Category: Web/Tech

Some folks at the U.N. have an idea that they seem to regard as brilliant. The idea is that the U.S., which built the Internet and grew it into the stunning, civilization-changing success that it is today, should cede control of the Internet to . . .  (are you read?) . . . (drumroll, please) . . . a U.N. committee.

This is indeed a brilliant idea.

Except for the fact that it isn’t.

Fortunately, the fact that it isn’t a brilliant idea has occurred to others. Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, for example.

"My probe of the U.N. as Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations revealed management that was at best, incompetent, and at worst corrupt," said Coleman. "The first priority for the United Nations must be fundamental reform of its management and operations rather than any expansion of its authority and responsibilities. The Internet has flourished under U.S. supervision, oversight, and private sector involvement. This growth did not happen because of increased government involvement, but rather, from the opening on the Internet to commerce and private sector innovation. Subjecting the Internet and its security to the politicized control of the UN bureaucracy would be a giant and foolhardy step backwards."

"Recently, I introduced UN reform legislation with the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations, Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN), known as the Coleman-Lugar UN Reform Bill, to help put an end to a culture of corruption that was exposed by the Oil for Food scandal, peacekeeping sexual abuse scandals, and other instances of organizational failures at U.N.," Coleman said. "Putting the U.N. in charge of one of the world’s most important technological wonders and economic engines is out of the question. This proposal would leave the United States with no more say over the future of the Internet than Cuba or China-countries that have little or no commitment to the free flow of information."

Yeah, that’s what we really need: Giving China U.N. Security Council-level veto power over decisions affecting the Internet. That’ll be really good for the free flow of information and ideas.

Perhaps if China and other countries are not satisfied with the U.S. controlling the Internet that it built and organized then maybe they should build their own Internet.

Heck, do a better job with a second Internet and I’m sure Americans will be trying to book time on it, instead.

That’s the nice thing about competition.

In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

Okay, folks. A little lunchblogging.

I just want to thank everybody again for the sanity and good humor they have displayed in the two "Huh?" posts.

It has become clear that the original commenter, Erik Johnson, is deliberately attempting to cause trouble. His lurching to new topics, raising new accusations for which he has no proof, and sending out of e-mails to other bloggers can only be interpreted as deliberate harrassment.

Y’all did notice, didn’t you, that after he introduced his latest theme that he indicated that he e-mailed it to ten other people (again, all of them being bloggers from what I can tell), right?

One of them, Steve Dillard, responded by saying:

Look, I don’t know who you are or how in the world I got on your email
list, but go sell crazy somewhere else.

Classic!

I am also told that Erik has been causing problems on other folks’ blogs, where the most successful strategy has been to simply ignore him.

I request the same here. If Erik logs on and comments again, I request that people simply ignore him.

Now a word to Erik: I have been patient with you beyond any reasonable expectation. It appears that you are a troubled individual who may be in need of counselling, as is the case with many people making the transition to adulthood. I suggest that you talk to a counsellor.

However that may be, you are no longer welcome on this blog. Do not post further comments here.

I was impressed by the comments folks posted on my original Huh? post. A lot of very perceptive comments and well-delivered humor. My compliments, folks! I was touched!

I’m not going to drag this subject out, but wanted to put a few items on the record.

First, as many pointed out, I did not endorse the Iraq War in the posts that the original commenter cited. Neither did I dis-endorse it.

Second, I have no intention of commenting specifically on the war at this point. There is no official Catholic stance on the war, and I generally confine myself to matters of theory rather than matters of application when it comes to subjects like this.

Further, if I were to stake out a position in the way that the commenter wants, it would only "feed the troll" as the saying goes. I have no interest in being provoked into a debate with the commenter on this or any other subject. I’ve tried to be patient and charitable, but I’m not going to feed a fixation.

Lest there be any doubt as to the unreasonableness of what was being asked of me in this case (and others have already very ably pointed out the problems here), I would like to put on record an e-mail that was sent to me at 11:05 p.m. Pacific Time, just over an hour before my "Huh?" post even went up–at which point I had publicly said nothing in response to the commenter. In this e-mail, the commenter wrote:

Mr. Akin,
So, you have been a little bit too much influenced by Richard John
Neuhaus, so that you’re a neoconservative like he is now, right?

This is simply wild speculation on the part of the commenter.

In point of fact, I can’t recall ever reading anything Fr. Neuhaus has written on the Iraq War. I don’t know what Fr. Neuhaus’ opinion of it is. I don’t know if he’s a "neoconservative," and I certainly am not one myself.

The commenter is simply leaping wildly to conclusions for which he has no rational grounds.

Further, the commenter carboned his e-mail to eight different people besides myself, all of whom are notable Catholic bloggers. In deference to them, I will not re-post their e-mail addresses.

I will, however, compliment them on the fact that at this time of this writing not one of them has chosen to respond to the commenter’s e-mail–at least not with me included in the reply. It appears that they all have the blogger ethics and professionalism to recognize and resist such attempts to gin up a baseless controversy and start a blogpile on someone else.

For all I know, they themselves may have had encounters with individuals attempting to entrap them in this fashion.

In any event, my compliments to them and to the voices of reason that have weighed in on this subject.

We now return to the blog . . . already in progress.

Down yonder a reader writes:

Mr. Akin,
What is your position on the Iraq War? I know that the late Holy Father
as well as the current Holy Father were opposed to it. I just don’t
believe it qualifies as a just war. Where is your evidence that it
qualifies? Why do you think it’s a good idea for Catholics to support
it? Have you lost your mind?

I wonder what you think of my website?

This comment was posted at 12:06 p.m., Pacific Time.

Then, at 12:44 p.m., the same commenter posted:

By the way, your position of same-sex "marriage" is good. However,
neoconservative foreign policy is not. I don’t see why just because
you’re an American you have to support immoral war policy.

Then, after someone pointed out that it’s rather rude to ask "Have you lost your mind?" before you at least know the answer to the prior question, the previous commenter posted at 1:21 p.m.:

Good idea.  I retract the question "Have you lost your mind?"  at least for now anyway.

Then, at 2:33 p.m. the commenter posts on his own blog that

I have been unable to get Jimmy Akin’s answer to the question I posed
to him: what qualifies the invasion of Iraq as a just war according to
the Catholic Doctrine? I will be honest: at the outset of the war, I
was a more or less passive supporter of it. However, now I oppose it
because I believe it does not meet the criteria for a just war as found
in Catholic teaching. Both the late Holy Father and the current Holy
Father were opposed to it. As then-Cardinal Ratzinger said before the
outset of the war, the pretext of a preemptive war cannot be found in
the Catechism. He also said that the unilateral invasion of Iraq by the
US was unjustified. Since the start of the war in 2003, all of the
original premises for going to war have been discredited: no weapons of
mass destruction were found, there is no evidence of a link with al
Quaeda, etc. The war has proved enormously costly both in civilian
casualties, lives of American soldiers lost, and an enormous amount of
money has been spent. More lives continue to be lost and more money
continues to be spent. In my opinion, the neoconservative idea that the
United States should force rogue nations to adopt Western-style
democracy at gunpoint is overly idealistic.

To all this I have to say: Kid! Cut back on the caffeine! ‘Kay?

I know that you may be part of the videogame generation (your blog profile says you’re a university student) and may perceive life as moving at breakneck speed, but it simply is not realistic to post a blog comment at 12:06 p.m. asking me a question and then two hours and twenty-seven minutes later be declaiming to the world that you have been "unable" to get my answer to the question.

I know that as a result of a variety of causes (the Internet among them), many folks have gotten so used to instant info gratification that they have the attention span of a ferret on cocaine, but really!

As I pointed out just the other day, I don’t write blog posts during the day (when I’m at work) but at night (when I’m not). If you write at 12:06 p.m., I’m likely to not even see your query until I get home. Much less am I going to drop everything to write a post responding to a tendentiously-phrased query about a subject like the Iraq War.

Further, again as I explained the other day, a lot of folks write with queries that, much as I’d like to, I simply can’t answer for time reasons. Why am I going to jump your query up to the head of the list, above everyone else’s, in order to answer it?

And that assumes that I’m even going to answer it.

As I explained just yesterday, I don’t generally comment on political issues. I’m quite happy to explain the Church’s just war teaching, and in fact I have done so on numerous occasions. But when it comes to applying those criteria to particular conflicts, who says that I have any obligation to tell people what to think about a particular war when even JPII and B16 have not (despite what you may have heard) chosen to make authoritative statements on the subject and bind the consciences of the faithful?

If I choose to express an opinion or not, that’s my choice, but I certainly have no obligation to commit to a running debate with you on the subject just because you stick a remark in my combox.

Further, if you’re asking for my position on the war, why are you then assuming that I’m in favor of it? If you already know the answer to your question, why are you asking it?

And, puh-lease, don’t go around contemptuously labeling as "neoconservative" whatever position I may or may not privately hold. Would you like someone slapping insulting labels on what they perceived to be your position–and before you have even said what your position is?

Also . . . what does any of this have to do with Canada? That was, you may recall, the subject of the post into which you stuck your comment. To the extent it had to do with countries in general (including the U.S.), it emphasized how little I tend to comment on political matters involving them. If you have an off-topic query to make, well . . . that’s why God created e-mail.

Then there is the "Have you lost your mind?" query. Despite your later attempt to retract it, you need to learn a swift life lesson that this ain’t how it works. Having uttered words in someone’s presence, you can’t just magically take them back (unless you have access to a time-travelling Delorean). You can try to mitigate the damage you did to your case with them by expression contrition for having been so insulting with what you said, but saying "Good idea.  I retract the question ‘Have you lost your mind?’  at least for now anyway" ain’t the way to do that.

Then we have the further query

I wonder what you think of my website?

This can be taken in either a snarky or a non-snarky sense. If it’s taken in a snarky sense then one would expect that there might be something on your blog that I would disapprove of (e.g., like comments about the Iraq War), however a check of your blog reveals that at the time you posted your comment you had written a grand total of seven blog posts, none of which had anything to do with the Iraq War, making it seem unlikely that you intended the question in a snarky sense.

That leaves us with the non-snarky sense. This one is also hard to explain because anyone who is sincerely seeking feedback on their blogging efforts should know enough not provoke and then insult the very person from whom they are seeking feedback.

Nevertheless, here are a few pieces of constructive criticism:

1) Light grey text on black background is a bad color scheme. It’s hard for the eye to read and will discourage people from reading your blog. If you want to attract readers, reverse the contrast.

2) It seems that you are still in the process of determining the name for your blog. That’s understandable, though you should get a snappier name for your blog than "Blog." A few days ago it was apparently called "Your Mom," which–while confusing–was snappier than "Blog." I know that it’s hard coming up with snappy names for things sometimes. Perhaps you might hold a "Name this blog!" contest among your readers or at least have a brainstorming session with your friends.

3) In regard to readers and friends, you’ll attract and keep more of both if you approach people positively rather than provoking and insulting them. Seasoned bloggers won’t mind engaging in friendly debates with you, but you can’t simply presume their answers and then start flailing away at them. You have to give people a chance to answer–if they want to–and treat them with the same respect that you’d like. Make a pain of yourself and few will link to you.

4) Oh yeah, and hit your "Enter" key often. If paragraphs get too long, they get hard on the eyes. Make sure you get a blank space between graphs, too. Much easier on the eyes.

I’m home for lunch, so a little lunchtime blogging. A reader writes:

Just a logistics question. I’m assuming that you probably don’t have time to answer all faith/church questions that you receive. But is there a "normal" amount of time that it takes you to respond to the ones you do answer?

I’m afraid that there’s not fixed answer to this, but I can describe what tends to happen:

People send queries, links, etc., to my gmail account, and I at least look at all of them. The great majority I read in detail, though in the case of some unusually lengthy ones I’m afraid that I can’t do more than skim them.

Many of these I intend to answer but don’t have the time to answer at the moment. As a result, they start moving down the stack in my inbox. The ones that tend to get answered tend to have one or more of the following characteristics:

1. They are short. The shorter the query is, the easier it is for me to answer it. If someone has sent a query that is several screens long, the odds of it getting answered are much, much lower than if it is only two sentences long. The shorter one can make the query, the more extraneous background one can cut out of it, the greater the odds of it being answered.
2. They don’t require me to look something up. The more likely it is that I’ll have to go do a bunch of research, the less likely it is that I’ll be able to respond. I know that there’s no reliable way for correspondents to know that I’ll have to research vs. what I won’t, but some kinds of queries are more likely than others to trigger the need for research. E.g., "What do you think about the personal scandals surrounding this particular pope in the tenth century?" and "What are the laws regarding hounds in the midsouth states of the U.S.?" and "What do the sheriff’s records in Amarillo, Texas have to say about Alberto Rivera?" are ones almost guaranteed to require research. (These are all variants on questions I have actually received.)
3. They don’t require me to write a huge, complex answer. Since I’m doing my responses in the evening, after I’ve gotten home from work, I’m likely to be tired or wanting to veg out. The more time and energy a reply would take, the less likely it is that I’ll be able to provide one.
4. They are on only one point. The more points that an e-mail tries to take on, the lower the chance of it getting answered. The reason is that adding more points (a) lengthens the email and (b) ups the chances of me having to look something up and (c) lengthens the response I’d have to write. A corrollary here is that it’s easier to get answers to multiple questions on different subjects if you ask them one at a time rather than combining them in a single email.
5. The don’t deal with questions that I’ve answered repeatedly. I actually cut quite a bit of slack in this area, but it won’t be interesting to the readers if I simply answer variants on "Can I attend this wedding?" and "Is an annulment needed here?" I feel a bit of a Catch-22, because these questions are important for pastoral reasons, but they are the current equivalent of "Did Jesus have brothers?" (the question that was asked Every Single Show back in the early days of Catholic Answers Live). Recently I received a question of this nature that was simple enough that I was tempted to post it and let the regular readers answer it in the combox.
6. They are questions of special pastoral importance. For obvious reasons, I try to answer these. This is also the reason I answer as many marriage-related questions as I do.
7. They are recently-received. When I’m looking for questions to answer on the blog, it’s just easier to go to the top of the stack than to root around further down in the inbox. A corrollary is that if it’s been a while since you asked your question and it hasn’t been answered, you may want to re-send it. Just bear in mind the following point. . . .
8. They are polite. Questions of an insulting or rude nature are less likely to be answered. People who write in only to tell me that I’m an idiot (and there are many such people), of course, get no response. If they tell me I’m an idiot as a prelude to asking a question, they are very unlikely to get a response. If they say "How dare you not answer my question, you cussed so-and-so!" they also are less likely to meet with a favorable response. After all, nobody is paying me to do this. I’m spending my own time and money to provide this service, and I simply can’t promise a response to every query. (At times the situation brings to mind the 285th Rule of Acquisition).

I also should mention one other matter. Folks reading the blog don’t see the responses I send back privately. This is something I do for particularly delicate situations. Sometimes I privately address some really amazing situations that are simply too sensitive to go into on the blog. While this is something that I do in exceptional circumstances, the limits on my time are such that if I at all can, I prefer to answer the questions on the blog itself.

I take pains to mask the identities of the people writing in. I even edit the e-mails they send to remove or fuzz over potentially revealing pieces of information (e.g., what year people got married, what churches they were members of, the precise number of kids they have, how old someone is). This lets me answer some otherwise delicate questions in a way that (a) respects the privacy of the individuals involved, (b) will benefit those in the audience who may be in similar situations, and (c) allows me to get a blog post done.

I say that to point out that individuals who write should in the main expect their queries to be dealt with here on the blog rather than by private e-mail, though in exceptional cases the reverse is what happens.

So. . . . I’m sure that’s both more and less info than the reader wanted, but I hope it provides a better feel for how email queries get handled and how to maximize the chances of having them answered.

Just an operations note.

Sorry, but my blogging will have to be light today. Had things going on last night that prevented me from being able to do a full compliment of posts.

The danger of treating a weblog like an online diary is the danger of posting your diary on the Internet:

"Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at Pew who tracks young people’s Internet habits, says she’s increasingly hearing stories about the perils of posting the equivalent of a diary online.

"She heard from one man whose niece was a college student looking for a job. Out of curiosity, he typed his niece’s name into a search engine and quickly found her blog, with a title that began ‘The Drunken Musings of ….’

"’He wrote to her and said, "You may want to think about taking this down,"’ said Lenhart, chuckling."

GET THE STORY.

As with any new toy, most people eventually learn how to play with it appropriately.  But one does have to wonder why anyone would think it appropriate to create a blog titled "The Drunken Musings of …" and insert their real name.

If you are a blog author and you want to be a statistic, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (aka, MIT) has a survey for you.

GET THE SURVEY (and become a statistic!).

(Nod to Religion & Society for the link.)

Howdy, folks!

Just an operations note.

I had a business meeting until late last night, and didn’t have time to prepare my usual slate of blog entries. As a result, today will be a light blogging day on my part. My co-bloggers will still be here, but I’m afraid that my contributions today will have be "encore posts" from last year.

Enjoy!

iTunes 4.9 . . . IS OUT!!!

That means one thing: Built-in podcast support!!!

Now you can listen to podcasts on your iPod without having to use a piece of third-party software!

YEE-HAW!!!

Even if you don’t have an iPod, my understanding is that you can still download iTunes (for free) and use it to listen to podcasts and other audio content right on your computer, so don’t let not having an iPod stop you from joining the fun!

I’ve already downloaded 4.9 and installed it. Poked around the podcast area of the iTunes Music Store, too.

They have at least a couple of Catholic podcasts already in the store (Catholic Cast and Catholic Insider–in fact, they have two podcasts called "Catholic Insider" by different folks).

The selection is still somewhat limited, but they’re just starting out.

One limitation: So far all the podcasts they have in the store are free. You may think that’s a good thing, but it will keep some podcasts that folks (like me) would want to get from being in the store. Hope that they change that policy soon and let in podcasts where you pay an access charge (some radio programs do that).

In the meantime

DOWNLOAD iTUNES 4.9!!!

(NOTE: Just opening your current iTunes–if you already have it–should also prompt you to download the new version.)