Fine? Why Fine?

$100

I hit the mall today during lunch to pick up a present for my wife's birthday this Friday. While walking around there was a guy very aggressively trying to give away $100 gift cards in exchange for signing up for delivery of Newsday. He didn't seem to be getting many takers, though I thought about it but I don't really read Newsday on deadtree anymore unless I'm at my parents house. Glenn Reynold's TCS column today offers suggestions on getting newspapers back in the game. While I don't necessarily read Newsday everyday online, they have made a considerable effort in creating a web presence that is at least on its way to looking a lot like Glenn's suggestions.

That Was Fun

The blogosphere is full of smackdowns of anti-American idiots and while they don't necessarily generate the buzz they did a couple of years ago, Shannon Love delivers a whomp on a commenter that's quite satisfying.

Glenn's World

I've been moderately busy with other things and pretty lazy to post much recently but that doesn't mean I don't think about things to blog about. Really, in my head this is a great a blog but not so much in the real world. Anyway, I'm about 3/4 of the way through Army of Davids and have a rough outline of a post I would write about it in my head. I was actually going to work on that tonight but then I read Jim Geraghty's review this morning and decided anything I'd write would be redundant because Geraghty says pretty much what I would have.

So “Army of Davids” is not just a good book; it’s better than I expected because it does, perhaps inadvertently, help explain why Glenn has earned the title of “Blogfather” and why “Instalanche” has become a verb.

In 268 pages – a meaty thought-provoking read that goes by quickly – Glenn explores, just deep enough, his experiences with home-brewing his own beer and how microbreweries changed the field’s biggest companies, the change from an industrial economy to a knowledge-based one, the eroding of the Dilbert-style corporate world, how panhandlers and hassles from folks in public spaces helped facilitate the growth of privately-owned “third place” meeting spaces like malls and Starbucks, how Internet distribution is completely changing the way musicians bring their art to listeners and customers, how smart, quick-responding citizens acting as ‘a pack, not a herd’ are a powerful, underutilized tool in the war on terror, what blogs do better than the mainstream media and what they don’t, what makes good blogging, how Americans saw the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit as illegitimate social engineering, the upside of Internet porn and violent video games, nanotechnology, lengthening the human lifespan, private sector space exploration, and, in perhaps the most speculative chapter, he discusses “the approaching singularity.”

This is a jaw-dropping breadth of knowledge and thought. And it helps suggest why Glenn has become the de facto News Editor of the Blogosphere – he’s got a stunningly wide range of interests, knows enough about enough topics to sniff out spin and bad information, and is enthusiastic about bringing this information to readers. He’s also fair, acknowledges the downsides and costs of phenomenon that he likes, and writes as if he’s smiling.

I think there are a lot of bloggers who look with envy at Glenn’s traffic, his awesome power to launch a book to near the top of the Amazon list (Dear Glenn, please remember to do this for my book later in the year!), and his unofficial title as the MSM’s designated spokesman for the blogosphere. Well, Glenn’s earned his spot up there in the Blogospheric Penthouse; to get up there, you/we need to develop his breadth and depth of knowledge, as well as his curiosity about seemingly everything, and his ability to persuade without histrionics or pounding the table. Perhaps someday some other blogger will come along and do that, but for now, it’s Instapundit’s blogosphere; we just live in it.

That was going to be my point. Not so much a book review as just an admiration for Prof. Reynolds as a guy whose judgment I've come to trust over the years. Aside from his own commentary and the probably thousands of links from Instapundit to other sources that I've read by clicking through, I can name about a dozen books I've read recently on Glenn's recommendation. There are probably another dozen he's mentioned that I'm likely to read soon too.

Piggish

(Via Dave Barry.) I'm pretty sure that in the near future Mark Steyn will use this story as an anecdote regarding the out of control EUro welfare state.

A GERMAN organic farmer has admitted to feeding a elderly friend who died while visiting him to his pigs in order to claim his pension.

The pigs were then later eaten by people who bought the meat at local butchers' shops.

[...]

Mr Bogner passed into the human food chain long ago. Roeben told police after he was arrested this week: "OK, it was stupid but I was broke. It's not like he could use the money anymore."

And what did Roeben (the perp) use the money for? Remember he was "broke."

Using the dead man's cheque card he was able to draw out his monthly pension of £1,500, which he spent on a large pornography collection, beer and foreign holidays.

Of course he did.

Bedlam

(Via Synthstuff.) I guess I can see where they were going with this but I'm not sure they pulled it off.

A mental health charity has defended a statue it commissioned of Sir Winston Churchill in a straitjacket.

The statue has been criticised as “absurd and pathetic” by his grandson, Tory MP Nicholas Soames.

Charity Rethink commissioned the 9ft high sculpture, unveiled in Norwich, to highlight the stigma of mental health.

Rethink said the image of Churchill - who suffered bouts of depression - was designed to “portray a more positive image of people with mental illness”.

Now my wife works on a locked psych unit at a hospital and she just told me last week about the pictures of famous people who suffered from mental illness they have hanging in the common room (i.e. Lincoln, Hemingway, etc.) so I guess it can be helpful for patients to see successful people who have been in similar situations. However, she has worked in the field for over a decade and in all the stories she's told me never once did she mention the use of straitjackets. I don't know for sure but I think they're a bit of an anachronism, maybe not in the UK, I don't know. I know that patients have to be restrained at times and often they're medicated for everyone's safety but does this group that commissioned the straitjacketed Churchill really want to associate mental illness with one of the most stereotypical and fearsome objects linked to mental illness? I undertand it's a metaphor but still.

Switch?

Today was a beautiful day here on LI and I took advantage by washing both of the cars. The wife had to go into the city around noon and I was done with both cars around 2pm. I had just walked into the house and was about sit down at the computer and check my email, blogs, etc. when the doorbell rang.

It was a 20-something year old kid decked out in Verizon gear. I happen to live in one of the few towns that's been wired up for Verizon's new FIOS set-up. I've been following the battle between Verizon and Cablevision and the legal fight my town fought to break Cablevision's monopoly. So it was not unexpected to see this kid at my door this afternoon. I had just thrown out their latest flier earlier in the week.

"Good afternoon, sir. It's a beautiful day, what are you doing inside? Shouldn't you be playing golf or..."

"I just washed two cars."

"...Well, yeah, they look great."

Sometimes when customer service people are overly familiar, I tend to respond by being overly surly. I appreciate good friendly customer service but I bristle when the relationship bleeds into buddy-buddy without my consent. I also don't like to have my balls broken. Or I may just not have been properly socialized. I don't know.

So I listen to the kid's spiel. As far as the services go, this is what they have in their favor over Cable:

• The kid claims the internet connection is faster. I'll have to do some additional research on that to be sure.
• Considerably more channels including movie channels I don't have now and twice as many HD channels than I have now.
• The OnDemand stuff appears to be fully included in the monthly fee.
• Overall I would get a little more for almost the exact same amount I'm paying now for all three services (tv, internet, phone).

The biggest thing they have going against them is just the sheer inertia of my own lack of motivation to make the big switch. I'm pretty satisfied with my service now, I don't really feel I'm missing out on much by not having HBO. (I know The Sopranos starts up again tomorrow, but I've bailed on the last couple of seasons, and to reinforce my point: everything is eventually available on DVD.) Also, the DVR from Cablevision holds 24 hours of HD programming, the Verizon on is only 21. A negligible difference I suppose.

So the kid was sent out to actually sign people up for installation dates not just distribute literature. It was a commitment I wasn't entirely prepared to make. But since I wanted to keep the home phone number he said that they would have to call me to set up the installation anyway. It was explained that Verizon would have to "buy back" my number from Cable. But I let him take down my information explaining I still might decide against the whole thing.

Throughout our conversation I could detect a southern accent on the kid and eventually he brought it up. He was self-conscious because he had to doubl-check his clipboard to spell the name of my town.

"Could you tell I'm not from around here?"

"Yeah."

"Guess where I'm from."

"I don't know...Georgia?"

He smiled a smile that seemed to take some satisfaction in my Yankee ignorance.

"I'm from Texas. They sent me up here to help roll out this program."

"Great."

"I heard it's really expensive around here. I mean these houses are like half a million dollars."

"Yeah, around there."

"Wow, I bought my house for $125K and it's four times the size of this."

"Yeah, it's expensive on Long Island."

"Why?"

"I'm an hour from the City."

Then we spoke a little about NYC--he'd only made it in once in his time here so far. It's impossible to defend the fact that my house would probably cost 1/5 of what we paid in other parts of the county. I appreciate the fact that parts of this country are affordable and booming and great, but I wasn't entirely prepared nor inclined to explain to this kid my entire familial and financial existence.

So we were wrapping it up and something in my head told me to take another look at his laminated channel guide. I suddenly had a feeling like I missed something the first time I looked at it. I checked the sports stations again and realized that the new Mets channel and the other local cable sports channels weren't on it. I mentioned it to the kid and he said they were being added "next month." He didn't sound too confident. I told him that could be a dealbreaker but I guess I'll try to pin them down when they call me next week to schedule an installation. But I won't be pulling the trigger until I know that I will get this summer's Mets games in HD. A man's got to stand for something.

It Really Is Fundamental

(Via PJM.) In a post about the difficulty of being a teacher, I think Avery makes a very insightful observation.

But let's back up a bit. Everybody who's looking at this could be said to be a part of a reading culture. I'm sayin' - you're here, looking at something I wrote. Is that because of me? Of course not. It's because you already liked to read. That's how you got here in the first place. You read for pleasure and for information. And you didn't just start doing it on the 'net. You've been doing it. Well again, going back to the definition I proposed earler, that's a culture. A lot of my students don't come from that culture. So I have a challenge.

I like to read. I like to write too. Always have. Maybe not always-always, but I've liked to read and write since long before I could do either. (Maybe one time I'll get into "scribble talk" and how it precipitates reading and writing, but for now just suffice it to say that I scribbled for meaning and talked stories long before the marks on the paper held any correlation to what I was saying.) I read the encyclopedia for fun. That's how I was raised. Not so for some of my students.

I like the notion of a "reading culture." He's absolutely correct that that's why I read blogs, because on a baseline level I'm always reading. I may not retain all that I read, but when I'm watching TV I feel completely unsettled if I don't have a book or magazine wedged in the cushion. I may only read a couple of paragraphs during a commercial but I feel compelled to do it.

When I was in kindergarten, I was one of three kids who could read. (Or the teacher knew who could read.) The parents were invited to come in for a little show. Me and the other two kids took turns reading Where the Wild Things Are while the rest of the class marched around the room like dummies with brown paper bag monster masks.

Glenn's Army

If hints like, "I want this book for my birthday," are properly understood I should be receiving a copy of Prof. Reynold's An Army of Davids in a few weeks. And I'll admit that TigerHawk's review got me a little pumped to read it. Also the trolling in the Amazon reviews are fantastic. Excerpts:

I'd rename the book "Amry of Warmonger Chickenhawks Who Pimp For Wal-Mart and Karl Rove."

Reynolds pretends conservatism but in reality is another failed neo-con shill.

The author is basically encouraging people to corrupt our social democracy for fun and profit...replacing "big" media with Fox News and blogs, replacing unions with Wal-Mart, replacing democracy with the increasing theocratic, capitalist and authoritarian GOP rule.

Those are all by different reviewers. Also, how is it possible that there are only 10 reviews for this book? By now there should be at least a couple of hundred reviews sprinkled with insights like above. 

...Nevermind, found 'em all at the HuffPo--in the comments, Arianna's review is positive.

Ex-Prez

Jimmy Carter:

The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonization of Palestine.

Oxblog fisks.

Sad

I know he sorta fucked it up in retirement, but Kirby was one of my favorite players of all-time.

I'd have to double-check my brother's extensive baseball video collection but he has one--from This Week in Baseball, I think--that has Kirby sitting in the dougout during the '92 Home Run Derby. Everytime McGwire would hit homerun, Kirby would crack-up. It's hard to explain but the entire A.L. dugout is laughing along with Kirby. It was one of those non-playing moments that define a guy like Kirby Puckett.

...Dave:

There are lots of entertainers in this world, but Puckett has a special place for the people of Minnesota.

...3/7/06...The StarTrib has a great retrospective.