Category: Weblogging

Categories
Insects Political Weblogging

Golden Arches

Loren from In a Dark Time is off to my favorite place in the entire world, Cannon Beach:

 

There is something both inspirational and moving about the ocean. As it turns out, I spent my first honeymoon at the beach, but I also drove down to the beach to clear my mind the night I decided to leave my first wife. Perhaps it is the sense of timelessness you sense at the beach that makes it such a good backdrop to make important decisions.

He also leaves a gentle admonishment to me:

…I really don’t need to get dragged into someone else’s battle now do, I Bb?”

Loren is referring to my posting yesterday where I used both his weblog and a posting by Glenn Reynolds as examples of intelligence and intelligentsia, respectively. The interesting thing about this post is that I wasn’t thinking of Glenn Reynolds or the warbloggers when I wrote it; it was actually directed elsewhere. However, in the midst of my war debates, and using Professor Reynolds’ quote, I could see why the assumption was made that I was pointing it at the the warbloggers and Professor Reynolds.

Regardless, good point and well taken Loren, but no worries–I’ve realized how wrong it is to drag another into my battles.

Speaking of Professor Reynolds, he did write something yesterday that I felt was both honest and sincere:

I don’t pretend to offer guarantees that American intervention in the region will make life better for the people who live there. I think it will, I hope it will, and I think we should do our best to make that so. But those are secondary objectives. The primary objective is to make clear to leaders that if their country threatens America, they, the rulers, will be out of power at best, and dead along with all their family and friends at worst. Is that “nice?” No. I don’t care.

 

There is no pretense in this statement, and I can respect that, as I can respect Andrew Sullivan’s statement (pointed to by Doc) along similar lines:

The far-left notion that this is a cynical war for “protecting American interests in the Middle East” is absurd. Such a war might indeed make the Middle East a safer place, but the war is about protecting America and the West, as well as liberating the Iraqi people from one of the most evil tyrants in history.

I imagine that Sullivan would concur with Reynolds in that freeing the Iraqi people is secondary to ensuring the safety of the West. If I disagree with both on the direction the US should take, I can respect their honesty.

One can talk, really talk, when all sides strip away rhetoric and side issues and focus on true opinions, concerns, and realities.

Speaking of battles and discussions, Jonathon suggests that I focus on debating Steven Den Beste rather than Eric Olsen and Glenn Reynolds. After reading the posts he references I agree with Jonathon. ( Though I think the link to the legal post is inaccurate; should it be this one instead?).

In particular, I appreciate Den Beste’s multi-part Ground war in Iraq as a point of beginning discussions. With such a careful and detailed analysis, there is much to respond to.

However, for a discussion on the legality of a unilaterial US invasion of Iraq, I would prefer to focus more on John Chipman’s America’s Right to Fight Iraq in the Financial Times (through Glenn Reynolds).

I’ll work on both posts as I wash all my clothes and vacuum in a vain attempt to rid myself of the Missouri buglife that has decided that I look like MacDonald’s Golden Arches. However, from readings on the subject of chiggers that Ben was kind enough to provide, it would seem it was my last foray into the wild that’s responsible for my current suffering and that only time will provide me a cure. Unfortunate as there are so many bites on my legs I look like I have the measles.

I have found Dante’s missing hell: it’s full of chiggers.

(And I’m still trying to figure out what caused the huge bite that’s so inflamed–a mosquito couldn’t have caused this, could it? What kind of mosquitos live in Missouri–reincarnated fighter pilots?)

Categories
Weblogging

You free blogging shits

Snippets:

 

“During that weekend, I came to the realization that I’ve been mulling over ever since: a lack of money is hindering the growth and potential of blogging. Free — or personal — blogging can only take us so far.”

…

“By paying great bloggers to produce weblogs, we remove economic constraints and enable them to devote their energies full-time to producing compelling content and creating outstanding weblogs.”

…

“If we can demonstrate that these blogs are worth the cost it takes to maintain them, we will enable the creation of many more compelling, useful blogs. The key to success lies in the creation of great blogs for these sites — blogs that will contain practical and engaging content and drive traffic to their respective hosts. One sure-fire way to do this is to hire bloggers.”

…

“There’s a vast group of people out there now who are experts in finding the news and links, capturing its essence in short snippets, and churning it out hour after hour, day after day.”

Meg’s latest and greatest at O’Reilly. (There’s a delicious bit of irony associated with the page–can you spot it?)

Want my opinion of the article? You know me, here’s a blank ___________ fill it in.

Better yet:

Hello O’Reilly!

 

I’ve written several books and articles for you, which unfortunately, don’t pay me enough so that I can focus on writing full-time. Too bad, really, because I love to write and spend a considerable amount of time on said books and articles.

 

However, after reading this latest article by Meg, I came up with an idea: why don’t you hire me as a professional weblogger, thereby freeing me from having to look for a new contract. Instead of writing articles and books full-time for you, I can weblog.

 

After all, I can research and link-comment-post with the best of them.

 

Sincerely, your author,

 

Shelley Powers

Categories
Weblogging

Well, someone’s a little cranky, aren’t they?

Let’s see now…

I trashed Meg’s newest article, my publisher, the intelligentsia, and Glenn Reynolds. Not bad for a day’s blogging. However, I think it’s past time that I temper the temper. What can I say, I woke up, I opened my email, I read my email, and I’ve been in a very bad mood ever since.

(Not helped by having a huge bug bite on my leg from last week that isn’t healing, and which is now compounded by this bizarre red spotted rash over both legs. Anyone from St. Louis in the audience have an idea of what this could be?)

On to positive things:

We’ve seeded the RageBoy cloud with our spam Body Parts email campaign and all we can do now is sit back and hope for rain. Or better yet–lightning and thunder. Regardless, thanks to everyone for getting involved in this, and I hope it was a little fun for one and all.

And Chris, humor aside, we miss your voice. Dive back in, the water’s fine, and we’ll help you stay afloat when the water gets rough. You have friends here

Categories
Weblogging

Wow, thanks, Glenn

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

All of that material and effort that went into the cross-blog discussion with Eric Olsen, and Glenn Reynolds doesn’t link to any of it.

However, Professor Reynold’s comes through today by pulling a quote out from another one of my postings –out of context — to somehow prove a point about warbloggers and technobloggers not being able to reach agreement because of some form of a “cultural divide”.

Cultural divide? Ares and Athena?

Update

Looks like Professor Reynolds and I are going to be going back and forth.

True, professor, you don’t have to link to me at all. Whether you do or do not has nothing to do with fairness. I apologize for pointing out to you that you do tend to link only to those you feel justify your viewpoint. However, this is human nature, so who am I to label something ‘fair’ or not (though, I don’t remember using this expression in any way.)

However, when you say that those of us who are against the invasion of Iraq have no ‘stomach’ for fighting, then you are dead wrong. The truth is that I have no stomach for a fight that has no justification.

There is no documented evidence supporting a claim of eminent danger from Iraq and all the reasons provided as justification for an attack could also be applied to several other countries. If we’re justified in attacking Iraq, does this also mean that the US should go to war with Saudi Arabia? Syria? Jordan? China?

What criteria sets Iraq apart from any of these other countries? Or do you think we should invade Saudi Arabia next? Perhaps Iran, too? How about Syria? When do we stop?

You’ve identified yourself as a member of the Libertarian Party if I remember correctly. Well, even your party has come out with a press release stating that the party is dead set against invasion of Iraq.

What’s especially frustrating is that, as with the debate with Eric, rather than attack my position, you drop me into a group and then dismiss us with the most spurious of reasons. We are talking cross-purpose, we’re not talking the same thing, we who are against an invasion of Iraq don’t have the ‘stomach’ for fighting.

However, you are right about one thing: I apologize for any sense I may have given that I don’t think you’re fair and unbiased in your linking–your weblog, your links. It was wrong of me to get irritated (and I was irritated) because you linked to Eric’s weblog in this cross-blog debate rather than myself or the other participants. I agree–It was petty of me to get irritated about this.

About as petty as reducing my very real, very serious, and carefully documented concerns about a war in Iraq to not having the stomach for fighting.

Categories
Political Weblogging

War shit

Tom writes today that he’s bowing out of war blogging:

I think I’ve finally got the Iraq blogging out of my system. I wish I hadn’t allowed myself to get sucked into it. It’s not what people read my blog for. Readership seems to have evaporated. Emails and quotes have been conspicuously absent. I should have known better.

I can identify with Tom, because writing about politics, ‘debating’ with the warbloggers, and being a peaceblogger aren’t necessarily the focus of this weblog, either. My focus is on people connecting with other people, technology, philosophy, the environment, photography and writing. And sensuality, can’t forget sensuality.

And I have found that sensuality and war don’t mix. Sensuality and politics don’t mix. Sensuality and warbloggers don’t mix.

(There’s a pattern emerging here.)

So why do I do it? Why do I get into the debates, comment on the politics? The timing of Tom’s posting is serendipitous, because the posting I pulled earlier today touched on this. I salvaged a bit of it to repeat here:

Someone once asked me in an email if I think webloggers are journalists. I told her that webloggers aren’t journalists, we’re conduits; we don’t originate stories, we provide pipelines to new sources of information, ones that may be escoteric or obscure or unknown to the average person on the street. And these sources of information provide the news we don’t get from the mainstream press.

 

If the information is interesting our readers may discuss it with their family and at work, and this news finds its way, slowly, haltingly, gradually into the non-Net world. If there are enough pipelines joining the flow, it causes ripples and eventually even the mainstream press might take a reluctant interest.

 

Every once in a while I divert from my regularly scheduled programming to discuss a political topic, or to take on the warbloggers, as I’ve done this last week. I don’t do this because I really enjoy beating my head against a wall (‘it feels so good when I stop’), or because I expect to win the debate or to convince the warbloggers to see the error of their ways.

 

I do it because I’m laying a pipe.

I do it because I’m laying a pipe.