[ via Wood s Lot ] Punditry is an exercise in power:
The whole point of pundity is reduce discourse to an extension of raw physical or economic force: raw repetition and numbers win, period. The quality of argumentative content is of superficial concern. The “fact-checking” of any numerical minority is powerless in this scenario–which is [...]
Dave Winer’s back from the hospital, where the angel of Health appeared to him, and chastened him, but he’s not happy about it.
Phillip Winn, over at W6 Daily, responded to my comment on his and Rebecca Blood’s posts on MIT linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky.
He and I will have to agree to disagree on Chomsky’s relevance on politics. I think Chomsky does have intelligent things to say, but says them in a way that infuriates people*.
I [...]
You’ve all probably seen the Jacob Nielsen Drinking Game before, but a coworker forwarded it, and I want to read it into the official record.
If he mentions scrolling, take one drink.
If he mentions that users don’t scroll, take one drink.
I’m proposing an additional rule:
If a designer friend forwards you the rules to this game, [...]
Rightwing bloggers have been quick to take up Pym Fortuyn, the ‘rightist’ politician murdered yesterday in the Netherlands, as the latest bloody cudgel to smack around those of us on the Left.
Fortuyn’s apparent assassin was a member of a ‘vegan animal rights group’ — which somehow makes the asssassin a member of the Left. Sorry [...]
April 21, 2002 – 12:00 am
Bruce Sterling gave the closing keynote at Computers, Freedom and Privacy in San Francisco last Friday. It’s another great Sterling piece. This time he talks about going computerless at a technical conference (he wrote this talk out in longhand); Steven, the annoying Dell kid; corruption in Bollywood; desperation in Hollywood; why John Ashcroft doesn’t care [...]
April 21, 2002 – 12:00 am
[ via Faisal.com ] Tom Friedman convinces me that I ought to look into golf:
No one on the Golf Channel is afraid of compromise or change. On the contrary, golf is a game where the very best players engage in never-ending self-criticism, self-reflection and self-correction, constantly adapting to changes in courses, conditions or age. That’s [...]
Oy, the mainstream press is all over that Andrew Sullivan, they either love him or hate him. I don’t have plans to forgive his post September 11th “5th Column” screed.
But regardless of all that, something the press ought to heed is that Andrew Sullivan did not invent the weblog, no matter how many fans and [...]
March 30, 2002 – 12:00 am
On the occasion of the death of the Queen Mother (no, I’m not celebrating it, nor am I going to participate in the wearing of ashes and sackcloth from an older form of the cult of celebrity), I’m pointing you at Christopher Hitchens’ editorial in the Guardian from last fall.
Events, many of them biological, have [...]
March 29, 2002 – 12:00 am
[ via RC3.org ]Lessons from Brock’s mea culpa:
When billionaires do support more or less liberal causes, they usually try to help the world, not take over the U.S. political system. Not to put too fine a point on it: While George Soros was spending lavishly to promote democracy abroad, Mr. Scaife was spending lavishly to [...]
March 24, 2002 – 12:00 am
The Alicubi Journal’s Crank Watch column goes in my bookmarks. Here they take apart Andrew Sulivan, the Quisling of the Castro (okay, he lives in DC), and his claim that ‘increasing numbers of Conservatives support Gay Rights’:
Of course these “numbers” are growing, we cannot help but observe: They could scarcely go down. Despite the presence [...]
The Independent asks a few questions from its readers of Mother Theresa’s favorite biographer, Chrisopher Hitchens.
You’re a highly-paid newspaper columnist. How do you square this with your left-wing leanings? — Jo Spencer, Leeds
Nothing’s too good for the working class.
That’s why I like Hitchens.
A great Bruce Sterling rant on how the non-commerical Internet won. Well until the Entertainment-Industrial Complex mandates filtchware…
Thanks to Prentiss Riddle for emailing me the updated URL.
February 14, 2002 – 12:00 am
Dave, really, it’s okay. I’ve been doing a tableless version of whump.com for over two years now, and I was doing it in Frontier 4.x. The question isn’t if Dave uses tables, but if the tools Userland builds allow me to build the way I want to. I think it’s great that Radio has CSS [...]
February 6, 2002 – 12:00 am
Dave should have a look at the toolkit they are using on trolls and flames at Megatokyo. Esp. that last panel.
