Thursday, June 26, 2003

Silflay Hraka links to the Liberty University men’s dress code. The best stuff, though, is in the section for women, which includes rules against “styles related to counterculture,” and may give the impression that Liberty regards women as dummies – not to mention an unintentionally funny headline. All of which leads us back to another piece of hraka. 3:51:44 PM    comment []

News that the Supreme Court has effectively legalized the private sex lives of North Carolinians seems like a good enough excuse to check in with North State Blogs. The blogosphere is global, but it also recapitulates geography. People like to know their neighbors. Local and regional weblog groups are forming spontaneously, like North State, and there are also people in the business of setting them up. Blogging with your homies is fun, but it’s also going to become an important part of weblog journalism. We’ve already seen how a weblogger in the right place can report news of international interest – what’s coming is the weblogger reporting for a local audience.   In fact, it’s already happening, in different ways and different places. As individual bloggers report on things they can touch and feel themselves, they will spark conversations with other nearby bloggers, feed stories to the local press, and sometimes break news of widespread interest.   Bloggers can cover stories that the press wants to ignore – I seem to be the only person covering the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation project with any kind of regularity, for example.   North State Blogs is off to a good start, with an interesting diversity of thought and style and a high entertainment value. The list is growing, even if The Misanthropyst won’t join (true to his name, says Indigo). Word is that Monkeytime is joining soon.   Here a few names to consider asking on board: Doozy, Mercurial, rc3, Ryan Irelan, Saltire, thoughtsignals, frograbbitmonkey, Jim Capo, Lex Alexander, and Tara Grubb. 2:53:40 PM    comment []

Eight unemployed journalists, including my friend Connie, are participating in what they bill as reality programming for the Web.   “Think of it as reality TV without the TV and the schlock factor. This is Reality Web Programming. We hope you’ll tune in periodically and see how this particular reality adventure turns out.”   It’s a group blog/group therapy/job search kind of thing. Check it out. 1:58:26 PM    comment []

The goal of affirmative action programs should be to end the need for affirmative action programs. The population aided by successful affirmative action programs should eventually reach critical mass and become self-sustaining, making the programs obsolete.   Affirmative action seems to be working toward its goal of overcoming barriers to equal opportunity, but it does so at a price. Therefore we should be considering when and how to end it.   Other solutions to the problems addressed by affirmative action, e.g., access to adequate primary and secondary education, would help alleviate the need for affirmative action.   Setting an endpoint for successful affirmative action programs is not a precise science. Determining the exact point at which the harm caused by racial preferences outweighs the benefits will involve subjective analysis.   The sunsetting of affirmative action may not be imminent, but eventually it will have to happen. 9:05:17 AM    comment []

So now the ACC is inviting just Miami and VA Tech to join. What a train-wreck this has been, an embarassment to a once-proud league. Only UNC and Duke have shown any class, or the slightest sense of tradition and purpose and proportion. Yeah, UVA helped force the compromise, but that was at gunpoint.   The proposed deal is better than the original plan – but it would be even better if Miami backed out now, and we just got Tech.   This morning the N&R got around to pointing out something it should have been hammering on for weeks: Adding more than one team "will create havoc with the league's most significant product: basketball." Uh, yeah.     Ed Hardin, who has been great on this issue: "This is about money, and it's about football and it's about telling those pencilnecks over at Chapel Hill and Durham to start acting like football factories and quit acting like a bunch of prissy little college twits."   RIP, ACC. 8:23:57 AM    comment []