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News, Updates, and Other Small Things that Don't Justify Whole Articles

News archives:
9. #87-97, 6-15 to 7-25
8. #80-86, 5-30 to 6-13
7. #71-79, 5-8 to 5-26
6. #56-70, 4-21 to 5-6
5. #47-55, 4-8 to 4-19
4. #35-46, 3-25, 13:54 PST to 4-7
3. #24-34, 3-11 to 3-25, 13:11 PST
2. #16-23, 2-20 to 3-7
1. #1-15, 2-6 to 2-19

#109
2004-9-8, 11:18 EDT
Wow, it's been a while. I'm trying to kick my blog addiction - I even tell myself tongue-in-cheek stuff like, "Hello, my name is Joe, and I'm a blogaholic... it's been almost three weeks since my last blog post." It's not that I had nothing to say - I did, and a lot. I would've posted many entries about the school siege in Beslan, including lamentations about this story not getting enough exposure on the American blogosphere. But I'm trying to leave the blogosphere entirely. I've had too many clashes with the Blogtopian mainstream and I've had this feeling that nobody or almost nobody listens to what I say.

This site is going to still be on - for one, I need the webspace to transfer big files around ;-). If you're craving for Chapter 4 of Freedom is Slavery or whatever, just drop me an email. At least with only 3 chapters online this will be publishable... not that I have much hope in the way of publishing that.

#108
2004-8-20, 16:45 EDT
(Three news posts back-to-back!)
A scary quote from OSP member Drucilla Blood: "Being a member of the white race, and living in a society in which the white race is the race of privilege, I am, in fact, a racist."

Funny, I thought a racist was a person who thought that some races were superior to other races... But that's so (in Clueless accent) old left, apparently. Even Malcolm X eventually admitted that not all whites were devils.

Addendum: I posted the above at 13:08 on OSP and have yet to get a single comment - compare that to the Black Identity thread, which got its first flame 26 minutes after posting.

#107
2004-8-20, 16:41 EDT
Sebastian Holsclaw lists a few left-wing, pro-Kerry, or anti-Bush movies and says that it means Hollywood is liberal. Further, he says, talk radio is a reaction to liberal Hollywood, so liberals shouldn't bitch about "how to combat conservative talk radio shows." Maybe he's right. But even if he is, the evidence he presents in the linked post is anecdotal. Some of you might remember my Liberals vs. Conservatives article, where among other things I attacked the use of anecdotes given without context, and Sebastian does just that.

There's a way to determine what Hollywood's political orientation is. We can do a study of all movies released in the last 10 years that grossed over 50 million dollars in the USA. Each of these movies we will categorize as "very liberal" (e.g. Mercury Rising, The Day After Tomorrow), "mildly liberal" (The Matrix Reloaded, Godzilla), "neutral or apolitical" (The Matrix), "mildly conservative" (Independence Day, every Halloween-inspired horror movie), or "very conservative" (The Passion of the Christ). Michael Moore's movies are a class in itself. That way we can compare. Listing a few movies, some of which would probably end up in the "neutral" category in such a study because their politics are so weak or unimportant, and then calling this evidence of Hollywood's liberalism is futile.

#106
2004-8-20, 16:38 EDT
Better late than never - chapter 3 of FIS is up. For those of you who come from OSP (or go to OSP for that matter) and wonder about the chapter nomenclature, remember that on OSP chapter 1's two installments are counted separately. If I ever publish this book (which is very unlikely given that it's on the web), they'll be in one chapter.

#105
2004-8-11, 13:33 EDT
Post 102 below doesn't exist - it's just the Matrix messing with your mind. Even if it exists, my original goal is a chapter per 2 weeks, obviously not including compensation for the loooong time I didn't write any FIS.

Anyway, there's a place on the Blogosphere called The Iron Blog. It's kind of the Iron Chef of Internet debate - there are four Iron Bloggers (OSP members Jay Bullock and Dru Blood, Libertarian Vinod Valloppillil, and Republican Big Dan), and people can decide to challenge them. The chairman of IB then picks up a topic, and the battle begins - both sides then submit opening arguments at the same time, then the challenger and the Iron Blogger submit rebuttals twice each, and then sumbit closing arguments at the same time.

This looked promising. It still looks promising. And it has the advantage of being a forum where people can debate controversial issues without going down to the level of flames you see on Free Republic and Democratic Underground. Unfortunately, it has several problems limiting the critical exchange of ideas. Because the chairman picks the topic, the issues that are discussed are only reviewed by one person, who doesn't even do the debating. In less moderated debate forums it's customary for the debate to be between two people, usually but not always of equal stature, and for the two people to decide on the debate topic. That's how it works when the debate evolves spontaneously, and also how it works on the infidels.org forums.

I have never even thought of debating an Iron Blogger. That's not precisely because I'm afraid of losing; rather, it's because I don't like to pick debates I don't even know beforehand what they are about. Besides, my own style of debate is such that it can never be sufficiently presented in four posts; often the time it takes me to think of new ideas is high enough to handicap me in even unmoderated debates, let alone debates that are over after 6 days and 4 posts by each side. If I had challenged Dru Blood instead of Bryan, the chairman might've had us debate affirmative action, a topic I have no clear opinion on. Worse, the topic might've been black identity, a topic I've been religiously avoiding since my original black identity post.

Don't get me wrong - I think that the idea of moderated debate is splendid, and that the Iron Blog is a pretty good arena. But its rules often stifle discourse, and turn the whole thing into a battle of rhetoric more than logic.

#104
2004-8-6, 22:24 EDT
There's some hoopla lately about Kerry's purple hearts and military service record. About half an hour ago (it's now 22:10) I considered writing something like "Am I the only one who doesn't give a damn?" but then realized that on OSP only one person seriously delved into this, so the answer to my question was most certainly in the negative.

A purple heart is a medal you get for being wounded in combat. Rational people will do their utmost to avoid getting a purple heart for obvious reasons. But patriotism is not rational, so people turn soldiers into heroes for getting a purple heart. In a war, the idea is to get the other side as many wounded as you can, not to get wounded yourself. As such, discussion on whether Kerry deserved his purple hearts or not is futile. It takes a seriously twisted person to think that getting wounded in combat is a good thing, or indeed one that shows heroism (it only shows the enemy's ability...).

Besides, all this talk about Kerry's military service record is not relevant whatsoever. He's up for president, not swift boat commander. Whether he went along well with his fellow officers won't change anything in his presidency. What does matter is that he enlisted in Vietnam like a good sheep, killed Vietnamese civilians, and then said he was against the war. Then he voted for the war on Iraq that killed Iraqi civilians and said he was against it. He's like the Catholic church - he'll shoot you and then say he's sorry; whether he means it or not is irrelevant to you when you're dead.

Why can't we have another president with Bill Clinton's military record?

#103
2004-8-4, 04:41 EDT
I have a refutation of some email telling lies about Teresa Heinz Kerry and how radical and anti-American she is.

#102/b>
2004-8-2, 14:48 EDT
Chapter 2 is up 15 hours late. Better late than never, as they say. Chapter 3 will be up by the end of the week, i.e. by 8/8. I built being late into it, so I'll make it on time *L*. The disadvantage of living in the USA as opposed to in, say, Japan, is that you can't push deadlines much by juggling with timezones. Here I can say, "but in Hawai'i it's still yesterday..." until 6 AM. In Japan I can say that until 10 PM, IIRC.
P.S. Baghdad Burning is back on my links list, now that it got updated.