Sunday, October 02, 2005

Duncan Black interviews the excellent PZ Myers about the science of evolution. 3:29:06 PM   permalink   comment []

Chris Anderson notes that executive blogs are not what business blogging is all about. Agreed. 3:25:57 PM   permalink   comment []

Must read: Troublemaker on the TRC, gang activity, and Skip Alston. Be sure to read the Ahearn column he references, too...if you can find a print edition, that is -- the column linked online today is not the one in today's paper. 2:47:11 PM   permalink   comment []

John Robinson discusses some of the N&R's latest online features. I've thought for a while that expanded sports coverage could be a real revenue opportunity for local papers -- you should be able to sell ads around stuff like the audio files of Dustin Long's interviews with top NASCAR drivers that JR discusses. Sports fans are passionate. Local papers have access to the objects of the passion. For the N&R, that includes NASCAR and ACC sports. 2:25:46 PM   permalink   comment []

Jay Rosen on Judy Miller and the Times. "Civil disobedience succeeds when there is clarity in purpose, cogency in argument, and transparency in action. None of which has been apparent in Judy’s Miller’s epic." 2:14:12 PM   permalink   comment []

A prominent white Greensboro clergyman yesterday described to me the decision by the six white City Council members to skip every minute of TRC testimony as "institutional racism." I had not thought of it that way. I had chalked up the no-shows up to short-sightedness, cowardice, and stubborness. Institutional racism doesn't require the individuals in the institution to be racists, and I do not believe that the members of our City Council are racists. But is there something more at work here than the decisions of six individuals? If so, can a label be put on it? Is there a better label than "institutional racism," which seems incendiary if only because it includes the R-word? 2:04:00 PM   permalink   comment []

DarkTimes: Rich is essential reading (too bad most people can't): "It's not just Mr. DeLay, a k a the Hammer, who is on life support, but a Washington establishment whose infatuation with power and money has contaminated nearly every limb of government and turned off a public that by two to one finds the country on the wrong track... a culture antithetical to everything conservatives had stood for in the Gingrich revolution of 1994....Mr. DeLay's latest plight is only a tiny detail within this vast Boschian canvas of depravity...this is a crisis in the governing culture, not the tale of a few bad apples." He's got chapter and verse on the lobbyist culture and the spread of the rot. But the NYT doesn't really want you to read it. Hey, maybe the DarkTimes is a GOP plot? Kristof: "A dozen years after Bill Clinton's health reform efforts were destroyed by the insurance industry's duplicity, it's worth trying again. The health care system is steadily becoming more gummed up in ways that are impossible to hide." Brooks says that as technology allows people to live longer, families will have to take care of their own. "Will our moral philosophy catch up to this reality?," he asks. Citing a report from the President's Council on Bioethics, he says, "It is a rebuke to the economic individualism of the right and to the moral individualism of the left. With its emphasis on mutual obligation, I sometimes thought I was reading a report from the old German Christian Democrats." More: "A generation ago, all the emphasis was on rebelling against conformity, on liberating the individual. Now the emphasis is on nurturing bonds so sacred they are beyond the realm of choice. Now the individual is less likely to be regarded as the fundamental unit of society. Instead, it's the family." 9:28:20 AM   permalink   comment []

Cobb weighs in at the GSO blogcon blog in anticpation of his session on Saturday: "Thinking about your involvement in the web as sort of an anthropological study is a useful thing. Let's do that." 9:14:47 AM   permalink   comment []

N&R's Elyse Ashburn covered the final day of T&R hearings. Plenty of quotes, but somehow Spoma Jovanovic's press criticism got left on the cutting room floor. Nothing about the kids of survivors, either. Just asking: did the N&R have a reporter in the auditorium for the entire day's program? Same question for the previous hearings. 9:12:40 AM   permalink   comment []

My newspaper column asks 20 questions about the war in Iraq. Your answers may vary depending on the direction you knee is jerking, but that doesn't mean your answers are correct. Sample questions: When will Iraqi forces be adequate in number and preparation to assume responsibility for their country? What is our exit strategy, in terms of timing and the criteria that must be met before we leave? Is there a point at which we would leave without achieving our stated goals? What is our ultimate obligation to the Iraqi people? Do we plan to maintain military bases in Iraq after turning things over to a local government? And a favorite that I've used in other 20 Questions columns... Why are questions about going to war seen by many people as unpatriotic instead of patriotic? Read the whole thing. 8:23:43 AM   permalink   comment []