Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Ann Althouse is calling out this canard, practiced most recently by Josh Marshall who says:
A year ago, no one took seriously the idea that a federal health care mandate was unconstitutional.
Althouse replies:
We don’t rule out a proposition of constitutional law simply because no one seems to taking it seriously right now. We work through the analysis, and maybe we discover that it should be taken seriously.
Notice she said “maybe.” The point is that the “nobody taking it seriously” litmus test is not a reverse barometer of logical validity; the point is that it is non-correlative.
Also notice that she’s granting Marshall the benefit of the doubt — conceding the point, for the sake of argument, that “no one” was taking the proposition seriously twelve months ago, so she can contest the reasoning of what this would & would not mean.
But there were people taking it seriously one year ago. How did Marshall ignore this? Easy. He made them disappear…by refusing to take them seriously. That’s the trouble with this kind of thinking. You start manufacturing your own reality. And you do it on purpose. Without explicitly knowing that’s what you’re doing. By being a craven gigglepuss.
Hardy-har-har.
Your Thomas Sowell reading assignment that deals with this, would be Intellectuals and Society, Chapter 5, “Optional Reality in the Media and Academia.”
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“Nobody I know voted for Nixon….”
I’m not sure if Sowell’s book covers it, but the standard ivory tower response to the charge of “optional reality” is to point out the indisputable fact that they do have disagreements — big serious ones, that last lifetimes (and which pull in students and students-of-students, turning them into a kind of Hatfield/McCoy thing, or one of those big long Biblical lineages, except of petty vindictiveness).
Only problem is, these huge, nasty fights tend to be about things like whether the Marxist interpretation of something is more correct than the Marxist/Leninist, or the Marxist/Leninist/feminist, or the feminist/transgendered Marxist, or the… etc. etc. I imagine it’s similar in our totally objective, completely nonpartisan media, with bitter arguments over whether Obama is merely the greatest president ever, or actually sort-of-God. (I wonder which side Josh Marshall is on?)
- Severian | 12/14/2010 @ 11:40I look forward to Severian’s responses about as much as Morgan’s posts.
- Jason | 12/14/2010 @ 15:27Awww, shucks! Thanks!
- Severian | 12/14/2010 @ 17:12