Category: Web/Tech

The mainstream media (MSM) still doesn’t understand that it is facing an evolutionary change as large (for itself) as the one that separated the mammals from the dinosaurs.

This New York Times story discusses rumors that spread rapidly via the blogosphere that Bush had stolen the election–rumors that were swiftly shot down by others in the blogosphere.

Ever since the debacle of the CBS forged documents scandal, MSM commentators have been yawlping about the absence of "checks and balances" (i.e., fact checkers) in the blogosphere. What they fail to realize, as many bloggers have pointed out, is that the blogosphere itself provides checks and balances. If a blogger (at least one who is seriously enough engaged in political discussion to achieve prominence) makes a mistake of fact, he will quickly be informed of the fact by others in the blogosphere and, if he wishes to retain his reputation (unlike CBS), he will quickly make a correction or at least stop pushing a crazy theory.

The blogosphere thus has what the MSM does not–a set of real-time cross-examiners among its peers who are devoted to shooting down theories that limp when it comes to factual matters. It ignores what these cross-examiners say at its peril. The MSM has not yet realized that it is at this point.

What all this means is that the advent of the blogosphere has made more information available to real-time cross-examination, with a resulting shortening of the time it takes to shoot down erroneous ideas that otherwise would circulate through the press.

It is a Darwinian process.

The MSM doesn’t realize that the mammals are about to gobble up the corpses of the final dinosaurs.

GET THE STORY (NYT-noid REGISTRATION WARNING!).

The mainstream media (MSM) still doesn’t understand that it is facing an evolutionary change as large (for itself) as the one that separated the mammals from the dinosaurs.

This New York Times story discusses rumors that spread rapidly via the blogosphere that Bush had stolen the election–rumors that were swiftly shot down by others in the blogosphere.

Ever since the debacle of the CBS forged documents scandal, MSM commentators have been yawlping about the absence of "checks and balances" (i.e., fact checkers) in the blogosphere. What they fail to realize, as many bloggers have pointed out, is that the blogosphere itself provides checks and balances. If a blogger (at least one who is seriously enough engaged in political discussion to achieve prominence) makes a mistake of fact, he will quickly be informed of the fact by others in the blogosphere and, if he wishes to retain his reputation (unlike CBS), he will quickly make a correction or at least stop pushing a crazy theory.

The blogosphere thus has what the MSM does not–a set of real-time cross-examiners among its peers who are devoted to shooting down theories that limp when it comes to factual matters. It ignores what these cross-examiners say at its peril. The MSM has not yet realized that it is at this point.

What all this means is that the advent of the blogosphere has made more information available to real-time cross-examination, with a resulting shortening of the time it takes to shoot down erroneous ideas that otherwise would circulate through the press.

It is a Darwinian process.

The MSM doesn’t realize that the mammals are about to gobble up the corpses of the final dinosaurs.

GET THE STORY (NYT-noid REGISTRATION WARNING!).

BTW, folks, I know there are a number of good comments discussions going on right now, and I encourage y’all to (politely!) have fun in them. I’m afraid that I’ve got some stuff going on the next couple of days that will prevent me from participating in the comments discussions that much, so if I’m not answering it’s because I’m not able to at the moment. Blog entries will be going up on the usual schedule though, so do stop by over the weekend.

Have a good ‘un!

Howdy, folks!

I’m back from the Catholic Answers Cruise now. As expected, it was both a lot of fun and a lot of work.

Now that I’m back physically, I’ll also be back to regular blogging strength starting tomorrow morning.

In the interim, I just wanted to thank Steven Greydanus for gracing these “pages” with his insights and say that, as always, he’s more than welcome to contribute whenever he’d like.

Three cheers for Steve!

I’m not a big fan of “dynamic equivalence” translations of the Bible–at least not for Bible study. They’re okay for Bible reading, but the more liberty translators feel themselves at liberty to take with the text, the more liberty they will take. Thus translations like the New International Version or Today’s English Version display considerable translator bias, though that’s a problem to some degree even in more literal versions.

But even dynamic equivalence translations don’t go in for what versions like the Mormon “Inspired” revision of the King James Version do. The latter commits wholesale fraud by inserting material into the text that is not remotely there in the original.

Turns out there’s a Wahabbi translation of the Qur’an that does exactly the same thing. It commits translation fraud in order to make Christians and Jews look worse than what the base text says.

GET THE STORY.

I’m going to have to be in blog-lite mode for a little bit, so I’ve asked Steven Greydanus if he’d care to help out by pitching in some extra posts, and he generously agreed. Don’t know how much his schedule will permit him to add, but I’m sure whatever he can do will be ex—-celent as Monty Burns would say.

I’ll still be around (at least one post a day), but it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back to full-strength blogging. In the meantime, enjoy what Steve has to add!

I’m going to have to be in blog-lite mode for a little bit, so I’ve asked Steven Greydanus if he’d care to help out by pitching in some extra posts, and he generously agreed. Don’t know how much his schedule will permit him to add, but I’m sure whatever he can do will be ex—-celent as Monty Burns would say.

I’ll still be around (at least one post a day), but it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back to full-strength blogging. In the meantime, enjoy what Steve has to add!

Blogging has been light the last few days while I’ve been dealing with the killer bee invasion (at least, they must be presumed to have been killer bees). They now appear to be vanquished, and I am on the verge of getting back into my house full time.

That means a return to regular blogging as well.

Prayers are also welcome, as I wouldn’t want a straggler bee to put me into anaphylaxis due to a previously-undiscovered bee allergy.

If y’all listened to the show last Thursday (RealPlayer Feed), you’ll know that I did it by phone from my family’s ranch in Deep East Texas and was heading to Houston (South East Texas) the next day. These were two of the stops on my nearly 4000-mile Long Hard Ride (WMP Hear It, Buy It) in the words of the Marshall Tucker Band. Took two weeks, and constituted my summer vacation. More on that later.

In the meantime, I wanted to thank my good friend Steven Greydanus for helping out with the blogging duties while I was gone. All of my posts for the last two weeks were written before I left, as I knew I would have spotty Net access while gone.

Steven’s posts seem to have been a resounding success, as I knew they would be, and I have extended an invitation to Steve to keep posting here whenever he’d like. He tells me that he probably won’t be posting every day, but will whenever he wants to sound off on something.

So now we have a kind of symmetry: I’m a regular bloggist and part time movie critic via Steve’s site, and now he’s a regular movie critic and part time bloggist via my site. I think the book of Proverbs listed that as one of the benefits of friendship in that “two is better than one” passage or something.

Anyway, glad to be back, and three cheers for Steve for filling in! If you’d like to tell Steve how much you enjoyed his posts and encourage him to write more, use the comments box. 🙂

If y’all listened to the show last Thursday (RealPlayer Feed), you’ll know that I did it by phone from my family’s ranch in Deep East Texas and was heading to Houston (South East Texas) the next day. These were two of the stops on my nearly 4000-mile Long Hard Ride (WMP Hear It, Buy It) in the words of the Marshall Tucker Band. Took two weeks, and constituted my summer vacation. More on that later.

In the meantime, I wanted to thank my good friend Steven Greydanus for helping out with the blogging duties while I was gone. All of my posts for the last two weeks were written before I left, as I knew I would have spotty Net access while gone.

Steven’s posts seem to have been a resounding success, as I knew they would be, and I have extended an invitation to Steve to keep posting here whenever he’d like. He tells me that he probably won’t be posting every day, but will whenever he wants to sound off on something.

So now we have a kind of symmetry: I’m a regular bloggist and part time movie critic via Steve’s site, and now he’s a regular movie critic and part time bloggist via my site. I think the book of Proverbs listed that as one of the benefits of friendship in that “two is better than one” passage or something.

Anyway, glad to be back, and three cheers for Steve for filling in! If you’d like to tell Steve how much you enjoyed his posts and encourage him to write more, use the comments box. 🙂