Photo Friday

Great site offering a photo assignment, and a week to post a photo. This weeks topic “shadows”.

The Neoconservative-Conspiracy Theory: Pure Myth

I have noticed many anti-war bloggers who point towards a conspiracy in the defense establishment, who orchestrated the war in Iraq. Some bloggers barely skirt calling it a jewish conspiracy. Here is an article refuting this thoughtfully.

Why is is that most conspiracy theories end at a dark place where either jews or aliens control the world? I mean I like a good conspiracy as much as anyone else, but I have never been able to make the leap to actually believing in one. I am even less likely to believe in one where an ethnic/religious group controls the world.

One other thing that always stops me from believing in vast government conspiracies.

Competence. At it’s core conspiracy implies a certain competence. The cabal can create a plan, carry it out effectively, and most importantly keep it a secret perfectly. While some people are conpetent, most big conspiracies would require hundreds of people to participate, many of whom would be government workers not reknowned for competence, imagination, or creativity.

I came across a new word today, while waiting in a doctors office.

This word seems at the moment to have been used in rather random ways on the web. Citations I found ranged from strange new agey religions, to people talking about hair, to people complaining about rock and rolls afro-carib roots. In fact as much as I like the sound of the word, I probably won’t use it much as I don’t like the company this word seems to keep at the moment.

Perhaps, I’ll use this one instead.

“A Forced Tour of the Iraq Torture Chambers for Garofalo?” by the ChronWatch Founder, Jim Sparkman

Interesting article suggesting that those opposed to war under any circumstance come face to face with the mind numbing reality of how opposing war in all circumstances has the effect of allowing cruel dictatorships to continue brutal oppression.

While sometimes I still can’t fully grasp the rationale for the war in Iraq. I am glad the people have been “liberated” from Saddam, but the reason we went in there still seems muddy to me.

Even as much as I don’t like the inhumanity of war sometimes it the only thing that can stop greater inhumanity. I believe this is sympathetic to “just war” theology.

Personally, I wish that people living in countries run by third world thugs would overthrow their own dictatorships on their own, without the loss of U.S. service people.

Of course, the John Stewart Mill quote was talking about slavery in the U.S. That’s a case where I wonder if there were any routes other than war to have accomplished the end of slavery. After all many nations gave up human slavery without civil war. In these cases the slave owners were compensated for there losses.

The interesting bit about that is that we, the U.S. enabled Iraq in the early 80′s by befriending the enemy of our enemy.

In the event of an actual blog entry you would have something more interesting to read.

After taking some time to think about the ethics of blogging as written about in my last post, I have come the following conclusions.

Blogging as a form of expression does not neatly fit into an existing category like journalism, editorial, fiction, diary, or non-fiction

Blogging is a super category or container for all other forms of expression, but with the attribute of linking and often an attraction to a sense of nowness.

If a blog is a written by a professional journalist and purports to be an accurate account of the facts it should be held up to the same cannon of ethics used by journalists.

If the blog is fiction, it should be held up to the same ethical conventions regarding fictional writing.

To regard blogging as a form unto itself with it’s own conventions, i.e. don’t edit later, always be perfectly self revealing is to limit the possibility of expression.

To make rules for blogs seems about as useful to me as making rules about what can be put on paper. We declare that all words published on wood pulp must follow journalistic ethics. Seems silly doesn’t it.

Perhaps this diagram explains what I am trying to get across better.

Lately, I have been interested in the subject of the ethics of blogging specifically whether it is ethical to edit material after submission, how self revealing one must be, whether it is ethical to have an online persona, etc..

The first thing I realized is that people take this much more seriously that I thought.

• Essay on blogging ethics. This essay suggests that you shouldn’t edit material later. This is fine if you want to be a journalist instead of a diarist.
• OnePotMeal: Learning to Read. Examines some of the boundaries between truth and fiction.
• Jonathan Delacou: Art’s Emotional charge.
• mamamusings: honesty of a different nature
• Blogging, ethics, and moolah
• Washington Post takes on ethics and blogging.

Does it matter if the blog entry is true? To me, the answer is sometimes not.

For instance,these confessions are hilarious, entertaining and instructive even if not true.

• Hannah’s confession
• Andrew’s confession

However, if the BBC “blog” entries were false I would be peeved. It’s all about context to me.

However, I think that really the issue is people want to understand the author’s intent when they read. They don’t want to get emotionally wound up over fiction, for instance.

On the other hand many blogs have the tone of an annual Christmas letter. Does anyone really argue over whether the Christmas letter account of the previous year is an accurate and faithful recording of the years events?

I have a solution to propose. I propose that people adopt a standard way of tagging their content. Here are some categories that people could use sort of like the Creative Commons license.

• Readers choice (Reader decides veracity)
• Author Editorial opinion
• First Hand Account
• News Commentary
• For Fun
• Self Revelation
• Speculation
• Fiction
• Plagiarism

Each of the categories above would exist in a “signed” and “unsigned” author state. The “signed” state would indicate that the author would be willing to swear in a court of law, stake their online reputation, or be willing to provide evidence of the “truthfulness” of the blog entry. The unsigned state would be less rigourous. For instance a “Self Revelation” entry that did not completely bare the soul and all the nuances would be “unsigned”.

The readers would also be able to sign the material. In this way a web of trust” could be developed, so that others might have a frame of reference for the material.

Perhaps this would prevent a “journalist” in China from mistaking the onion for a real source of news.

I suppose some of the heat in this discussion is generated by people who see blogging as a means to creating a world dominated by peace, love, freedom, and democracy through a connected informed public.

I recently finished up “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”, by Malcom Gladwell.

It was extremely interesting. It tied together a diverse set of ideas about social diseases, memes, athletic shoes, advertising, childrens programming and the spread of ideas in a really fascinating framework. The basic question the author was trying to answer IMHO was why ideas seem to suddenly become popular. His answers were not trite and they seemed to have some good research behind them.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand some of the whys of human behaviour, especially in groups.

One thing I found missing in the book was myself. He describes certain actors that have outsize roles, connectors, salespeople, and mavens. I don’t comfortably fit into any of those roles yet I feel like I can be a meme spreader under certain circumstances. Namely, I often synthesize information from several disciplines with a new application. Then I spread it around to individuals. Sort of like a “typhoid mary” of ideas.

I came away from the read with my head spinning with new ideas. Frankly, I also wondered of the author had cherry picked research that agreed with his hypothesis. His examples really made the book for me. The best contained the image of a seminary student prepping a devotional on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” and stepping over a sick guy on his way across the quad to deliver the devotional.

I give the book four stars out of four possible. No qualms about suggesting it to others.

I would be curious how people with a more rigorous academic bent look at this material, would they think it is overblown or lightweight or what. If so what other similiar books would be suggested as better?

As of today, I am the number one entry on google for the term “militant wilsonianism”, if you quote the words.

To celebrate I thought I would list a few links, that discuss this concept also known as “hard wilsonianism” or “neo wilsonianism.”

• Nickels worth of free advice
• Good Definition
• Conservatism, Labels, and American Foreign Policy, Part II — adds term “hard wilsonian”
• What the Heck Is a ‘Neocon’? — much ballyhooed Max Boot op-ed piece
• principled pragmatism — adds the term neo-wilsonian

My favorite, albeit broad, definition is this one.

The neocons, in the famous formulation of one of their leaders, Irving Kristol, were “liberals mugged by reality.”

Collection of other Irving Kristol quotations. One of my favorites is this one.

“[Conservatism] Our revolutionary message … is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation.”

… followed by …

“Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity.”

mamamusings: stories i won’t tell

Like liz, I find some events in my diary are not fit for public consumption, as described in “stories I won’t tell.” I have considered setting up a private MT server for these private entries, but that seems like overkill.

I find for myself that blogging allows me to journal events in a way that is much more comfortable than with pen and paper. I think that is because I can edit the entries (although that creates an ethical dilemma for some), I can use a keyboard & spellchecker(if I want to), and the result is just plain easy to navigate (no hyperlinks in a leather bound volume).

Likely, I could come up with a software solution if I thought about it a bit more. Currently,
the private thoughts go into a text file, with date entries. Some entries have XML/HTML like tags for semantic markup, like <RANT></RANT>.