Blogging

Another Place Heard From

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Mrs. Davis thoughtfully comments on James’s post  :  

In case you missed it, the housing market started to crash about a year ago. But unemployment never rose. Why? They all went back to Mexico. They may have a hard time getting a job there, but they’ve saved a lot of dollars and they’re still the richest guys in the village. They’ll hang out till we need them again and then they’ll be back. Even in those midwestern meat and poultry packing plants.

James, Ohio must be really different from other parts of flyover country. I don’t think anyone would mistake Lexington, Nebraska for Marin County.   But guys stand around there as they do all over Texas waiting for a job on week-ends.   Put in a meat packing plant and suddenly the Somalis and Mexicans join the cowboys at Wal-Mart.      

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Outblogging the MSM

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I belong to an internet group called the UCF, who started out as members of John Scalzi‘s Wateveresque forum until an army of trolls came in and set up residence in that once-fine space. We gradually retreated to our own blogs and set up an online community for ourselves. Most of us are aspiring writers, all of us are science fiction fans, and we’re all a little goofy, but that’s about where the similarity ends. We run the political spectrum from socialist to me. There is a lawyer, a film and TV location manager, an administrative assistant at JPL, and editor for Linux Journal, several other IT professionals of various stripes, an architect, a marine biologist, and a former Navy Chief Warrant turned writer and woodworker, among others (oh yeah, and me, a chemist). Over time, I’ve come to regard all of them as friends, although I’ve only met two of them in meatspace.

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Post-Implementation Audit Review

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yes, it smelled good

of the rendezvous, that is. PIAR Items:

Issue 1

  • Description: Overcorrected for anticipated too-early arrival time.
  • Area of Improvement: Change Management
  • Root Cause: Assumed functional highway network. Ha!
  • Mitigation: Allow 2x as much time if going anywhere on the Edens or the Kennedy.

Issue 2

  • Description: Initially parked in wrong garage.
  • Area of Improvement: Documentation
  • Root Cause: Didn’t ask hotel operator for detailed instructions.
  • Mitigation: Ask next time.

Issue 3

  • Description: Missed rendezvous with Carl.
  • Area of Improvement: Communication
  • Root Cause: Didn’t check comments on planning post after early Saturday morning.
  • Mitigation: Graze (Midwesterners don’t surf) through the blog at T-2 hours. Exchange mobile phone numbers. Buy Carl a plate of barbecue.

Issue 4

  • Description: Wore Bill out walking too far.
  • Area of Improvement: Planning
  • Root Cause: Unduly elaborate itinerary.
  • Mitigation: Traveling-salesman algorithm; taxicabs (implemented).

Issue 5

  • Description: Appeared drab and uninteresting by comparison with other attendees.
  • Area of Improvement: Work Error (1959-present)
  • Root Cause: Couldn’t keep up with Bill’s knowledge of Chicago goings-on and economy/tax issues or Tatyana’s tales of camping trips on river islands in Siberia and eye for architectural/design details.
  • Mitigation: Surround self with boring friends, or just get a lot more people to show up next time so I can revert to lurk mode.

Best Practices (I did do some things right)

* yep, swiped it from Stephen Green, who I’m pretty sure swiped it from this

Questions from Outside the Loop

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Andrew Sullivan  can still write well; he can even be  thoughtful and  interesting;  A&L links to “Why I Blog,”  in the November  Atlantic.    The essay makes several points about the difference between writing an essay, writing for a newspaper and blog writing.    He  remarks  

Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

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Reynolds Heats Up to Room Temperature

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We usually know what Glenn Reynolds thinks, but the temperature is low  at  Instapundit.   Today he  is prompted to comment at  (relative) length: “So we’ve had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers’ bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly   about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it’s a sign that anger is out of control in American politics?”    Dry,  laconic and  link-filled, Reynold’s  post gives context.    He blames the media; reading the comments at   the  NYTimes, I begin to see different narratives built on different perceptions of how McCain’s crowd acts and  the appropriate response to Palin & her children.    I  wonder what is true and what is projection – and how we will ever know.    One thing the media’s biases have done is make us doubt its reporting.   I’m not sure  what was actually chanted at that McCain rally – chants reported in a way that angered John Lewis, set off some of   the commentors and led to McCain’s apology.   Surely, however,  defenses of booing don’t come from an understanding of  civility. (Gateway Pundit)