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...
The Trouble With “Fisking”
Quoth the Urban Dictionary on the verb “Fisk”:
The term refers to Robert Fisk, a journalist who wrote some rather foolish anti-war stuff, and who in particular wrote a story in which he (1) recounted how he was beaten by some anti-American Afghan refugees, and (2) thought they were morally right for doing so. Hence many pro-war blogs — most famously, InstaPundit — often use the term “Fisking” figuratively to mean a thorough and forceful verbal beating of an anti-war, possibly anti-American, commentator who has richly earned this figurative beating through his words. Good Fisking tends to be (or at least aim to be) quite logical, and often quotes the other article in detail, interspersing criticisms with the original article’s text.
This brand-new word shows some signs of dying as quickly as it was born, I’m afraid. After all, what is the point of giving someone a good fisking? I would say the point, if there is one, is to let the reader read the original author’s text word-for-word, and then clearly define the end of that author’s comments and the beginning of your own. It is to protect yourself from accusations from the original author, that you are critiquing not something that he wrote, but something that you made up. To protect yourself from accusations of the classic “strawman” argument, as it were.
Well, we here at The Blog That Nobody Reads aren’t real fans of “fisking.” It doesn’t seem to work. Here’s a great example. Our friend, His Royal Majesty at Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler got his robes in a knot over the finch beak thing last week. We, here, kept our silence on the issue. Well, Emperor Misha has been fisked by some kind of doctor-type guy.
The doctor-type guy, after his momentum gets going in about the sixth or seventh paragraph, says “His Majesty the Ann Coulter wannabe seems not to realize that he is constructing one massive strawman.” Mmkay, so the fisker is taking the fiskee to task for using the strawman argument.
Okay, kids. Click on the link above. How many times did the doctor-type guy use the strawman fallacy to attack Darth Misha? How many times did he say Misha said something, that Misha, in fact, didn’t actually say? a) 10 b) 15 c) 20 d) 50 e) More.
So, no, this new communications medium is rapidly becoming a futile one. Fiskers quote fiskees as a matter of ritual, and then they proceed to put words in the fiskees’ mouths. I guess you can refrain from doing that, and do a “good job” at fisking someone. If that’s the definition of a good fisking, then I’m having a little bit of trouble seeing how this could be one.
But if you liked that, you’re gonna love this. Politburo Pundit, applauding this suspect fisking-job, says…and this is a quote now, I’m not going to put any words in this guy’s mouth at all…
Orac does a good job, and since my corporate firewall blocks the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, I can�t add too much more at this point. [emphasis mine]
Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot. Yeah that’s right, you can’t add too much more at this point, and you also can’t do something else, dude. Like uh, you can’t figure out if Orac did a good job or not. Was that not obvious?
Well anyway. Like I’ve said before, I’m a believer in the whole kitten kaboodle. Macro-evolution, micro-evolution, ooze to slime to fish to crocodiles to chimps to people. And I believe in God too. I believe in an efficient God, who grows things, rather than sitting around on His ass putting every single one of thousands of species together one model at a time, like some bored second-grader with a room full of airplane- or dinosaur-models.
So Misha and I may disagree on that point, I dunno. From where I sit, Misha’s critique seemed to be against the study, and how people were interpreting it, and the good doctor didn’t even do a decent enough job of “fisking” to even get that part of it straight. What the doctor actually did, in fact, was give me a whole bunch of instructions about what I’m supposed to believe Misha was trying to say, and accuse Misha of doing exactly the same thing. Not my idea of a good fisking.
Of course others are free to disagree. But I think if they want to do so, they should be able to read both pieces instead of confessing to the whole “I’m blocked by my company’s firewall” excuse and punting on it.
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