Impulsive bloggers

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Bloggers work alone. Oh, I know, there are group blogs. And probably there are some bloggers who show their posts to spouses or friends before clicking on “publish.” But my guess is that most spouses get worn out with that pretty soon, and most bloggers end up writing alone, and they make their posting decisions alone, too.

Bloggers have to produce at a steady clip. With the exception of someone like Bill Whittle, who takes his sweet time to churn out a lengthy masterpiece every so often , the rest have to keep it coming on a daily basis in order to have any hope of keeping those readers visiting. And you know the old saying: haste makes waste.

Other writers–even those who churn it out under time pressure for newspapers and magazines–have editors and colleagues to bat around ideas with, to get opinions from (yeah, I know, I know, ending my sentences with a preposition–well, I don’t have an editor, do I?). In writing a book, an inherently lonely activity, the author has the luxury of lots of time to get feedback and help from others. But bloggers have to move it, and quickly. And they ordinarily do that alone, in front of that nonresponsive computer screen.

In blogging, there’s also a lot of pressure to get attention; and one of the ways to do it is to take risks, to be shocking, to pack a lot of punch into the writing. So an idea that looked really really good at 2 AM (or any other hour when the blogger is all alone), a phrase or a statement that’ll really wow ’em, can seem way over-the-top when viewed in the cold light of day and/or reflection.

I think that’s what happens sometimes with those bloggers who pride themselves on never pulling their punches, who specialize in going for the jugular. I won’t dignify the worst of these comments with links to them and further discussion of them. Most of them have already been chewed over in the blogosphere ad nauseum, and those of you who follow blogs probably can think of plenty of examples yourselves.

The computer is a technology that works so quickly it fosters and rewards implusive behavior, at least of the verbal kind. Blogging is no exception. And, people being what they are, it will continue to happen.

Since I like to coin words, I’d like to suggest one for that sort of post, the kind that bloggers regret having put up there in a moment of solitary impulse, although they may never admit it. How about blart (as in: blog fart)?

Used in a sentence: Hope this whole post doesn’t end up being a blart.

ADDENDUM: Then there’s a blurp (as in: blog burp). Similar to, but somewhat less intense than, a blart.

Mohammed Atta’s Eyes

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Michelle Malkin links to an article about the Portland, Maine airport worker who looked into Atta’s eyes early on the morning of 9/11, saw something strange and terrible there, and didn’t act on it.

Probably everyone who has since seen the famous photo of Atta (and nearly everyone has seen it) has noticed those eyes. You know them–eyes that seem drained of all humanity or compassion; cold, steely, and hard. It’s not at all difficult, seeing those eyes, to imagine Atta walking onto an airplane with a bunch of innocent people, knowing that he was going to blow them all to bits. Difficult, in fact, to imagine him as much of anything else–as a person who had once been a little boy, for example.

The photo put me in mind of a book I read some time ago: James Gilligan’s Violence. If I were to read it again, perhaps I’d now find in it some apologia for violence, but that’s not the way I remember it. I’m doing this from memory, so I could indeed be mistaken–but my memory is that it was a fascinating book in terms of analyzing the genesis of violence, rather than making excuses for it.

I recall that in a chapter called “Dead Souls,” Gilligan describes looking into the eyes of men who appear to have had the humanity scooped out of them. These men would kill (and did kill) with little provocation or remorse. Their eyes told the tale.

Not all killers are like that, of course; some seem to retain elements of what we would regard as normal human emotions. But Atta clearly appears to have been a member of the subset Gilligan describes as “dead souls.” We don’t know how they got that way, and although Gilligan has some ideas about commonalities they all share (fairly substantial abuse and shame in childhood), no explanation exists. Lots of people are abused and shamed; few (fortunately) grow up to become cold-blooded killers.

The man at the counter in Portland on 9/11 seemed to know instantly, however, that before him stood one of these “dead souls.” He says, “It was just the look on the one man’s face, his eyes…everyone in America has seen a picture of this man, but there is more life in that photograph we’ve all seen than he had in the flesh and blood. He looked like a walking corpse. He looked so angry. And he wouldn’t look directly at me.”

We seem to be hard-wired to be able to “read” emotions and faces very well. Not perfectly, but very well. Even babies can do this at an early age. And someone as far gone as Atta was an easy read for the man at the ticket counter.

What should that man have done? Hindsight is 20/20, and I doubt there’s anything he could have done which would have been permitted at the time. I’m not even sure what would be permitted now, now that we know so much more about the enemy we face.

This discussion of “dead souls” puts me in mind of the many legends that feature changelings. I wonder whether such legends–in which human children were stolen away and replaced by the human-looking offspring of demons or elves–were early attempts to explain this sort of phenomenon: a person who is indeed a person, but who seems somehow to have lost some basic element we think essential to being human. We can sense this thing, but can’t describe it. It spooked people long ago, and it fills us with dread now, to look into those empty, empty eyes.

Summers and science

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Captain Ed points to a study that might tend to vindicate Larry Summers’ speculations about possible differences between men’s and women’s brains. It’s certainly not the first evidence of its type, and it won’t be the last–unless, of course, the academic PC police ends up banning this type of research.

Most of the people jawing off against Summers probably haven’t read the full text of his remarks. I can’t say I blame them–the text is lengthy, and tough to slog through. But if one does study his remarks, it should be clear that he’s talking about differences in the numbers of males vs. females among the very small percentage of people who are close to being geniuses in the sciences, people many many standard deviations from the mean. He never says women can’t do science, or shouldn’t be hired to do science–au contraire.

Another drawback is that, in order to understand Summers’ remarks, it’s necessary to know a certain amount of science and statistics. I don’t mean to be elitist here, but it’s a fact. And that’s dry and boring stuff. So, it’s much easier for people to fly off the handle at what they think Summers said than what he actually said.

But there’s simply no excuse whatsoever for scientists themselves to misunderstand how careful and measured Summers’ remarks were, and what he actually was saying. The conference at which he spoke was full of such people. That’s why this entire affair is extremely chilling. There seems to be a trend in academia to try to drag us into a new Dark Ages–this time one in which political correctness, rather than religion, triumphs over science. And some of its proponents are academics and scientists themselves.

(For a previous post of mine on the subject see this.)

International law, and order?

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Belmont Club, by way of The American Future, offers the following Guardian quote. :

The [Iraq] war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects.

Poor old Europe–how to reconcile its worship of international law (and its idee fixee that the US flouted it) with the slowly dawning recognition that Iraq may be turning into some sort of success story?

International law is a beautiful idea, but it can work only with the consent of the governed. Ideally, all nations would hold hands and sing “Kumbaya,” and then international law would function seamlessly. Short of that, the “law” has to have the “order” part as well–the teeth, as it were. And that requires force.

Ideally again, that force would be multilateral–even by old Europe’s definition, which means: they would be included in it. But, short of that sort of overwhelming consensus, a consensus unlikely to appear in the real world of real nations (and we’ll leave aside for the moment that the Guardian article conveniently ignores that most of the involved nations were on the take from Saddam, and would never have acted against him)–what to do?

The Guardian, along with much of Europe, doesn’t seem to know what to do with outlaws. Saddam was an outlaw from international law. It’s as though Europe thinks of the world as a sort of tea party, and that anyone knocking on the door and wanting to come in would quite naturally play by tea-party rules: pick up a cuppa, grab a cucumber sandwich, sit down and chat a while.

But it’s no tea party, it’s an armed world of high-stakes power struggles, with vicious and tyrannical killers such as Saddam holding the reins of an entire country and flouting international law. Then the European tea party breaks down, and the lawmen have to be armed. And sometimes outlaws have to be taken out, especially if they are holding an entire nation hostage, and have designs on others.

And if those efforts are successful in freeing the hostages and putting the tyrant behind bars, then one needs to reconsider whether the means used to accomplish that task may not have been right, after all. Acts need to be evaluated by ethical standards that take into account some sort of notion of the real world and how it operates.

Watch “High Noon” sometime. In the end, even Will Kane’s pacifist Quaker bride learns the bitter and terrible lesson that force is sometimes necesssary for the enforcement of the law–and that it can’t always be multilateral, if the townspeople just won’t cooperate.

Barriers and walls: Iraq and elsewhere

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When I turned on the news today, first thing I heard was that there had been another car-bombing of a police station in Iraq, with the death of 15 brave policemen. It seems the bomber got past the guard at the gate by wearing a police uniform.

I’m glad they have gates and guards there, although in this case the bomber managed to foil them. But I think they also need concrete barriers between the road or parking lot and the police stations themselves, to contain the concussion of such explosions. Not that a determined bomber still couldn’t get in, but it would help make the task much harder, I assume, although I’m no engineer.

Thinking about that made me think of the old Cambridge Trust Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now, that may seem an odd juxtaposition–and it is, to be sure–but there is a small connection. This story may seem frivolous, but the place I’m trying to get to with it isn’t.

I lived in Cambridge for about seven years back in the late 60s through the mid-70s, back when a person with normal finances could actually live there and have enough money left over to eat every now and then. When I first arrived, the bank in the middle of Harvard Square had a huge glass window in front, light and airy. During some sort of demonstration or demonstrations (Cambodia bombing? after Kent State?) the window was repeatedly broken by stones heaved by angry demonstrators or vandals, or perhaps a combination of both.

And so the bank decided to brick up the entire front. It created a gloomy fortresslike facade that was a sad and tangible reminder of the anger and discord in our society (and, although I wasn’t throwing any stones, I went to a few antiwar protests in my time).

And then one day, many years later, perhaps in the 80s (I was in the Square on a visit), I noticed a change. The glass front was back again. And it remained that way last time I looked, several years ago. For all I know it’s that way still–I’ll have to check next time I go there.

The reinstatement of the glass facade coincided with the transformation of the Square into a consumer haven. The old Design Research morphed into Crate and Barrel, and the much older Wursthaus became Abercrombie and Fitch (or is it Banana Republic? Oh dear; sometimes I confuse the two.) And El’s, wonderful El’s, dead and gone, although Bartley’s remains.

So, the barrier went up, and it worked as long as it needed to. Years passed, the situation became calmer, and some higher-up decided the solid brick front was no longer needed.

The same process of building barriers is happening now in Iraq, for far more urgent reasons, against a far more vicious and implacable foe. The barriers will have to go up, lots of them. But it’s my fervent hope that some day, even if it takes many years, they will come down again, because they will no longer be necessary.

Same for all those protective walls, I say (although here in New England we also say–or, actually, Robert Frost says we say, “Good fences make good neighbors.”)

And some day soon when I visit Harvard Square again, I’ll take a look at that bank building. Maybe it’s not even a bank anymore, I don’t know; maybe it’s a Dunkin Donuts. But I like Cambridge and I like the Square, even though now I’m the oldest person strolling around there, except for a few fusty old professors, and even though I have to keep my mouth shut about politics lest I become the target of at least a few stony glances.

Ward Churchill, proud Native American…

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…not.

Well, as Emily Litella would say, “Never mind.”

If Colorado ends up firing him on the basis that he made false claims of ethnicity to get favoritism in hiring, he can always say he’s a victim of affirmative action. It wouldn’t surprise me if he claimed some sort of victimhood, anyway, after gaining notoriety by slandering the true innocent victims of 9/11.

UPDATE: Instapundit now writes that there is some question about the authenticity of the Churchill quote. We’ll see–maybe in the end it’s the blogosphere (wonderfully self-correcting organism that it is) that will have to say, “Never mind.”

UPDATE OF UPDATE: Yep, it’s official. The blogosphere says, “Never mind.”

So now it seems that Churchill is actually “less than a quarter Native-American.” Whatever that means. It all only serves to point out how absurd these fractional racial classifications are. And, apparently, Mr. Churchill can finally claim to be a victim of something: being misquoted in the MSM. Join the crowd, Ward!

Press pass: spread the word

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I think it’s a phrase whose time has come: press pass

Definition: the strategic spiking of a story that, if properly investigated, would be likely to reflect poorly on someone the MSM considers a friend or a good guy.

Usage (examples):

“The NY Times gave a press pass to Eason Jordan for his Davos remarks.”

“The MSM gave a press pass to John Kerry on his failure to sign a form 180.”

Spread it around, if you see fit.

Big Pharoah speaks…

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…and he says “let my people go.”

Right around the time of the build-up to the Iraqi war, the first Iraqi blog came into being, Salam Pak’s, now defunct. It was fascinating to read an actual Iraqi’s words, emanating almost magically from behind Saddam’s iron curtain. From the start, Salam wasn’t any sort of generic Iraqi, he was his own extremely unique person with an instantly recognizable voice, sardonic and clever, funny and iconoclastic.

Since the war there’s been a proliferation of Iraqi bloggers with a huge readership hungry for their unique points of view. My own personal favorites, Iraq the Model and Free Iraqi, eloquent and stirring, are on my blogroll. Sometimes I think of them as the Patrick Henrys and Thomas Paines of their time and place.

Big Pharoah is another of these distinctive blog voices from the Middle East, this time from Egypt, where he seems to be the only blogger writing in English. Fascinating stuff. Despite the distance and the exotic locale, one of the things that struck me when I first read his site last spring was something he and I seemed to have in common: he reported being surrounded by people who don’t share many of his political viewpoints.

Yesterday Big Pharaoh wrote some words that made my heart glad. Maybe they’ll do the same for you. Listen:

something is beginning to happen in Egypt. In fact, something is beginning to happen all over the region, from the revolution of the purple fingers in Iraq to Lebanon’s anti-Syria red demonstrations today. The enemies of freedom as well know that something is happening and they are trying to stop it.

Something amazing does seem to be stirring, the power of freedom. And recently freedom’s enemies actually appear to be getting weaker–although that story is far from over, and probably never will be over.

It seems those long-ago framers of our Declaration of Independence really were onto something big, something well-nigh universal. Isn’t it ever and ever more “self-evident” that people desire liberty–as much now as they did in 1776, perhaps even more?

Although, of course, not every single person on the face of the earth wants it. Some are afraid of it–afraid for themselves, or, more commonly, afraid for others–but that’s another story, for another essay.

Condi and Jackie

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Those not interested in fluff, please skip this post.

Am I the only one who thinks that Condoleezza Rice and Jackie Kennedy bear some sort of resemblance to each other? Physically, I mean. Think about it. The extraordinarily slender clothes-horse elegance, the erect and regal posture, the wide-set eyes and proportionately large head, the hairdo–and, of course, the beautifully tailored suits, not to mention the nicknames. Stick a pillbox on Condi’s head and call it done.

UPDATE: Well, someone else made a connection, but it’s not the same one.

Nature, red in tooth and claw

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When I signed up for the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem, I did it for the laughs. Likening the forms of life in the blogosphere to the Linnaean classification system and the Great Chain of Being (both which I had to learn about in some detail–and even, in the case of the former, laboriously memorize–way back when) gave me a chuckle.

But I’m not chuckling now (oh, well, maybe just a little bit). Because it turns out this is a heavy responsibility, and hard work not to slide back down the slippery slope.

Not that anyone cares but me, and I’m not sure how much even I care, but still–how often in life does one receive such a quantitative and seemingly objective rating of one’s rank and station? I started out an Insignificant Microbe or Lowly Insect or whatever it was I started out as. But now, thanks to a few gracious links, for one brief shining moment I’ve crawled out of the primordial slime (at least partially) to reach the relatively exalted rank of Crawly Amphibian.

But I’d ascended before, only to fall. I hadn’t realized when I signed up for that thing that you’re only as good as your last weeks’ stats. I had slithered up in the Truth Laid Bear world before, and yet it had taken only a week of slothfulness to ooze back down again to Lowly Insect.

It’s a jungle out there.

Instapundit: the Ed Sullivan of the blogosphere?

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An amusing post at VietPundit (be sure to read the comments section, too) raises a somewhat serious question, at least for us bloggers toiling away at our keyboards: how does Instapundit Glenn Reynolds do it? How does he churn it out, day after day, night after night, through rain and snow and sleet and…well, you get the idea. And manage to hold down a full-time job of some distinction, have a family–and, I suppose, eat? And still get more traffic than the San Diego Freeway at 5 PM on the Friday before Labor Day?

VietPundit’s answer–that Instapundit is not one, but many–is one I’ve entertained. Perhaps he has a fleet of unpaid law interns scanning the internet in search of nuggets to highlight. Perhaps there was a typo, and his blog title was supposed to read “Instapundits” instead, and now that he has such brand recognition he can’t change it. Perhaps he, like many bloggers, has a combination of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and insomnia. Or perhaps he doesn’t need more than a couple of hours of sleep a night, anyway.

But all of that only explains how Glenn does it in terms of mechanics. The question that interests me more is: what is it about his blog that generates all that traffic? He’s not the most flamboyant or polished writer, although his prose gets the job done with clarity and an economy of effort impressive to those of us inclined to be a bit wordy (who, me? couldn’t be!). Unlike LGF or Powerline, he was not a major player in exposing the CBS forgeries. He’s smooth, with the smoothness that hides all trace of effort. And the fact that he was one of the earlier bloggers and thus built up his base before there was much competition still doesn’t explain why that fan base has stuck with him and actually grown, along with the blogosphere.

So, I submit my own Theory of Glenn. He’s one of the first bloggers I ever found, and I still read him pretty much every day. He fills a niche in the blogosphere that no one else occupies–that of companion, generalist, and affable guide. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time to read him, and people are busy. There are very few bloggers who seem to have less ego, who are merely saying, “Here, read this, it’s interesting,” in a low-key and unthreatening way. The blogosphere can be a pretty heated place, with lots of sturm and drang, full of prima donnas and flash. Glenn is quiet and calming, but he can zing it with a pithy (that’s pithy, not pissy) comment now and then. His “Heh” says volumes.

Pardon me, Glenn, I don’t mean this in a bad way–but he’s the Ed Sullivan of bloggers. Always brings you a really good show, and then steps back and lets you enjoy it.