Following Lex’s advice, I e-mailed Michael Yon about an answer to our Oliver’s question on my previous post. Irene Pinsonneault responded that the best example was in Yon’s two-part dispatch:
Blogging
Tales That Should Not Be Told
In one of the comments to my post Telling Stories, Veryretired said something very wise:
There are myths so entrenched in our national psyche that facts are simply insufficient to change the story that “everyone knows”.
As H. Beam Piper said in “Cosmic Computer“: “Well, always take a second look at these
things everybody knows. Ten to one they’re not so. ”
Over time that damage to the collective mental model of how the world works can be repaired, but in the short and intermediate timeframes, myths are dangerous. One of the great boons bequeathed to mankind by the scientific method is the creation of a class of people who question received wisdom all the time. One of the recurrent complaints on my blog is that many scientists don’t lead the way in this regard. Oh, sure, we question each other deeply about matters in our own fields, but we don’t carry this over to other areas in our own lives, to say nothing of trying to spread the method to laymen.
Self Referential A&L
It’s old news – three days old when “Truth Hates Delay” – but A& L links to Fulford celebrating A&L Dutton makes 21st century “haste” with the eclectic curiosity of eighteenth century conversation; maybe man hasn’t changed much from the coffee houses of Congreve to Starbucks at Barnes & Noble, but the borders have. Dutton teaches philosophy in Christchurch and the managing editor, Tran Huu Dung, economics in Dayton. This distance hints at the width of their interests – but then, its the nature of the net. He’s one of those people – it is one of those projects – that makes me feel lucky to live in the 21st century. I’m grateful – they make me laugh, make me think, and, by pulling together endless links, puts many the riches of the web within a click or two. (Though of course one would think they’d include the incomparable Chicagoboyz on their blogroll.) Of course, it’s seductive – always beckoning with far more charm than grading papers or cleaning house.
Ribbit Redux
The Dissident Frogman is back!
Thanks to Gateway Pundit
- Update: Today, Gateway Pundit‘s concludes descriptions of various participants, heroics of Iraq’s Mithul al-Alusi and Garri Kasparov with the understated: “Certainly, Prague is not short on heroes this week.”
Countering the posts we’ve been doing on Cuba and Venezuela, across the ocean Sharansky, Havel & Aznar organized “Democracy and Security: Core Values and Sound Policies.” (In Prague, June 5-6, hosted by Prague Security Studies Institute, Jerusalem-Based Shalem Center’s Adelson Institute For Strategic Studies and Madrid’s Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies.) Gateway Pundit is covering it and includes a moving speech by Lieberman and a rather rousing one by Bush – described by Gateway Pundit as “Bush Rocks the Czernin Palace”. The conference is full of people who have taken great risks and lost much for the cause of democracy and liberty.
This doesn’t seem to be getting the coverage one would think it should. For instance, dissidents from seventeen countries sat in the front rows for Bush’s speech – these people are, by their presence, interesting. The stories need not really say that Bush met with them privately or that he got a standing ovation – we understand why that is not news.