Thursday, July 21, 2005

Truth and Reconciliation exec director Jill Williams is looking for volunteers to transcribe testimony from last week's public hearings. 4:10:59 PM   permalink   comment []

Boring-sounding but important story: "Following months of political pressure, China today revalued the yuan to 8.11 for every dollar, scrapping a decade-long peg to the currency." The Wall Street Journal is hosting a conversation between economists Nouriel Roubini and David Altig about the move. 1:57:04 PM   permalink   comment []

Alexander Samuels on bumper-sticker etiquette. 11:21:11 AM   permalink   comment []

It must be hard to type with your fingers in your ears, but John Hammer seems to have mastered the trick. Nothing he heard at the Truth & Reconciliation hearings seems to have even slightly challenged his conviction that the Commission is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CWP survivors. At one point in his front-pager in today's Rhino (posts Monday), he refers to CWP's version of events as "the way the commission would like us to believe." He takes it as a given that the panel is not independent and that the fix is in from the start. But on Saturday the Commission established some credibility. The CWP narrative of a peaceful march set upon by the forces of conspiracy did not have a very good day (Hammer neglects entirely the testimony of Elizabeth Wheaton).  By asking for input from any relevant source and having public hearings, the Commission is creating a record that will raise the bar on accuracy for the final report. If people cooperate, we could end up with an oral history of this time and place that exists independently of the report, no matter how serious or tendentious it turns out to be. Some people want to starve this folk history as it is being compiled, ignore it or criticize it so that people stay away and the charges of incomplete and inaccurate reporting become self-fulfilling. It's natural to have suspicions about a group that was inspired by survivors with a definite agenda, but to ignore any hints of independence and larger purpose revealed along the way goes beyond skepticism and becomes just the kind of incomplete and inaccurate reporting Hammer assumes of the Commission. 11:17:28 AM   permalink   comment []

Learn to blog in Chapel Hill...a free blog teach-in this Saturday from 12-2. Details here. 9:00:50 AM   permalink   comment []

A review of James Webb's book on the Scotch-Irish. (Webb calls them Scots-Irish, but I heard the -ch usage more while growing up in this Scotch-Irish center.) 8:58:11 AM   permalink   comment []

More from Ron Bailey at the big Creationism conference in Lynchburg. Caution: contains graphic scenes of tortured logic. 8:48:50 AM   permalink   comment []

Interesting war coverage from Michael Yon in Mosul. 8:44:31 AM   permalink   comment []