuse, but it never truly existed.
Me, I just have one question: why? Were I Atrios, at this point, I'd toss the whole kit 'n caboodle back up and simply divide them between "current reads" and "old friends" or the like. Ditto with Kos. No matter how you feel about "community building"...
(and if Kos thinks that not building a progressive community online is important as Maryscott implies, He. Is. Insane.)
...you have to at least realize that making progressive enemies for reasons that are utterly foolish and facile is unbelievably bad PR.
And, in many respects, the same goes double for Duncan/Atrios, who doesn't do all that single-site community building stuff on his blog that is still, at its core, the same Blogspot blog that it ever was. He can't pretend that he's building this giant Myspace-style community like Kos is, those 400 page long comments threads notwithstanding. Why did he even bother with this?
More importantly, barring a kind of wounded stubbornness that is unseemly in adults, why continue it?
I Love Irony
The original reason Atrios gave for The Great Purge of '07 was that he wanted to promote smaller, overlooked blogs.
By and large, that didn't happen, as a quick perusal of his blogroll reveals. Most of the blogs listed are the Usual Suspects, the big group blogs that anybody who's even heard of a blog can type from memory or already has an RSS feed of.
Yet, by removing skippy and provoking him into an absolute torrent of linking, Atrios has somehow managed to introduce at least one reader, yours truly, to more good blogs through skippy's site than I've read in a good while. I imagine I'm not the only one.
So, uh, thanks?
By and large, that didn't happen, as a quick perusal of his blogroll reveals. Most of the blogs listed are the Usual Suspects, the big group blogs that anybody who's even heard of a blog can type from memory or already has an RSS feed of.
Yet, by removing skippy and provoking him into an absolute torrent of linking, Atrios has somehow managed to introduce at least one reader, yours truly, to more good blogs through skippy's site than I've read in a good while. I imagine I'm not the only one.
So, uh, thanks?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
More Medieval Than Advertised?
You know that armor that the military is trying to ban? Dragon Skin? Here's a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMHhw_w1qs
(I'd embed, but Youtube isn't behaving.)
Notice something? The Dragon Skin... is Scale Mail!.
The more things change...
(From http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/7/114814/3131)
Edit: Just finished watching this. It's astounding. That Kos diarist (Occam's Hatchet) is right... why the HELL isn't this stuff standard issue?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuMHhw_w1qs
(I'd embed, but Youtube isn't behaving.)
Notice something? The Dragon Skin... is Scale Mail!.
The more things change...
(From http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/7/114814/3131)
Edit: Just finished watching this. It's astounding. That Kos diarist (Occam's Hatchet) is right... why the HELL isn't this stuff standard issue?
Skippy on the Warpath
Skippy (a great individual blogger that I'd been remiss in not linking to earlier) has been on an absolute tear over this "screw the little blogs" thing. Most of it is because he didn't take his delinking at Eschaton as calmly as your host did ("frothing rage" would be a better description), but he's pointing out all those issues of egalitarianism that are really bothering me about this whole thing.
It's really turning into a "big vs. little" conflict. Chris Bowers at MyDD was the source of the "screw you, kiddies" sentiment that seems to have turned this nuclear, Kos has been thrown into it, and it's turning into a huge slapfight all around. So it's not doing the liberal blogosphere any favors. For once, their conservative counterparts actually look good, because if there's one thing Instapundit is good at, it's linking to the little guys.
(Even if they're absolutely insane.)
There are other problems here, though, with this shift from independent blogs to group-blogs and subsidiary "diaries". I already mentioned that the one that bothers me the most is editorial freedom. If "diarists" are forced to choose between toeing the party line or languishing out in the wilderness, that's going to get reflected in their writing, and how readers perceive it. That charge against Kos from the wingnuts saying that he controlled the blogosphere was ludicrous because of independent blogs, not the Kos diaries, where he really could exercise that kind of control. The same is true of all sites that have subsidiary diaries, like MyDD and TPMCafe.
Another, more ominous issue is a financial one. Let's face it: if you're writing a popular diary, you're not seeing a dime. It's all going to the site admins. They might maybe share a little, but the advertising dollars are headed their way. There's a real problem there: administrators could start making a point of not linking to other sites' diarists and subtly encouraging their diarists to "keep it in the community", in order to maximize ad rates, clickthroughs, and revenue. The act of delinking an independent blog opens you up not only to the charge of being censorious, but the charge of trying to rub them out for financial gain... and even if you aren't intentionally doing that, the charge is going to happen.
This is a website design truth as old as the hills. Once you have a reader, you're supposed to try to hang on to them, unless they decide to click through something that you're going to make money on. That's also the absolute worst way to try to build a broader community; taken to its conclusion, it hives the Internet off into gated enclaves with strict moderation and little connection to the "outside world". Kos is already starting to kind of feel this way; The Huffington Post (as good a read as it is) definitely is. That's not what blogging is about, not at all.
Besides, if you want a big gated community, you should probably just go to the Something Awful forums. The actual Something Awful satire website, I feel, never quite survived the loss of Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka as a regular contributor, but the forums are probably the best (and certainly the biggest) around. Kos, MyDD, TPMCafe and the like aren't going to catch up to huge forums like this or uber-social sites like Myspace and Facebook, but that seems like what they're trying to do.
And, of course, it's a blow to internet pseudonymity, because the administrators can easily make real-world identification a condition of entry. Kos doesn't now, but Huffington does, and fear of lawsuits brought on by the complete lack of anything like common-carrier status might make that inevitable.
I don't think this is a positive development, and I'm absolutely shocked that Instapundit can see it and Kos can't.
In any case, I've added skippy to my own tiny blogroll, and I'll repeat his promise: link to me, I'll link to you. assuming you're progressive and your content doesn't make me want to punch something. I didn't have that rule before, and manually adding these things is a pain (I really need to set up a damned blogrolling bar) but heck with it. Let me know.
It's really turning into a "big vs. little" conflict. Chris Bowers at MyDD was the source of the "screw you, kiddies" sentiment that seems to have turned this nuclear, Kos has been thrown into it, and it's turning into a huge slapfight all around. So it's not doing the liberal blogosphere any favors. For once, their conservative counterparts actually look good, because if there's one thing Instapundit is good at, it's linking to the little guys.
(Even if they're absolutely insane.)
There are other problems here, though, with this shift from independent blogs to group-blogs and subsidiary "diaries". I already mentioned that the one that bothers me the most is editorial freedom. If "diarists" are forced to choose between toeing the party line or languishing out in the wilderness, that's going to get reflected in their writing, and how readers perceive it. That charge against Kos from the wingnuts saying that he controlled the blogosphere was ludicrous because of independent blogs, not the Kos diaries, where he really could exercise that kind of control. The same is true of all sites that have subsidiary diaries, like MyDD and TPMCafe.
Another, more ominous issue is a financial one. Let's face it: if you're writing a popular diary, you're not seeing a dime. It's all going to the site admins. They might maybe share a little, but the advertising dollars are headed their way. There's a real problem there: administrators could start making a point of not linking to other sites' diarists and subtly encouraging their diarists to "keep it in the community", in order to maximize ad rates, clickthroughs, and revenue. The act of delinking an independent blog opens you up not only to the charge of being censorious, but the charge of trying to rub them out for financial gain... and even if you aren't intentionally doing that, the charge is going to happen.
This is a website design truth as old as the hills. Once you have a reader, you're supposed to try to hang on to them, unless they decide to click through something that you're going to make money on. That's also the absolute worst way to try to build a broader community; taken to its conclusion, it hives the Internet off into gated enclaves with strict moderation and little connection to the "outside world". Kos is already starting to kind of feel this way; The Huffington Post (as good a read as it is) definitely is. That's not what blogging is about, not at all.
Besides, if you want a big gated community, you should probably just go to the Something Awful forums. The actual Something Awful satire website, I feel, never quite survived the loss of Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka as a regular contributor, but the forums are probably the best (and certainly the biggest) around. Kos, MyDD, TPMCafe and the like aren't going to catch up to huge forums like this or uber-social sites like Myspace and Facebook, but that seems like what they're trying to do.
And, of course, it's a blow to internet pseudonymity, because the administrators can easily make real-world identification a condition of entry. Kos doesn't now, but Huffington does, and fear of lawsuits brought on by the complete lack of anything like common-carrier status might make that inevitable.
I don't think this is a positive development, and I'm absolutely shocked that Instapundit can see it and Kos can't.
In any case, I've added skippy to my own tiny blogroll, and I'll repeat his promise: link to me, I'll link to you. assuming you're progressive and your content doesn't make me want to punch something. I didn't have that rule before, and manually adding these things is a pain (I really need to set up a damned blogrolling bar) but heck with it. Let me know.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
MyDD on the evolution of blogging...
Mydd:
In any case, I'm very uneasy with the idea that at the end of the day blogs are essentially going to be little more than online magazines, with multiple writers, sections, collective mastheads, investigative journalism, huge forums and the like. All that is well and good, but it's also essentially The Washington Monthly or Newsmax or the like, except with shorter, differently arranged articles.
That's not what a weblog is.
At the end of the day, a weblog is just a journal, and the essentially egalitarian and individual nature of the enterprise is what makes it valuable. You lose that at your peril.
Now, more than three years later, it has come to the point where the early structure of the progressive political blogosphere has been almost entirely done away with. The days of the major, solo content generator, pundit blogger are all but over.A quote about cold, dead hands springs to mind. As I said over on Atrios' site, there's going to be at least one, dammit.
In any case, I'm very uneasy with the idea that at the end of the day blogs are essentially going to be little more than online magazines, with multiple writers, sections, collective mastheads, investigative journalism, huge forums and the like. All that is well and good, but it's also essentially The Washington Monthly or Newsmax or the like, except with shorter, differently arranged articles.
That's not what a weblog is.
At the end of the day, a weblog is just a journal, and the essentially egalitarian and individual nature of the enterprise is what makes it valuable. You lose that at your peril.
More Floor Crossing Madness in the Great White North
Garth Turner, the firebrand former Canadian Conservative who was kicked out of the party for not playing ball with its rather imperious leader, is now, apparently, a Liberal.
(And yet, somehow, not a single Republican in the Senate has moved to give the Dems that Joe-less 51 seat majority. )
(You'd think 2008 would be looming large.)
In any case, I'm not sure exactly how this affects Canada's rather precarious minority government, but I THINK it means that NDP leader Jack Layton is probably weeping behind a bottle of scotch right now, because for a few glorious weeks he controlled the balance of power and now he doesn't.
(Hat tip: Oliel again, who called it early.)
(And yet, somehow, not a single Republican in the Senate has moved to give the Dems that Joe-less 51 seat majority. )
(You'd think 2008 would be looming large.)
In any case, I'm not sure exactly how this affects Canada's rather precarious minority government, but I THINK it means that NDP leader Jack Layton is probably weeping behind a bottle of scotch right now, because for a few glorious weeks he controlled the balance of power and now he doesn't.
(Hat tip: Oliel again, who called it early.)
Monday, February 05, 2007
Does anybody still take Joe Klein seriously?
I think, at this point, that the credibility is pretty much shot.
Then again, I've thought that before, and here we are.
(Hat Tip: Atrios)
Then again, I've thought that before, and here we are.
(Hat Tip: Atrios)
Web 2.0
Found kind of a nifty presentation on what "Web 2.0" is supposed to mean on Youtube.
It feels a bit too much like a circa 1999 Wired article, but it's nifty enough. The "teaching the machine using tags" stuff is a bit much, but the points about ease of content posting and the differentiation between form and content is at the heart of the whole blogging phenomenon. People use blogs, at their core, because they're an incredibly easy way to present a constant, readable flow of content without having to muck around much with HTML. That's really all that "Web 2.0" is- the technology facilitating user-created content. It's not about labels "teaching the machine" or any of that folderol.
(And no, I'm not disparaging labels just because I don't want to go through my archives and label everything now that I've switched to the New Blogger.)
(That's a big part of it, of course, but not the only reason.)
By the way, I'd encourage all my readers (all three of you) to go bug Atrios to keep me on his blogroll. OG bloggers need to stick together, dawg.
It feels a bit too much like a circa 1999 Wired article, but it's nifty enough. The "teaching the machine using tags" stuff is a bit much, but the points about ease of content posting and the differentiation between form and content is at the heart of the whole blogging phenomenon. People use blogs, at their core, because they're an incredibly easy way to present a constant, readable flow of content without having to muck around much with HTML. That's really all that "Web 2.0" is- the technology facilitating user-created content. It's not about labels "teaching the machine" or any of that folderol.
(And no, I'm not disparaging labels just because I don't want to go through my archives and label everything now that I've switched to the New Blogger.)
(That's a big part of it, of course, but not the only reason.)
By the way, I'd encourage all my readers (all three of you) to go bug Atrios to keep me on his blogroll. OG bloggers need to stick together, dawg.
Yglesias Summarizes Privatization
I'll just let the man speak:
Besides, as someone pointed out in Matthew's comments, the key is not "private sector", but "competition". There is nothing efficient about a monopoly, even though they're private entities. The desire to maintain monopolies itself often leads to political rent-seeking, because the last thing an inefficient monopoly wants is real competition, and if it's cheaper to buy political clout instead of making the business more efficient, that's the choice they'll make.
(A good thing to remember the next time you hear someone bleating about wonders of "The Market".)
The trouble with government work, as opposed to the private sector is that there's a lack of efficiency. It's important to understand, however, that there's nothing intrinsically efficient about private sector work. No magical "it's the free market" dust comes and renders private enterprises effective. Rather, the idea is simply that an inefficiently run private enterprise (and there are many) would simply go out of business. An inefficiently run government office, by contrast, goes out of business when it loses political support and sees its budget grow as long as it maintains political support. Thus, you see public sector dollars flowing to whatever there's a strong political constituency for, whereas private sector dollars flow to wherever well-managed firms are meeting demand.Bingo. This is the main reason why everybody should look at sole-source contracts and hidden bidding processes with enormous suspicion. It doesn't really take that much time or change before something that once seemed honest turns into political cronyism. The fair-minded people who might have propelled privatization aren't necessarily going to retain control of the process, and those that acquire control will usually have friends and supporters who want a little taste as a reward for all their hard work.
Then enter government contractors which, as The New York Times points out, have exploded to unprecedented levels under George W. Bush and the late unlamented Republican congress. Here you have private enterprises displacing government. Why? For the private sector efficiency, of course! But you don't actually get that efficiency. It's still a government program. Funding is still being determined by political support. The cash doesn't go to companies that can do a really good job, it just goes to companies that have political clout -- i.e. ones that recycle a share of their profits into campaign contributions. It's essentially the worst of both worlds, since you get the inherent problems of the public sector plus the need for owners to be taking a slice off the top in profit margins. It is, however, a very good deal for politicians interested in union-busting and for politicians interested in raking money in from government contractors. Shockingly, the GOP loves it.
Besides, as someone pointed out in Matthew's comments, the key is not "private sector", but "competition". There is nothing efficient about a monopoly, even though they're private entities. The desire to maintain monopolies itself often leads to political rent-seeking, because the last thing an inefficient monopoly wants is real competition, and if it's cheaper to buy political clout instead of making the business more efficient, that's the choice they'll make.
(A good thing to remember the next time you hear someone bleating about wonders of "The Market".)
Saturday, February 03, 2007
On a More Serious Note
I haven't linked the IPCC report yet, and I should. So here it is, or at least the policymaker's brief.
(Warning: it's a PDF. I know those things can get a little error-prone.)
So if you're gunning for that sweet AEI dollah-dollah payday, that's where you start.
(Warning: it's a PDF. I know those things can get a little error-prone.)
So if you're gunning for that sweet AEI dollah-dollah payday, that's where you start.
Friday, February 02, 2007
I Should Read Conservative Bloggers More Often...
It's really, really funny when someone tries to take down Joe Wilson and pulls a boner like this:
Like Bond, Joe went to Niger, a country only known for yellowcake and junk email...I almost don't want him to know that Niger and Nigeria are different countries. It's so much FUNNIER that way.
Hilarious Follow Up to That AEI Bit...
Watching reactionaries try to defend it is almost as funny. Endless verbiage to make one simple (yet dumb) argument: "the scientists need to be paid by somebody, so why not Exxon?"
The answer, equally simply? Because they aren't being paid for their insights, they're being paid for having the "right" results. For all that these "Big Lizards" tools fulminate about leftie academics, no university does this, and reputable think tanks don't do it either. They might pay for researchers to do work about subjects they agree with, and might even hire ideologically-compatible researchers. What they don't do is buy results. If, say, Brookings gives a research grant to a Ph.D, they don't say "and make sure you come to the conclusion that Iraq was a fine idea".
They say "research Iraq and tell us what you find". At WORST they might bury poor results, but that is worlds different, and while researchers might not get future grants from, say, the Sierra Club, you'd have to be profoundly naive to think that they couldn't find an employer.
(Like, say, the AEI!)
And Universities are, of course, different beasts entirely. The whole tenure system exists because this very idea of paid results would cause 99% of legitimate academics to break out in hives. Academics tend to become more successful by going against received wisdom, not for it.
I realize that this is a terrible day for the right blogosphere- the IPCC smacked down pretty much every argument by the deniers and the AEI has just been thoroughly discredited. Still, you'd think they'd do better.
The answer, equally simply? Because they aren't being paid for their insights, they're being paid for having the "right" results. For all that these "Big Lizards" tools fulminate about leftie academics, no university does this, and reputable think tanks don't do it either. They might pay for researchers to do work about subjects they agree with, and might even hire ideologically-compatible researchers. What they don't do is buy results. If, say, Brookings gives a research grant to a Ph.D, they don't say "and make sure you come to the conclusion that Iraq was a fine idea".
They say "research Iraq and tell us what you find". At WORST they might bury poor results, but that is worlds different, and while researchers might not get future grants from, say, the Sierra Club, you'd have to be profoundly naive to think that they couldn't find an employer.
(Like, say, the AEI!)
And Universities are, of course, different beasts entirely. The whole tenure system exists because this very idea of paid results would cause 99% of legitimate academics to break out in hives. Academics tend to become more successful by going against received wisdom, not for it.
I realize that this is a terrible day for the right blogosphere- the IPCC smacked down pretty much every argument by the deniers and the AEI has just been thoroughly discredited. Still, you'd think they'd do better.
All Right- This is Handy!
Now we have a simple way of ensuring that those who we really shouldn't listen to on Global Warming are easily identified.
All you have to do is check to see if they were involved with this:
The best part, though, is that it pretty thoroughly discredits the American Enterprise Institute. They can't even pretend that they're a neutral, scientific group anymore, or that their research is worth the paper it's printed on. This announcement makes it impossible to verify that any AEI study is scientifically worthwhile; if they're doing this now, there's no reason to believe that they haven't done it before and that they won't do it again.
Were I even peripherally involved with the AEI, I'd make a serious point of disassociating myself with them RIGHT NOW. This is, from a conservative researcher's point of view, beyond disastrous.
(I couldn't be happier.)
All you have to do is check to see if they were involved with this:
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.I trust I don't need to explain why this is very, very bad science, or the pall that it would cast over the careers of anybody who accepted this money.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.
The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.
The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".
Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
The best part, though, is that it pretty thoroughly discredits the American Enterprise Institute. They can't even pretend that they're a neutral, scientific group anymore, or that their research is worth the paper it's printed on. This announcement makes it impossible to verify that any AEI study is scientifically worthwhile; if they're doing this now, there's no reason to believe that they haven't done it before and that they won't do it again.
Were I even peripherally involved with the AEI, I'd make a serious point of disassociating myself with them RIGHT NOW. This is, from a conservative researcher's point of view, beyond disastrous.
(I couldn't be happier.)
Iran attacks in the next few weeks?
US News:
Anyway, here's hoping the Dems aren't that dumb. 2002 wasn't THAT long ago, the should still remember the lesson from that: that it doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna be slimed as unpatriotic anyway. Especially since public opinion on this is going to likely be somewhere between poisonous and murderous.
The US News Political Bulletin has learned Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly concerned that President Bush will order air strikes against targets in Iran in the next few months or even weeks. They cite as evidence the tough warnings from senior Administration officials, including the Commander in Chief, that Iranian help for insurgents in Iraq is leading to the deaths of US troops and Iraqi civilians. Democratic insiders tell the Political Bulletin that they suspect Bush will order the bombing of Iranian supply routes, camps, training facilities, and other sites that Administration officials say contribute to American losses in Iraq. Under this scenario, Bush would not invade Iran with ground forces or zero in on Iranian nuclear facilities. But under the limited-bombing scenario, Bush could ask for a congressional vote of support, Democratic insiders predict, which many Democrats would feel obliged to endorse or risk looking like they weren't supportive of the troops. Bombing Iran would also take attention away from the troubled situation in Iraq and cause a rally-round-the-president reaction among Americans, at least for a while. But Democrats add that an attack on Iran would probably be condemned around the world and would precipitate an Iranian response that could dramatically worsen Mideast turmoil and have unforeseen consequences that could be extremely damaging to the United States.First, to reiterate what may be a tired point, can someone PLEASE MUZZLE THESE IDIOT "INSIDERS"? They're wagging the dog themselves by setting up the "feel obligated" line for the Republicans and sabotaging any message control by the Dems.
Anyway, here's hoping the Dems aren't that dumb. 2002 wasn't THAT long ago, the should still remember the lesson from that: that it doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna be slimed as unpatriotic anyway. Especially since public opinion on this is going to likely be somewhere between poisonous and murderous.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Whoops!
Looks like the very first industry-funded attack on the IPCC report just got leaked, courtesy of DeSmogBlog.
Only read a bit, but it seems like it's the same old, same old. "Too complex to really understand", "the sun is getting hotter", "all the data is taken in urban heat islands", etc. There are some new ones (I personally liked "climate scientists aren't using proper econometric methods and it invalidates their findings, but we won't say how or why"), but for the most part it seems like the same crap that has been rebutted on RealClimate.org over and over again.
Still, it IS pretty detailed for a rebuttal of a report that hasn't come out yet. Which makes sense, because they've actually been writing this for a year now:
Of course, it's not supposed to. It's supposed to provide academic cover for business to continue doing what they're doing and ideologically biased legislators to support them. That's no surprise; that's what the Frasier Institute is for.
What I'm concerned about isn't that, but whether the media is going to portray this as he said/she said. Considering they likely have little idea what the science is and are still (at least somewhat) cowed by loud conservative mouthpieces, I'd say the odds are pretty good.
Pity.
Only read a bit, but it seems like it's the same old, same old. "Too complex to really understand", "the sun is getting hotter", "all the data is taken in urban heat islands", etc. There are some new ones (I personally liked "climate scientists aren't using proper econometric methods and it invalidates their findings, but we won't say how or why"), but for the most part it seems like the same crap that has been rebutted on RealClimate.org over and over again.
Still, it IS pretty detailed for a rebuttal of a report that hasn't come out yet. Which makes sense, because they've actually been writing this for a year now:
Finally, Weaver pointed out that the whole Fraser Institute analysis is based on a document that is almost a year out of date. “I was most surprised that this analysis was written based on our second draft” (released in Spring 2006), said Weaver. “We incorporated changes in response to well over 1,000 reviewrs' comments before preparing a final draft last fall.”Unfortunately (or fortunately), it's very likely that anything that these guys have cooked up that might seriously damage the science of global warming has already been raised and responded to. That makes it really unlikely that this is going to sway any scientists.
Of course, it's not supposed to. It's supposed to provide academic cover for business to continue doing what they're doing and ideologically biased legislators to support them. That's no surprise; that's what the Frasier Institute is for.
What I'm concerned about isn't that, but whether the media is going to portray this as he said/she said. Considering they likely have little idea what the science is and are still (at least somewhat) cowed by loud conservative mouthpieces, I'd say the odds are pretty good.
Pity.
Gore's on a roll
First the nominations. Then selling out stadiums. And now, Al Gore has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Honestly, this just seems to get more and more bulletproof. The Nobels, as the article said, are chosen in November and announced in December. Thanks to the accelerated primary schedule, many bellwether states will be holding their primaries around February.
It is concievably possible that Al Gore will go into those early primaries having just won the Nobel Peace Prize a few months earlier. Unless Hilary saves the world from an asteroid hit with her laser vision or something, she's going to be REALLY hard pressed to compete with that.
Campaigns or no, the stars seem to be aligning for Gore/Obama '08.
Honestly, this just seems to get more and more bulletproof. The Nobels, as the article said, are chosen in November and announced in December. Thanks to the accelerated primary schedule, many bellwether states will be holding their primaries around February.
It is concievably possible that Al Gore will go into those early primaries having just won the Nobel Peace Prize a few months earlier. Unless Hilary saves the world from an asteroid hit with her laser vision or something, she's going to be REALLY hard pressed to compete with that.
Campaigns or no, the stars seem to be aligning for Gore/Obama '08.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Harper's Copyright Foulup
On the one hand, the possibility that Canadian PM Stephen Harper might get sued for copyright is hilarious. The somewhat paranoid Conservative boss is running attack ads against the new Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, that use Liberal leadership debate footage to put try to put Dion in a bad light.
(No, there's no election coming soon. I don't get it either. He must be terrified, otherwise he wouldn't do something so hamfisted.)
On the other hand, I have to agree with Michael Geist:
(Even if it also features a bizarre section that essentially means "if you think it's for a good enough reason that you can justify as somehow 'democratic', you can jettison most of these rights at will." It's a little more complex than that, but that's what it boils down to, especially for freedom of expression.)
Fair comment, especially in the political arena, really should be interpreted pretty broadly, or else the whole edifice of freedom and democracy quickly falls apart. You end up with a Russian situation, where you have meaningless elections because quasi-legal tools are employed to silent dissent and protest. For all the Bill of Rights' flaws, at least there's no danger of that.
Besides, there's so much stuff that the Liberals can use in return that it'd be FAR more fun if the barn doors were opened and those horses set free.
(Hat Tip: Michelle Oliel)
(No, there's no election coming soon. I don't get it either. He must be terrified, otherwise he wouldn't do something so hamfisted.)
On the other hand, I have to agree with Michael Geist:
Geist said the use of such video clips in political ads would be entirely proper in the United States, which applies a broad “fair use doctrine” to its copyright laws. The fact that the Tory ads raise questions here highlights the shortcomings of Canadian law, he added.Honestly, I have to agree, even aside from my own newfound interest in the matter. Fair comment in Canada is woefully inadequate- it might suffice for a country like Britain with no constitutionally-based bill of rights, but Canada has a very impressive charter of rights, and it's pretty explicit about freedom of expression.
“Frankly, it should be beyond doubt that they should be able to use short clips of these kinds of public political events that should fall under a fair use doctrine. I think it’s unfortunate that under Canadian copyright law there is some level of uncertainty.”
(Even if it also features a bizarre section that essentially means "if you think it's for a good enough reason that you can justify as somehow 'democratic', you can jettison most of these rights at will." It's a little more complex than that, but that's what it boils down to, especially for freedom of expression.)
Fair comment, especially in the political arena, really should be interpreted pretty broadly, or else the whole edifice of freedom and democracy quickly falls apart. You end up with a Russian situation, where you have meaningless elections because quasi-legal tools are employed to silent dissent and protest. For all the Bill of Rights' flaws, at least there's no danger of that.
Besides, there's so much stuff that the Liberals can use in return that it'd be FAR more fun if the barn doors were opened and those horses set free.
(Hat Tip: Michelle Oliel)
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Second Life Protester in Davos' Second Life
...or something, I'm not quite sure how to summarize this story about a meeting of Davos attendees in the increasingly popular online game/world/society/environment Second Life.
To be honest, I consider this official passion with Second Life to be a little bit of a fad; nothing I've seen of the game--to use what some players consider a demeaning name--suggests that it has the flexibility, longevity, or power to become a true Gibson style Cyberspace. It doesn't run that well, it tends to bog down, and the graphics are usually serviceable at best.
More importantly, though, I doubt these luminaries will stick around once word gets out about he unbelievably unsavory groups that have colonized Second Life. I doubt the Google guys are going to want to end up associated with, say, the "furries" that have colonized vast swaths of the Second Life landscape.
("Furry" is a brand of fetish peculiar to the Internet that you do NOT want to look up whilst at work. A relatively benign description can be found on Wikipedia; what you tend to find on Second Life is much, much less so.)
Still, right here, right now, it's a heck of a story. It shows that offline activities like invasive protesting are likely to follow the Best and Brightest into any virtual environment, and that the protesters can be pretty civil about it. Not EVERYBODY on the Internet is a vulgar boor.
Most of us, sure, but there are a few exceptions.
It also shows that there's a real hunger out there to take something like Gibson's Matrix or Stephenson's Metaverse and bring it to life. The fact that corporations and other organizations are willing to deal with all the problems of something like Second Life shows that hunger isn't just found in computer geeks, but on a much broader scale, among those who have the cash to bring it to life. Most of those who want to inhabit such an environment want it to be gamelike--hence the enormous difficulty in popularity of more traditional "games" like World of Warcraft vs. amorphous "environments" like Second Life--but there's room for both, and time spent in the former is going to increase acceptance of the latter as a social and business tool.
Slowly, people are getting used to the idea of avatars. Even if Second Life never lives up to its promise and events like this are just a curiosity, something like Second Life probably will. It's just a question of time.
A single demonstrator has broken through the World Economic Forum’s otherwise thorough security cordon, sneaking past rows of efficient guards to wave a large anti-Davos placard right in the temple itself.
Ok, so he’s an avatar (online alter ego). But he still did it. luemmel Lemmon of the WEF protest group DaDavos walked into the Second Life virtual auditorium where Adam Reuters has been interviewing avatars of Davos participants. No security there, and barely any rules either.
Lemmon sat politely with his banner in the front row. Rather wonderfully, as our picture (left) shows, he chose to sit next to one of the few avatars choosing to wear a suit.
To be honest, I consider this official passion with Second Life to be a little bit of a fad; nothing I've seen of the game--to use what some players consider a demeaning name--suggests that it has the flexibility, longevity, or power to become a true Gibson style Cyberspace. It doesn't run that well, it tends to bog down, and the graphics are usually serviceable at best.
More importantly, though, I doubt these luminaries will stick around once word gets out about he unbelievably unsavory groups that have colonized Second Life. I doubt the Google guys are going to want to end up associated with, say, the "furries" that have colonized vast swaths of the Second Life landscape.
("Furry" is a brand of fetish peculiar to the Internet that you do NOT want to look up whilst at work. A relatively benign description can be found on Wikipedia; what you tend to find on Second Life is much, much less so.)
Still, right here, right now, it's a heck of a story. It shows that offline activities like invasive protesting are likely to follow the Best and Brightest into any virtual environment, and that the protesters can be pretty civil about it. Not EVERYBODY on the Internet is a vulgar boor.
Most of us, sure, but there are a few exceptions.
It also shows that there's a real hunger out there to take something like Gibson's Matrix or Stephenson's Metaverse and bring it to life. The fact that corporations and other organizations are willing to deal with all the problems of something like Second Life shows that hunger isn't just found in computer geeks, but on a much broader scale, among those who have the cash to bring it to life. Most of those who want to inhabit such an environment want it to be gamelike--hence the enormous difficulty in popularity of more traditional "games" like World of Warcraft vs. amorphous "environments" like Second Life--but there's room for both, and time spent in the former is going to increase acceptance of the latter as a social and business tool.
Slowly, people are getting used to the idea of avatars. Even if Second Life never lives up to its promise and events like this are just a curiosity, something like Second Life probably will. It's just a question of time.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Superstar Gore
So now, in addition to those sellout crowds in Idaho, we have the Rolling Stone writing fawning three page articles on how cool Al Gore is and how he should run for president.
I don't know if he's going to run. Maybe he is, maybe not. I'll say one thing, though: it's gotta be really great to be Al Gore right now. About the opposite of those Cheneys, I'd say.
I still think it'll come down to the Oscars. If he wins, if he gets up on that stage, he'll probably say he's running. I honestly CANNOT think of a better venue. Even if he didn't get either the nomination or the presidency, it'd be a moment for the history books.
(Certainly one for Youtube.)
the problem, though, is the same now as it ever was- that Gore's current status and popularity is a vivid and painful reminder of what could have been. Even the media that hates him almost certainly agrees that a Gore presidency would have been so much better for the country as to defy description. It's why that SNL moment was so bittersweet; An Inconvenient Truth, even more so.
Damned butterfly ballots.
I don't know if he's going to run. Maybe he is, maybe not. I'll say one thing, though: it's gotta be really great to be Al Gore right now. About the opposite of those Cheneys, I'd say.
I still think it'll come down to the Oscars. If he wins, if he gets up on that stage, he'll probably say he's running. I honestly CANNOT think of a better venue. Even if he didn't get either the nomination or the presidency, it'd be a moment for the history books.
(Certainly one for Youtube.)
the problem, though, is the same now as it ever was- that Gore's current status and popularity is a vivid and painful reminder of what could have been. Even the media that hates him almost certainly agrees that a Gore presidency would have been so much better for the country as to defy description. It's why that SNL moment was so bittersweet; An Inconvenient Truth, even more so.
Damned butterfly ballots.
Sympathy
Malice aside, I do have to admit to a little bit of sympathy for the Cheney clan. How rough must it be to be a Cheney right now? Granddad is going absolutely loco, without the faintest clue about Iraq, Lynn is forced to carry his water, no matter how nonsensical and distasteful, and Mary Cheney might need to leave Virginia if she wants to have any parental rights at all.
Plus, Dick's about as popular as cholera right now.
Were it not for all the money- and Dick being so, well, evil, I'd feel really sorry for them right now.
Plus, Dick's about as popular as cholera right now.
Were it not for all the money- and Dick being so, well, evil, I'd feel really sorry for them right now.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Gore the Rock Star
AL Gore, that is, as we move on to actually important news.
Apparently, according to the Huffpo, Gore's latest talk in Idaho sold like hotcakes... "faster than Elton John", in fact. Makes sense- aside from being a strong defense of real science, An Inconvenient Truth was an example of the best damned presentation I've yet seen, and I know I'd love to see it in person myself.
Oh, and he got two Oscar noms: Best Doc, and Best Song for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up".
(And won't that be one hell of a performance in and of itself.)
Sure, the Oscar would technically go to the director of the movie, Davis Guggenheim. Let's be honest, though: the point of the movie is Gore and his presentation.
So why is this important? Because Gore and his movie have ensured that global warming and the science behind it has reached the mainstream. Heck, it's practically pop culture now. Even if Inconvenient Truth doesn't win (it's up against the fantastic "Jesus Camp" and several documentaries about the chaos in Iraq), global warming has now gone irrevocably Hollywood, in a way that the truly terrible "The Day After Tomorrow" never could have accomplished.
Apparently, according to the Huffpo, Gore's latest talk in Idaho sold like hotcakes... "faster than Elton John", in fact. Makes sense- aside from being a strong defense of real science, An Inconvenient Truth was an example of the best damned presentation I've yet seen, and I know I'd love to see it in person myself.
Oh, and he got two Oscar noms: Best Doc, and Best Song for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up".
(And won't that be one hell of a performance in and of itself.)
Sure, the Oscar would technically go to the director of the movie, Davis Guggenheim. Let's be honest, though: the point of the movie is Gore and his presentation.
So why is this important? Because Gore and his movie have ensured that global warming and the science behind it has reached the mainstream. Heck, it's practically pop culture now. Even if Inconvenient Truth doesn't win (it's up against the fantastic "Jesus Camp" and several documentaries about the chaos in Iraq), global warming has now gone irrevocably Hollywood, in a way that the truly terrible "The Day After Tomorrow" never could have accomplished.
Monday, January 22, 2007
"Punks" and The Game - Note: Edited
The Wire is violent, nasty, profane, and filled with the sort of thing that causes middle-aged women to write nasty letters to executives about the state of television nowadays. Many of the characters are amoral drug dealers, playing "The Game" of selling poison to addicts...and while some are antagonists, many are surprisingly sympathetic, despite being killers and thieves. It doesn't necessarily show them being brought to justice, and some are heroes to their younger counterparts, being powerful, respected (in their own right), and wealthy beyond the means of almost everybody else in their community.
It's also one of the best shows on television. The reason is simple: it provides an unflinching window into a society and way of life that most people misunderstand, if not choose to ignore. It shows the decline of the American city; why, and how. If it's "sexy", it's because violence and machismo has always remained so.
It is not, however, that original.
People often forget that the whole point of "gangsta rap", at least before it became a means to flash one's wealth, was doing the same thing in the early 1990s as The Wire does now. It shows White America what is happening in its cities, under its nose, while it busies itself with other cocerns. It holds a mirror to aspects of life and living that people like to ignore: aggression, hate, alienation, tribalism, violence, and the desire to prosper in the face of adversity, society, and its laws. In that, it's very much like punk music's wild scream of alienation in the face of staid conformity.
It is, thus, extraordinary that a self described "punk" would write a jeremiad against rap music that could have just as easily issued from the mouth of Pat Robertson. Never mind the alarming lack of knowledge of lines of causation, or the citation of masses of totally unnamed 'studies' that purport to prove that media causes rap- as if David Simon, Ed Burns, and HBO are responsible for the violence in Baltimore. Never mind that the foundation of similar studies on video game violence are highly questionable at best.
No, what really bothered me is that this "punk"'s arguments almost certainly echoes the reactions of others to his own genre of choice! Has he never read the similar complaints about the youth-corrupting elements of punk music? Hell, even of ROCK music?
Post was temporarily edited until I settle an issue brought up in the comments thread. I've removed anything that could be considered remotely libelous; although I would thoroughly disagree that a word I've written is anything of the sort, I have no interest in being on the business end of Warren Kinsella's apparent penchant for lawsuits.
Oh, and for the record? I'm not anybody he knows personally. I don't know him personally. I only know him from his position as a public figure and from his public statements. If commenting on and critiquing public statements is now grounds for legal action, it's news to me, and rather scary at that. Still, better safe than sorry. At least for now.
Further Edit:
I did a quick scan of Canadian Cerberus' breakdown of Canadian libel law. My position is that all that I'd written falls under Fair Comment:
Anything written as a column for a newspaper, especially on an issue as sensitive in Canada as culture and gun crime, certainly comes under the category of "public interest", and the specific comments I'd made about his own comments certainly fit under that criticism/comment/opinion/whatnot category. what statements of fact I'd made are also easily verifiable as truth: the "top ten" does mention Public Enemy in a positive light, a skeptical American judge really did throw out the lion's share of anti-media (specifically anti-video game) studies as largely worthless, and correlation really isn't causation.
Nor, for the record, do I actually hold any malice against the man. (The comment he made later about Canadian conservatives' helplessness in trying to smear Stephane Dion was actually pretty good.) I'd be interested in seeing the justification that he could pull out for any claim that malice did exist. Malice I reserve for, say, Dick Cheney.
And unlike Marc Bourrie, I haven't charged him with any crime. He hasn't committed any crime- just, in my opinion, some very poor judgement.
Another Edit: unless, of course, this is about that horrible stabbity punks comment. It was satiric hyperbole intended to show that punk rather treasures its horrible violent bastards, nothing more. It is certainly not advocacy, as I am not, in general, a horrible violent bastard.
(I figured that would be obvious, but I suppose not, hence why it was pulled.)
Just to be clear: wrongheaded column or no, nobody should do violent things to Warren K. Including NWA.
And no, the irony of this isn't lost on me. Were it not for the fact that I am in no position to pay lawyers to go to town for the next few months or so, I'd find the whole thing really, really funny.
It's also one of the best shows on television. The reason is simple: it provides an unflinching window into a society and way of life that most people misunderstand, if not choose to ignore. It shows the decline of the American city; why, and how. If it's "sexy", it's because violence and machismo has always remained so.
It is not, however, that original.
People often forget that the whole point of "gangsta rap", at least before it became a means to flash one's wealth, was doing the same thing in the early 1990s as The Wire does now. It shows White America what is happening in its cities, under its nose, while it busies itself with other cocerns. It holds a mirror to aspects of life and living that people like to ignore: aggression, hate, alienation, tribalism, violence, and the desire to prosper in the face of adversity, society, and its laws. In that, it's very much like punk music's wild scream of alienation in the face of staid conformity.
It is, thus, extraordinary that a self described "punk" would write a jeremiad against rap music that could have just as easily issued from the mouth of Pat Robertson. Never mind the alarming lack of knowledge of lines of causation, or the citation of masses of totally unnamed 'studies' that purport to prove that media causes rap- as if David Simon, Ed Burns, and HBO are responsible for the violence in Baltimore. Never mind that the foundation of similar studies on video game violence are highly questionable at best.
No, what really bothered me is that this "punk"'s arguments almost certainly echoes the reactions of others to his own genre of choice! Has he never read the similar complaints about the youth-corrupting elements of punk music? Hell, even of ROCK music?
Post was temporarily edited until I settle an issue brought up in the comments thread. I've removed anything that could be considered remotely libelous; although I would thoroughly disagree that a word I've written is anything of the sort, I have no interest in being on the business end of Warren Kinsella's apparent penchant for lawsuits.
Oh, and for the record? I'm not anybody he knows personally. I don't know him personally. I only know him from his position as a public figure and from his public statements. If commenting on and critiquing public statements is now grounds for legal action, it's news to me, and rather scary at that. Still, better safe than sorry. At least for now.
Further Edit:
I did a quick scan of Canadian Cerberus' breakdown of Canadian libel law. My position is that all that I'd written falls under Fair Comment:
“Comment” does not mean merely “opinion”. Comment is something which can reasonably be inferred to be a deduction, inference, conclusion, criticism, remark, observation, or the like. Fair comment protects only comment or opinion; it does not protect statements of fact.
Fair comment must be a comment on a matter of public interest. In general this consists of two broad categories: matters in which the public in general has an interest, and matters submitted to public attention and criticism. Matters of public interest are very numerous. It is a matter of public interest on which everyone is entitled to make fair comment whenever a matter is such as to affect people at large, so that they may be legitimately interested in, or concerned at, what is going on, or what may happen to them or to others. “Public interest” is not to be confined within narrow limits
The burden is on the defendant to prove the truth of the facts upon which the comment is based. The defendant must also prove that the subject-matter is one of public interest, that the words are a fair comment on it, and that the views expressed are ones which could honestly be held. The plaintiff has the burden of proving malice.
Anything written as a column for a newspaper, especially on an issue as sensitive in Canada as culture and gun crime, certainly comes under the category of "public interest", and the specific comments I'd made about his own comments certainly fit under that criticism/comment/opinion/whatnot category. what statements of fact I'd made are also easily verifiable as truth: the "top ten" does mention Public Enemy in a positive light, a skeptical American judge really did throw out the lion's share of anti-media (specifically anti-video game) studies as largely worthless, and correlation really isn't causation.
Nor, for the record, do I actually hold any malice against the man. (The comment he made later about Canadian conservatives' helplessness in trying to smear Stephane Dion was actually pretty good.) I'd be interested in seeing the justification that he could pull out for any claim that malice did exist. Malice I reserve for, say, Dick Cheney.
And unlike Marc Bourrie, I haven't charged him with any crime. He hasn't committed any crime- just, in my opinion, some very poor judgement.
Another Edit: unless, of course, this is about that horrible stabbity punks comment. It was satiric hyperbole intended to show that punk rather treasures its horrible violent bastards, nothing more. It is certainly not advocacy, as I am not, in general, a horrible violent bastard.
(I figured that would be obvious, but I suppose not, hence why it was pulled.)
Just to be clear: wrongheaded column or no, nobody should do violent things to Warren K. Including NWA.
And no, the irony of this isn't lost on me. Were it not for the fact that I am in no position to pay lawyers to go to town for the next few months or so, I'd find the whole thing really, really funny.
Why on EARTH is Frank Luntz on the Huffington Post?
Especially when the arch-spinmeister is using his tradecraft as vigorously as ever?
Yes, nobody who reads the Post is going to read this:
No, he's not converted, and he's sure as hell not the detached analyst of spin that he's playing here. (Hell, the Dems have a few too many of those and a few too few Luntz types, but that's another issue entirely.) The only reason he's preaching conciliation is that he knows that liberals tend to respond well to that sort of thing, knows the press likes their Dems fluffy, cute, and conciliatory instead of akin to those mean, hard-edged Republicans, because it makes for a better story, and knows that if they do so, they'll get eaten alive by the employers he really makes money from.
I mean, hell, look at this:
And, finally, it invokes the long-exploded idea that the American people want "cooperation and compromise" and that they want the Dems to "work together" with the Republicans, again trying to appeal to a sentiment that appeals to some liberals and the press, but has no connection to reality. And what is that reality?
They threw the bums out, and the new guys shouldn't play pattycake with the bums left over.
That's what Frank is trying to dance around here. He's damned good at it, I'll give it that, although "a dozen long years" gives one an eye for this sort of thing and he's FRANK FREAKIN' LUNTZ, so one is going to be a little wary. I am. You probably are too.
The question is... why give him a forum to do so?
Yes, nobody who reads the Post is going to read this:
Democracy is at its best when its practioners use language to unite and explain rather than divide and attack. The blogs from the Left and the Right be damned, the real center of America is upset but not bitter, anxious but not fearful, restless but not unforgiving....and not laugh. He made his fortune and reputation doing exactly that which he decries here- using language to divide and attack.
No, he's not converted, and he's sure as hell not the detached analyst of spin that he's playing here. (Hell, the Dems have a few too many of those and a few too few Luntz types, but that's another issue entirely.) The only reason he's preaching conciliation is that he knows that liberals tend to respond well to that sort of thing, knows the press likes their Dems fluffy, cute, and conciliatory instead of akin to those mean, hard-edged Republicans, because it makes for a better story, and knows that if they do so, they'll get eaten alive by the employers he really makes money from.
I mean, hell, look at this:
But alas, power does strange things to Democrats: put a gavel in their hands and a camera in their face and they revert to the name-calling that kept them from the majority for a dozen long years. The message from the electorate in November was 'work together and compromise.' You need only look at the incumbent governor of California who won a lopsided landslide in an otherwise Democratic sweep. Cooperation works. Compromise wins. But over-heated rhetoric says to the world that you are no different - and no better - than what you replaced.Yes, this is masterful spin. It sets him above and apart from what he's talking about, to make him seem objective (a prize to many liberals and most opinion journalists and not a principal architect of those "dozen long years". It repeats old nonsense about the Dems being "out of the mainstream" (read: "strange"), and invokes the new nonsense about Bush's critics being simply hateful name-callers. It hauls out isolated, easily explained incidents (like Arnold's re-election) to try to create a trend that means anything but "Republicans were tossed out".
And, finally, it invokes the long-exploded idea that the American people want "cooperation and compromise" and that they want the Dems to "work together" with the Republicans, again trying to appeal to a sentiment that appeals to some liberals and the press, but has no connection to reality. And what is that reality?
They threw the bums out, and the new guys shouldn't play pattycake with the bums left over.
That's what Frank is trying to dance around here. He's damned good at it, I'll give it that, although "a dozen long years" gives one an eye for this sort of thing and he's FRANK FREAKIN' LUNTZ, so one is going to be a little wary. I am. You probably are too.
The question is... why give him a forum to do so?
Friday, January 19, 2007
Blast from the past
This is an interesting bit of trivia: apparently George R. R. Martin, author of the wildly popular "Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series, had a terrible computer crash on his main computer, losing thousands of emails and hundreds of bookmarks.
Yet, this didn't affect his writing at all. Why? Well...
Not even the old DOS standby, Wordperfect. WORDSTAR. There's not one in a thousand people on this planet who even remember what Wordstar IS. This is a word processor whose heyday was on CP/M machines. What you see on the screen using this program looks absolutely nothing like what will appear on the page, but is simply chunks of blocky DOS font text. It doesn't even use the arrow keys.
Astounding.
Then again... if you want something that will keep you from distractions, a DOS computer running an ancient word processor is definitely up to the task. No alt-tabbing, no internet, no windows... just you and the text.
Hmm...
Maybe he has a point?
Edit: Holy crap, apparently this is utterly common for writers! Check out this piece by Robert Sawyer. IT says just how many writers use WordStar, and why it's the "writer's Word Processor".
Neat stuff, actually, especially about the usefulness of control key combinations for navigation, kind of the ultimate expression of the common writer's love of keyboard shortcuts and loathing of the mouse.
(One that I share, actually. Mice are for artists, not typists.)
Yet, this didn't affect his writing at all. Why? Well...
Lest anyone have a heart attack, let me hasten to add that this has NOT affected A DANCE WITH DRAGONS or any of my other work-in-progress. I do my writing on a completely different computer than the one I use for email and the internet, in part to guard against viruses, worms, and nightmares like this. My work machine does not even use Windows (which I loathe). I write with WordStar 4.0 on a pure DOS-based machine. Mock if you must... but WordStar and DOS are both stable as rocks, and never give me the sort of headaches I get from Windows. (I won't even talk about Microsoft Word, about which I have nothing printable to say).The entire 3000 page series (at least so far)... is written with Wordstar. On a DOS machine.
Not even the old DOS standby, Wordperfect. WORDSTAR. There's not one in a thousand people on this planet who even remember what Wordstar IS. This is a word processor whose heyday was on CP/M machines. What you see on the screen using this program looks absolutely nothing like what will appear on the page, but is simply chunks of blocky DOS font text. It doesn't even use the arrow keys.
Astounding.
Then again... if you want something that will keep you from distractions, a DOS computer running an ancient word processor is definitely up to the task. No alt-tabbing, no internet, no windows... just you and the text.
Hmm...
Maybe he has a point?
Edit: Holy crap, apparently this is utterly common for writers! Check out this piece by Robert Sawyer. IT says just how many writers use WordStar, and why it's the "writer's Word Processor".
Neat stuff, actually, especially about the usefulness of control key combinations for navigation, kind of the ultimate expression of the common writer's love of keyboard shortcuts and loathing of the mouse.
(One that I share, actually. Mice are for artists, not typists.)
Emperor? Maybe Not
Via Majikthise, the WaPo says that Bush is moving away from his maximalist vision of his own privileges. Among other things, the FISA court will once again have to rubber-stamp wiretap requests.
Not terribly surprising. While Bush and his flunkies have always believed they could get awa with anything, a lot of that really had to do with an ultimately-complicit congress and press corps. Absent those, the technical legal arguments begin to look a bit benuded.
Kinda like the Emperor himself, these days. Good thing he's in good shape, I suppose.
Not terribly surprising. While Bush and his flunkies have always believed they could get awa with anything, a lot of that really had to do with an ultimately-complicit congress and press corps. Absent those, the technical legal arguments begin to look a bit benuded.
Kinda like the Emperor himself, these days. Good thing he's in good shape, I suppose.
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