Highway 99
Monday, August 25, 2003
TRANSHUMANIST ALERT
Folks with a keen interest in the future development of brain science should definitely check out the upcoming (September 2003) issue of Scientific American, currently featured on their home page. The issue is devoted to "Better Brains: How Neuroscience Will Enhance You." It contains eight major articles exploring different aspects of the subject -- including one article by ethicist Arthur Caplan, in which (to my surprise) he argues in favor of brain enhancement.
Caplan's conclusion:
In reality, though, it is unlikely that coercion will be needed to induce people to want to optimize their brains. Market-driven societies encourage improvement. Religious and secular cultures alike reward those who seek betterment; every religion on the planet sees the improvement of oneself and one's children as a moral obligation. If anything, the impending revolution in our knowledge of the brain will require us to build the legal and social institutions that allow fair access to all who choose to do what most will feel is the right thing to do.
Yes indeed -- as long as "fair access" isn't Caplan's euphemism for a government-run redistribution of neurological wealth. I suspect it is not, given his enthusiastic reference to market-driven societies just a few lines previous.
If Scientific American whets your appetite for more of the topic, you should also read "The Battle for Your Brain" and "Making the Future Safe: Notes from the World Transhumanist Association's annual conference" (currently on the home page), both by Ronald Bailey and both at Reason Online, and "Reversing Bad Truths: James Watson's solution: 'Just let all the genetic decisions be made by women,'" at Discover Magazine's website, in which Watson discusses his "very libertarian" beliefs about biotechnology and human enhancement.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
FSP UPDATE
For the past week or so I've been meaning to mention that the Free State Project reached its first major milestone of 5,000 members in the week prior to August 13.
And now I find that, while I've been procrastinating, the number of signed-up members has shot up by another 300: According to the FSP home page, the number of members as of August 20 is 5,302.
October 1 is the scheduled date for the release of the voting results, and the Free State will have been officially chosen.
BILL MAHER: AN IRISH JOKE
And speaking of this morning's Reliable Sources (see my previous post), I was taken aback when Bill Maher, while being interviewed by Howard Kurtz, described the awkward fit between his previous show Politically Incorrect and its ABC network owner Disney as "a marriage made in Poland."
I assume this was supposed to be a Polish joke, but I may be a little rusty in my interpretation, since I think it must be at least 25 years since I've actually heard a Polish joke.
Is it once again considered permissible among liberals to tell ethnic jokes?
Or does it depend entirely on which ethnic group is being targeted?
And does it help when the ethnic group being targeted supported George Bush in the Iraq War?
CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE
On CNN's Reliable Sources this morning, Kurtz interviewed a Time magazine reporter, Mark Thompson, on the situation in Iraq. Click here for the transcript -- you'll have to scroll past the Bill Maher interview to the bottom third of the screen to get to the Thompson interview. I wasn't familiar with Thompson and so wasn't sure what to expect, but as usual I prepared myself to hear a straight, left-wing, anti-Bush line of argument. Although there was certainly some of that view in what Thompson had to say, I was pleasantly surprised that he made the point that it's much harder to capture what's going right in Iraq than what's going wrong, because news is so television-oriented and therefore picture-oriented, and disasters are a lot easier to photograph; and also because it's easy to define disasters as news, so that as soon as they happen all available reporters descend on the disaster scene and report on it obsessively for awhile, skewing post-war coverage into disaster coverage. (I probably don't have Thompson's words down exactly -- I'm relying on my memory of this morning's program -- but that's the gist of what he said.)
He made this point not once but several times, even when that's not what Kurtz was directly asking him about. Considering the left-of-center tilt of the magazine Thompson works for, this struck me as surprisingly fair-minded of him, and it certainly made him stand out amid the near-hysterical coverage of last week's bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq.
I'll remember Mark Thompson's name, and the next time I see him writing or speaking on any issue, I'll take him a little more seriously because of the fairness he showed on this one.
Saturday, August 23, 2003
MEANWHILE, BACK ON GILLIGAN'S ISLAND . . .
Great news. According to this article in tomorrow's Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan is about to be fired from the BBC, and at least two of his superiors (if that's the right word) are in deep trouble as well.
What strikes me about the Telegraph's account is that Gilligan is getting the sack because he tried to influence a parliamentary committee looking into the government/media coverage/WMD controversy and because he did not notify his bosses that he was contacting the committee. According to the Telegraph, the BBC only found out about Gilligan's e-mail to the committee when the rest of the world did: when it came out at the Hutton inquiry hearings. (Heh!)
In other words, Gilligan is in trouble with the BBC because of the shitty thing he did to the BBC, not because of the innumerable shitty things he did to so many other people (the BBC backed him to the hilt when he was doing all those shitty things).
But despite my disgust at that angle of the story (which the Telegraph seems not to take note of), and the mention at the end of the story that Gilligan is writing a book on his recent experiences and will probably make a lot of money from it (a nasty but not surprising idea), I am nonetheless heartened that at least someone is losing his job over this and that that someone is Gilligan.
Here's hoping that no one in the Blair government loses his job over anything having to do with the Iraq war, including the Kelly affair. From what I have seen and heard, no one in the government deserves to. The fault in this whole traumatic string of events is the BBC's in particular and the media's in general.
Heads rolling at the BBC. Heads rolling at The New York Times. The still-dangling possibility of one of the Gray Lady's treasured Pulitzers being rescinded. Dan Rather's ratings in the toilet.
THERE IS A TERM WHICH WAS COINED AND POPULARIZED DURING THE VIETNAM WAR DAYS WHICH IS ALSO APPLICABLE TO THE CURRENT WAR ON TERRORISM. THAT TERM IS NOT "BOGGED DOWN." THAT TERM IS NOT "QUAGMIRE." THE TERM IN QUESTION IS "CREDIBILITY GAP." BUT IN TODAY'S WAR IT IS NEITHER THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION NOR THE BLAIR ADMINISTRATION THAT IS SUFFERING THE CREDIBILITY GAP. IT IS THE WORLDWIDE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA WHOSE CREDIBILITY HAS BEEN TORN TO SHREDS.
I wonder if, even now, the media elites are cognizant of just how much damage they have wreaked -- upon themselves.
ET TU, ECONOMIST?
As anyone who reads this blog knows by now, there are many news sources I deeply distrust and from which I have come to expect the (jounalistic) worst.
It makes me angry when I come across biased news (sorry, "news") in such sources -- but at least my guard is up every time I read or view them. That does tend to mitigate the effect they have on me. Expectations matter.
But my feelings are a bit different when I encounter this sort of bias in a news source I generally trust. There's definitely anger -- but it's mingled with disappointment and a vague sense of betrayal.
That's the reaction I had recently when I came across this passage in the August 2nd issue of The Economist.
So far, the government has been the loser in the battle for public opinion. Mr Blair confirmed this week that his "appetite" for power is undiminished and that he wants a third term in office. But he must first regain public trust. . . .
I accept the idea that public opinion has been largely against the government since the start of the Hutton inquiry (even though I think this anti-government reaction is completely unsupported by the evidence and that Hutton is going to clobber the BBC in his post-inquiry report).
But I'd like to clobber The Economist for perpetuating the blatant lie, thoroughly noted and ridiculed throughout the blogosphere, that Blair said in his press conference that he still had an undiminished "appetite for power." What he actually said was, "There is a big job of work to do -- my appetite for doing it is undiminished." (In case you missed this whole story at the time, see Glenn Reynolds' take on it to get the details.)
I expect this sort of sloppy, anti-Blair (and indirectly anti-war) writing from all kinds of sources.
But I expected better from The Economist.
SAY UNCLE
A short time ago on Fox News Watch, Eric Burns referred to Walter Cronkite as having at one time been "the most trusted man in America."
It made me wonder for the umpteenth time: Just how did Walter Cronkite get this accolade? It's been ricocheting around the media echo chamber for so many years now, I wonder whether anybody even remembers the first time someone stuck that label on Cronkite. Did some other reporter refer to him in that way? Was it in an ad in TV Guide? Some politician trying to flatter Cronkite to get better treatment from CBS News? (I don't think it originated in that story about LBJ saying that if he'd lost Cronkite's support for the Vietnam War, then he'd probably lost America's support as well -- but I could be wrong about this.)
If I had more free time, I'd set out to track that phrase backwards in time and see if I could discover the original occasion of its use -- sort of like setting out to discover the source of the Nile.
The reason I'm fascinated by this idea is that I'm so suspicious that it's all been a decades-long con job. Who exactly decided that Walter Cronkite was ever The Most Trusted Man in America? Was an election held to decide the question? Or, at the very least, was a poll taken? Was it a particular individual who first came to that conclusion? And, if so, what was that individual's view of society, of America's place in the world?
Wouldn't it be interesting to the know the answers?
And if I ever do get around to digging up the answer to the Uncle Walter mystery, the next thing I'll figure out is how Robert Byrd ever got to be called "the conscience of the Senate."
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Here's an interesting, rather unexpected poll result showing that, in spite of the brouhaha going on in Britain right now over the justification for the Iraq war, a slim majority of Brits (51%) believe going to war was the right thing to do, as opposed to 41% who think it was wrong.
I would have predicted the figures would be the other way around.
WEASELS LICKING WEASELS #3: IHT LICKS BBC
The International Herald Tribune (owned by everyone's favorite fount of objectivity The New York Times) covers the BBC/New Labour ruckus in a manner predictably sympathetic to the Beeb.
Sunday, August 03, 2003
WEASELS LICKING WEASELS #2: BBC LICKS CBS
Well, to be more specific, it's the BBC licking Dan Rather. We've all seen the "objective" news media use personality profiles to present political opinions as "news:" do a flattering interview of a subject whose views match yours, let him/her spout those views ad nauseum, and pretend like hell that in so doing you're only covering a newsworthy person and not actually shoving your own political agenda down your readers' or viewers' throats.
Here are two of the more hilarious examples of the genre. The first is a transcript from the BBC's Newsnight program, a gushing spring of anti-American invective even by BBC standards, and the second is a regular "news" story whose title refers to Rather as "America's News Anchor."
If Dan is America's News Anchor, apparently somebody forgot to inform America, because most Americans are behaving as if Dan is anything but. About a week ago, CBS News producer Andrew Heyward claimed to be completely mystified about why Rather's news show was experiencing its lowest ratings in ten years, and possibly its lowest ratings ever. The press conference was reported, with varying emphases, in, among other papers, the San Diego Union-Tribune (this one features the CBS honchos expressing remorse that their Iraq war coverage was excessively patriotic!), the Springfield News Sun, the Charlotte Observer, the Washington Post, the Denver Post (this one contains a denial by the CBS folks that Rather's declining popularity has anything to do with biased reporting on his part), and the Rocky Mountain News.
Can the people at the BBC possibly believe they're fooling readers and viewers about their own motives when they produce such ridiculous puff pieces about a kindred spirit like Dan Rather?
Can the people at CBS possibly believe that Dan Rather himself, and the bias that permeates CBS News, have nothing to do with the severe decline in ratings they've experienced?
Can such worldly, well-traveled, well-educated, well-paid people truly be so completely and utterly clueless?
Saturday, August 02, 2003
WEASELS LICKING WEASELS #1: CBS LICKS MOORE
Lately I've become fascinated by the amount of mutual stroking/butt-kissing/back-patting that goes on among the weasels. I've been vaguely aware for years that this sort of thing was happening, of course; but it's only been in the last few months that it's come into sharp focus for me. I plan to keep notes from now on on specific instances of brown-nosing in Weasel World.
First entry: Last Sunday's
My favorite moment: a quick shot of the New York Times bestseller list to illustrate the Number One status of Moore's screed Stupid White Men. Why would I approve of such a moment? Because Number Two on the list was Bernard Goldberg's Bias, his exploration of the left-wing slant of the news media in general and CBS News in particular. Never thought I'd see any indication on 60 Minutes that Bias even exists (though it supplies evidence every week that bias certainly exists).
Needless to say, Blow Job Bob did not even draw the viewer's attention to the existence of this bestseller-list juxtaposition, let alone point out its beautiful irony.
But to me, the very word BIAS shouted out from that newspaper page an accurate assessment of the whole Michael Moore segment. I hope a lot of people noticed it. Let's consider it a small example of Goldberg's revenge.
By the way, if you would like to read a really insightful (and in its own way even slightly sympathetic) essay on why Michael Moore's bizarre view of the world appeals to some people, you can find it here on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. By no means the nastiest or funniest writing on Moore that I've seen -- but possibly the most original.
