February 28, 2005
Moo-lahs In Eye-ran
I'm really tired of all the people who snigger at GWB's pronunciation of "mullahs" (he says, "MOO-lahs"); two seconds later these same wags say, "eye-ran." And this includes the Fox Allstars, unfortunately.
It's "ee-RON".
Posted at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Watching the Mid East Pot Bubble
WaPo columnist Jackson Diehl presents a hopeful analysis of the ongoing ferment in the Middle East autocracies (via Instapundit):
[Mubarak and Assad] are autocrats whose regimes had remained unaltered, and unchallenged, for decades. There has been no political ferment in Damascus since the 1960s, or in Cairo since the 1950s. Now, within weeks of Iraq's elections, Mubarak and Assad are tacking with panicked haste between bold acts of repression, which invite an international backlash, and big promises of reform -- which also may backfire, if they prove to be empty. They could yet survive; but quite clearly, the Arab autocrats don't regard the Bush dream of democratic dominoes as fanciful.
Diehl goes on to recall how none of the "experts" he interviewed in 1989 had a clue that the Berlin wall would soon fall. Army generals are not the only ones guilty of planning for the last war.
Diehl concludes:
[The possible Middle East transformation] also won't be entirely Bush's creation: The tinder for ignition has been gathering around the stagnant and corrupt autocracies of the Middle East for years. Still, less than two years after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the fact is that Arabs are marching for freedom and shouting slogans against tyrants in the streets of Beirut and Cairo -- and regimes that have endured for decades are visibly tottering. Those who claimed that U.S. intervention could never produce such events have reason to reconsider.
Diehl is correct in pointing out that the conditions for reform have been ripening for years, just as it did in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The yearning for individual freedom is universal, after all. But if the Eastern Europe scenario repeats itself in the Middle East, you may bet your retirement savings on the certainty of the left launching a revisionist campaign to discredit Bush's role. After all, we all know that is was Gorbachev who brought down the Berlin wall. The left is never wrong.
UPDATE: Austin Bay has more on Diehl's article--and brings Tom Friedman into it also.
February 27, 2005
Sanity, and Comments
Dr. Sanity has had an encounter with insanity of the left. She analyzes the reactions to a previous post in which she attempted to examine the issues of civil liberties in a wartime environment. After a string of ad hominem attacks along with comments such as, "Jesus would slap the shit out you.", she writes:
I must say that I could not possibly make up better evidence documenting the hysteria (noun: meaning "exaggerated emotional response") of the Left. I could not possibly have asked for better examples of projection, denial, or distortion.
I suggest[ed] that there be a rational discussion about the issue of civil liberties during war--what are the legal precedents; what are the differences between being an American citizen and not? What is the definition of "enemy combatant" and how is that different from a POW? These are all important legal questions [...]
Anyway, I suggest[ed] a discussion based on differing viewpoints and possibly differing outlooks with the goal of finding some compromise that will not be "national suicide". For that suggestion, I am hit with comparisons of Nazi Germany (always a favorite of the Left to compare anything they don't like to the Nazis); accused of supporting a "war for oil"; and supporting torture.
She goes on to quote another commenter:
This appears to be the Left's idea of a rational discussion. Bush and Crew became constitutional traitors, and fifth columnists, when they broke with our Constitution, and ignored our Bill of Rights, after 9/11.
This statement is the same type of distortion that plagues the Left. Anyone who disagrees with them are obviously "traitors" (a psychological projection--it is their own thoughts that likely dwell on betrayal).
This is so typical. I know there are also some unhinged commenters from the right, but these are so utterly predictable, so familiar in their complete disregard for the simplest line of reasoning.
Getting at the source of the irrationality of the left is really one of the main reasons I started this blog. My working hypothesis is that two historical threads have converged into a "perfect storm": 1) the transfer of Marxist ideas from the field of economic geopolitics to that of culture; and 2) the attack of "progressive" educational theorists on the classical curriculum. Both of these threads have at their center an inherent animosity toward the individual, and his associated rights; the idea of reasoned debate based on the evaluation of empirical evidence (witness the relativism of the cultural studies gang); and ultimately the value of any accumulated (meaning, of course, Western) knowledge.
February 25, 2005
I think Larry Summers is somewhat conflicted. He seems to have good instincts: he called out Cornell West's typically vaporous scholarship, and accepted the invitation to offer challenging commentary at his latest, most infamous meeting. But he's apologized to everyone in sight for his latest non-offense; I wish this MIT and Harvard alumnus would stand up to the postmodernist lynch-mob.
Peggy Noonan has a great take, (as usual) on Summers in the WSJ:
Tuesday he faced an angry faculty gathering where "his ears were pinned back," as one reporter said. Summers now seems to be saying he made a mistake in airing the idea of gender-related differences in the interests and aptitudes of scholars. But here is what he may be forgetting, for people under pressure often lose track of their lack of culpability: Summers did nothing wrong. He thought aloud about an interesting question in a colorful and un-defended way. That's what universities are for. [...]
These [faculty critics] are the worst of both worlds, frightened and so ferocious, antique and so aggressive. Will they exorcise Summers from their midst? Stay tuned. But cheers to the Ivy League students who refuse to be impressed by these relics.
Brit Hume recently interviewed new Harvard grad Duncan Currie, and he confirms that there is significant support for Summers:
HUME: What about the — there was also, I gather, a knot of pro-Summers protesters. What about them? How many were they?
CURRIE: They — I didn’t see them in the vicinity — I was at the anti-Summers protest. There were random students who would walk by and shout a pro-Summers statement or two.
HUME: Slogan?
CURRIE: But yes, one guy, one puckish young fellow ran by and said, "Larry is the man." But I think pro-Summers statement has been concentrated on a Web site, StudentsforLarry.org and it was started by three young women who wrote an op-ed piece last Friday in The Crimson expressing their support for President Summers. And on the Web site, you can sign your name to support the op-ed piece.
And the last time I checked, which was about 1:30 Tuesday afternoon, there were over 420 students, parents and alumni, mainly students who had signed it. So, in my opinion, the vast majority of students, if they’re not pro-Summers, they’re at the very least anti- anti-Summers. And that they may think what he said was a bit foolish or a bit irresponsible, but they do not think that this is a hangable offense by any means.
Newt Gingrich on C-Span today said that the elimination of tenure is the solution to the intellectual monopoly held by the tenured radicals on our university campuses. I'm starting to think he's right.
Posted at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Ward Churchill's Latest Gig
Looks like Professor Churchill's problems are multiplying. The Denver CBS affiliate has raised serious questions about the authenticity of some "art" that Churchill claims to have produced (via LGF):
An exclusive report by CBS4 News indicates embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill may have broken copyright law by making a mirror image of an artist's work and selling it as his own.
Placing Churchill's work beside that of renowned artist Thomas E. Mails and the two look like mirror images. But one is a copyrighted drawing. The other is an autographed print by Churchill.
Well, well, well.
The real issue, of course, remains the process by which this buffoon obtained a coveted position in a hyper-competitive field.
Posted at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Baathists: Syrian vs. Iraqi
Tom Holsinger makes a very interesting observation about the demographics of Syria's ruling class (via Winds of Change):
The real drawback here, IMO, is that there might not be a replacement regime, i.e., 1980's Lebanese type chaos, for a while. Syria's Alawite minority (Shiite-related - about 10% of the population) has been dominant for many years (the Assad clan are Alawites) and is violently unpopular. There is a fair chance of it suffering genocidal massacre and ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Sunni majority when the Alawites lose power.
Hmmm...so Iraq has a Shiite majority and was until recently under the boot of a Sunni minority dictatorship; and Syria has a Sunni majority and is now (hopefully for the time being) under the boot of a Shiite related minority. So this means that the Baathists in Iraq are Sunni, and their Baathist cohorts in Syria are Alawite/Shiite? Evidently I have much to learn about the Baathists.
Posted at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 23, 2005
The Domino Effect
The spotlight in the Middle East has been on Lebanon lately, with good reason. It would be a wonderful thing if Syrian hegemony there came to an end.
But what about Syria itself? I noted with great interest the fact that Syria allowed absentee voting in the Iraqi elections. I figured that the sight of expat Iraqis actually voting would plant an irresistibly powerful seed thought in the minds of the Syrians. But events in Lebanon soon grabbed our attention.
But the seed may have sprouted (hat tip Chrenkoff):
More than 150 Syrian intellectuals on Wednesday signed a petition calling on Damascus to end its military occupation of Lebanon. The petition was sent to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"There is no more use of insisting on managing crises using old political solutions," the petition read. "Its time that Syrian adopt a new policy which will take into account new developments, especially the criminal assassination of Rafik al Hariri." [...]
The Syrian opposition makes its voice heard periodically in letters it sends to Assad. The group has no real influence on Syrian policy, but criticism of such sensitive issues like Syria's presence in Lebanon is unprecedented.
Exciting times, indeed.
East vs. West (Europe, that is)
When it comes to delivering value-per-blog-viewing-minute, Arthur Chrenkoff has to be near the top--his post are always jam-packed with good information. Today he writes on the revitalization of eastern Europe, and the consequent heartburn of the EU:
Starting the engines of growth: As the Old European economies stagnate, the Eastern and Central Europe is adopting tax policies designed to spur growth. Many countries in the region, for example, have adopted flat taxes. [...] Taxes, particularly corporate taxes, throughout the Eastern Europe are already generally significantly lower than in the West. No wonder the Old Europe is hating the competition and trying to undermine the low tax push.
Why it matters: Because as V. Arun, research analyst with Frost & Sullivan writes, "low tax rates coupled with cheap labor prevalent in the [Eastern European] countries can have a drastic impact on the employment, investment, and industrial production in the EU member states. As a result, the corporates in the west are bound to move eastward in the hope of benefiting from the tax advantage."
It's already become self-evident, due to their appreciation of democracy and support for the Iraq war, that the eastern European countries are on a different path than the EU dinosaurs. And I think it's a great idea that the U.S. is making plans to shift our military assets to the east (via JINSA):
The initial repositioning of American forces will most likely be towards Eastern Europe. The drawbacks to the German and Italian bases were obvious to all when the German and Italian governments, opposed to U.S. policy toward Iraq, dragged their feet in granting permission to move equipment to ports for sea shipment. The Pentagon plans to take over military bases formerly used by Soviet forces in Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria. [...]
In contrast with Germany and France, central and eastern European countries firmly aligned themselves with the Bush Administration's plans for Iraq. The American Enterprise Institute's Thomas Donnelly said, "As the Europeans with the most recent experience of tyranny, they are most willing to pay the price of liberty". Military officials insist, however, that the move will make U.S. forces more mobile, allowing them to jump from country to country.
Contrast this encouraging situation in the east with the creeping PC totalitarianism infesting the western European countries.
Posted at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Europe vs. Islam: The Metastazing of Political Correctness
The murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands is pretty well known by now, along with the burgeoning conflict between French culture and France's growing Islamic population.
Now comes a very interesting and troubling post over at the Ten O'Clock Scholar:
An interesting new blog out of Norway, that discusses Islamic infiltration of Scandinavia, and the difficulties of confronting it due to Political Correctness. See the conclusion to this entry:The conclusion one may draw from this is that the authorities in Sweden and Norway know about, or should know about, a disturbing amount of Muslim immigrant rapes of native Scandinavian women, yet choose not to make this information known to the public. [...]
There is a great deal of supporting information, including quotes like:Swedish laws prohibiting "hate speech" against racial minorities have been vigorously enforced. There have, for example, been a number of gang-rapes of Swedish women by Muslim immigrants. But Swedes must be careful what they say about them. On May 25, neo-Nazi Bjorn Bjorkqvist was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison for writing, "I don’t think I am alone in feeling sick when reading about how Swedish girls are raped by immigrant hordes." ["Jag tror inte jag är ensam om att må dåligt när jag läser om hur svenska tjejer har våldtagits av invandrarhorder"]
I think Europe is in very serious trouble.
Posted at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 22, 2005
Conservatism: My Definition
Jonah Goldberg wonders about the true definition of conservatism:
Moreover, to expect normal Americans to accept philosophical denominations whole is entirely unreasonable. Heck, we can't even get most of NRO's readers to agree on what's conservative and what isn't, never mind the writers.
My own definition of conservatism has two necessary, but possibly not sufficient, conditions:
1) There are no perfect humans. (Call it original sin, if you're so inclined.) Therefore since no one is perfect, any group, government, plan, organization, corporation, army, diplomacy or battle plan also cannot be perfect.
2) The rights of the individual are more important than the rights of a (any) group.
From 1) we get the time-tested tactic of the left: Set up a utopian strawman, and blast away at the U.S. when it doesn't measure up to perfection. A perfect example is the Abu Ghraib scandal--a localized outbreak of military lawlessness in a poorly-led outfit gets extrapolated onto the entire U.S. military operation in Iraq. Naturally, the exemplary conduct of combat operations in regard to preserving civilian lives, along with the massive rebuilding efforts, is ignored.
The second of my conditions follows from the self-evident superiority of judiciously regulated free enterprise capitalism to the stifling, or murderous, confines of socialism and communism. It applies equally to the more current battle between "cultural" Marxism--the Chomskys, Zinns, and Churchills of the world--and the ideas of the Founders.
Breaking the Inner-city Monopolies
LaShawn Barber tells of meeting Rev. Jesse L. Peterson at the CPAC:
... An outspoken critic of liberalism and godlessness in general and Jesse Jackson and the NAACP in particular, Peterson is a Christian and activist who wants to topple so-called black leaders from their perches of privilege. Like me, he believes that the collapse of the family and immorality are the biggest problems in the black community, not racism. ...
And to that add the still all-powerful combination of the reform-resistant teacher's unions and the leftist colleges of education, which dooms the majority of black kids to a second rate education.
It doesn't have to be that way. Houston educator Thaddeus Lott took charge of an poorly performing elementary school in the heart of a neighborhood riddled with poverty and drug use, and in just a few years he proved that not only could disadvantaged minority kids learn, they could surpass their wealthy urban counterparts.
One tragic aspect of this story is the fact that this is not breaking news—Lott took over Wesley Elementary in 1975. In 1998, Tyce Palmaffy in Policy Review recapped the story (emphases are mine):
We have come to expect mediocrity from schools whose students are saddled with such tragic circumstances. But since Thaddeus Lott became its principal in 1975, Wesley has graduated thousands of children whose reading and math scores rival those of their suburban peers. Before Lott introduced his educational philosophy, only 18 percent of Wesley’s third-graders were scoring at or above grade level in reading comprehension on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. By 1980, 85 percent were achieving at or above grade level. In 1996, 100 percent of Wesley’s third-graders passed the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in reading. Statewide, fewer than 70 percent of third-graders in schools with similar demographics passed.
To achieve this astounding turnaround, Lott eschewed popular nostrums—computers, school-to-work initiatives, parental involvement—for the basics: a proven curriculum, rigorous teacher training, strict discipline, high expectations of teachers and students, and a fervent belief that any child can learn.
"It’s a myth," says Lott, "that if you’re born in a poor community and your skin is a certain color that you can’t achieve on a higher level."
Lott used a teaching method called Direct Instruction, which relies on scripted lesson plans that emphasize teacher-student interaction, along with mastery of each incremental step before moving to the next.
DISTAR’s phonics-based reading lessons are literally scripted for the teacher, who is required to ask 200-300 questions per day, often in rapid-fire sequence. The children’s high-decibel choral responses may sound like a high-school cheerleading squad hopped up on No-Doz, but they are learning the relationships between the sounds and the letters that constitute the English language. And there’s no quibbling with the results at Wesley.
During Lyndon Johnson’s "War on Poverty," the federal government began Project Follow Through, which spent $500 million and many years investigating the most effective pedagogy for disadvantaged students. It concluded that direct instruction was the only method that even came close to elevating poor readers to the 50th percentile in achievement. Child-centered approaches that diminish the teacher’s role in the classroom and reject the teaching of basic skills finished in the cellar. Ironically, researchers also found that direct instruction elevated students’ self-esteem far more than the child-centered methods that ascribe a central role to high self-esteem and maintain that self-esteem suffers in heavily controlled, teacher-directed environments. Disadvantaged students succeed more often with direct instruction, however, and Lott knows that achievement builds self-esteem, not the other way around.
Needless to say, Direct Instruction is bitterly opposed by the progressive educational establishment. Nothing could be more of a threat to the progressives' cherished vision of teachers as "guides on the side" and "facilitators", than the scripted and effective lesson plans of DI.
There are many "progressives" in the education establishment who built entire careers on suppressing the education of minority students. This is an outrage beyond words.
In subsequent posts I’ll have more on Project Follow Through, and some more recent news on Direct Instruction.
Posted at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 21, 2005
Presidential Biographies
John J. Miller asked some scholars and authors to recommend a one-volume biography of our most influential presidents. The very interesting and useful results are in the Washington Examiner today (via The Corner).
Posted at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 20, 2005
Condi, yea -- Condi, nay
Carpe Bonum believes that Condi Rice, as a presidential candidate, would suffer from not having won elected office before. I had the same thoughts, but then I remembered Dwight Eisenhower and more recently Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not so fast, says Carpe Bonum:
Of course there counterexamples to this rule such as Ronald Reagan's California Governorship, Hillary Clinton's US Senate seat, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwight Eisenhower. Each of these had exceptional circumstances which I don't see in Rice's case.
Condi is a great person. I loved what she did as National Security Advisor and what she is doing as Secretary of State. I'll back her 100% if she is nominated. But my hope is she will not run for President unless she proves she can get elected to some other office first.
I doubt if anyone will ever again possess the combination of affection and respect that Eisenhower did--the media was more civil (and much smaller in size), the national threats much larger, and our heroes larger, too.
But the example of Schwarzenegger is a lot more encouraging for Condi supporters. We as Americans have a special talent for over-hyping the trivial into a national feeding frenzy. But the nomination of Condi Rice would be a legitimate Big Deal--a deal so authentically huge I think it would dwarf Schwarzenegger's election as a captivating story. I think the combination of being African-American and being a woman would be an irresistible force.
BTW, if Hillary does run, along with Condi, the timing of the conventions will be interesting: the convention that comes first will produce the "first woman nominee for President."
UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini (hat tip Decision '08) has the scoop on a straw poll conducted at the recent CPAC convention:
For the GOP:19% Giuliani
18% Rice
11% Allen, Frist, McCain ...
Hmmm...
Rice/Guiliani vs. Clinton/...Obama?
Posted at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)Missing the Point, Part 358
Glenn Reynolds on the respective motivations of each side in the Jordon story:
Well, whether he should have lost his job was always CNN's decision, of course. But we wanted to see the tape. As I've noted before, bloggers wanted the tape made public more than they wanted to get rid of Jordan. CNN, on the other hand, decided it would rather be rid of Jordan than see the tape made public.
Once again, a fine illustration of how the MSM continues to make faulty observations and then compound their mistake by employing dishonest/inaccurate analysis.
Posted at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 19, 2005
"What ineffable twaddle!"
For a (brief) while I thought Susan Estrich was a good example of an honest liberal: unmistakably partisan but with a thin cord of reasonableness that kept her tethered somewhere near the vicinity of earth. But her statments during the recent campaign ("The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough.") were disturbing.
The ongoing email dust-up with Michael Kinsley of the Los Angeles times has made it official: she's a certified left-loony. The Washington Examiner (via The Corner) details the latest round. What strikes me, notwithstanding the truly despicable reference to Kinsley's Parkinson's disease, is the blizzard of egomaniacal references to the powerful circles in which she moves.
... It is signed by approximately 50 women, among them some of the most powerful women in town...
... My friend Barbara Howar...
... NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did...
... and I am certain the many prominent women who have signed the letter would also agree. ...
... I now have powerful businesswomen and community leaders, professors and developers and talent agents and managers and journalists...
Sheesh...what a maroon. Her earlier comments during the campaign were an early airing of one of the persistent themes of the Democratic loss: "If we could got our message across more effectively, everyone (that's not an insane Nazi) would have voted for us." Estrich is still wallowing in Kael-ite miasma, i.e., all my powerful friends agree with me, therefore you must be wrong/insane/affected by your illness.
Are there more male opinion journalists than female? Undoubtedly. But Estrich's hysterical tantrum has done nothing to help shed any light on the subject.
February 18, 2005
1st Lt. Prakash and Armor Geddon
As the blogosphere has exploded in popularity, the term "must read" has been understandably overused--all of us who blog are passionate about something, and we think it's vital that everyone else see it too.
Well, for any of you who have any opinion about the war in Iraq, I have a "must read". It's a blog named Armor Geddon by 1st Lieutenant Neil Prakash, a tank platoon leader from 2nd Battalion, 63rd Armor Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. He was recently awarded the Silver Star for his actions under fire in Ba'qubah June 24. Neil was an ROTC cadet at Johns Hopkins, and on a sure track to medical school, when he was sidetracked by the allure of commanding a tank. A good description of the battle is given here; it's obvious that Lt. Prakash is an outstanding young officer.
He's also an astonishingly good writer. A simple narrative would be interesting enough, but Neil has the quality all good writers have: the ability to see beyond the rush of events to pick out the important ideas. His narrative is packed with description, yet reads easily; it sounds cliched, but I felt like I was sitting in the seat next to him:
“Alright SGT P. Let's hit it with main gun. 3 rounds each” I requested some added firepower from SSG Terry. Let’s hammer this garage. I put my video camera up to the GPSE as I watched the LCD screen of the camera. BOOM.
“Damn!” One section of the garage blew up. BOOM. I watched a red beam shoot across the ground from my left as SSG Terry nailed the garage again. BOOM. SGT P hit the garage with another HEAT round. BOOM. “Oh shit! He hit the light pole!” SSG Terry’s HEAT round just happened to hit dead center of a street light pole. The pole went down like a tree but the round hit its target. The garage was hurting.
“Disarm the gun,” SGT P told PFC Langford. The turret smelled of cordite and carbon. I loved that smell. And the smell of the ammo storage. That little compartment had its own distinct sweetness to it, which was only exposed when the ammo door opened.
The garage was pummeled and I don’t think any more bad guys were going to try that. We probably rocked the shit out of those Bradley guys from the concussion of the main gun. Whatever. This was our fight.
The point of this is not to "glorify" war. As a normal American male I figure it has to be fun to fire an Abrams main gun. But it's not that. The impressive thing to me is to see the combination of utter professionalism and 25-year-old chutzpah, all underlined by a tangible, unsentimental dedication to protecting America.
Fascinating and inspiring stuff.
The Proverbial Tip of the Iceberg
The Big Trunk makes a razor-sharp point on the Jordan affair:
I wonder, however, why Jordan didn't ever simply acknowledge a mistake or issue a retraction and apologize. Either or both would have gone a long way toward quelling the public controversy. The abruptness of Jordan's downfall in connection with remarks that had barely registered in the mainsream media makes me wonder if ninety percent of the real story here isn't submerged below water.
Indeed. As far as that goes, if Jordan feels he has been unfairly accused, why not call for the release of the videotape?
It's been noted that innocent people invariably show up early for polygraph tests, and are eager to cooperate.
Posted at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 17, 2005
College, Trades, and K-12 Education
The Anchoress found one of my red buttons--you know, the ones with the locking cover so you don't accidentally lean an elbow on it and blow up the world?
She's commenting on a recent speech by Laura Bush in which she extolled the desirability of every student attending college.
But I think we've been banging the "everyone needs to go to college" drum enough. I would have loved to have heard Mrs. Bush say this too-often ignored bit of truth:
College is not for everyone, and you do not need a college education in order to earn a decent living and get your piece of the American Dream. To be trained in a trade is a perfectly honorable thing, and those Americans who work as electricians or plumbers or mechanics or carpenters all have the choice of becoming entrepreneurs or working for another. And none of them have to worry about their jobs being "outsourced."
The Anchoress is right, in principle, but there's a problem: The erosion of the standard public school K-12 curriculum has resulted in a situation where a college degree is now (barely) equivalent to a high school degree in say, 1920. The ideal complement to an honorable trade is a high quality K-12 education firmly based in the classical curriculum—an education in which reason and empirical knowledge are valued over “feelings” and “discovery learning.”
If I tomorrow I was appointed benevolent-dictator-for-a-day, I would require everyone of child bearing age to read Left Back, by Diane Ravitch. It is an indispensable and meticulous recounting of the successful war waged on the classical curriculum by the educational “progressives”. She exposes the skilful tactics employed by the progressives, such as repeatedly renaming a failed trend; thus “look-say” became “whole language” which is now the “balanced method” of reading instruction (all utter failures). And this is a battle which began, not in the turbulent sixties, but a hundred years ago.
I recall someone stating, “In one hundred years, we’ve gone from teaching Latin in high school to teaching remedial reading in college.” If you've ever seen an eighth grade final exam from 1900, you'll understand the truth in that quote.
It’s easy to see why the First Lady places such an emphasis on attending college—but it’s also a tragedy.
UPDATE: On second thought, the first thing I'd do if I were made benevolent-dictator-for-a-day would be to ban the designated hitter, surely one of the most heinous crimes against nature there is.
Posted at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 16, 2005
The MSM and Blog Readership
Ed Morissey at Captain's Quarters relates L. Brent Bozell's take on Eason Jordan, the MSM, and the blogosphere:
Bozell also presents the best analysis so far of the media blackout's result:Amazingly, most of the major "news" media avoided this news -- especially CNN. So when Jordan resigned, it made the blogs seem so powerful that liberals started attacking them for recklessly destroying Jordan's career, even using goofy terms like "cyber-McCarthyism" to denounce it. But what the bloggers did here was deliver information and accountability, the same things the major media purport to be providing -- unless it's one of their own in the hot seat.
That reaction will wind up driving readers to the blogs to research this supposed witch hunt, where they will find much more to Eason's Fables than the pathetic treatment given in the mainstream press. That will be a body blow to the MSM's credibility and create much more demand for the blogosphere. The media, much more so than in Memogate, has done far more damage to itself than the bloggers could ever have done.
Quite right, and not only will all those new readers be enlightened on the Jordan story, they will do what we all do: start following links to new topics, new stories. How many among us haven't had to learn the hard way to bookmark something interesting as soon as you see it--otherwise you might never get back there?
I bet a lot of those new readers will make the blogosphere a habit. The fact that they're surfing the web for information means that they are already expending some effort to satisfy their curiosity about a news event.
Twelve months ago, my day started with Townhall and Frontpage Magazine. Now I hit them once every three or four days; my primary source of news are the blogs.
Posted at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Diana West over at the indispensable Townhall.com claims "Sir Paul played for our past sins" (hat tip: The Big Trunk at Powerline).
I’m not so sure that West is on the right track. In fact, her line of argument in this column is muddled at best. The central idea seems to be a reflection on the irony that a former leader of the sixties counterculture was asked to provide “decent” and “innocuous” entertainment for the Super Bowl, forty years removed. But West’s adoption of Paul McCartney as a metaphor for sixties radicalism is unsuccessful.
From the start her timing is off. The anchor year of her comparison is 1965, when “Beatlemania was approaching its anti-Establishment crescendo.” She’s partly right. Beatlemania was peaking, but it was hardly “anti-Establishment”. In fact, at that time, the Beatles were seen as safer alternatives to more menacing groups like the Rolling Stones or the Animals. Regardless of whether they were banned in Cleveland, it surely is a mistake to suggest that the music on “Help!” was “combustibly controversial” and “sundered families and propelled generations along separate tracks.” It takes more that pop music to accomplish these results—jazz has been maligned throughout its history, and Chuck Berry and Elvis himself were were vilified as evil influences without any of the societal upheavals that occurred in the sixties.
West wants to establish a hard link between the cultural decay of the Sixties—“the upending of a civilization”—with the music of the Beatles, because she intends to use that same link to reflect upon the values of 2005:
As The Beatles, they, more than any other rock act, produced the heartbeatingly familiar and practically worshipped 1960s soundtrack of rebellion and collapse.
This is perfectly true on its face, but the music was hardly a root cause of the Port Huron statement or the Newark riots. The Beatles did get more politically radical as time went on (and John Lennon’s most famous political stunts occurred during and after the Beatles long breakup), but no one is going to confuse them with the Weather Underground. They were musicians first.
West attempts to set up McCartney’s music as a yardstick against which to measure the changes in cultural values from 1965 to 2005:
But it's worth noting that the songs he played to be innocuous and decent in the 21st century were the songs he played to be groovy and cool in the 20th. In other words, he didn't change: We did.
I don’t think McCartney wrote “For No One” just to be “groovy and cool” any more than Gershwin wrote “Love Is Here To Stay” for the same reason. When West says, “He didn’t change,” I believe she is continuing her erroneous attempt to attribute to McCartney more political influence than he ever exhibited, or indeed desired.
Soon thereafter, West savages McCartney for singing 40-year-old Beatles songs at the Super Bowl:
This is one thing if you're 62-old Pavarotti singing "Pagliacci," or even 62-year-old Noel Coward singing "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." But 62-year-old Paul McCartney singing "Baby, you can drive my car" is something else again. Jingle-catchy though the song may be, there was something more than a little pathetic about "Car/star/car/cuz baby I love you" 40 years down the pike; ditto for "Get Back," with its once ... Shocking? Unsavory? Dangerous? Reference to "California grass." Today, of course, soaked in the tepid wash of a toxic mainstream, we consider it decent.
So...we changed, he didn’t. And yet he’s the one that’s “more than a little pathetic”? By now it’s hard for me to follow the point of her essay. I’ve always placed the Beatles, as pop songwriters, far above the remainder of the sixties bands; judged by their musical and technological legacy, they do have a rightful place in the progression of 20th century pop music. McCartney was celebrating that legacy at the 2005 Super Bowl in the same way that Frank Sinatra could have recapped his career in Las Vegas in say, 1990.
West and I are in agreement on both ends of the argument: I have a high appreciation for the same classical pop music she loves—Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong together on one album is surely one of the high points of American culture—and I think we both share a deep contempt for the leftist corruption of American culture in the sixties. We just just part company in the middle.
February 15, 2005
Calling Robin Wright...
I wonder what Robin Wright has to say about this story by Associated Press writer Jamie Tarabay in the Houston Chronicle? (Registration required, unfortunately).
BAGHDAD, IRAQ - A French-educated finance minister and a former London physician emerged Monday as the top candidates to be Iraq's next prime minister after the clergy-backed Shiite Muslim alliance failed to get the necessary majority of votes to control the legislature.
The prominence of urbane, moderate, Western-oriented figures appeared designed to counter concern in Washington that Iran's influence will grow in Iraq after a Shiite-dominated government takes power — even though the ultimate decision may rest with a reclusive elderly cleric.
Hmm, what a difference a day makes. Not to mention a change of authors.
UPDATE: There's another good point today at OpinionJournal.com:
A striking feature of these elections is how well the moderates did. It is commonly said that democracy in the Muslim world can only lead to the victory of radicals. Yet democracy itself tends to be a moderating force, demanding compromise, persuasion and salesmanship rather than force. So it's notable that Shiite firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr, who led an uprising last year, took only three seats in the new parliament--far fewer than the 20 that some had predicted.
Isn't it nice when writers just report the evidence?
Posted at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Deaths--Real and Figurative
A recent post by The Anchoress reminded me of a little occurrence today. My wife and I were killing time before picking our son up at his school, which happens to be nearby the cemetery in which my dad is buried. We were strolling around the grounds when I came across a standard headstone, "Joe Smith and Mary Smith" along with their birth and death dates. What struck me was the added phrase "Pray For Us." My wife's an avid photographer and we love cemeteries; I've seen on headstones lots of biblical verses and poetry both good and bad. But never that particular phrase, and it really struck home. It had a particularly personal appeal, as if they were speaking directly to me--after all, it was a request in made the first person. I couldn't help but oblige them.
The Anchoress was writing about the recent passing of her brother, but she goes on, admirably, to ruminate on the repercussions of the Eason Jordan affair.
The saddest thing about this whole episode (and there is much about which to be sad) is that it could have been adroitly avoided, had Jordan simply addressed the questions as soon as they were asked, in an open and self-effacing manner. Something along the lines of, "yes, I did say it, and it was wrong of me to say it. Clearly, my mouth was moving way before my brain was in gear, and therefore nothing I said came out as I meant it to, and I couldn't feel worse about it..."
She's right, of course--the real handle that provided the blogosphere a good tight hold was the cover-up and smoke screen, the avoidance of responsibility exhibited by Jordan and the MSM. But the MSM doesn't realize the leverage they still hold: just a little easing of their own arrogance would a have a multiplied effect on the impact we bloggers wield, because as ascendant as the blogosphere is, there is still a huge group of people that rely on the MSM as their sole source of news.
February 14, 2005
I see I'm not the only one who noticed that Robin Wright cited Juan Cole as an "expert" in her Washington Post piece this morning.
Wright should poke her head out of her insulated bias-bubble to hear what Michael Ledeen has to say:
It's hard to imagine the MSM getting stupider, but there they go again...a raft of articles today on the "pro-Iranian Shi'ite list" in the Iraqi elections. It's totally wrong. The Iranians dread the Iraqi Shiites, because the Iraqis, from Sistani to Chalabi to Hakim and on down, all oppose the Iranian heresy of the "Supreme Leader," a cleric at the top of the state. The traditional Shiite view is that such an event can only take place when the "12th Imam" returns from his disappearance--more than a millennium ago--to claim rightful leadership of the entire Muslim world. Until then, people in turbans should stay in the mosques, and the state should be governed by non-clerics. Sistani, Chalabi, and Hakim all said they were opposed to clerics in the government. Chalabi said--loudly and publicly, IN TEHRAN--that he and all the members of his list were opposed to the creation of an Iranian-style Islamic Republic in Iraq, and Chalabi also said, publicly on television, sitting next to the Iranian Ambassador to Baghdad, that Iraqi freedom was due to the brave leadership of George W. Bush. [...]
Or Cliff May:
[...] Cole damages whatever reputation he has left further by saying that the new Iraqi government “will have very good relations with Iran. [Kurdish leader Jalal] Talabani is very close with Iran. The Kurdish victory reinforces this conclusion.”
Anybody who knows anything about Talabani and his Kurdish followers understands that they are determinedly secular, that they are Sunni not Shia, and that they are openly and avowedly pro-American. Do they want strife with their neighbor to the east? Of course not. Are they concerned about the fate of Iranian Kurds? Sure. Does Cole’s analysis anything other than leftist spin? No. [...]
Really, instead of getting bent about Wright's tired shilling for the left, it's becoming a lot more fun to uncork a bottle of Schadenfreude '05, sit back and watch the the grindstone of the blogosphere slowly overtake them.
Posted at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)Jonah Goldberg noted an email he received:
So much of the opposition to Bush's policies are shallow personality politics rather than thoughtful disagreement that it's quite possible some Democrats watching Pat Buchanan voice opposition to removal of a tyrant could be forced to see all of this through a different prism. Do these people really want to be on the same side as Pat Buchanan? I don't think so. Such exposure could make at least some of them recognize the reality of their present position which is fully captured by that precision-guided description, "post-humanitarian left."
At first I thought the phrase "post-humanitarian left" was going to be a real keeper, a first-line weapon in my culture war debates. But after thinking about it for a second, it occurred to me that the term is a contradiction--the left has never been "humanitarian".
One of my defining memories of the time right after 9/11 was of the TV clip I saw of a leftist feminist bitterly denouncing the Bush administration for even considering military action against the Taliban. I can't find the reference, but this interview with author Elinor Burkett from Front Page Magazine captures the same feeling:
In Afghanistan, I found it difficult to walk down the street because I didn't understand that women always scurried around in their burqas because they were always expected to get out of the way of any man on the sidewalk. I met a woman who'd been crippled by a beating from the Vice and Virtue Police because - unaccustomed to seeing out of a burqa - she's tripped on the street and exposed a little ankle. I interviewed extraordinary women who'd been active professionals before the rise of the Taliban who'd endured their confinement by addicting themselves to sedatives or by abusing their husbands and kids.
In Iran, I got on a bus one afternoon and was directed to the back of the bus, which is where women are expected to ride. In Turkmenistan, I heard about arranged marriages to uncles, about women who refused to agree to such marriages being driven out by their families. In Kyrgyzstan, I learned about hymen replacement surgery - surely an amazing symbol of the plight of young women caught between modernization and tradition. If these women couldn't produce bloody sheets on the night of their weddings, they would, as a minimum, be shunned, at a maximum, be killed. In Iraq, urban women had watched as Saddam became more religious, and as short-sleeve dresses disappeared from the stores and women were pushed out of public life.
So when I came home, I fully expected the feminist movement to be up in arms, demanding that the U.S. government do more to defend these women, marching on the United Nations in defense of their sisters.
Instead, I found NOW working on its annual Love Your Body Day. And if I didn't hit a wall earlier, I hit it several weeks ago during the March for Women's Lives. Whoopi Goldberg declared that "there's a war going on, a war against women." I agreed. Unfortunately, we were talking about different wars.
How can the so-called progressives be so blind to the staggering hypocrisy of touting human rights while ignoring the Taliban’s murderous abuse of women? There must be some serious emotional disconnect that allows them to disregard the obvious while nurturing their internal self-comforting theories.
So no, I don’t think the left has ever been "humanitarian". And you can't lose what you never had.
Posted at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 12, 2005
Eason Jordan and the Blogosphere
Mark Coffey over at Decision '08 has some good stuff on Easongate and the blogosphere: The Lesson of Easongate: The Rules Have Changed.
Have we entered an era where our lives can be destroyed by a pack of wolves hacking at their keyboards with no oversight, no editors, and no accountability? Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where the MSM has become irrelevant?
I would argue that neither of those extremes is the case.
I think this is right on target. As I’ve watched the unfolding of first Rathergate and now Eason’s Fables, I’ve wondered if the blogosphere will one day unjustly malign an innocent person. But before we can answer that question I think we have to ask “Does the blogosphere really exhibit self-correcting behavior?” In other words, is it accurate to characterize the blogosphere as a network of distributed, independent researchers, and if so, is it then impossible for an unethical or malicious meme to flourish?
I don’t know how you could answer the question with metaphysical certainty. But in an attempt to disprove the question I can imagine two theoretical scenarios: 1) the blogosphere swarms a breaking story, a central thread settles out and continues to be pursued by bloggers, and subsequent events or discoveries discredit the bloggers’ position; 2) a dishonest "plant" of information that bloggers could then “discover” and publicize, thus becoming the unwitting mouthpiece of the initiator.
It seems to me that the sheer number of bloggers provide the safety cushion. As a new blogger I’m stunned at the quality of observation and analysis that’s to be found among even the lower life forms in the TTLB Ecosystem. “Critical mass” is a term that is probably overused, but it really does apply here, because just as in a nuclear fission reaction, the tipping point of a blog swarm involves not only size but also interaction. Given the two scenarios above, I think it’s reasonable to dismiss #2 out of hand. There’s just no way someone could seed bad info to enough sources to flummox the thousands of intelligent bloggers out there. An awfully large number of very smart people would have to be taken in for a malicious blog-plant to work. An important exception to this might be the realm of bloggers who are on someone’s payroll (and that’s a subject too big for this post).
As far as #1 goes, I was initially tempted to say the only scenario I could envision that could cause bloggers problems would be one in which there was a single, tightly-controlled source of information about the controversy at hand. My thought was that there wouldn’t be enough points of attack for the blog swarm to latch onto. But, of course, this was pretty much the script of the Eason Jordan affair: limited witnesses and no video or audio record (compare to Rathergate, where the show was nationally broadcast and the documents posted online). And still the bloggers triumphed through rapid communication and verification.
The important thing to note is that the crucial element the blogosphere brings to the table is the corrective pressure it exerts on the MSM—the blogosphere is not going to break every story, or right every journalistic wrong. But the constant knowledge that the unblinking compound eye of the blogosphere is always upon them will hopefully eliminate the cover-ups and obfuscation that’s been par for the course for the MSM for so long.
Story? What story?
In an article running no more than five column-inches and located on page A10, the Houston Chronicle today announced the resignation of Eason Jordan.
Posted at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Comments and learning...
I've reconfigured comments so that they don't need my approval...d'oh. Focusing now on learning CSS; have lots of good post topics stored up, and a profile, too.
Why am I up so late? I've got a long bike ride tomorrow, the longest in several months, and there'll be some very rapid riders there, too.
Posted at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 11, 2005
Using the Koran Against the Islamofascists.
A very intersting article by James Brandon in the Christian Science Monitor (via The Corner): "Koranic duels ease terror":
SANAA, YEMEN – When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.[...]
Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.
This seems smart to me. Obviously, some terrorists are no more than common criminals who are using the religious motivation as a free pass; and I'm sure there are truly psycopathic terrorists who actually believe in their twisted motivation. But there is bound to be some significant faction that has been "brainwashed", and an approach like this might be just what's needed to turn them around. A countryman wielding superior Koranic firepower, so to speak, is probably the only hope of employing this tactic successfully. I would think an American, even a Moslem American, has very little chance of getting through.
Of course this won't be a cure-all, but it could be a valuable weapon to add the the armory. Author Brandon goes on to say:
To be sure, the prisoner-release program is not solely responsible for the absence of attacks in Yemen. The government has undertaken a range of measures to combat terrorism from closing down extreme madrassahs, the Islamic schools sometimes accused of breeding hate, to deporting foreign militants.Commonsense stuff. We're going to need all the tools we can get our hands on. Posted at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 09, 2005
MovableType or TypePad?
Slowly, but slowly, I'm getting the site into shape. When I decided to start a blog, I very nearly signed up with TypePad; the only reason I bailed at the last second was that I couldn't quite make out their policy on excess bandwidth charges. I admit I was probably swayed by illusions of some future Instalaunch (so much for rational analysis), so I went with LivingDot hosting and MovableType. LivignDot has been great so far, by the way.
After reading a well-written comparison of Blogger and TypePad by Libertarian Girl, I had some second thoughts about not going with TypePad. But I do enjoy programming, and I'm getting the hang of the MT template system. Next up is CSS, and getting the design tweaked out.
Posted at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)February 08, 2005
Totten, Hitchens, and Their Iraqi Friends
Micheal J. Totten tells the story of his dinner experience after the C-Span coverage of the Iraqi election in Drinking with Christopher Hitchens and the Iraqis. A heated cross-cultural argument broke out over the dinner table, much to Totten's chagrin. The contentiousness ran its course, and the Totten reflected on the sense of camaraderie that took its place:
Perhaps that fight needed to happen. Maybe there was no way to avoid the tension wrought by invasion and occupation, and the air just had to be cleared. Perhaps our Iraqi guests felt, on a subconscious level, like they needed to test us. Maybe they really didn’t (and don’t) completely understand how we differ from the colonialists and imperialists of the past. Perhaps their pride really is wounded, not just by Saddam but also by us. Maybe all these things are true at the same time. And surely there is more to it than that, things I might never be in a position to understand.
I think this is exactly right. I for one do not generally feel put out when I hear an Iraqi express his desire for U.S. troops to leave the country. I contend Iraqi nationalism is a good thing. Certainly if a person is proud of his country it's only to be expected that they would chafe at the sight of foreign troops in the streets.
And it also is a mistake to conflate an Iraqi wish for coalition forces to leave Iraq into an animosity toward the U.S. in general. Hopefully the Iraqis will think: "The sooner coalition forces leave, the sooner we can take charge of our own country, and the sooner we can become true friends on a mature diplomatic level."
Here's hoping so anyway.
Posted at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Ward Churchill and Ethnic Studies
Evidently it's pretty hard to find any Native Americans who support Colorado University professor Ward Churchill. There are a few however. According to Native American Times(emphasis mine)
One of the few to defend Churchill is Don Trent Jacobs, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University and a faculty member at Fielding Graduate Institute who also goes by the moniker of "Four Arrows." Jacobs, who says he is part Cherokee and Creek, believes that Churchill’s questionable Indian roots are not important.
"As for whether Churchill is 'Indian,' I refer to a piece I wrote in Red Ink a while back, entitled, 'On Being Indian' that quotes [novelist N. Scott] Momoday's belief that this ultimately has more to do with consciousness and experience and a spirituality than it does with blood. Far too many of our blooded brothers and sisters, including those who have become Christian fundamentalists, may be losing all three to the growing presence of U.S. dominant culture influences," Jacobs writes.
This is a classic example of academic moral relativism and the hot war being waged by the liberal arts academy on the value of empirical proof. The fact of a person's lineage doesn't matter; the things that do matter are "consciousness", "experience", exposure to "dominant culture".
The phrase "dominant culture" is the flashing strobe light here. It is a sure-fire indicator that we're dealing with an analysis grounded in cultural Marxism, and it highlights an important point about the Ward Churchill brouhaha: The basic premise of Churchill's "Some People Push Back" essay should have surprised no one. Although couched in incendiary terms, the basic ideas of the piece would scarcely raise an eyebrow in any state university graduate English department.
As Glenn Reynolds and many others have pointed out, the real scandal lies in how this non-Ph.D.-holding quasi-Native American could rise to the top of a very competive professional pyramid.
Site Update
The Bernoulli Effect remains a work in progress--I'm working on getting permalinks enabled, Sitemeter installed and the improving the general look of the site.
Posted at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)February 07, 2005
The Farcical "Balanced Approach" to Literacy Instruction
Am I missing something here? From a story on reading instruction in the Washinton Times, of all places:
Research shows that 90 percent of students can learn reading from phonics instruction but only 10 percent from whole-word instruction, says Elizabeth Primas, director of literacy of reading and language arts at District of Columbia Public Schools. "The balanced approach means we break it down for children," Ms. Primas says, adding that children are allowed to learn at their own pace.
Why do we need a "balanced" approach if phonics is 90% successful? Answer: we don't. The "balanced approach" is a well-known proxy for the whole language method, which is a documented disaster.
I'll have a lot more on this in the days to come. Grrrr...
Posted at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)Conservatives vs. Republicans
President Bush is going to push for sharp cuts in farm subsidies. That’s great news, and it touches on a an interesting and largely ignored subject: the difference between being a Republican and being a conservative. Most people fail to realize that the two are not interchangeable. The Republican Party is, of course, the traditional party of business. Conservatism as a political philosophy holds that free markets and competition are essential to a successful society. The conflict becomes obvious when you consider that, once established, the last thing an established business wants is competition. I’m no expert on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but here in Houston it led to a situation where Clear Channel and Infinity control a huge chunk of the radio market.
Bruce Bartlett writes:
Big businesses are much more inclined to support governmental solutions to the problems they face because they have the muscle to get them. Government bailouts and trade protection are seldom, if ever, granted to small businesses, only to big ones with high profiles and many employees. It is doubtful that the Bush administration would impose tariffs, as it did for the steel industry, on an industry comprised of many small firms instead of a few large ones.
Bruce's article is well worth reading in its entirety.
Let’s hope that the farm subsidy cuts contemplated by the Bush administration are a sign that attitude is changing.
Official first post
The Bernoulli Effect is on the air! Whoop-te-doo...
The odds of more than a few people reading this blog are slim...yet I’m exhilarated all the same. Even though I feel like I’m broadcasting on a 500 watt radio station from a small island in the South Pacific, with a little more thought the analogy doesn’t hold. I’m really (figuratively) broadcasting in the middle of Manhattan—the potential for a vast audience is there; it’s up to me, and good fortune, to find it.
The rise of the blogosphere is certainly an epochal event. Although I’m behind the curve as a blogger (according to Jeff Jarvis, Nick Denton says 40,000 new blogs are being created every day), a huge section of the news-consuming public still is clearly unaware of the real power of the blogosphere. There’s room for lots of growth.
At present, you can make one big division: those that understand blogs, and those that don’t. Among those that don’t, there are subdivisions: honest misunderstanding, willful disinformation, and just plain ignorance. One of the oft-repeated slanders against bloggers is that we are uneducated, extremist, reactionary scribblers sitting around in our pajamas. Even a cursory tour through the TTLB Ecosystem will put paid to that, and it applies to left-wing as well as right wing blogs. Sure, there is faulty analysis and bad writing, but it’s just breathtaking to see the number of little-known bloggers who are offering up really top-notch observation and analysis.
Though I’ve always been inherently suspicious of populism, the rise of the blogosphere may change my mind: it truly marshals an army of millions of experts—micro-experts, if you will, people who can comment on maybe only one topic, but it happens to be a topic they’ve spent twenty years making a living at.
I’ll never forget my visceral excitement back in early September, when the Rathergate scandal was unfolding. I’m much better at analysis than prediction, but I knew with certainty then that I was witnessing something of historic importance. The only readers I may ever get might be misdirected physics students, but I can’t help but give it a try. It’s just too exciting to not join in.
February 05, 2005
Success...
Crash course in html and CSS continuing. Got the horizontal rule added. Now I'm going to ride my bike--I think I'll take the hardtail out.
Posted at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)February 04, 2005
Testing, again...
Testing the separator formatting. I'll be fixing this raggedy template soon.
Posted at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)Testing, testing, testing....
All right then. I've finally got at least minimal functionality, and the domain is visible on the net.
A real "first post" is coming soon.
Posted at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)