Wyeth, Two
Another few thoughts on his post. He characterizes meta-blogging as linking with light opinion commentary. This is true, but there's a good reason. When you link to lots of things, you probably do not know a great deal about most of those things. Therefore it's best to keep some language to a minimum so as not to betray your full ignorance. 'Course, that never stopped me before...

But another thought is this. Wyeth's niche blogging style works because he blogs about something that he lives and breathes (and maybe does for a living, but I don't know if that's the case - Wyeth?). For small comparison, I'm a graduate student beginning work on my masters thesis in public history, and as much as I can tell you about various aspects concerning local Columbia old-time radio personality and musician Snuffy Jenkins, there just isn't that much to say, and less that you want to know. Hence...

Thanks, Wyeth/ Environmental Tangent
1) For giving mention of this blog on his, which is dedicated to South Carolina politics. Am I truly a meta-blogger? For the purpose of the discussion we've had, and for your purposes if you've come here from there, then yes, albeit imperfectly. I also bring my family life and my ambitions into play sometimes, if only to give some context. For the record I fully endorse his "niche-blogging" technique. At the very least, you know the he knows what he's talking about.

2) For giving me something to write about today! His post here talks about the presence of nuts in both political parties, which I find undoubtedly true. But he makes the statement that,

...your nuts are more influential than our nuts. I daresay that Jerry Falwell, Dan Burton and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page all have more sway over the Republican Party than an alternative political cartoonist and a professor at Buffalo State College do over the Democratic Party.

I wouldn't classify the WSJ opinions page as nutty (pure opinion, sure). However, I do feel that certain groups on the left of the political spectrum, if not purely Democratic (big D), have been equally adept at successfully pushing their political agendas. I have in mind the environmental movement in particular. I believe that most of the young people in this country (< 30)
really believe that all things are getting worse, that all corporations naturally desire nothing else than streams to dump their pollution, and that the human race is a curse on this planet.

I say this also because I just can't see why we're some are so opposed to things like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Besides the fact that it's a barely hospitable barren wasteland, my core belief is that proper regulation and careful oversight can mitigate the long-term effects of humans on a delicate environment.

Don't believe me? Then read Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. Besides being a wonderful exhortation for rational debate over hysteria, I want to paraphrase one particular incident. He discusses the effects of the long-term clean up following the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. As part of that clean-up, certain areas were left uncleaned for scientific comparison to the cleaned areas. The results were amazing. Despite the one-time shock the local ecosystem sustained in terms of destroyed habitat and massive loss of wildlife, the uncleaned areas have actually rebounded better than the pressure-washed beaches. Lomborg explains that oil naturally breaks down into organic compounds over a short period of time - it virtually cleans itself. Meanwhile, pressure-washing completely removed all organic substances from the treated areas, effectively turning them into moon rocks (my phrase). In other words, it was continued human meddling that made the situation worse than it would have been.

Now, this example obviously doesn't apply to other areas were non-organic, toxic wastes have been deposited, leaving very real long-term problems in their wake. I am not a corporate apologist. But I do not believe that anti-corporate hysteria, or a feeling of collective guilt should prevent us from generally making our lot better. Let us use oil now - when alternative energy sources become cost-effective (Lomborg estimates this to occur with fifty to sixty years), they will be embraced by this country, and I imagine by the corporations too. After all, money will be made, won't it?

So I leave you with a bit of advice from George Carlin, that perceptive social commentator, about our long-term effects: "The planet is fine. The people are fucked!"

Judge orders parents to keep children away from tobacco smoke
Very nice post that raises appropriate legal concerns about the ruling at The Volokh Conspiracy. The opinion has now been withdrawn; does it still count as precedent?
I'll be a parent in five years or so (lord willin' and the creek doan' rise), neither Erin or I smoke. How does this decision affect me? As Eugene Volokh notes, what if the issue was obesity, or physical fitness, or perhaps if we were talking about the amount of television my kids watch. This is the groundwork for a creeping courtroom presence in our own homes. You may say that tobacco is a proven health concern, but there are groups lining up at the gates to prove that junk food is a health problem, that American lead excessively sedentary lives. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and I believe it should be here.
*DISCLAIMER* Both my parents were smokers, though I never have been. I'm not familiar with the studies on the effects of secondhand smoke on children, let alone picking up other habits. That is an entirely separate, and equally sticky issue. I do not know the likelihood of children of smokers contracting diseases (asthma, cancer, allergies, etc..) but I've always been healthy. This of course is anecdotal, but it does affect my opinions on this matter.

Why are my hands so cold?
It's not that cold outside (probably about 50-55, in Columbia, SC). So why are my hands like ice at this keyboard? I haven't been able to warm my right (mouse) hand all week! Can someone explain this stuff to me please?

Googlism.com
Found via Gene Expression, Googlism.com finds out what Google thinks of you. For instance, type in your name, click on "Who," and see what comes back! One of my results is at left. Enjoy for the evening!

Not Alone
John Rosenberg at Discriminations has posted on the difference between the Washington Post's and the New York Times' coverage of the Wellstone funeral/Mondale rally earlier this week. This goes along very well with what I've posted on NBC below.

And they say the media isn't biased...
Tonight's Evening News on NBC did a story on negative ads. The coverage featured the sentence, "A few of the favorite boogeymen that Republicans are using this year include..." No mention of Democrats! What, do Democrats not use negative campaign ads as well?
I know of one. South Carolina's Democratic Candidate for Senator ran one attacking Rudy Giuliani for moving in with two gay men after he stumped for Republican Lindsey Graham, ending with the sentence, "Does this sound like South Carolina values to you?"

The underlying problem
The History News Network has an excellent essay on the underlying problem behind the Michael Bellesiles affair, which is followed by a lengthy discussion in comment-form a la newsgroups.

Warblogger Watch from the Right
Godless Capitalist at Gene Expression has an excellent post on the lack of self-control that permeates some of the warblogger pages. In particular, he takes issue with those that fail to distinguish between those Muslims who are sympathetic with terrorists and Muslims in general.

Geitner Simmons of Regions of Mind is on a roll! First, he gives us this gem on the moral bankruptcy of the hard left in formulating a coherent policy on national threats. Then, he's gotten the royal treatment - a link from Instapundit, for his post on how hypocritical Europe is to berate the United States for pursuing self-interested policies, but then failing to stick with their own monetary and fiscal policies in regard to the Euro!

Killer sends 22-page letter to publisher
This article (via Media Minded) talks about a 22 page letter that nursing student Robert Flores, Jr. sent before he killed three people at the University of Arizona. The context is bizarre, but let me reprint one passage:
"To the sociologist, it wasn't the Maryland sniper," he wrote. "I have been thinking about this for awhile."

"To the psychiatrist," he wrote, "it's not about unresolved childhood issues. It is not about anger because I don't feel anything right now."

Addressing Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, he said the gun control debate isn't relevant. "A waiting period or owner registration would not have stopped me. I have a concealed carry permit but I have never brought a gun to the University, (until now)."

Tropical America
Media Minded reports that a game your tax dollars helped pay for not-so-subtly rewrites history to fulfill a multicultural agenda. The game is based on the life of a survivor of a massacre in El Salvador in 1981, a massacre at the hands of U.S. trained-troops, and the title comes from a well-known mural by the well-known Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, well-known as a hardcore Stalinist. Media Minded even recounts a story where Siquerios led a party to assassinate Leon Trotsky in 1940.

Free the Baby Lawyers!
A story like this makes me glad my wife has chosen education over law.

Ted Rall isn't the only one!
Ipse Dixit lambasts Ted Rall for suggesting that President Bush has Senator Wellstone assassinated (as does Rand Simberg). And he calls out for all "liberals" to condemn him as well.

Well I'm neither purely liberal or conservative, but I certainly can say that Rall is an idiot. So is Dr. Michael I. Niman, "who teaches journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College," "the largest four-year college in the SUNY system"[1] who suggested the same thing in an editorial to the local alternative weekly here in Columbia, SC, the Free Times, which I assume was circulated via news wire.

Now plenty of bloggers are piling on Ted Rall, so I'll choose Dr. Niman. A quick search via Yahoo brings us mediastudy.com, which "provides resource links for conducting critical research in Media Studies and American Studies." Certain web sites listed "offer a critical analysis of the dominant media, political and cultural institutions in American society" to be used "as tools to deconstruct and better understand the American cultural landscape." Given the attitude of many bloggers towards the New York Times, for example, this sounds promising, right?

Wrong. His various link-sections are devoted mostly to indy (read: leftist) media, and feature other subjects on Pirate Radio, Social Activism, Environment, and "Multi-National Corporation Watch." Other links include many to anti-TV sites, anti-consumerism, anti-corporatism, and other anti's the broadly characterize (and often self-lampoon) the "left."

Other Yahoo links tie him to the Rainbow Family, where, "anyone who walks in is a citizen. Whether tattooed punk or silent drifter, Christian evangelist or Buddhist vegetarian...they find their place. The gatherings give members, often social activists of some stripe, a chance to live in a community they can actually shape - if only for a week. All are welcome - and, by Rainbow custom,- - all are fed."[2] Niman has even written a book about it.

There are many other links, and I do not wish to use him to lampoon the entire left wing-of the spectrum, but if his political views on the Wellstone tragedy are in any way directly related, in a reflexive kind of way, to his other activities, this doesn't bode well for that particular branch of the political spectrum in my opinion.

[1] from http://www.buffalostate.edu/about/, the website of Buffalo State College.
[2] from Under the Rainbow, a Community of Peace
By Andrew Z. Galarneau News Staff Reporter
The Buffalo News - February 10, 1999.

UPDATE: Jesse Walker's latest column in Reason magazine says this exactly.

Wyeth responds
South Carolina blogger Wyeth Ruthven has graciously responded to my post last week criticizing him for his take down of blog speak via email. He has agreed to let me post excerpts from the discussion that followed.

On Oct. 23rd, Wyeth wrote,

Often, bloggers are merely preaching to choir, linking to one another, and proclaiming that they hold these truths to be self-evident. I believe that blogspeak is merely an extension of that fact.

The key feature of a democracy is that rival ideologies TALK TO one another. In the blogosphere, rival ideologies TALK ABOUT one another. And the trend is toward less exchange of ideas and more insular talk with code words to keep out the riff-raff.

I responded that in the blog world, the formation of "cliques" was evident and even to be maligned for this very reason. I continued however,

to get back to your original post, in terms of fostering the debate, it did precisely what you rail against here - it preached to the choir, rather than further the debate...

I think you're giving to much agency to "blogspeak." I don't see it used to keep out others. I see it as communication between parties that know each other well. Perhaps by default this keeps out others. But that's actually another plus of the blog world. It's incredibly imperfect. You can never be satisfied by one blogger's take on the world, because no one should be espousing your views in toto back to you. Rather, the blog world is piecemeal, and you satisfy your thirst through web surfing, and by commenting on the pages of others....in fact the existence of comments on many web pages is also an example of democracy in action.

To this Wyeth responded,

I think some of this results from growing pains in the blogosphere. Blogging is - by Internet standards - a mass medium. People are more likely to take rhetorical license and grandstand when they know that people are watching. And they are even more likely to do so when they know that lots of people will be cheering them on at their own blogs.

I agree with you in theory that the best thing to do with blogs is lean back and "let a thousand flowers bloom." My only concern is that I see less, not more of that taking place. Too much of the blogosphere looks and sounds the same, where a topic of the day gets repeated on blog after blog, with each one trying to stop the other. I would be curious to learn if there was some way to chart the rise and fall of a certain topic in the blogosphere: OUT: "Left-wing homophobia" IN: The Bellesilles resignation.

He even provided his personal solution: "My own antidote to that is do engage in what I call "niche-blogging" or perhaps "value-added blogging" where I take topics that I have an interest or knowledge in (mostly South Carolina) and try to add something to the debate, rather than seeing if I can shout "fire" in the crowded theater faster and louder than anyone else."

It has been a wonderful exchange of ideas for me, and at the least, it proves to me the value and necessity of debate. He also mentioned the differences between the old world of blogs, where those around spoke on any- and everything, to today's world of partisan rants low on originality, full of banality. I still feel that the blog world is inherently selfish but also community-driven: Selfish in that one posts a blog as a personal importance broadcaster, community-driven in the search for those that are like-minded. The blog world is saturated too, and that makes it harder to find original voices. If I had gotten in on the orignal wave, I suspect I'd feel the same. But I still see lots different out there. At any rate, Wyeth's "niche-blog" is a helpful solution for cutting down on the self-masturbatory rhetoric that permeates the medium.

Mickey Kaus on Congress
Mickey Kaus, welfare reformer extraordinaire and esrtwhile Slate political analyst opines on the possibility of a perpetual 50-50 political divide in the Chambers of Congress.
He also discusses the possibilities of numerous election results being determined by the courts a la Presidential 2000 here.

"No War!"?
Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine links from his blog to Stand Down - The Left-Right Blog Opposing an Invasion of Iraq, a cornocopia of voices from all spectrums of the blog world stating the above. All except the warbloggers, that is.

"People of Color"
Godless Capitalist at Gene Expression rants about this term.

Libertarians (for/against) War! (choose one)
Reason magazine is posting an open forum between Brink Lindsey and John Mueller on whether or not we should go to war with Iraq, both from libertarian perspectives. This will take you to the third essay written with links to the other two.

Rosenberg on Bellesiles
John Rosenberg at Discriminations has a long an excellent post that sums up the coverage of the Michael Bellesiles affair.
This is an issue that I've taken a strong interest in. It affects my future tremendously. Prof. Bellesiles' use of coverup of erroneous data in a serious scholarly work damages the only credibility that academics have. Our only savior is transparency of sources - someone should be able to replicate our findings, even if that person disagrees with those findings, or even if he can find alternate conclusions using the same data. Prof. Bellesiles has broken this code of trust, and from the sound of his statement of resignation, he doesn't even realize it.
Other bloggers, such as Glenn Reynolds, Clayton Cramer, Eugene Volokh et. al. and many other have covered this admirably over the last several months.

Third Party Politics
South Knox Bubba talks about the need for a third party, and even provides some helpful name suggestions. (Link via Instapundit.)
Loyal readers of this site know that this is an important issue to me. While I do not identify myself as a conservative, I disagree with Democrats when it comes to liberal-ly - driven social policy decisions. So what am I (Not libertarian either).
Actually, I think that the parties are gradually shifting bases in this country. Certain dogmas held by each party well grow increasingly dissonant with the needs of the base until a schism emerges that is too great to cover up. Thomas Kuhn refers to this as a paradigm shift.

When is discrimination legal? When it's practiced by a politically correct institution
Erin O'Conner, associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, refers to this piece at the Daily Pennsylvanian about the college's blatant discriminatory hiring practices. The money quote:
It is no secret that Penn plays demographic games at hiring time. Nor is it a secret that those games come into play full force during tenure review. When I was up for tenure, for example, I was told by a Penn administrator that based on my vital statistics, my chances looked very good. He told me point blank that if I were black, he would be able to guarantee me promotion, but that as a woman, the odds were very much in my favor. Such comments are often classified as harassment, but I was not being harassed. I was being told the truth, as ugly as it was.(link via Instapundit.)

I Take it Back

It seems that Godless is suggesting that we keep guns out of the hands of non-whites, at least young black males, if we want to pay more than lip service the treatise, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." His solution is an actuarially determined age limit on gun ownership - you can't own a gun until it's statistically safe to own one for a person of a certain age and race. He does acknowledge it's complete unworkability. You can access his arguments here and here (second item) as well as the post below.

Personally, although this information is interesting in that it raises strange hypotheticals, it's obviously unrealistic in its actual workings, and it doesn't go to the root of the problem - our murderous inner cities, rife with drugs, gangs, and crime. It's treating the symptoms but letting the disease fester.

Godless Capitalist (what a great, offensive [to some (not me)] name) at Gene Expression posts that if gun crimes committed by non-whites in America are factored out of the equation, the U.S. would then have a crime rate similar to other First World nations. And he has proof! I'm not sure what all this means, though. Is he saying we should forbid certain subsets of the population, namely non-white males, from owning guns? That hardly seems reasonable. (but he's not saying that!)

I would be remiss in not mentioning Iraq in this blog. OK so not so remiss, given I determine the dialogue, but anyway. I am undecided on Iraq, but my wife is pretty much against an invasion. So, since she reads this at work during the week, here's a link to another long, thoughtful post, this one from The Agitator.com, arguing against war from a libertarian perspective. Neither my wife nor I are affiliated with any political party or concrete ideology.

Have you read Orwell's 1984? Doesn't this really creep you out then? (Link via Instapundit.) This is real, folks.

Steven Den Beste has a long post on how the Blog World is an example of true democracy in action. Wyeth Ruthven, take note!

As a former high school debater (and I get the feeling that several bloggers are, too) I find his reasoning especially to my liking. Argument is a wonderful thing. Now if I can only convince my wife....

Geitner Simmons at Regions of Mind has had a busy night, posting about The Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and less recently, the memory of Napoleon in France.

In addition, he has posted on Egpytian state television's 30 part miniseries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Take it away, Geitner!

No single document, with the arguable exception of Mein Kampf, has brought more misery to the Jewish people than a nasty screed known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, as most visitors to this site probably already know, were a concoction of rabid anti-Semitic conspiracy theories peddled by Russia’s czarist regime just over a century ago and circulated ever since by Jew-haters the world over. It is old news in the blogosphere by now, but Egyptian state television is about to broadcast, with great fanfare, a 30-part series based on the Protocols

....And so, with the new Egyptian TV series on the Protocols, the lies of anti-Semitism march into a new century. The ancient anti-Semite Manetho surely would be delighted. Egyptians ought to be ashamed that such ignorance is about to be displayed so rapturously in their country. That they are not should give Americans great pause about the depths of prejudice and gullibility in the Muslim-Arab world.

Indeed, it is astounding to me that such lies can still find credence in today's world. My own education and the values instilled by my parents taught me to question half-truths of this nature, to get at the full story. Perhaps it is this life experience that blinds me to the reality that anti-Semitism is still very much alive. As my wife has said, "Why is anti-Semitism so popular? What have the Jews ever done to anyone? They've faced persecution for 2,000 years!"

Self-Importance Broadcaster
I'm noticing a disturbing trend in the Blog World of late. Several bloggers have formed a habit of linking to some of their previous posts they have deemed especially worthy, whether it be for the snarkiness of the comments inside, or the sheer genius of their logic displayed, or maybe even because those posts generated the most comments. Whatever the reason, this seems like unnecessary showboating to me. Then again, with a name like The Insecure Egotist, you would assume I'd appreciate the sentiment.