Dodd Harris hogties, skins and eviserates some brainless academic who uses bad science to malign chivalry as sexism.
I do so adore the hunter-gatherer type. [Clapping wildly for Dodd]
It would be fair to say that I have "issues" with men who think women in general are less capable than men, and I've gone head to head with a few who do (Note: I win). I don't, however, see how being such a male twit is supposed to conflate with opening doors for women and in general being chivalrous. While I'm capable of opening doors, and have done so for men on occasion, guys sure do score points if they get there first (especially if they manage to do so w/o making it seem like they tried). Why would that be a bad thing? As for women staying home to raise children... This country would be a lot better off if in every family one of the two parents did that. I know it's not always possible, but just because an ideal is not always doable doesn't mean it should cease being the ideal. And you know what? I think 9 times out of 10 - or even 99 out of 100 - the woman really is better suited to be the at-home parent. I admire families who've made that choice.
Besides, I just like being pampered. There, I said it. And let me add that a man who's good at respectful chivalry will find the rewards quite worth the effort.
Well. I could rail on about this forever, but Dodd, being the chivalrous man that he is, has taken that burden from my weary, fragile shoulders. So ya'll just go on over and see how a Southern man gets the job done.
I ordered an elliptical trainer online and it arrived today. We won't discuss how I got it up the three flights of steps to my apartment, other than to say that the UPS man was very sweet and sometimes I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Now I'm faced with a pile of pieces and a sack of screws and bolts, thinking to myself, Where's a guy when you need one?
I may or may not be functional enough to post for a while. Off to find a phillips screwdriver in my toolbox. I wonder if I can use that cordless electric thingy...?
UPDATE: ADULATION ACCEPTED! Yes, folks, it is now 5:15 p.m. and I just finished putting together my elliptical trainer (bowing to thunderous applause). I figured out halfway through that those little L shaped bolts were actually the screwdrivers I was supposed to use even though the instructions said I'd need a phillips, which I didn't. No electric thingy was required, no stripping of threads occurred, and everything I got in the box found a home in the trainer. My hands smell like axle grease, but I'm very happy with my afternoon's work!
Now if I could just find those batteries for the console...
Oh, and in response to Jimmy in comments - women like me are independent but not stupid. As you can tell, if I have to put together an elliptical trainer I can do it. But I wouldn't mind the role of admiring a man as he does it and thanking him very nicely afterward. Much more fun for me, he'd probably get it done faster than me anyway, and I'd have an elliptical trainer good to go at the end of it all that way too.
Although I will confess that sometimes it's just way fun to get down into it and get grease under my fingernails and haul out all those tools in my toolbox. Yes, I liked playing in the mud as a kid too.
I just talked with a reporter for a national media outlet; I can't tell you which one because she asked that the project she's working on not be publicized at this point. She emailed me yesterday, and I called her back today only to learn that she didn't need to interview me just yet and maybe not at all, depending on how the program development goes. So, naturally, I asked her if I could interview her about media bias.
She had a lot of interesting things to say about how viewers respond to their programs, but she was not willing to discuss her own story development nor speculate on the presence or lack of bias on the part of other journalists. Given that her beat is media, I understand her unwillingness to give much in the way of her own opinion. She did give a little bit though, that I found curious: She said that some media outlets are open about their bias, something I agree with completely. I said, such as? She said, well, I think it's obvious that the WSJ opinion page is biased and they'd admit it. I said, like what? She said, I don't read the WSJ, I can't say. Then I said, what about the NY Times, do you think that it's biased? And she said, I don't know about their opinion page, I only read their news information. So, I asked, where do you get your news information? She said... I can't tell you.
She highlighted another thing I think is true and important to remember: Viewers/readers judge the information they receive based on their own filters. She thinks that's where what's called "media bias" comes from - the filter of the viewer. She says they will get emails about the same story where one rails at them for being extremely conservative and another blasts their liberal spin. The Israeli/Palestinian situation is particularly fraught; they'll get an email saying, "I can't believe you are so pro-Israel, why don't you just go anchor the show from there?" and another one saying, "You're so pro-Palestinian, how can you do that??"
That was when I asked her how she makes sure her own stories are free of bias. I said, every story has some nugget of fact in it, and the goal is not just to get the facts right but to honestly represent the interpretations of those facts too. So, how do you do that? And she said, I cover the media, we don't have 18 shades of gray where you have that problem; we look at how media covers things. So I said, some of the more conservative media have been saying that Howell Raines is taking the NY Times in a more liberal direction, not just in the editorial section but in its coverage of the news itself. Is that the kind of thing you'd cover? Theoretically, yes, she said. Have you? I asked. No, I've not, she said, but I don't know if it's been done in the past.
All in all, she seemed a very nice person without any kind of agenda, as much as I could tell from our conversation. Given her job, I can also see that she would not want to see her viewpoints about media bias out in the public marketplace - or even to have formed a definitive opinion about it. But she deflected every question about whether individual journalists may have filters similar to those of the viewing audience that might affect their reporting, saying she couldn't speculate on what forces impact other journalists (and yes, I said - but you did speculate on the viewers. She said, that's not speculation, it's fact that they can see the same show and perceive it totally differently, because I've seen the emails they send. Valid.). When I finally asked straight out, can reporters be biased? She said, well, they're human!
And that answers that.
(If it seems that this post is a bit disjointed, which it does feel like to me, it's because the conversation was too. Journalists caught off guard do not make for the smoothest, most comprehensive interviewees, for valid reasons. While naturally I would have liked for her to be more forthcoming, she exercised her responsibility as she saw it to maintain neutrality. I appreciated her willingness to discuss it with me at all.)
Americans have Been Advised to have a "terrorism kit" on hand in the event of bio- or chemical terrorism. Basically, it's food, batteries, radio and duct tape and plastic to cover the windows. Now WABC 770 in NYC is reporting that some hardware stores and megaplexes like Home Depot have sold out of duct tape already.
Hmmm. I sense a conspiracy with the duct tape manufacturers.
I need some duct tape and plastic, but not because of bioterrorism - when the wind blows around here it comes through the edges of my windows until I'm an ice cube in my own home. I guess now is not a good time to fix that. My big question is... unless I have an air transfer system that will pull in and clean outside air before sending it into my apartment, and will securely exude dead air from my apartment... what's the point?
Just askin', is all. I think my safest course is moving into my parents' basement in the middle of Nowhere, USA. At least I'll have good home cookin'.
There is a serious point there, though. I had a long conversation with a friend last night about terrorism and our risk here in the US. She is concerned that we're going to have terrorist attacks all over the country, and Americans are not ready for it. She doesn't think we take it seriously enough.
And this is what I said: I saw the WTC towers burning, and smelled the smoke of bodies burning in the rubble. It was a place I knew, although not as well as those who live in Manhattan. I work in a city where terrorists have based their operations for over a decade. Every day when I go to work, I notice - although not always in the front of my mind - that the WTC isn't there. I wonder - not always in the front of my mind - if today there will be a suicide bombing attack near my office, maybe while I'm on my way to buy a slice at a nearby pizzeria. Every morning I know - not always in the front of my mind - that I could come home that night or I could be dying in a hospital riddled with nails from a homemade bomb. When I was in Manhattan with a friend, he wanted to go across the street to pass a collection of firetrucks with lights flashing - he said terrorists will sometimes call in police or fire before blowing up a bomb so they can have a greater toll. I've wondered how far the radioactive effects of a dirty bomb can spread - am I safe, seven miles away from Manhattan? Yesterday I was thinking that I'm glad I'm going to upstate New York to meet with my friend this Saturday, instead of going into Manhattan, because going into the city involves the PATH train and subways. The thought of sarin gas was on my mind. The potential for terrorism happening near me is not a remote, academic one.
So I'm very conscious of the risks that attend my day. I haven't lived in Bosnia or Israel, so I can't say I know what it's like to live with the actual drumbeat of terroristic death on a daily basis. But I think my concerns about terrorism are legitimate - as Mark Steyn said in his RWN interview:
I'd be very surprised if we get through the next five years without a terrible catastrophe in a western city.
But what I'm not is generally fearful. I know every day when I leave my apartment that I could be killed by a drunk driver, or shot during a robbery. There are all kinds of risks in life, and this is one more. I hope I don't have to deal with it. I'll take what precautions I can. I'll occasionally play out scenarios in my mind of what I'll do in this or that type of situation. But the reality is the majority of my safety is dependent on others - the US military, police, people's willingness to obey the law. The part that belongs to me is not to wring my hands, but to live my life with a consciousness of the risks, doing what I can to circumvent them, pray that our country will be spared, and stand ready to do what I can to lessen the chances of terrorist success.
I hear duct tape makes great handcuffs and gags.
Go read it now. You'll be glad you did.
The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta is a combination FBI and university research center of disease in the United States. They research disease and what causes them, and investigate any type of widespread illness in the US population - for instance, they were called in on the anthrax spread after 9/11, and would also be called in the instance of something like the Legionnaire's Disease. But increasingly in recent years, they have branched out into other areas, including a recent report on the effects of cohabiting before marriage on divorce - and some people are not happy about it:
[Steve Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a Foxnews.com columnist] and other critics believe the CDC has no business doing research on lifestyle matters, and wonder when cohabiting couples, marriage and divorce became public health issues, especially in light of concerns like bioterrorism and anthrax..."They have too much money and they're not focused on what they're supposed to be doing," [Milloy] charged. "It's bureaucracy out of control. They're involved in nonsense like this all the time."
..."The public health establishment is notorious for trying to label absolutely anything they care about as a public health issue," {Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute] said. "In this case [of the marriage-living together report], the data are really old. And people are asking, what does this have to do with disease?"
Of course the CDC folks disagree:
CDC experts at the public health agency's National Center for Health Statistics said the agency studies many issues and defended last month's report entitled "Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States" as related to its overall mission."The CDC is a larger and more diverse organization than some people might be aware of," said statistician William Mosher, who co-authored the study. "The National Center for Health Statistics collects birth and death data, and we also do surveys, including this one, that help shed light on births and family formation," he said.
"It's not just about infectious disease. Congress gave them a wider mission than that," he added.
I have to agree with Fumento and Milloy here - the CDC needs to deal with disease and leave these other things alone. They've also gotten heavily into gun control issues, another area that I think is not their business. And it's one thing to give the numbers, and something else again to make political statements about what those numbers mean.
NY Times military correspondent Michael Gordon is writing a web-only "dispatch" column on the move toward and likely engagement of war in Iraq. In the newest column, Gordon tries to make something of the morning meeting of Aghanistan coalition forces representives with US military commander General Tommy Franks. Unfortunately, he not only doesn't make any sensible connection, he doesn't even describe the meetings or tell us anything significant about them. Instead, he goes off into an analysis of Bush unilateralism. To be fair, he also points out that France's motives for its current stance are likely not pure either, but he takes a number of shots at the Bushies in the course of the column. I anticipate that this will not be a very straightforward coverage of the war. I'm just hoping for "coherent".
This is eye-opening:
A controversial African-American history initiative may be incorporated into the curriculum of public schools across the nation as early as September 2003. Twenty-four black scholars are currently finalizing lesson plans that focus on events such as the "Black Holocaust" and issues like slavery reparations that are typically not addressed by kids' textbooks.Dennis Smith, a Milwaukee, Wis., teacher, is part of the elite group of African-American scholars from across the country who were chosen by the Thomas Day Education Project (TDEP) to participate in its 'Let It Shine' program. Both rely on federal grant money from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support their educational efforts.
Smith seeks to trace the history of all civilization to Africa and show how it emerged from there; he wants to expose the "Black Holocaust" with a direct connection from there to black reparations; and he wants young black Americans to know "where they came from" so they will know "where they are now".
Interesting. You know, my ancestors in Ireland, Scotland and Wales didn't have an easy time at home and faced some very difficult times once they came here. I'm interested to learn about that, but I'm not "where I am now" because of "where I came from". I'm American, not Irish or Scottish or Welsh - although I'm proud of my heritage. I do think it fills in some gaps to understand your history - for instance, my hair is a dark blonde edging toward red, and I know that's from my Scottish ancestors. And when I discovered recently that my Jacksonian political approach was common amongst my ancestors too, I thought that was very cool. Smith wants black kids to know what part of Africa they came from, and I think that would be neat. Just as there are some physical characteristics common among people from different parts of Europe, or from the Far East, different tribes in Africa have different characteristics that might manifest now. For example, one family where I go to church are all very tall - the girls all 6 feet or taller - and another is very short, quite a bit shorter than me at 5'8". I've wondered if that's connected to their heritage or if it's just a self-selection artifact of partner choice over the years (tall marrying tall, short marrying short).
But those are interesting things, not necessary things. I'm no more or less talented, intelligent, capable because I am from Scots rather than Russian or Japanese or Watusi stock. I think it would be great to teach all American kids about the history of all great civilizations, and in our increasingly mixed race classrooms for all children to know the ancestoral history of their Russian or Japanese or Watusi classmate. That should be about an appreciation of differences, however, not an effort to say that someone is now better or worse than another person now because of that ancestry.
Scary that they want to put this in kindergartens. Here's what David Almasi, spokesman for the black conservative group Project 21, had to say:
"If you'd start teaching kids this in kindergarten, by the time they're in fifth or sixth grade, they're going to take it as fact and it's going to be going for the rest of their lives thinking that something is right when it's not," he said.Almasi said Smith's curriculum could be compared to corporate sensitivity training sessions that are meant to foster diversity and equality amongst employees of all races, religions, sexes and sexual orientations.
Similar to sensitivity training, Almasi suspects that Smith's overall intention is to "strip everyone down to zero and start building up" as equals.
None of this is new, either the efforts to create a superior class as a means to even out earlier oppression, or my objection to it. I guess sometimes I just need to say it again. And we need to make sure that curriculums like Smith's are cut off before they reach the children.
The Arab News is not happy about how things are going in the move to disarm Saddam.
One editorial says the US should listen to France, Germany and Belgium, even while chastising those countries for their attitude toward Turkey:
Arabs are highly appreciative of the stand taken by France, Germany, Russia and now Belgium against Washington’s proposed attack on Iraq. There is as a result a great deal of goodwill toward the four. Likewise there is a great deal of indignation at the vitriol being flung at them by the Bush administration, notably by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. To compare Germany to Cuba and Libya because, like them, it will not jump to Washington’s commands, is preposterous. To call it and France “Old Europe” was a deliberate insult. To ridicule Belgium because it has had the audacity to join them in blocking NATO defense equipment being shipped to Turkey is downright offensive. This is megaphone diplomacy spiked with petulance. These countries have a right to disagree with the US...The decision by France, Germany and Belgium to block the supply of NATO equipment to Turkey, which fears a possible attack by Iraq, is altogether different and a serious mistake at that... The reality is that France, Germany and Belgium acted as they did purely to spite the US. That is politics — a case of giving as good as they get.
Well, they're right about the spite part.
The second editorial compares the current escalation toward war to WWI, not WWII:
Washington compares Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and the situation to the run-up to World War II. World War I is a more frightening comparison. It started with ultimatums and troop movements which took on an unstoppable momentum of their own, resulting in the most lunatic, most destructive war the world has ever known. By the time it was over, those Prussian, Russian, Ottoman, and Hapsburg empires that thought they could control events had been swept into the history books and the maps of Europe and the Middle East entirely redrawn. None of that was foreseen in 1914.There is a chilling feeling that this is August 1914 all over again. Prayers for peace are desperately needed.
I agree about the prayers. They manage to get a few digs in at the Bushies though:
...because of the Bush administration’s steadfast, arrogant refusal to be swayed from its determination to topple Saddam Hussein, all we can contemplate is a world on the brink of war.
Oh, and they think that the US only comes to talk to the Arabs when they want something. Hmmm... Naturally the Saudis themselves always operate altruistically with the purest of motives.
The viciously anti-Semitic and anti-American Arab News cartoonist Mahmoud Kahil died yesterday in Britain after surgery.
According to the article about him in the Arab News:
Kahil was at heart a humanist. He cared for the poor, the oppressed and the dispossessed. It did not matter what the ethnic or religious beliefs these people held...No one has exposed Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon’s bloody history better than he, with his fine lines.
It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?
The Carnival of the Vanities is up for this week over at John Ray's place. Check it out!
CPO Sparkey recounts the sometimes laugh-out-loud funny preparation for and birth of his first daughter, who turned 14 today.
My brother just sent me this link to Oobi, which is a very fun site for kids - like me and my almost-3-year-old niece Haydon. You can play music with Oobi, or draw with Oobi... Your kids will love it.
Proof continues to build that the peacemongers are determined to believe in the face of any and all evidence that 1) Saddam isn't a threat to the US and 2) Saddam isn't connected to Al Qaeda. See, they have to believe those things to have any purchase at all in the debate about war - to support their "they've not proven their case" argument.
After Colin Powell, the peacemonger's hope in the Bush administration, presented his devastating information on Saddam's activities to the UN last week, I heard this:
"Dick Cheney got to him!"
Today, Sean Hannity played the tape even the State Department says is likely Bin Laden calling Muslims to attack Americans and their allies, also speaking of standing in solidarity and partnership with Iraq. A caller to Hannity's show said, "How do they know it's him?" and somewhere else (I really should have written it down) I read that the CIA likely faked it.
It's not new information that some people will not be persuaded. These instances just make that fact undeniable. And that ends even the marginal value they had in the debate.
I've got several things going on today so likely no more posting until tonight.
Have a good day.
I don't follow the awards shows much - of any kind - because I don't generally care who wins what. It's not about what's good, it's about who's in favor with the Hollywood elite or elite-wanna-bes, and who spreads enough money around to get nominated. If I needed any confirmation, the nominations for this year's Oscars provide it amply.
LOTR II isn't nominated for cinematography? For costume? For makeup? Screenplay? Director? No actor or actress nominations?
Michael Moore is nominated for something other than scum of the earth?
I think I'll be watching my LOTR I DVD during the Oscars. It's a lot more connected to reality.
UPDATE: Could this be the real reason LOTR II didn't sweep the Oscars this year?
Steven Den Beste nails Reuters in an anti-American spin.
Wheeeee!!!!
Finally a candidate I can fully support:
Well, ok, mostly support. I'm still not sure about his policy on the War on Drugs. But I'm open to being convinced, and you can't fault his position on bombing.
UPDATE: You too can help by just posting a link to Ipse Dixit saying "Dodd for President" on your own site - without the quotes, of course. But you knew that.
Lee Harris dealt with death and martyr cults in his Tech Central Station column on Friday. His basic point is that modern liberalism is founded on a Hobbesian calculation that everyone equally fears death of self, and this fear can be the basis of negotiation between parties of disparate interests. That’s the world that the liberals in the US and Europe live in. It needs as its foundational premise that the worst thing that can happen to me is that I will die, so that the ultimate escalation is a threat to kill the other person. A following premise is that nothing else in life is so important to me as the fact of living
Because of this belief that individual life is the most precious possession, the liberal (especially the vehemently leftist) is ill-suited to negotiate with someone who sees his life not as a treasure to be hoarded, but a currency to be spent in exchange for something more desirable – an afterlife. Many liberals are already flummoxed by the insistence of a significant portion of the American electorate that not only is there a God, but a Heaven and Hell; that there is a spiritual law that must be followed, even when personal inclinations would dictate a different path. Because they are grounded so thoroughly in life on earth, liberals who find that position to be marching on the edge of insanity instead find other things for the behavior of Christians to mean: they’re anti-women, racist, etc.
In a similar way, the more leftist of the liberals really cannot grasp what is happening in the war on terrorism. They continually cast about for earth-based reasons why the current conflict is occurring. It’s about poverty. It’s about oil. It’s about a few insane mullahs drawing an oppressed people into their insanity, and if the oppressors (which regardless of where it occurs winds up being the US) were to stop their oppression the Islamists wouldn’t be drawn to kill. The leftists show a very basic misunderstanding of people who are not afraid to die, and die horribly.
I don’t think you need to have a strong religious faith, or even any faith at all, to be able to see the depth of fanaticism and the disconnection from life on this earth that is evidenced by the Islamic terrorists we’re fighting. I do think those who have a strong faith of their own understand best the extent to which the religious philosophy of the Islamists totally permeates their being. They cannot be separated from it. And the corollary to that is that they are not operating out of desperation, but rather out of choice based on their worldview. When they engage in something that will most likely cause their death, they are not running from something, like oppression, but rather they are running to something – a glorious hereafter where they will have all the adulation and grandeur of living that they have not had here, a grandeur enhanced by the level of violence that attends their death. Instead of seeing as a savior someone who would prevent their death, they see that person as an obstruction, an obstacle to be overcome. For a radical Islamist, an offer to give him something less than his goal in exchange for his life is an insult.
Negotiation in a liberal world is a game of diplomatic chicken where it’s understood the ultimate escalation is death (and that can be a symbolic death of economy, power, pride, and other things), and the person with the willingness to risk going closest to death will win. Liberals believe everyone has a line they won’t cross, that negotiating is about finding where that line is and threatening to cross it as a means of gaining advantage. This presupposes a range of possible outcomes that are on a sliding scale of desirability. The problem with the Islamists is that they have one goal with no opening for negotiation, as noted above. There is no range or sliding scale. And when liberals – be they American leftists or EUnuchs – offer concessions as a means of opening negotiations, the Islamists take it as a gain and move closer to their goal. The leftists then decide that the pain caused by the Islamists’ earthly circumstances were worse than they thought, so they offer more concessions. And so it goes. Eventually the leftists have to show some measure of force to prove that they do have some position of strength, but they always shy away from the final step - and the Islamists know it. They have seen the Western world back down again and again and again. Each time the Islamists move closer to their goal – the goal that has not changed at any point. First they were contained in a relatively small geographic area. Then they got footholds elsewhere. They made inroads into Western countries – Europe, the US. Although they play it as a success, 9/11 was a miscalculation caused by the conflation of their arrogance and the continual appeasement of the West. And they’re deeply involved in what’s happening in Iraq. While Saddam Hussein is not an actively religious man, he understands the value of religion as a tool, as his many mosques to himself show. His interests are grounded in the world in a way the left understands, but his instincts are those of the Islamists – dominate at any cost.
And now the left in its sense of superiority toward these Oppressed Peoples, who still need that opiate of the masses, is playing its pretend game of negotiation thinking that the other side is fearful and dealing at least in some measure in good faith because the left can (with its chained grizzly, the US) wreak death at will. The Islamists and their cohort, the megalomaniacal Saddam, are watching with a similar if not greater sense of superiority knowing that they will bear those deaths when the time comes, and they believe their will to die is greater than the West’s will to inflict death. That the West, as represented by the leftist appeasers, will move the line of actual engagement further and further back – a view that is supported by recent history.
As a corollary to their inability to see that the Islamists really and truly do not fear death, the left is also impeded by its inability to acknowledge evil – to recognize that there is a desire for domination so very deep that it is implacable to any arguments of reason or humanity. They have become so accustomed to viewing the mostly benign strength of the US as the darkest wickedness that when they encounter the real thing they again seek other reasons for the actions that evil takes. It is a willful blindness that will eventually sacrifice the good in the West, the Middle East and the Far East, blind to its own encroaching darkness of heart, unless it too is contained.
I think this is going to have to be a regular feature, since I get up in arms fairly frequently over language, grammar and other relatively unimportant matters.
Today's peeve is the word "fortuitous". It does not mean "a happy occurrence", at least not yet. It's moving in that way. It does mean, "an accidental or unforeseen circumstance" which can be either good or bad. So it is equally fortuitous to run into your nutcase ex-girlfriend while out on a date with the woman you desperately want to marry and to find that you and your future father-in-law are rabid fans of the same sports teams.
I'm not a stickler on this word, other than I try to use it in its proper way. That means I won't hit you over the head with my ruler if you use it the other way. After all, it's getting there in some dictionaries. I like how it's put on Dictionary.com:
for·tu·i·tous( P ) Pronunciation Key (fôr-t-ts, -ty-)
adj.
1. Happening by accident or chance. See Synonyms at accidental.
2. Usage Problem.Happening by a fortunate accident or chance.
Lucky or fortunate.
I love that Usage Problem in italics; it just evokes a language professor furrowing his brow about these young whippersnappers corrupting a fine old word - not angry, just... discouraged. Here's what the Usage Problem is:
Usage Note: In its best-established sense, fortuitous means “happening by accident or chance.” Thus, a fortuitous meeting may have either fortunate or unfortunate consequences. For decades, however, the word has often been used in reference to happy accidents, as in The company's profits were enhanced as the result of a fortuitous drop in the cost of paper. This use may have arisen because fortuitous resembles both fortunate and felicitous. Whatever its origin, the use is well established in the writing of reputable authors. ·The additional use of fortuitous to mean “lucky or fortunate,” is more controversial, as in He came to the Giants in June as the result of a fortuitous trade that sent two players back to the Reds. This use dates back at least to the 1920s, when H.W. Fowler labeled it a malapropism, but it is still widely regarded as incorrect.
I daresay that by the time my youngest nieces reach adulthood, this Usage Problem will be one no longer, because fortuitous in its original sense will have lost its utility like gay has now. It's not a huge thing, but I mourn the little morphs that take precision from the language.
Of course, we do also pick up words like "morph"...
It's so sweet to be #1 and #2 at the same time.
But then, it's so sweet to be a basketball fan in Kentucky.
The new Sports Illustrated College Basketball Power Rankings has the University of Kentucky Wildcats as #1 in the country, with Louisville hot on its heels at #2. SI admits some struggle to decide which to put on top, but Kentucky's tougher schedule and public shaming of Florida last week finally settled it. Not that I'm complaining - I've been a UK fan since I knew about basketball, since everyone in and from Eastern Kentucky bleeds blue and loves it, and I've been a Louisville fan since attending there in the late 1980s - it's one of my alma maters. And while I'd prefer to see the Wildcats add another national championship banner to Rupp, I'd still rather Louisville get it than, say, Arizona or (shudder) Florida.
I just try to block out that my current school, Rutgers, can beat, oh, Princeton, and then only on a good day.
Periodically people send me links that I mean to post, but in the chaos that is my life they get buried in more important things, like a burning need to make chocolate chip cookies instead or, lately, cleaning out junk. Trust me, when the urge to clean takes me over, I go with it, because it's rare enough to qualify for Evening News status if I were to issue a press release. Last night I cleaned out my email inbox and came across several links I wished I had posted earlier. All are good, although by now you may have seen some of them. But if you, like me, sometimes get behind on such things, you'll be happy to have the chance to read them.
I know you've seen this: Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine nominated for a screen writing award never before given to documentaries, by the Writers Guild of America. As others have noted, it's still not going to be given to a documentary, even if Moore's is selected. Having seen it myself, I can honestly say it has all the charm and elegance of a Jason or Freddie movie, and about the same level of truth. But then these folks probably voted for The Big Lie that is Bill Clinton too, so it should be no strain for them.
Crispin Sartwell gives us a deeply considered, wisely couched response to the "barrage of doltish fallacies uttered in an insufferable whine" that is the "conservative" argument against affirmative action. He admits himself that he isn't "the biggest fan" of affirmative action (which, you see, gives him automatic credentials as an Unbiased Observer of the Argument), and apparently is horrified by "dishonest, vicious and fallacious" arguments - but that doesn't stop him from using just that line of argumentation to defend that which he is not a fan of. Naturally we should listen to him because he is a "ethicist and philosopher" in "Railroad, PA" - I'm sure that living in a rural (sounding at least) setting gives the hard-working ethicist and philosopher that little bit of Walden Pond sheen that convinces us he is Not Interested In Materialism, as are the rest of us greed-mongerers lying in wait to do some oppressed minority out of his or her place at Harvard. And just in case you didn't realize it, people who use any measures of intelligence or ability have "no idea what knowledge is or what is valuable in human life". No, you have to go to Railroad, PA, to find that out.
And finally, a lovely little piece in the National Post that gives you hope for the Canadians - Andrew Coyne's Can't see the guns for the smoke.
Shanti of Dancing with Dogs blog has started Real Women Online with a couple of friends to call attention especially to blogs by women, and to encourage women to blog either by themselves or collaboratively. She's especially highlighting blogs by Asian Indians. Pretty interesting. Of course it is - it's done by Shanti! So go check them out.
I woke up this morning before the alarm sounded, pulled out of sleep by a nightmare. I had been hired to teach, and when I was taken into the classroom it turned out to be over 60 teenagers in an oddly configured warehouse, not a standard room at all. They were rowdy and not much interested. And the topic? It was on the board: Biology and the horologistic path of evolution.
And I will tell you that I was valiantly laying the law down on the students and preparing the lecture in my head when I was thankful pushed to wakefulness by the stress. What a horrible nightmare.
Last night at a party I talked with two Russian women who came to the United States in the early 1990s, already young adults at the time. One of the two, Anna*, returned just a couple of weeks ago from a trip to Russia to visit relatives; both are in frequent contact with family there. It was a fascinating conversation, which I’ll get into more in a bit, but of course the first question I asked was – what do Russians really think of the possibility of war in Iraq?
Anna said they don’t care. They didn’t talk about it while she was there, except when one of her cousins asked her where Iraq was, and was it near Israel? They’re more concerned about Chechnya, or just getting through life day by day. Mary* had a somewhat different view. She said they didn’t care one way or another whether the United States went into Iraq, but they do bear a lot of resentment to the United States for fighting against them in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, then coming in themselves to fight Afghanistan last year. I said, it was a different country then, they were the Soviet Union and the goal of the war was different. She shrugged and said, I know, but they’re still angry, and resentful about it, even after all this time.
Mary said she wasn’t sure herself about whether the US should go into Iraq; she thinks the government knows more than she does, and that if she knew more she could make a decision. But she can’t say yes or no on what she knows now. Anna said she reluctantly agrees we should go, although she wishes we could have peaceful resolution. The two of us talked for a while about Saddam, and she, like me, believes he is not going to be deterred. He has to die. The question is… how many others will have to die in the process?
The conversation covered a wide range of topics, and they were able to offer a unique perspective as women who are here legally, both having green cards, and both with close family in Russia still (Anna’s parents and brother live there, as well as other family; Mary’s brother and other family are there, although her mother and sister are here). Here’s a few more tidbits, from their perspective:
--Average Russians see all Americans as Bill Gates, with huge amounts of money and no limits on their credit cards. Their primary knowledge of America comes from American movies and products; before Mary arrived here, she said she thought of Americans as people who partied all the time, who didn’t care about anything and rarely did any work. She neither liked nor respected Americans – something which has changed 180 degrees since she moved here.--Russians make on average $150 a month. Few can afford their own apartments, and it’s common for two generations to live together. Even with that, they often have to work two jobs to make ends meet. The younger generation – 20s and early 30s – tend to see their parents as “owing” them, feeling they have a right to a better life and their parents should sacrifice to give it to them. There’s little sense of individual initiative, and a pervasive fatalism, a belief that there’s really no opportunity for a better future so why look past right now.
--Russians resent Americans generally, finding them “cocky”, and resent that the US as such a young country is so much more successful than Russia with its many centuries of history. And yet, Mary said, they also don’t see themselves as able to make things change in their own country. Even when they hate the US, they see it as a model – they’ll say, “We hate the US” if asked what they think, yet if you ask them where they want their country to be in 15 years, they’ll say, “Like the US.”
--Mary said that her relatives in Russia think of her and her mother – most especially her mother – as a traitor because she moved to the United States and didn’t come back. Anna said her family expects that she will finish school here and return to the US, but Anna plans to stay and become a US citizen.
--The ways of life in the two countries are so different that it’s difficult for one to understand the other, Mary said. For example, she told her brother that in the US, she could only take a hot shower for about 20 minutes at a time because then the hot water tank was empty. He was amazed, because in Moscow, where he lives, they can leave the hot water running all day and it never runs out – in their system, the water comes into the building hot, it isn’t heated in each building separately. Mary said that results in a lot of waste because people will just leave the water running with no sense that it’s a resource that’s limited. Her brother thought she should be able to have as much hot water as she wanted. On the other hand, she said Americans find it difficult to understand that in Moscow, for two months every summer the hot water is turned off completely in part of the city. If you want a hot shower you have to go to the other side of town. It’s an accepted thing there, but she’s right – it’s not something I’d be very accepting about.
--Moving around within Russia is still very restricted, similar to the way it was under the USSR. People “belong” to a city, and must get permission to live in another. For example, Anna’s friends bought an apartment at great expense - $30,000 – in Moscow, but now they have to get permission to live in it because they are from another city. It’s a bureaucratic process, and one that may not turn out in their favor. They likened moving between provinces like trying to move from Mexico to the United States.
--Anna said that during her three weeks in Russia, she did not see Putin on television once. Both Anna and Mary believe he is a figurehead for the billionaires who really run the country. Mary said he should be on television 24/7 while the economy is so bad, explaining to the people what they need to do, what he is going to do, how the country is going to improve to turn the economy around. It isn’t happening – he’s off skiing in Siberia instead. They don’t see evidence of a plan for positive change either on the governmental level or in the minds of the people.
--Prostitution and trafficking in women and children is common within Russian, and Russian women are also sold into other countries for sexual use. This is something I knew a little about, as I know that women from the Soviet bloc countries are many times brought illegally into the US with promise of legitimate jobs as housekeepers and babysitters, only to find that while they do have those jobs they are also expected to be a sex partner for the husband in the household where they work. Since they are here illegally, and have no recourse for protection, often they acquiesce. (That’s not limited to women from the Soviet countries – a friend of mine here illegally from the Caribbean said that other women from there who are here illegally are often victims of sexual predators, with the same inability to go to the police about it.)
--Neither Anna nor Mary see much hope for Russia in the near future. They think things will gradually change, but there won’t be significant, important change until the generation now in their teens, with no Soviet background and with greater contacts with the West, are in charge of things.
--Both women are very happy to be in the United States; Anna said “we are very fortunate, to have been chosen” to get into the country legally, and have the opportunity to become citizens. Mary said she now has great respect for Americans, and admires how hard they work and try to get good things for their children. They both thought that the attachment to the concepts of freedom and individual responsibility is what makes the difference between the countries. Anna said, You can’t give that to the Russian people, you can’t get inside their heads and make them learn it.
I know this is somewhat disjointed, but we covered a lot of ground and often skipped from topic to topic, so it wasn’t a cohesive whole. I just wanted to share with you parts that I thought were particularly interesting.
And hi, Mary and Anna! I hope you like your pseudonyms, and the site in general!
*I told them I would blog this conversation, and both asked that I not use their real names.
Ky Governor Paul Patton actually cried during his budget address this past Wednesday when he asked legislators to raise taxes in the state, in an effort to show just how much he cares about the cut in services that will happen otherwise. You can see the video here.
Patton is just beyond belief, and in my judgment an active harm to the citizens of Kentucky. Last fall the married governor confessed to having an affair with a married party operative - he cried then too. She claims that he used his influence to first get her state approvals for her nursing home business, then when she broke it off with him he used his influence again to have her nursing home inspected and basically shut down for violations. He's currently under investigation on those charges.
Earlier this year, Patton tried to blackmail the legislature into approving his budget by releasing prisoners before their sentences were completed because, he said, the state didn't have the money to pay for their incarceration. He even admitted that was his reasoning, although he didn't call it blackmail. Now he's sobbing behind the lectern because the state's children are going to have their educational opportunities cut if the legislature doesn't raise taxes.
Patton has been the most pathetic, bar none, governor Kentucky has had in the memory of anyone in my family, and from what I can tell he'd run a tight race for worst governor ever. I think he's a liar, a panderer, an immoral and greedy powermonger who's arrogance has finally caught up with him. Kentucky can't get shut of him fast enough. He's a Democrat, but even they are distancing themselves from him as much as possible - both sides of the aisle are calling him "irrelevant". I don't think he's irrelevant, I think he's dangerous.
It's a prime opportunity for the Republicans to retake the state house, which hasn't happened in quite a while in Kentucky. All I can say is, if the Republicans can't win the next gubernatorial race, they may as well pack their bags and move to Bora Bora, because they're useless to Kentucky.
I use Romenesko's Media News a lot as a source for articles on odd things in the media, including bias. I hadn't really thought of it as biased or unbiased, but Andrew Sullivan says it is (and makes a good case):
ROMENESKO WATCH: Gay left supporter James Romenesko runs a blog linking to liberal stories and opinion in the media. If Eric Alterman sneezes, there's an item. But if someone right-of-center has anything to say about the media, it's ignored. A good example today: Jonah Goldberg's excellent and provocative piece about media overkill on the Columbia disaster. It's a big piece in a big paper, the Wall Street Journal. Look at what else Romenesko links to today - an end to the Miami Herald spelling bee! a college meat-eating contest! - and ask yourself the reasons for the lacuna. In fact, see if you can find any stories in the past week that deviate even slightly from left-liberal politics. Romenesko has every right to run a left-liberal blog on the media, of course. But he should be candid about his biases. He's a propagandist. And a very good one.
Interesting that Sullivan uses my usual reasoning - bias isn't the problem as much as unacknowledged bias is. I guess I'll be looking a little closer at Romenesko now.
UPDATE: Ooppss!!! Looks like it's not Media News (or MediaNews) anymore. It's just Romenesko.
We hear a lot about Hollywood peacemongering idiots, but as the WSJ points out today, not all stars are on that track. I think it's a good idea to explicitly support those who take a strong stance for the United States and for doing the right thing in Iraq. In that spirit, I suggest that we make a blogospheric effort to spread the word about Ron Silver's new film, Festival in Cannes, an indie film which hits theaters in March.
Silver isn't alone in his stance, but he did take it to the big guys:
Our own newspaper [WSJ] reported the story of actor Ron Silver angrily challenging the president of the European parliament at Davos after the latter took a swipe at so-called American imperialism.
According to James Lileks, Silver isn't precisely ready for the Conservative Hall of Fame, but he should be applauded for two very important things: He stood up for the country, and he didn't hold a press conference or wear a goofy t-shirt to get publicity about it. He wasn't, in other words, using his celebrity to "make a statement" to his adoring public. He said what needed to be said to the person it needed saying to, in a situation where he could very easily have been shot down publically. He took a risk. I say, go buy your tickets! Make Festival in Cannes the biggest indie hit in recent memory!
After all, it can't be worse than Bowling for Columbine.
[Thanks to Dodd for the WSJ link.]
This is pretty funny.
[Link via A Mad Tea Party]
Sometimes the best part of a post winds up being the comments. While the post itself is brief, the comments here are excellent. Basically, a commenter on Ipse Dixit says that Israel is more aggressive and repressive than Iraq, and accuse Dodd of being "willfully ignorant" of the facts of the situation. Both Dodd and Brent of The Ville then wade in to establish what the facts really are. It's one of the best short discussions of the true situation in Palestine, and why it's foolish to equate Israel and Iraq, that I've seen. Thanks, guys!
Get a load of this:
NEW YORK -- The day after Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech before the U.N. Security Council Wednesday, daily newspapers in their editorials dramatically shifted their views to support the Bush administration's hard-line stance on Iraq, a new E&P; survey has found.These results come in stark contrast to those of E&P; surveys on Jan. 31 and Jan. 20. Those surveys identified strong opposition to President Bush's plans for a quick war in the majority of the country's largest newspapers. The number of newspapers advocating the use of force seemingly has grown faster in the last day or so than it had in the last month...
A once-tiny hawkish faction has grown to include 15 newspapers, three times as many as the five identified in the Jan. 31 E&P; survey.
The Dallas Morning News strongly reflected the sentiment behind calls for quick force: "The U.S. Secretary of State did everything but perform cornea transplants on the countries that still claim to see no reason for forcibly disarming Iraq."
...The cautiously pro-war camp expanded to 14 from 11 members, who generally advocated the forceful overthrow of Hussein while contending that maximal international support and preparation still should be prerequisites for any invasion.
...Even the shrinking number of war skeptics, down to 11 in this survey from 29 in the last one, seemed unsure of how to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict.
In other news, editorial pages around the country have come out strongly in favor of building an interstate system to provide easy vehicular access throughout the country. However, most are still skeptical about whether air travel will ever be a viable commercial option.
Geez. Nothing like a major newspaper being willfully ignorant and thoroughly behind the curve, is there?
It's obvious that I don't agree with the pacifist position, but I also don't agree with inviting someone into your realm - TV show, radio show, blog, whatever - to berate them, especially if in the process I hold myself up as an example of all that is good. I came across a section of a transcript on Tom Tomorrow's site of Bill O'Reilly interviewing Jeremy Glick, son of a 9/11 victim who has signed the Not In Our Name petition and is vehemently anti-war. I disagree with him, but I don't get why O'Reilly gets a pass for doing things like this:
O'REILLY: I don't want to debate world politics with you.GLICK: Well, why not? This is about world politics.
O'REILLY: Because, No. 1, I don't really care what you think.
GLICK: Well, OK.
Huh? It is about world politics. And here:
GLICK: Let me finish. You evoke 9/11 to rationalize everything from domestic plunder to imperialistic aggression worldwide.O'REILLY: OK. That's a bunch...
GLICK: You evoke sympathy with the 9/11 families.
O'REILLY: That's a bunch of crap. I've done more for the 9/11 families by their own admission -- I've done more for them than you will ever hope to do.
My contribution's bigger than your contribution! Nyah! And I must say, Glick lost his father to terrorists. That trumps any donation O'Reilly makes, if you're keeping score on relative cost to individuals. What's important in that discussion (or what should be) is philosophy of followup, not who-gave-more.
I realize that this is not the full transcript, and maybe O'Reilly was more reasonable in earlier sections of the interview. And I very much disagree with Glick. But O'Reilly does not show well here, and even though he's done some good things - like pushed for 9/11 charities to be accountable - I find him arrogant and humorless, which leaves him open to this kind of bizarre exchange. Read the whole bit that's posted on This Modern World for more context.
I just don't get why O'Reilly's so popular.
Blaster has evidence.
But I don't think it'll make Teddy a happy boy.
Because I'm in love.
He just spoke, speech carried on the radio. He threw down the gauntlet to the UN in no uncertain terms - they can stand by their resolution or go down. And he said Saddam will no doubt continue to lie, mislead, obfuscate, but, Bush said, and I quote:
"The game is over."
He summarized the information from Powell's presentation yesterday. Then his closing words were:
"Saddam will be stopped."
He took no questions.
So... bombs by Valentine's Day? Or March 1?
UPDATE: Here's the CNN story on it - interesting, including that Ft. Campbell's 101st Airborne Division received orders today to deploy.
Here's the MSNBC story, with (finally) a reason:
The main purpose of Bush’s remarks was to light a fire under the United Nations, especially France, which says it wants to give more time to the weapons inspectors, an official said.The administration believes French President Jacques Chirac holds the key to whether Bush will seek a new resolution from the Security Council. If Chirac insists on vetoing such a resolution, Bush will not seek one, the official told the Associated Press.
So the UN's relevance is now firmly tied to France. Heh.
Here's the story on FoxNews.
And Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is tightening the screws too. Interesting. (And so is the fact that in the photo with the article, Bush in the foreground is blurred out and the focus is on Powell. Why is that when Bush is the one speaking and quoted? Hmmm.)
While I enjoy politics, I'm not a political or even historical scholar, so sometimes I miss some of the historical context of current events. Stephen Den Beste has an excellent post (as usual) today about what he thinks France is up to with its opposition to the war in the face of all reason. He mentions Jacksonian politics in passing, and provides this link. I wasn't far into reading it when I had a moment of sudden recognition - this is me! I haven't finished reading it (it prints out to 27 pages), but so much of it resonates with me that I'm fascinated. I'm not solely Jacksonian, I doubt anyone is completely within one highly-delineated political camp, but it's close enough. What's interesting as well is that I am culturally Jacksonian as well - the author of the article, Walter Russell Mead, identifies the source of the Jacksonian approach as the Scots-Irish settlers who came to the United States in the late 1700s/early 1800s and populated the lower Appalachians before moving into other areas of the South. Those are my people; my family has lived within a couple hundred miles of where my parents still live for over 200 years, Scots-Irish in the lower Appalachians.
It's always interesting to see more clearly the crucible where your own views were formed. I think we as adults have not just the ability but the necessity of intelligently reassessing our attitudes and philosophies based on a broader experience with the world as we have opportunity. But I know that the center of where I come from is the deeply religious, poor and fiercely independent Scots settlers, and I carry both good and bad from that influence. It's exciting to see some of that come together in a description of a still-vigorous and influential political philosophy.
We've been making fun of the "Take Your Clothes Off For Peace" folks since, well, since they started taking off their clothes - and now they're doing it in Australia (not safe for work). I understand what the general goal is - to stop any kind of military aggression on the part of the US and its allies; but I wonder precisely how they think removing their clothes will advance that cause. After reading several articles on it (including this one), I came up with four basic reasons they put forward, implicitly or explicitly:
1) It embarrasses people, and so serves as a form of blackmail in trying to force the action the strippers want. That kind of activism is most effective in a public forum, like when women removed their shirts at a Santa Cruz city council (discussed here) to protest a proposed anti-drug law that they said would also limit the rights of topless women and performance artists. They use the decency and/or hang-ups of others to get what they want.2) Nudity gets press. As the photo with this article illustrates (not safe for work), beautiful (or just naked) bodies get attention. Attention equals higher sales. Higher sales equal more money. So these folks are plugging into capitalism to sneak their message into the media stream; marketing, in other words, similar to how banks give away ink pens with their name on them, or how funeral homes used to distribute paper fans with advertisements to churches in the South. Use one type of functionality to highlight an unrelated message. And incidentally to trip the corporate mechanism that they generally decry to the heavens, when they're not getting naked.
3) At least for some of the naked protesters, public nudity has some level of embarrassment attached to it for the one getting naked - I don't see much sign of shame, so I won't include that. Nudity makes you vulnerable because your entire physical being is exposed to public judgment, which is often harsh. The reason why that matters to their cause is that they are hoping that the people who see their nudity recognize the level of commitment to their cause that exposing their naked bodies requires, given the vulnerability it causes. I think the mental dialogue it's supposed to trigger goes like this: "Look at those women! They're all naked. They don't have great bodies. They care so much about stopping war that they're willing to expose themselves to harsh criticism! Unmask their deepest insecurities about themselves! What courage, what... what dedication! I should listen to their message, it's obviously important." We're supposed to "feel their pain".
4) It gives them maximum sense of sacrifice without requiring a real sacrifice. They take off their clothes, submit to being photographed with a group of others, put their clothes back on and go their way. Nobody went hungry, lost a job or income, were physically hurt, or even openly mocked during the activity, yet they get to feel that they have done something really important and big for The Cause. They can imagine with pride their grandchildren telling their great-grandchildren, "That's your great-grandmother who got naked for peace!" and the children saying, "Ohhhh, she's so brave! I want to be like her!"
After analyzing it like this, I have a clearer sense of what is going on in their heads, scary though it is. I think the most important one is the fourth one: thumbing their nose at society and making a sacrifice without really sacrificing anything. The fact that they don't get the difference between real sacrifice and a peacemongers bonding experience with no real negative consequences is made clear in this article where the "naked for peace" folks in the US are equated with the women in Nigeria who threatened to go topless to force Chevron to make a deal (and I don't have details) with the local communities. The difference there is that going topless in Nigeria in that context, according to what I've read, is an established cultural statement of shaming, and likely (although I can't say certainly) could carry consequences beyond a chuckle or two when others see your thunder-thighs. And it's so evocative of what the Left is all about: symbolism with no substance, like the "Feed the World" song produced a number of years ago. Those stars singing could have contributed from their own wealth more than the record made, without even having to sell the Mercedes. Sheryl Crow and Viggo Mortensen with their clever t-shirts aren't risking anything. Those of us on the right - we understand fully that our sons, fathers, sisters, cousins, mothers, friends not only can but in some cases will die if this war moves forward. That's a bit different from the vulnerability of having people know that my left breast is smaller than my right one, or that I have cellulite on my butt. It's not just the lack of substance, too, but the fact that they think it is substance.
The fact is, sometimes nudity does have precisely the effect they want. One instance would be the Nigerian women's protest. Another that has remained in my mind for over a decade is a scene near the end of Athol Fugard's play, Master Harold... and the Boys (here's a review with some details), about apartheid in South Africa. The play, set in the early 1950s as apartheid is taking hold, is about a teenaged white boy who grew up with two black men as servants in his family's household. The men genuinely care about the boy, and he obviously does about them too. But he's struggling with the dissonance of caring for someone as an equal or an admired friend, and the dehumanizing required by the racial prejudice. At the end of the play one of the black servants lowers his pants to submit to a disciplining by Master Harold. The nudity it required was a necessary expression of the debasement the young man was inflicting; it was deeply moving in the way it expressed that even though the black man was submitting himself of necessity, he was the one with dignity and character, while the white teenager is clearly aligning himself with the small-minded evil of assumed superiority. The reason it's so moving is precisely because the black servant has proven himself to be a good man of depth, of character and dignity, and you feel deeply the injustice being done to him. But the character in the play was not mooning the boy, he wasn't exposing himself to make a statement. Rather, the actor was exposing himself to make the pivotal point of the play, which has nothing to do with nudity for nudity's sake.
That's symbolism with substance. And the left aren't even able to tell the difference.
[Thanks to Andrea for getting me started on this by following a link from her site. It's all your fault!]
(Edited to add links and formatting.)
Another newspaper is showing that it gets the basic idea but hasn't quite absorbed the utility of the concept. The San Diego Union Tribune has a nice article on blogging, but manages to list over a dozen blogs without setting up a single actual link to any of them. They interview San Diego blogger Scott Koenig, the Indepundit, and mention CotB buddy (and former San Diego resident) The Timekeeper's blog, Horologium, but - yes - no links. The writer has no clue what he's talking about, but still an interesting read.
CG Hill at Dustbury, where I found the link originally, points out that they also left in a bunch of code in the text, which is very odd. Apparently they don't get the online thing very well at all.
Neal Pollack, who I excerpted here on the lefty response to Powell's UN presentation, is according to the article a satirist who bills himself as the "Greatest Living American Writer", and aims his blog at least in part at parodying warbloggers. I'm waiting for him to be funny. This could take a while.
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