Puzzling update: The Free State Project's homepage count of signed-on members has dropped back down below 5,000. Perhaps some people asked to have their names removed when the Free State vote was taken and they realized this great big migration thing might actually happen? I don't have time to investigate now but I'll look into it further and try to figure out what's happened to the figures.
- posted by M.J. @ 9:28 PM

 
IT IS NOW OFFICIAL! I AM ROADKILL ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!

Now here's a column that should appeal to anyone reading this website:

However, one section of what is nauseatingly known as blogosphere appeals to me in particular: x-blogs.

These exciting experiments in communication represent by far the greatest number of blogs. Millions upon millions of people have created x-blogs.

What are they?

They're dead.

The "blogosphere" (oh pass the sickbag) is littered with blogging roadkill: blogs that were set up using the easy to use blogging software and then hastily abandoned as it became obvious A) no-one was reading them; B) they're a lot of work to maintain; and C) you quickly run out of things to say about your cat or pot plant or conspiracy theory.

A study by a US survey company called Perseus found that of the four million or so blogs created using the eight major blog-hosting services at least 66 per cent had not been updated in more than two months. Over a quarter of the blogs were not touched after the day they were created.

And I was feeling guilty because I've sometimes slacked off for more than a week at a time.

Just as there are sites such as archive.org that chronicle and preserve dead web pages so the roll call of x-blogs is being assembled.

Unfortunately, this being a family publication, I can't write the URL of one of the most entertaining sites devoted to dead blogs, ****ed Blog at davezilla.com/****ed. Also, the site is ruined by graphic "adult" pop-up ads that are unsuitable for minors, or indeed most majors.

The bad news is that even if you manage to keep your blog alive, no-one will read it.

According to web expert Clay Shirky, traffic to blogs is governed by power law distribution. This means that a tiny number of bloggers get read by an awful lot of people, while the vast majority of other blogs get hardly any visitors.

Let's see if we can't put a positive spin on that.

You rise above the crowd. Not for you the docile sheeplike loyalty of the flocks of InstaFans or SullivanGroupies. No, you stand tall, you break new ground, you explore terra incognita. You are one of the few, the proud, the Highway 99 readers. And I slobber over you with the obsequious over-the-top gratitude of a Democratic nomination-seeker at a Congressional Black Caucus-sponsored debate. Long may you scroll, you elite corps of info-junkies, and please keep coming back for more.
- posted by M.J. @ 8:49 PM

 
NATION BUILDING COURTESY OF WHOM?

I usually try to document my source materials reasonably thoroughly, but I'm going to have to take a flyer on this one.

On last night's 60 Minutes, the final segment was titled "Nation Building." It was a pessimistic look at the nation-building effort in Bosnia/Kosovo, as a way of casting the current reconstruction efforts in Iraq in a negative light.

The nascent nation-building in Iraq was laid quite explicitly at the feet of George Bush. Not only was he named, but his campaign pledge not to engage the American military in nation-building was unearthed for the umpteenth time. (I personally am willing to let Bush off the hook for that one. It may be a cliche to say so, but in a lot of ways it really was a different world before September 11, 2001.)

Now this is where my uncertainty comes in. Because I was not expecting to be blogging on this topic, and because I wasn't taping the segment, I can't be sure that what I think I heard is what I actually heard -- during the first couple of minutes of the segment, I was engrossed in another activity some yards away from the TV and was listening only cursorily to the narration.

So I could be wrong, but what I think I heard was this: that nowhere in the depressing saga of attempted nation-building in the Balkans was the name Bill Clinton ever mentioned. Not even once. If you think about it, that's odd to the point of being downright bizarre.

So, Bush is blatantly connected to what 60 Minutes regards as failing nation-building in Iraq; but Clinton is not in any way connected to what 60 Minutes regards as failed nation-building in the Balkans.

If the Balkan campaign had been conducted by a Republican president, how much do you want to bet his name would have been mentioned in every other sentence in the 60 Minutes segment?
- posted by M.J. @ 8:53 PM

 
Iain Murray has the following posting containing information that ought to be part of every news story on socialized medicine health-care reform:

UNSURE ABOUT THE UNINSURED

It's continually asserted by the defenders of socialized medicine schemes like the NHS that the American healthcare system is unfair on the poor, and the number of uninsured people is always advanced in support. Unfortunately for this argument, new research by the Dallas think tank NCPA reveals that a large proportion of the unisured [sic] aren't poor and appear to be uninsured by choice:

From 1993 to 2002 the number of uninsured people in households with annual incomes above $75,000 increased by 114 percent.

The number of uninsured in households with annual incomes from $50,000 to $75,000 increased by 57 percent.

By contrast, the number of uninsured people in households with incomes under $25,000 fell by 17 percent.

About three-quarters of the rise in the number of uninsured over the past four years has been among households earning more than $50,000 per year, and almost half of that has occurred among households earning more than $75,000 per year. In fact, almost one-third of the uninsured now live in households with annual incomes above $50,000 and one in five live in households earning more than $75,000 annually, says Herrick.

Add to this the fact that 14 million of the "uninsured" are actually eligible for Medicaid but haven't bothered to enroll and that half of the uninsured periods last 6 months or less (like mine did) and the true position looks rather different from the headline figures.

Iain links to the source material, in case you're interested in having a look at it.
- posted by M.J. @ 8:30 PM

 
Here's an interesting nugget that hasn't gotten nearly as much attention as it deserves:

Between 2000 and 2002, the number of Jews voting Republican increased to 35 percent from the 21 percent to 26 percent of Jews who voted for Republicans during previous midterm elections, according to exit polls conducted by Voter News Service.

More voters also identified themselves as Republican and fewer as independent than in 1994 and 1998. Women leaned more Republican than usual, and twice as many respondents said their House vote was meant to support President Bush, not oppose him.

Read the whole Washington Times article here.

Of course, the midterms were almost a year ago, an eternity in politics; the question is whether this change was only an outpouring of emotion in reaction to September 11th and the Afghanistan war or a more profound shift in loyalities. Considering how staunch Bush's support of Israel has been, and how the Democratic Party seems to be getting more anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic by the year, it should not come as a shock if the Jewish vote swings more to the Republicans in 2004 than it has in the past.

The November 2002 exit-poll results are featured in an article in the Forward, the online offshoot of the old Jewish Daily Forward. (Not only did I find the report interesting in its own right, but I was a little startled to find out that a version of the Jewish Daily Forward is still alive and apparently kicking on the web.) The Forward article also discusses two Bush fundraisers being held this month in New York that target the Jewish vote, one with Dick Cheney at the Waldorf-Astoria (Jewish dietary laws will be observed -- the Forward suggests the slogan "Kosher for Cheney?"), another with Laura Bush at Rockefeller Center. The article wraps up by looking at the Bush campaign's "specialty" media advisors, including the newly appointed Jewish outreach coordinator Michael Lebovitz.
- posted by M.J. @ 6:05 PM

 
CZECH THIS OUT

I've just come across a really good new (new to me) blog, Nazory-Opinions, courtesy of a link by Merde in France. I haven't had the chance to read a lot of it yet, but what I've read, I've certainly liked. I have no idea how many pointedly pro-American, pro-Israel blogs there are coming out of the Czech Republic, but we now know there's at least one, and you really should give that one a look-see.
- posted by M.J. @ 7:53 PM

 
ORWELL ON GANDHI

I often wonder whether the current anti-war types who idolize Gandhi have anything approaching a realistic idea of what he was like.

In this context, it's interesting to read what George Orwell had to say in an essay written on the occasion of Gandhi's death and published in the January 1949 Partisan Review.

Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though he were not only sympathetic to the western left-wing movement, but were even integrally part of it. Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines. But one should, I think, realise that Gandhi's teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things, and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from. . . .

But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is "higher". The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives", from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man. . . .

Even after he had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not--indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not--take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most western pacifists, specialise in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: "What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr Fischer Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence". After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

How many Bush-bashing contemporary liberals could stomach Gandhi's recommendation to the German Jews any better than Louis Fischer did? Why can they not see that Gandhi's suggestion is the logical conclusion you must eventually reach if you say -- and truly mean -- that war is never the answer?
- posted by M.J. @ 8:31 PM

 
FREE STATE PROJECT UPDATE

The FSP has finally chosen and announced their destination: The Free State is going to be New Hampshire.
- posted by M.J. @ 1:51 PM