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Andrew Sullivan needs time to think
Sullivan’s Daily Dish goes silent for a while:
This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it - and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided - is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.
Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin’s unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning - specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy - we feel it’s vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.
Its actually refreshing that a blogger would actually stop posting in order to think things through carefully and completely. Ladies and gentlemen, give the man some room.Posted on November 18, 2009
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Typepad Micro evaluation, completely off the top of my head
The Typepad Micro design team should probably look up “minimalism” in the dictionary.
via hellotxtPosted on November 18, 2009
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Malcolm Gladwell's Igon Values
Steven PInker in the NYTBRAn eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.:Elsewhere in the review PInker calls Gladwell a “minor genius”. HIs take is just about right: Gladwell is a very interesting journalist and engaging public speaker who is in no way the Great Thinker Kottke and others make him out to be.Posted on November 15, 2009
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Lewis Lapham on the late Tim Russert
From New York Magazine:
Lewis Lapham isn’t happy with political journalism today. “There was a time in America when the press and the government were on opposite sides of the field,” he said at a premiere party for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on June 25. “The press was supposed to speak on behalf of the people. The new tradition is that the press speaks on behalf of the government.” An example? “Tim Russert was a spokesman for power, wealth, and privilege,” Lapham said. “That’s why 1,000 people came to his memorial service. Because essentially he was a shill for the government. It didn’t matter whether it was Democratic or Republican. It was for the status quo.” What about Russert’s rep for catching pols in lies? “That was bullshit,” he said. “Thompson and Russert were two opposite poles.”
Posted on November 13, 2009
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The contrarian position on commonplace books
Anthony Grafton on commonplacing
…like a good sausage machine, it rendered all texts, however dissimilar in origin or style, into a uniform body of spicy links that could add flavor to any meal—and whose origins did not always bear thinking about when one consumed them.
Posted on November 13, 2009
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Go get 'em
via The Notion:
In an unusually aggressive move, Organizing for America announced Wednesday that it is mobilizing its volunteer army to confront the 32 Republican legislators who voted against health care reform — despite representing districts that voted for Obama.
The pressure campaign is designed “to remind these members that voters in their districts voted for change last year,” explain OFA officials, “and urge them to reconsider their position when the House votes again on a final bill later this year.”
Posted on November 13, 2009
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Cutups, commonplacing, and mediated culture
Whitney Anne Trettien on a parallel between the 20th and 17th century:
Now these practices are seen as the precursor of generative computing and digital poetry — that is, as an early form of database-driven, user-generated work. But I love the thought of more deeply and meaningfully historicizing these practices, stretching back to the commonplace cut-ups of the early modern period. And earlier. On the surface, there probably isn’t a lot in common between a crazy pomo heroine addict like Burroughs and a finicky, seemingly obsessive-compulsive English lawyer like Caesar living at the turn of the seventeenth century. But think about it: they both lived in increasingly mediated cultures; they both consumed a lot of media in and for their work; they both dealt with information overload. It’s not so strange that they both (or rather both of their media cultures) would find their way the same strategy for traversing, consuming and digesting the glut of textual information they had to deal with on a daily basis. The printed book comes to us as a manufactured (and now industrialized) object; it seems only human to want to personalize it, customize it.
Posted on November 13, 2009
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Joe Connason on Lou Dobbs
Lou Dobbs is running for president already, and the Republican Party should be scared:
Having observed the former CNN anchor for many years, including a number of recent appearances on his nightly broadcast, I suspect that he may well nurture ambitions to run for president, as reported in the trade press — and could mount a formidable campaign drawing upon the same resentful remnant that Republicans hope to mobilize in 2012. Except that he probably won’t be running as a Republican.
Posted on November 13, 2009
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The coolest picture you'll see all day
Posted on October 2, 2009
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Aleatory Composition book
Posted on September 24, 2009
Links, snark, snarky links. All DIY
