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...
We’re All Such Independent Thinkers III
Quoth Noreen at Independent Bile, this past spring, in the post that sent her site to my blogroll…
…if I hear anyone saying “Is it just me, or…..” or “Am I the only one who…” then I move away from them as fast as I can.
And, by the way, the answer to those questions is “No” and “No”, because invariably, the things that these cunts believe themselves to be the only ones saying, doing or thinking, are incredibly mundane things that half the population say, do or think as well. And even if these “AM I the only one” types happen to be boasting about slightly rarer traits than usual, like : “Am I the only one who collects feathers” or: “Am I the only one who enjoys being bitten by dogs”, you can bet that there still are other people who do those very things as well, because the world is enormous.
All of which is certainly a bunch of entirely valid observations, but if the problem was limited to just those, Noreen would be going off on this bunny trail without me. People collecting feathers don’t bother me one bit. People wondering if they’re the only ones collecting feathers, likewise, can do that all day long as far as I’m concerned.
But blogger friend Aup from Just Muttering made a salient observation about this:
In my experience, that verbal nonsense is a passive-aggressive trick that some people use to get people to say “oh no no, it’s not just you” and then share something. I hate it.
And there ya go. Pondering the situation a little more closely, one sees there really isn’t much reason to string those five words together but to coerce a false sense of agreement from the apathetic. Example: I freakin’ hate Seinfeld. Suppose for the moment you have never watched Seinfeld. You don’t give a rat’s ass about Seinfeld one way or the other. I know you don’t watch Seinfeld, and really don’t care for it or against it. I know this. But I want to pursuade you to my point of view — at least, cosmetically.
And I know if I say “I freakin’ hate Seinfeld” you’re going to say “I’ve never watched it” and nothing else. What if we’re not alone? What if we’re in the presence of someone else who also never watched Seinfeld and doesn’t know what to think of it? The conversation might go against me…after all, gee, like 67% of us have never watched Seinfeld. Maybe we should tune in sometime!
No, that won’t do at all. I freakin’ hate Seinfeld, remember? So I take a different approach, is it just me, or does Seinfeld suck??? Ah! Now, there’s no way to be “hip” unless you know something about Seinfeld. It’s an invitation to those unacquainted with Seinfeld that…if you don’t know anything about the matter under discussion, you’d better start pretending that you do. And oh by the way, the “prevailing viewpoint” is that it sucks. One guy just decided that for the rest of us. Truly an exercise in the tail wagging the dog.
You might say it’s a Jedi mind trick, that only works on the weak-minded.
Well, the liberal resource AmericaBLOG would like to give it a try.
Is it just me, or has Google News become useless? Their definition of “news sites” seems to include an ever increasing number of simply bizarre Web sites that aren’t even the top in their category of site. Meaning, they’ve tried to include blogs, but only some blogs, and many of the ones they have you’ll never have heard of, and many of the ones you have heard of are just plain bad. When I’m doing a news search, I want news site – not blogs, not left-wing conspiracy sites, or right-wing religious nutjobs. News. If they want a blog search enging, that’s fine too. But the current state of affairs has taken a great news search engine and turned it into a bunch of noise.
That’s the post. All of it. Every single word, every single comma. That’s right; no examples given, just the “is it just me” schtick. Upon what dullard could such feeble magic possibly work?
Well, along comes Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKOS. Coerced not only into agreement, but into action as well.
I agree with Aravosis:
Is it just me, or has Google News become useless? Their definition of “news sites”…
Google News is becoming unusable. They need some serious soul-searching about what they are and what their mission is.
A “news” operation needs to present news, and credible news at that. That means get rid of the blogs (mostly opinion), get rid of the no-name sites, the conspiracy sites, and the rest of that crap.
I voluntarily asked for Daily Kos to be removed from Google News since it was returning results from this site that quite frankly weren’t up to the sort of standards I expect out of a service offering up credible news. Obviously, I was alone in trying to preserve the integrity of the service. Not even Google News seems to give a damn.
Again, no examples given. And, unbelievably, the problem is not called out by someone making requests to Google News and being frustrated by a list returned by the search engine of “no-name sites…conspiracy sites, and the rest of that crap.” No, the complaint is being made by the guy whose “crap” is included in what’s presented to others.
Moulitsas’ banning of Google News has made the headlines of C/Net.
Moulitsas, once again, has helped to demonstrate what liberalism is all about. Permitting the free flow of information and ideas — only so long as it makes his side look good. You want news about, let’s say, red socks. Someone on DailyKOS might have written an article on how he forgot to take red socks out of the wash and his little white “Buck Fush” tee shirt got bled all over, and IT’S GEORGE BUSH’S FAULT!!! And if that were to be returned in your search results, why, you might get the idea that some of our liberals are a little, y’know, kooky. Just a tad bit soft in the head for the time being. So Moulitsas, et al, are going to use social activism once again — to make sure you don’t find out how kooky they are. Not to make sure Rosa Parks can sit where she wants. But to keep liberal weirdness under wraps.
Most among us don’t give a rip about conservatives or liberals, but would rather be concerned about learning stuff from the “innernets” when we want to learn about it. In their interests, I would have hoped an exchange of examples would be forthcoming. Neither KOS nor AmericaBLOG thought that was worth exploring.
Is it just me, or is that interesting?
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