Author Archives: Danny Silverman

Meg, Meet Jason

Two blogs I read are MegNut and Kottke, written by two people who reference each other and who one can logically infer over a period of time are together. Recently Jason Kottke posted an entry about how his blog is six years old, and how he has never stuck with anything for that long. This caused me to wonder about how he met Meg, and whether there were references to their relationship’s beginnings in his blog. Them both very web-focused people, this seemed probable, and interesting. How did people talk about relationships on blogs back when blogs were first beginning?

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Paul Krugman’s latest Op-Ed explains in clear, succinct terms what is going on with the media coverage of President Bush and his administration.

There are typical reasons for the media being easy on Bush, including many that I have elaborated on before and that have been written about in a lot of books that the public never hears about dealing with corporate ownership of media, the introspective nature of the press, etc. There are also, of course, those stemming from Sept. 11:

The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush’s problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush’s “infallibility complex” more than two years ago, and I wasn’t being original.

So why did the press credit Mr. Bush with virtues that reporters knew he didn’t possess? One answer is misplaced patriotism. After 9/11 much of the press seemed to reach a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief.

Another answer is the atmosphere of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt put forth by the White House, vitriolic conservative pundits, and well-meaning Americans, who attacked “negative” or critical coverage. Journalists who reported the “wrong” story would quickly see their sources dry up, their access revoked, and their sponsorship pulled.

Another factor that Krugman does not consider but that media critics are well aware of is the institutional nature of reporting — generally reporters don’t look report controversy unless it is put forth by public figures. If the scared and confused Democrats had put out some serious criticism, the press would have picked it up. But without “important” actors putting out opposition, the press will not do it either.

Krugman seems to think that that is all about to change, and I say it’s about time. After this Iraq mess, everyone, including the Times, is looking back at the last couple years and wondering where iit all went wrong, and how they can rebuild their shattered reputations. That introspective nature of the press is working for good, for once.

Keep American Safe and Free

I subscribed to one or two magazines in the past that are considered “left” or “liberal” and ended up on a lot of junk mail lists, which pissed me off. I also once gave money to, I think, KPCC (or was it KCRW?) and started getting a lot of crap from them as well. I wondered whether my money was going to anything useful for just going to more mailings.

But the ACLU has brought a case challenging a provision of the USA PATRIOT Act that I find particularily revolting, and I’ve decided it’s high time I finally join an organization that has become increasingly more important every day since Sept. 11. I unchecked the box that said “share my name with other organizations” and gave ’em 20 bucks, and I can finally call myself a card–carrying member of the ACLU.

You should do it too.

A Year In Pictures

Looking back, 2004 was a terrible year for me in pictures. It looks like all I have is stuff from the village and a few snaps taken on the last day. I don’t know how I missed everything, hopefully I’ll be able to collect some images from friends and post them in my gallery :cry:. Anyway, without further ado, here is Welcome to the Village, which shows images from moving-in and then moving-out. A year-spanning gallery with nothing in the middle!

Enoch Root Lives

Spoilers for Cryptonomicon follow…

There seems to have been a big controvery about the character of Enoch Root and his miraculous coming-back-to-life bit. Example. I don’t really see what the problem is or why this is such a big deal. I mean, admittedly, very little if any of Cryptonomicon is science fiction, so this could be coming out of the blue, or, if I may, gold.
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Comment spam…

…is stupid. I dunno if WordPress 1.2 does anything to fix it. One suggestion that was made is simply reject comments with lowercase names, and real people can learn to capitalize. 🙂 For now I’ve set it so that all comments have to be moderated. Generally these spambots target older entries, so ideally I’d like to set it up when I upgrade so that all entries older then n, where n is a amount of time, are moderated comments, and all new entries are open comments. I think this strikes a better balance then disabling comments on all old entries (sorry Meg!), since sometimes people pop along and have interesting things to say.

Salad

I was about to post a quick entry about how Wendy’s didn’t give me ranch dressing for my salad and so I had to eat frozen pizza for dinner when I realized — if I’m not careful, over the summer my blog might turn into a LiveJournal! AHHHH!!! Must…avoid…pointless…daily…updates.