o brave new world

Too amusing to pass up on the Fourth (via Cogitamus): "1776," a satire of "300," among other things.

Not much to synthesize here, though I suppose we could also think about patriotism in a more serious fashion:

- dave//

Blogs are often completely derivative. One person somewhere writes something original, whether in the form of a blog post or an article or editorial that appears on some news site, and then bloggers pick up on it, whether directly or from other bloggers they happen to follow who find it first. Either the derivation will be a simple sentence pointing readers to the original with maybe the addition of a quotation or abstract (the kind of thing Ben Smith seems to like to do almost exclusively), or it will be a "riff" on the original, adding additional color or perspective, or simply providing a contrary opinion.

I myself tend to prefer a synthetic approach, pulling together different things I've read on a topic into a theme, drawing connections or contrasts where I see them, then providing a personal spin on it. No big surprise or mystery there, I suppose; originality isn't really my goal with this medium, but if I can add something to the discussion and offer at least an original synthesis, I feel like I'm being creative and perhaps even useful (though, to be sure, I have no illusions about the breadth of my readership or the influence I might have on those who do stop by from time to time, whose interest in my occasional blog expositions never ceases to amaze me).

Take this, for example: Al Giordano's recent post on McCain's trip to Columbia. What Al does with this piece is a bit of semi-original opinioneering based on a relatively idiosyncratic review of source material, synthesizing an interesting and compelling perspective on the news, one that you don't get just anywhere, least of all in the MSM. I count no fewer than 17 "link citations" in this particular piece, to sources including the IHT, the Huffington Post, MSNBC's First Read, the AP, and Wikipedia, as well as the author's own writings and related posts. This is one thing that makes Giordano so interesting: his eclectic interests and research which he builds on in the creation of original syntheses of material. Whatever you may think of his perspective, you could hardly say he's a lazy blogger, just regurgitating stuff that others have published: he thinks, takes his time, applies an original point of view, and produces something that a lot of people apparently find compelling, judging by his traffic numbers and authority ranking, to say nothing of his active, prolifically commenting readership (just check one of his posts: he gets not dozens of comments, but often even hundreds of them).

Although this isn't quite what I had initially envisaged doing with Al's piece on McCain in Columbia, it does demonstrate the point well enough. It's interesting what you can do with blogging when you put your mind to it.

- dave//

Will wonders never cease? Remember Barr's assholic persecution of Clinton as one of the House's "impeachment managers"? Agree with Noam Scheiber over at The Stump that this Bloggingheads' sequence w/ Bob Barr on Bush and Clinton is rich. Rich, I tell you!

I remember well that period: late '98, early '99, when I had just come back from Switzerland after breaking up w/ my ex-wife for the first time. I was riveted by the whole scene and just livid that the whole thing was happening in the first place. That was when MoveOn.org was born, and that was perhaps one of the key moments in our glorious "politics of personal destruction" of the past 20+ years--the very politics that Obama strives to put in our collective rearview mirror. Seems just insane that Clinton would be impeached for his peccadilloes and lame-ass prevarications, and here we are with a President who's run wholesale roughshod over the Constitution, as if it were a half-crumpled McDonald's bag discarded into the road by a passing motorist.

Ok, the metaphor is a bit overwrought, but what the hell: you get the point.

- dave//

UPDATE: At least we can say this about Barr: there's a certain perverse consistency in his view of the "rule of law"--that hammer that he, Asa Hutchinson, and the other managers used over and over again in their prosecution of Clinton. I just have to wonder, now that he sees what true "crimes and misdemeanors" really look like in the slaughterhouse of the Bush presidency, whether he feels any shame at all about his petty, sanctimonious grandstanding against Clinton back in the '90s? Still, you have to revel in seeing this old cast of characters from that time playing out their internal and external conflicts on the stage of the 2008 elections. Makes for some often very ironic political theater.

Gnawing, always gnawing at unexpected corners and with preternatural vanity: Nader, dismissing Obama as too white/black. Reminds me of a certain Geraldine. Amazing.

And now, look over here: counter-intuitive delusionals looking forward to an Obama presidency. As long as they keep it to themselves in that perverse echo-chamber of theirs.

- dave//

So I'm trying out the new corporate bus system, partly to save on some gas and also to alleviate some of the stress of my commute from Ballard to Redmond and back, which typically hits 50 mins to an hour each way. If I didn't have regular off-campus appointments during the week, I'd have long been a regular rider. In fact, this very post I'm doing on the bus right now, jarring bumps notwithstanding. One of the nice features of the corporate bus line is that they have these things equipped w/ wi-fi; makes either work or casual browsing pretty easy to do in transit.

Anyhow, so I was thinking: the last tank of gas I filled cost me north of $60.00 for the first time. Although I've got a small car, I'm constrained to use premium. If I manage to do the bus a couple times a week, I'm liable to save some 1/3 of my petrol outlay, which begins to be significant, week to week, month to month. And that's fine. I should do more, though. I have this idea that my next car will be the Great Leap Forward in automotive technology--some mass-market incarnation of today's lithium-ion powered prototypes. We'll see if I make it that long; it could be a very long wait before we get there.

Or not. It depends on what kinds of choices we make as we twist and squirm under the squeeze of skyrocketing oil prices. Do we buy the line that somehow we just need to produce more oil by drilling offshore or in ANWR, and maybe, in 5 years time, see a blip in increased domestic oil production that will have already been offset by increased consumption? Do we continue to stick that black needle in our arm and expect somehow that we won't crave more next time? Do we grovel and whine, shake and groan, imploring our dealers to please just give us one more fix to tide us over?

Or do we say, no, enough, it's time to change. Time to stop opting for the easy fix. Time to change the world by changing ourselves first, rather than somehow always, unfailingly expecting that it needs to happen the other way around. Imagine what the world might be like, how different it would be, if we could break the most destructive of our habits...

Ah, I see my bus stop is coming up. Some busses you need to get on and stay on for a while, others, well, you just need to get off, otherwise you'll go around and around and around and never get anywhere.

- dave //