by on
“The other night, from cares exempt,
I slept — and what d’you think I dreamt?
I dreamt that somehow I had come
To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom!”

Really, I don’t know what to make of this very strange excerpt from Rush Limbaugh’s show. He said:

“[L]ook at all the things that were built in five years during the Great Depression: The Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building came in ahead of schedule, built during the Depression, back in the days where we actually built things. And back then there wasn’t talk of extended unemployment benefits. There wasn’t talk of national health care. That mind-set just didn’t exist. And because those things didn’t exist people had to do what they could to fend for themselves, and if that meant picking up, moving to San Francisco, working for whatever you got paid in a dangerous job like building the Golden Gate Bridge or the bay bridges or the Hoover Dam or the Empire State Building, it’s what you did, you found work wherever you could.”

Um… wasn’t building all that stuff part of a government program; and under a Democratic President, no less? Isn’t that supposed to be, like, Socialism? Or else “Liberal Fascism“? I don’t think any of that exactly shows off the virtues of the free-market, at any rate. I may be wrong, but I would have thought Limbaugh would be railing against such awful, awful Government things.

If anyone reading this happens to have more knowledge on this subject, I’d appreciate some enlightenment.

(And yes, for those of you wondering, evidently I lied about not blogging till I could finish that big post I’m working on. I can’t help it.)

by on

…but I just had to post a link to this article by Mark Thompson. An excerpt:

“The ‘debate over debate’ that has arisen in the wake of the tragic assassination attempt of Congresswoman Giffords in Arizona on Saturday, which left 6 dead, including a 9 year old girl, a federal judge, and a bride-to-be has been, and sadly continues to be, perhaps the most childish and depressing debate I’ve seen in my nearly four years as a blogger. The victims, rather than being remembered and honored, are being used as cudgels and footballs to prove a point about how the other teams are more evil than one’s own team.”

I don’t know if “post-partisanship” is an achievable goal, but if it is, that article describes how you could achieve it.

(Hat Tip to Andrew Sullivan)

by on

I’m working on a fairly long, complicated post, but I think it’s going to take me a while to put it together.

So, if I don’t post here for a few days, it’s not because I’ve abandoned the blog; it’s just that I have a limited time available for blogging, and I’ll probably be spending it all working on the one post.

by on

I will post a link to Wil Shipley’s review of the game Fallout: New Vegas that, suffice it to say, does not really see eye-to-eye with my opinion of the game.

The funny thing is, he makes many points I agree with, but none of them were game-ruining for me.

(Hat Tip to Hacker News)

by on

Fascinating article by Chrystia Freeland. The key quote:

“[The rich] are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.”

It’s very interesting. Shades of Samuel P. Huntington’s concept of the “Davos man“.

by on

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”–Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I like this line, but unfortunately it’s the sort of thing that one says sadly, to no one in particular, rather than the sort of thing that can help you win a debate.

It falls into the category of things that are true, but useless. Because each side is capable of presenting some “facts”–numbers, figures, anecdotes–that sound good enough to the layman.

And, of course, they can deride all attempts at fact-checking these claims. For example, anyone who tries to show that the Laffer curve idea is not really supported by data can be dismissed as “liberally biased”.

I was reading a column by Leonard Pitts Jr. from about a year ago that examined this phenomenon in detail. (And introduced me to the Moynihan quote above.) Pitts wrote that he could remember:

 “…a time when facts settled arguments. This is before everything became a partisan shouting match, before it was permissible to ignore or deride as “biased” anything that didn’t support your worldview.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn’t just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn’t just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

But that’s the intellectual state of the union these days.”

I’ve heard other people, older than myself, assert that things used to be as Mr. Pitts describes as well. I’m not sure I believe it. I’m not accusing Mr. Pitts or like-minded people of lying, but I wonder if it’s simple nostalgia on their part.

And if they are right, I wonder what it was that caused the change.

by on

The Writers Guild of America announced the nominees for their video game writing award today. You can view the nominees here.

As you all can probably guess, I’m pulling for Obsidian and Bethesda‘s Fallout: New Vegas to win. Like the article pointed out, I’m also surprised BioWare‘s Mass Effect 2 wasn’t nominated.

However, the overall best writing I know of in a video game in 2010 was in Obsidian’s Alpha Protocol. In a just world, it should probably win for the character of Steven Heck alone.

Really, though, I’m just glad that such an award exists. It’s important that attention be drawn to the art of video game writing.

by on

So, in case you haven’t heard, they’re planning to release a new edition of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn that replaces the “N-word” with the word “slave”.

The reason for this is that apparently some teachers and schools won’t teach the novel because of the controversial and difficult nature of discussing this word with students. So, this edition is proposed as an alternative to not teaching the book at all.

To an extent, this is sound logic. After all, exposing people to the story (minus a few details) is better than if they couldn’t read the thing at all. On the other hand, is anyone really capable of preventing people from reading Huckleberry Finn (or any out-of-copyright work) these days? It’s on Wikisource.

Besides, students are notoriously bad at following what teachers tell them. Therefore, I would guess that the best way to get students to read the book is to expressly forbid them from reading it, or at least emphasize its taboo content.

In my experience, the people who want to read and understand literature will go and do so on their own. Those who do not, meanwhile, will not learn even if forced to. I’d say the easiest thing is to write down the name of the book and the author and then tell everyone they shouldn’t read it because it is offensive. This way, only people who don’t mind the risk of being offended will bother to read it. Those who do mind can read some inoffensive book.

Then, when test time comes, the teacher can offer the students a choice of which book to write about.

by on

Via Private Buffoon, it seems that the apocalypse will soon be upon us. At least, according to one group of Christians, it will come on May 21, 2011.

Here’s another weird coincidence for you: I myself blogged about the, ah… reasoning behind this prediction exactly one year ago today. (And then promptly forgot all about it.)

Okay, so this is probably not a random coincidence. I assume that the news media always puts the Prophets of Doom in the news around New Year’s. Trying to relive the “Y2K bug” days, no doubt.

However, I’m sure that if you’re into numerology, you can make up discover much more sinister reasons for this fact.