Friday Ephemera
I can’t help thinking there ought to be a word for this. // Galleries of small things. // There are dry ice pits on Mars. // Perspective and tape. // Painting without a brush. // Raincoat of note. // Moscow’s retro cars. // The Enigma machine explained. // Ed Miliband… the outsider! // The integrity of Johann Hari, moral colossus of the left. // Laurie’s babysitting skills. // Wang Wusheng. // Ostrich eggbot. // How to peel garlic. (h/t, MeFi) // People hanging over the edge of skyscrapers. // On community versus collectivism. // Carving watermelon skin. // Extreme unicycling. (h/t, Coudal) // The flow of US debt. (h/t, Jen) // Facebook and you.
I can’t help thinking there ought to be a word for this.
That’s a great way to ruin a sweater…
Now’s a good time as any to highlight the one good article on liberal conspiracy:
Hopi Sen on Johanm Hari’s prize winning article:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/07/31/johann-hari-and-the-article-for-speigel/
The strange world of Johann Hari:
Apols if I’ve mentioned this before on these pages. The amount of journalistic malpractice he seems to be guilty of is fairly stupendous. There are also allegations of racist pornography. Just allegations so far I should stress (and we know who the alligators are).
Another thing Hari admits to is impersonating someone he was at university with to write additions to Wikipedia, mostly to continue spats with the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Cristina Odone, and to stand up for his friends.
Here’s an excellent blog-post on the wiki edits. The 131 comments are a treat too, including speculation about other wikipedia accounts that seem suspiciously devoted to bolstering Hari’s reputation and quoting what he said about Niall Fergusson etc. Some of the commenters have gone to amusing lengths checking where edits by a user called Zafio were made from.
I can’t help thinking there ought to be a word for this.
Fluff removal.
Re the Penny tweet – should that be classed as child abuse?
Johann Hari defending himself while pretending to be someone else :
“Johann writes almost entirely on left-wing issues from a left-wing perspective. Check out his website. Your impugning of his integrity will be used, I suspect, mainly by Zionist groups and anti-environmentalists in their mailing lists to undermine his writing about Palestine and climate change
…It’s frustrating to see a decent guy who works hard for left-wing causes being pulled down by his own side (using right-wing allegations!) because they disagreed with him on one issue.”
Johann Hari puffing himself up while pretending to be someone else :
“I’ve suggested as a compromise we say “Hari defines himself as a defender of the Enlightenment, which he sees a system of rational thought that is under seige.” That is undoubtedly true.”
Has the Enlightenment always been about treating reason as a team sport and suspending critical thinking when it involves someone on “your team”?
Johann Hari : “…It’s frustrating to see a decent guy who works hard for left-wing causes being pulled down by his own side (using right-wing allegations!) because they disagreed with him on one issue.”
I must be unconsciously influenced by associating with Brits and Australians online because I have the overwhelming desire to respond with “How precious.”
Re: the Hari affair, aside from the fact that ‘Private Eye’ had his number back in 2003, the first website to expose his journalistic malpractice was a Marxist site called the ‘Deterritorial Support Group’. The main work done to uncover the extent of Hari’s plagiarism, churnalism and fabrications was done by Brian Whelan, Guy Walters (with his ‘New Statesman’ blog) and the novelist Jeremy Duns. None of the above fit the description of the ‘right wing conspiracy’ that Hari (and his former editor Simon Kelner) sought to portray.
The Independent’s own behaviour over Hari has been nothing short of cowardly and hypocritical. As has been pointed out repeatedly, the Indie has a scandal on its hands as serious as that which the New York Times experienced in 2003 with the Jayson Blair affair. The difference is that while the NYT made the Blair scandal the subject of a front-page story – complete with a 7,000 word examination of their employee’s deceit and an apology to its readers – the Independent has decided to slap Hari on the wrist, give him the face-saving option of ‘returning’ a prize which he never earnt, cover up Andreas Whittam Smith’s whitewash – sorry, report – into the matter, and keep him on the books. It’s unbelievable.
Let’s fisk dear Laurie:
“Baby’s first polemic: teaching @stillphosphor and @cavalorn’s daughter to say “smash monogamy, screw the patriarchy and destroy marriage.”
“Smash monogamy” – she seems to have trouble attracting one mate, and now she wants more?
“screw the patriarchy” – again, she seems to have trouble getting screwed by a representative of the “patriarchy”, both physically and metaphorically. Anyway, what’s the patriarchy, and how do I become a member? People like her make it sound like fun if you get to do all the things that irk her and her ilk.
“destroy marriage” – which clearly means “I can’t attract a mate to get married, so none of you barstewards should be able to get married either”. Bet she’s in favour of gay marriage though.
Further to last: Having split it up like that, I noticed that it is not in and of itself ideologically consistent.
Smash monogomy vs destroy marriage.
So if she wants to smash monogomy – marriage to a single person – she must be in favour of polygamy – marriage to multiple people. But yet she wants to destroy marriage per se.
So she is in favour of marriage as long as it is to multiple partners, yet nevertheless wants to smash it…
Pace, Douglas Adams, I wish she’d just dissapear in a puff of logic.
Re: the flow of US debt…
So let me get this straight…I owe Mexico $88? Well given that a good number of illegal immigrant Mexicans have been receiving health, education, and other welfare benefits from US taxpayers that I am quite certain were not accounted for in this (ahem) accounting, and given the damage to my lawn that my neighbor’s hired Mexican workers did tramping, wheelbarrowing, and palette-dragging across it, I think I can call that one even.
And if it weren’t for my old man’s efforts (and those a couple thousand of his buddies), South Korea would still be owned by the Japanese. And that goes double for the Philippines. Of course, maybe that explains the Japan stuff. From what I was told, my grandfather had to leave a certain amount of stuff behind in Germany when he left and he wasn’t too happy about doing so. Israel? Really? Last I was in Ireland, they tried to kill me…twice. Italy still owes me for the laundry I sent out and never got back. And don’t get me started about France. Please send the waitress back over here, I’d like to discuss some items on this tab.