Month: June 2002

Given that a) I’ve been a bit obnoxious lately and b) I am still a new kid on the blogger block, I find this somewhat appropriate:

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:: how jedi are you? ::

There aren’t too many rules here at TTLB, but one I generally follow is this: Make me laugh out loud, and you get a link. So when I hit this:

ORRIN JUDD to think that my article talking about the greater danger posed by neuroscience relative to cloning means that I have something in common with Francis Fukuyama. Well, at an appropriate level of abstraction, I do. We’re both carbon-based bipeds.

it gets linked. Even if it’s Glenn, and he really doesn’t need it. Read the whole note; Glenn is proving yet again why he’s top of the heap: the man can cram more intelligent prose into a minor rebuttal to someone else’s foolish post than some essayists have in an entire collection of works. And I couldn’t care less if that makes me sound like a suck-up; rest assured I’ll be there to tweak Prof R’s tail next time he slips up, too…

You know, some people are plain mean.

Seriously, what’s gotten into them? I can’t understand it; their actions are incomprehensible.

To put it clearly: how could it possibly be that I haven’t said anything obnoxious enough to piss them off yet?

Clearly, I’ll have to try harder… maybe that piece I was toying with on the Ellen Ripley solution to Saudi Arabia might work out after all…

“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. That’s the only way to be sure.”
-Ripley

Since I’m already at it…

Might as well go all the way. Has anybody else concluded that has delegated his blogging responsibilities to one of those mysterious interns he allegedly has?

I know he’s got the juice in him, but really: when was the last time you remember reading something really good on his page? (That he wrote, that is: quoting doesn’t count). And the whole publish-once-a-day thing is just so… old media.

I might feel slightly bad for being mean to a guy who’s obviously branching out and exploring new things and all (i.e., budding career as Shakespearean actor — see below), but heck, he can take it, and besides, I’m on record as saying I think he’s great when he wants to be. Come on, Andrew, show us the magic!

(Well, there goes my chances of ever getting a Sulliblast of linkage… ah well…)

Smack!

The sound you just heard was that of newest Prof on the block openin’ a can of whoop-ass on the latest offhand Sullivan remark o’ the day. Observe:

So I stopped by Andrew Sullivan’s weblog this morning to see what’s what, and was confronted with a short item which read, in its entirety:

SELF-PARODY WATCH: “Special Report: Zambian Copper,” – a headline from this week’s Economist.

.

.

.

Why, I wondered, does Andrew Sullivan consider this–interesting and important–story to be a big joke?

But then I began to imagine what the inside of Andrew Sullivan’s mind must be like…”What wonkish fools those writers and editors at the Economist are! Why are they writing about the failure of neoliberal development strategies in southern Africa when they could be writing about my career as a Shakespearean actor? “

Ouch! There’s more; read the whole thing for the complete effect. But hey: I thought slamming Sully for one-line attempts at pithiness was my beat. Back to the bloated Federal bureaucracy with you, Prof D, before I have to swing up north to Moscow on the Bay and give you a little what-for !

PS – I know, Prof D has been around for a while, but he’s new to me, and that’s all that matters on this page.

Speaking of which: how’s this for a “Duh!” headline of the day (from the AP wire):

House questions Arafat’s trustworthiness

In other news:

Pope May Be Catholic, Bush Concedes

Cheney: Yes, Bears Do Shit in the Woods

tanks are attacking Arafat’s compound.

Update: Lair, in a private email, casually tossed off the following assessment which bears reprinting (with his kind permission):

“I suppose I’ll just have to salute Arafat’s impending demise with a shot of tequila. Just as the Palestinians celebrated the World Trade Center deaths with candy, then I will acknowledge that one evil man’s death with giving treats to the cats and remembering all of the innocents on both sides lost to his bloody reign, and I shall pray for those who have yet to die for those tyrants who would take his place until those that would support them are either crushed by their own errors or made to see the light of reason.”

Amen, brother.

Major Whoops

In an earlier post today I referred to J. Bradford Delong’s weblog, and indicated he was the author of a rather hilarious Corner spoof. This is flat out wrong: Delong was simply quoting / linking it and the true author is Poor Man.

So now you have to go visit both of their sites.

Apologies for the error, and thanks to Jeff over at Protein Wisdom for pointing out my blunder.

I’m debating whether to rename the Hall of Link Sluttage.

I don’t mind tweaking PC sensibilities for a good cause, but I’m not convinced the joke is actually all that funny.

Comments? Thoughts? Alternative taxonomies are most welcome — you where to send them.

Okay, minor digression from my bottom-up blogrolling this week: if you think the major American newsweeklies suck (and who doesn’t, because after all, they do) you must check out Bleat o’ the day, in which he delivers a thorough thwacking to the ‘zines and the cretinous fools who waste barrels of perfectly good ink on their pages.

Note: This post was seriously wrong the first time I wrote it, so it has been rewritten heavily. Sorry!

Ok, I’m still examining Bradford DeLong’s weblog to see if it gets the totally-un-sought-after, not-particularly-valuable, and overall generally dubious honor of being the TTLB Leftie Blog of the Week, but he definitely gets a link for his referral to The Poor Man’s post The Cornier, in which TPM shows us what the conservative bloggers over at NRO are really thinking. A small sample:

SLATE – OF PHONEY TRAFFIC STATS![James W. Whitesides IV]

Slate claims to get 3 million different hits a year. Well, I’m certainly not one to begrudge another’s success, but whoop-dee-doo-da! I mean, Slate just gives away all their content free! I mean, so do we, but Slate gives it away on a Microsoft site. If The Cornier was on Microsoft, we’d get like 3 million hits every single day! Probably half the people who go there are fat middle-aged housewives trying to go to MSN’s Special Valentine’s Day Soft-Focus Soap-Opera Porn Sex Quiz, but too drunk off of Arbor Mist lemon-lime Chardonney at four in the afternoon to hit the right link. And Mickey Kaus is gonna regret it when MS goes under and he lives in a box under a bridge. Maybe he can write his blogs on a cardboard sign he uses to panhandle traffic on the interstate! Try THAT information superhighway, sell-out! Not that I’m jealous at all. And not that there’s any such thing as homelessness.

Beautiful. Surely someone must have linked to this gem before me, no?

Addendum: By the way, lest you think Prof. Delong is simply a goofball, he also provides quite a bit of serious political & economic analysis as well. Not suprising, since he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Clinton administration.

Hey !

And everyone else. I’ll repeat a few basic principles of the ‘ecosystem’ thing, just to keep them clear in everyone’s mind:

1) When links are counted on your page, only the links you have to other bloggers on the list are counted. So you can have links to CNN, Yahoo, AOL, etc — but none of those will count in your total, or have any effect on anybody else’s total inbound links.

2) Conversely, your total number of inbound links only represents the links you are getting from other weblogs on the list. If there are twenty other blogs that have links to you, but none of them are on the list, you won’t get ‘credit’ for them.

3) Keep in mind what others have observed, which is that strictly speaking, this is not the whole blogosphere by any means — it would more precisely be called the ecosystem (and map) of the political blogosphere (and who knows, maybe only a small chunk of that). As I mentioned in the original post, I started with Glenn and Stephen’s lists — hardcore politicos both — and worked out from there. So if your blog is a hardcore technical blog, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t rank that high on this list — because right now, at least, there aren’t many other techie blogs on the list to give you links that would be counted. You may have the most linked-to blog in the technoblogosphere, but that only helps if all the other techies get on the list as well.

There are several other interesting projects going on that are doing similar work to mine in ‘mapping’ the blogosphere; I’ll do a post sometime today with a roundup — there’s definitely some cool stuff out there.

Anyway, getting back to the political vs. techie distinctions: I’m toying with another idea that may explore those “subworlds” of the blogosphere in a more interesting way, so there may be Part III of the ecosystem project up sometime this week.

But I really want to do some writing. Honest. Damnit, my left brain and right brain keep pulling me in different directions. Interesting geek project or meaningful prose? Please fate, don’t make me choose!

Update from the Marsupial Anti-Defamation League

I received the following from a certain fellow hanging upside down by his tail from a tree. I reprint it here utterly without permission:

Dear Mr. NZ Bear:

I recently came to your site via a link from Dr. Reynolds’ Instapundit blog. I notice that in your ingenious list of blogological specimens, you completely ignore marsupials. I would like to recommend that you view Possumblog, one of the finest specimens of Didelphis virginiana currently blogging today.

Possumblog is well-written, insightful, thought-provoking, and is the only blog written with the use of a prehensile tail AND opposable hind toes.

Whereas most of the better known blogs concentrate on topics such as current events, political controversy, science, dogs, and sewing, (and often require the reader to be educated and literate) Possumblog takes a fresh and different approach, choosing to string long words together with no discernable reason or method. The effect is stunning and occasionally readable without the use of illegally obtained (and often dangerous) Schedule II narcotics.

On behalf of The Board of Regents, the Publisher’s Consort, and the humble Staff of Possumblog, I wish to thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours truly,

Terry Oglesby

Possumblog

Well what are you waiting for, a formal invitation? Go out the furry little critter’s blog, already.

Blogosphere Ecosystem: First Update Complete

OK, since everyone got so excited about the first pass, I moved up my schedule for the update and have done another sweep through the list.

Updates / Improvements:
– Added about 40 blogs to the list
– Fixed the bug where links redirected to top-level pages instead of actual blog pages on non-blog-only sites
– Fixed a bug that, believe it or not, was causing Glenn to get undercounted (related to all his different addresses during his move)
– Added categories “Flappy Birds” and “Slithering Reptiles” so that the big ole’ Microbe bucket wasn’t too huge

What’s Still Broke:
– The routine reads most pages just fine, however, a few pages are not being read correctly and hence their outbound links are not being included. Not sure why this is, but it may have something to do with setup to prevent spidering. Any suggestions are welcome, but this one is going to have to wait to be fixed for the moment.

What’s Totally New
Since we have the Ecosystem list tracking who is getting the most (or least) inbound links, it seemed only natural to create a similar list which shows who is providing the most outbound links. I call it the Hall of Link Sluttage.

Not surprisingly, I am way way up near the top of this list — since, duh, by creating these lists I’ve put a huge number of links on my page. I may have to take myself ‘out of the running’ for this category.

Finally: If you believe your site is being counted incorrectly, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know. Be as specific as possible about where you have links from other weblogs on the list that you don’t think are being counted. (Remember: only links coming to your page from other weblogs on this list get counted, not any links that sites that are not on the list might have to your page.) The more precise you can be, the easier it will be for me to track down any issues that exist.

And finally: remember, kids. It’s all in good fun. Don’t take this all too seriously.

Yglesias has thrown his hat into the ring as a liberal blogger, writing:

I dunno if my site (yglesias.blogspot.com) counts as “small” — I’m a rodent by your calculations — but I’m certainly a liberal (in a Matt Welch kind of way, not a Noam Chomsky kind of way)

Good, ’cause I did say no idiots.

…and if you want socialist I’ll write a post about my nutty scheme to have the government own all the land and grant it out on the basis of long term leases to real estate developers — the revenue could be used to costly social programs — hooray!

Dude, rock on! I dare ya! Coming out for public ownership of capital and big government meddling in social policies in one post will definitely get you on the flaming liberal list…

Speaking of the left…

I’ve been meaning to do a Christopher Hitchens post, ‘specially since he got a bunch of bloglinks for of his recent Nation columns.

Hitchens, in my view, is one of the most interesting and intelligent journalists / thinkers we have around today. I don’t always agree with him (but frequently do), but he’s always worth reading. His strong and consistent admonishments that it is the responsibility of every person to hold their own beliefs, and form their own judgments, rather than following the herd of conventional wisdom, were in fact part of my inspiration to join the blogging crowd and lend my voice to the din.

Anyway, praising Hitchens is easy, and practically everybody does it. But what I wanted to pass on are a few links that show that there is something equally enjoyable and enlightening as reading Hitchens: listening to him.

Hitchens is a phenomenal public speaker, and damn, he’s got the hardcore Oxford accent to make everything he says sound brilliant, too. So here is my little version of a “Hitchens audio primer”. There’s quite a bunch of audio interviews and / or lectures with Hitchens out there on the net, but here’s a few of my favorites to start with (many of these can be found at the unofficial Hitchens home page as well, or at this page devoted to Hitchens audio. ).

A good general interview with Hitchens (in two parts) by Danny Postel can be found here and here. In particular, Hitchens discusses his dim view of Mother Theresa, thoroughly debunking the conventional picture or her as a great friend of the poor.

Hitchens main claim-to-fame in recent years is his relentless attacks on Henry Kissinger, who he believes has both committed war crimes and violated the laws of the United States. I just found an entire page devoted to The Trial Of Henry Kissinger , so you can choose your own interview there, or start with this interview if you want my choice. Hitchens makes a convincing case indeed.

And finally, Hitchens has been one of the most outspoken critics of the left’s dismal reaction to the war; a longtime socialist and frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy himself, he nonetheless completely condemns the onslaught of “Islamic fascism” and is a strong (but not uncritical) supporter of war in Afghanistan and against terror more generally. For a primer on his view on the war and the left’s reaction, check out his address at the University of Chicago, “Is Bush’s War Our War?” (where he affectionately addresses his audience as “the beaten rabble that constitutes the remnant of the American left”)

Check him out, and judge for yourself. Because I assure you Hitchens wouldn’t want you taking my — or anybody’s — word for it.

It basically doesn’t matter to me what actual content has to offer, because it’s written by Zorak, Lone Locust of the Apocalypse. And that’s just too cool not to link to. Not to mention that he quotes Kierkegaard.

Justin Sodano’s Weigh In makes the list today if for no other reason than a rather disturbing “separated at birth” post.

Wanted: good flaming liberal blog

OK, I’m doing my little lesser-known-blogroll scan, and running across quite a few good neocon / libertarian blogs.

But what about the left? I have an urge to link to some good liberal thoughts. (Anybody reading this page consistently will probably recognize that I might well disagree with said thoughts, but that’s what open debate is all about).

Requirements:

– Must be a ‘small’ or ‘new’ blog. A squishy requirement to be defined by me as I see fit, but let’s put it this way: TAPPED need not apply.
– Must be a self-professed liberal or lefty. Libertarian doesn’t count. Bonus points if you actually claim to be a socialist.
– Well articulated, intelligent argument is key. As mentioned, I don’t have to agree with you, but I do have to conclude that you’re not an idiot.

Nominate yourself or someone else by me an email. But fair warning: I don’t promise to link to you, but I do promise to at least check out your page.

Looking for a roundup for the latest news with a libertarian slant and a strong dose of punk runk thrown in? Check out Blue Button at Popshot. Nice collection of links to recent stories of interest, with concise, sometimes pithy commentary. Example:

The European Union Wants to Tax You. Come on, it costs a lot of money to run a socialist dystopia.

Nice. The weblog is an extension of PopShot itself, which describes itself as:

“a indie/punk-rock music and culture magazine printed and distributed in Nashville, Tennessee. We differ from the majority of indie/punk magazines in our editorial perspective which is capitalist/individualist/libertarian. Our mission is to bring the ideas of limited government, personal freedom, and individual rights to young people, especially to our peers in the independent music community where these ideas are typically not covered.”

Libertarian capitalist punks. Neal Stephenson, call your office! (And page Ken MacLeod while you’re at it).