« Recipeblogging: Spring pasta | Main | Please allow me to introduce myself.... » Off to Puerto Rico29 Mar 2008 11:10 pm I head off to the airport at an absurdly early hour tomorrow, leaving you in the hands of my extremely capable guest-bloggers: Daniel Drezner, Peter Suderman, Mindles H. Dreck, Jon Henke, and new blogger Tristan Reed. I'm going to be trying a brand new experiment: unplugging from the internet for an entire five days. Meanwhile, here's something to tide you over until the guest-blogging kicks in: (via Orac) Comments (25)
Meghan, before you leave for PR remember to take that awful Brad DeLong off your Blogroll. And it's time to update the gadget of the week, too. 
I believe this is what's known as addition by subtraction.
No computer, no connection for 5 days.
Have you been suspended?
Did MM get suspended for telling tall tales?
Mindless Dreck is McArdle under an assumed -- and more accurate -- name. anony_mouse_ could be McArdle pretending to be a fan, but it's more like a devestating parody of a McArdle fan.
D, "...suspended for telling tall tales?" I like that, very witty. It's what this blog needs. I wonder why MM didn't pick us as guest bloggers?
And it is funny that McMegan goes on vacation just the day that Calculated Risk reems her a new one.
JKc, If that Calculated Risk post counts as good criticism of Megan, then you guys really need to recruit some actual talent. This was a witless mass of convoluted prose. The closest it came to coherence was the reptition of "get" throughout (always in scare quotes). A repetition meant to reminded us, every so often, that this rambling mess was intended to rebut Megan's bit on foreclosure vandalism. As best I can decipher, the author thinks that these ex-homeowners are angry, that we should view their actions as a species of unwitting performance art and that Megan is a very very bad person for mocking them. The rest is a sophmore's lit-crit essay on the proper purpose of humor. (It's apparently supposed to "deflate the hot air filling the designers of this doomed system." Fight the power, man, fight the power!) Drivel.
BTW: tall tales also refer to: http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/tall_girls.php
Megan: Have a good vacation. I'm always well annoyed when bloggers bring in the bench to cover for them so it will be good to have you back when you return. Perhaps the people who don't really like your writing will take this pause to create their own blogs and demonstrate their superiority on a fuller scale.
That's called a coincidence. Or do we all time our vacations to avoid pompously presented, but well argued internet chatter. (The Calculated Risk is a clever bit of verbal vomitoria that really makes a mountain out of Megan's molehill of a statement. I don't know why people trash houses either, and I try to avoid those types of vindictive souls. Invariably, their impulsiveness will set them smack in the middle of the next financial bubble that comes along). Others: I also enjoy how the comments get a bit nastier, under the assumption that Megan is not only on vacation, but blind, deaf and dumb. It's like the teacher has left the room and the kids are pulling out their willies and peeing on the wall.
Let me reiterate: Megan is great. Megan is most gracious, most merciful. Peace be upon Megan.
Do the comments really get nastier when she leaves? Have you ever read Calculated Risk? Or are you just mad because they dare criticize your high priestess? I suppose you think trickle down economics work, too. Personally, I'll criticize MM when ever I feel it is due. I am sure she knows people rip her all the time on MY's blog(and Ezra Klein's too). If she can't take any criticism of her views(and it seems you are pretty thin skinned), then why is she even writing? Have you seen the last 7+ years of Republican rule? Do you want to live through another four or eight years of it? If so, then go vote McBush. Just remember, we don't live in Utopia.
I have no problem with criticism of Megan; I have made some myself. I just prefer that it make some sort of sense.
JKC: Yes I have read Calculated Risk, and it's often good reading. You infer so much by my comments that it would take quite a bit of space to correct your assumptions (some of which may be true, some of which are off point). As for thin skinned, I would think the employ of terms like "McBush" ought to really clarify if the pot or kettle is blacker in color or thinner in skin.
Meghan, before you leave for PR remember to take that awful Brad DeLong off your Blogroll. And it's time to update the gadget of the week, too. This one (2:19 AM) ain't me. My suspicion is that someone was drinking way too late on a Saturday evening and thought name theft would be funny.
Finn:
How come no one is commenting on the video? I found it funny. It reminds me of the "push button science believers" who do not realize how hypocritical they sound when they bash creationism. Not that I believe in Creationism, I just don't like fanatical censure. Besides, epigenetics is showing Darwin was not completely right. It would be a strectch to say epigentics argues for ID though. Creationism and ID belong in metaphysical discussions, but they are not to be feared. If your argument is so clearly correct, what do you have fear from contradiction?
Well, *I* commented on the video. I thought it was funny, mostly because I have read a couple of Dawkin's books and encountered some of his vitriol in other media, and always found it ironic that you can pick apart his popsci blather with a review of exactly the same logical fallacies that he charges against creationists.
"Besides, epigenetics is showing Darwin was not completely right" Wrong way to think about it. Darwin wrote in the mid-late 19th century, at a time when (to pick one example) nobody besides an obscure Austrian monk had even the faintest clue about how variation and heredity worked. Darwin struggled to create a 'provisional hypothesis' - pangenesis - which was seriously challenged within a year or two and was soon utterly discarded, remaining only as a historical footnote. In the almost-150 years since On The Origin of Species was published, evolutionary biology has been tested, modified, expanded, interwoven with entirely new scientific fields, etc. - while Darwin's (and Wallace's) insights were very, very important, they're the beginning of the story, not the whole and the end of it! Modern evolutionary biology, for example, kinda arose in the '30s and '40s as a synthesis of Darwin's natural selection with the later rediscovery and development of genetics, mixed together with ecology, paleontology, etc, etc., with even newer developments and ideas - hey, DNA! - added as time went on. Epigenetics is really interesting (genomic imprinting, for example, likely explains why ligers (male lion x female tiger hybrid) are really frickin' big, and tigons (male tiger x lioness hybrid) are kinda little - use the magic of google if you want to know more . . . .) Evo-devo also's pretty cool (though reports that its proponents wear flowerpots on their heads and carry whips seem to result from confusion with a certain '80s band). It's been suggested, rightly or wrongly, that the field's on the verge of a whole new synthesis, vastly expanding our knowledge and understanding of some of the fundamentals of life. Certainly fascinating, fascinating stuff, the kind of thing that makes you happy to be alive. Now, the answer, Keith, to your question "If your argument is so clearly correct, what do you have fear from contradiction?" is that frightened people deeply uncomfortable with the changes and dislocations of modernity, and terrified that science will disprove their often rather tiny and mindlessly literal little god,* in their minds opening up a horrible abyss of immorality, squalid mortality, and utter meaninglessness, want to make sure kids are taught crudely religious anti-science propaganda in science class, rather than learning about these sort of awesome things (evolution being, incidentally, the cornerstone of the life sciences). They've been doing this, on and off, for about a century now (there was a lull after the Scopes trial, but that was in part because textbook publishers quietly self-censored; the reawakening of science education after Sputnik seems to have been one of the factors that set off the current and ongoing onslaught). It's taken a great deal of effort and a relatively favorable climate to barely hold the line, and that's an extremely charitable description: in countless classrooms evolution is briefly crammed into the summery end of class, carefully danced around, dropped altogether by conflict-adverse teachers or administrators, or covertly, unconstitutionally, and unethically replaced with creationism. (Would you want your kid being taught that the sun went around the earth, or their teachers being mandated to 'teach the [imaginary] controversy' between geo- and heliocentrism by half-educated school board members convinced that 'Galileoism' was an evil lie that would warp their souls, lead them to sex, drugs, and Nazi-style genocide, and eventually condemn then to eternal damnation (and no doubt with a eager band of graduates from televangelical 'colleges' happy to help teach this)? * In contrast, of course, countless religious believers have no problem with evolution, any more than they're troubled by the godless doctrines of meteorology and germ theory, and most atheists don't respond to their lack of god-belief with brutal rape, murder, and puppy-kicking sprees interspersed with nihilistic moanings about the meaningless of it all. YMMV.
Dan S., Impressive post. I agree with it. But do you think you could expand a little on it. It seemed a little too short for me. I'm curious to hear more about your philosophy. Write more paragraphs for us.
That video was full of so much win on so many levels. I was enthralled. One problem... that was a man, baby. (Apparently, there are fans and "anti-fans". Anti-fans like to hang out and read blogs by people they despise so that they can hate them. I think they must hate themselves so they try to find someone else to project the hate onto.)
I love it when family comes to visit. anony_mouse_#2, I'm anony_mouse_#1. Shall we do coffee, say, Tuesday at 10am?
The underscores used makes anony_mouse_ quite unique, actually. anony_mouse_ #2 needs to get a life.* * posting name withheld for fear that the anony_mouse_ #2 loser will pick a new target.
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Time really does weigh more heavily on some hands. Good stuff, and happy travels.
Posted by anony_mouse_ | March 30, 2008 1:17 AM