Skip to main content

What's blogging for?

Blogs are interesting not really for what they say but for how they connect. Some blogs are purely informational; I go to Eschaton and to Daily Kos primarily for their rapid feed of new political developments. (Some kossacks, such as DarkSyde, Jerome a Paris, and bonddad, are quite insightful; some, like Pastor Dan, are moving; and some, like Bob Johnson, are terrifically funny. But I encounter these writers as a result of keeping up, not because I keep up with them particularly.) On the right-wing blogosphere, this can lead to a massive echo-chamber effect (or maybe that's just Malkin's big empty head) or, as Truman Capote would have said about Glenn Reynolds, "that's not blogging, that's teletyping."

I go to Ron Silliman and The Rude Pundit for range of reading and for their ability to make connections across diverse terrains. If paralepsis is to have any value, I hope it's of this type.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who else can't speak for himself? Hermagoras, that's who. Because UD won't let him.

Welcome, Uncommon Descent members ! For the record, I don't ban users or arguments (I will delete threats and suchlike.) As long as you're here, you might check out the reality behind ICON-RIDS (if you haven't heard about this before). A letter to GilDodgen, responding to this : I, Hermagoras, am banned at Uncommon Descent but apparently still discussion-worthy. Indeed, a whole post devoted to refuting someone (me) who is not allowed to respond. You guys are certainly committed to fair debate! I was trying to make a fairly simple point, which I would have thought IDers agree with: that all observations and all "facts" are theory-laden. It's simple enough. I elaborated it in a post which Dembski apparently thought was off-topic and led him [to] ban me in precisely the terms I previously discussed on my blog . Hilarious. Then continued discussion (again I can't respond) about how I'm trying to be the clever one . Nothing in my banned posts ...
84 comments
Read more

Radical misreading: Kairosfocus on Saul Alinsky

Just a brief note to respond to kairosfocus, who claims regarding Saul Alinsky: For those who came in late, Alinsky was a neo-marxist radical who saw cultural and community subversion as the means of communist revolution. I cut my critical thinking eye-teeth on Communists, messianistic charismatic pols and cultists, and have wariness about all three. (All quotes in bold are emphasis added.) Truth be told, kairosfocus couldn't tell a Communist from a hole in the ground. He links to a passage in his bloviating web page on "selective hyperskepticism" as follows: His premise for resorting to ruthless radicalism -- as stated in his key work, the 1971 Rules for Radicals [RFR] was that: " A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of...
19 comments
Read more

Let the Mockery Continue

Just following up on the previous post: the first parody comment on Dembski's link seems to have made it past the censors (though really, it's hard to tell what's not parody). I thought I'd link to it here before Dembski et al. erase it along with the whole embarrassing episode. The poster calls him/herself "NoeticGuru," and writes : Heh, long time lurker, first time poster here. But I’m glad that organizations like ICON-RIDS are showing up, and that proponents of ID are taking notice of them. I think that it will help show that ID isn’t a single religious doctrine since it can incorporate so many different non-materialistic philosophies. ICON-RIDS, for example, will probably attract a lot of followers with its ethical philosophy (you’ll probably need to scroll down a bit to get to his Transparadigmic Pleasurian socio-ethical paradigm, but it’s worth a read). Since I’m also a dabbler in mathematics, I’ve been particularly impressed with Dr. Brookfi...
8 comments
Read more