Sun's Out

My link-dump this week starts with media. Competition hasn't improved it one whit, 99 channels with the same mish-mosh. Reading about the journalist that reported on the investigator who refered to the story on the article about the press release would be refered to as a circle jerk in the real world. In media world, it's news.And now a word from our sponsors.

• Blogger bites back: On Friday, I broke a tasty story about a woman suing Google, claiming bad directions caused her to get hit by a vehicle. Today, I discover our story is everywhere, often with no attribution. Come along and watch how the mainstream media, which often claims bloggers rip it off, does a little stealing of its own.
• War Room Reams Friedman: SkyLounges across this flat world, take note! Opinion guru Thomas Friedman has issued his important, moderate, hot, crowded opinion on the disastrous raid by Israeli commandos on a humanitarian aid flotilla headed to Gaza!
• Political journalism has evolved somewhat the same direction as literary criticism, which is now dominated by people called deconstructionists. Deconstructionist criticism is indifferent to the literary value of the "text"--novel or poem or whatever--it is analyzing. The "text" is just grist for arcane and self-referential analysis. A work of no special merit is even preferable in a way, since it doesn't distract from the analysis, which is the real show.
• Kitten up a Tree: Within a few days, though, the Washington media's "Israel narrative" abandoned those questions and focused instead on the ugly words and sudden Retirement of cranky 89-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Somehow, the debate shifted from Israel behaving badly to Helen Thomas behaving badly.
• Encomium with required disclaimer: Thank God for Helen Thomas, the only person to show any courage at the White House press briefing after President Barack Obama gave a flaccid account of the intelligence screw-up that almost downed an airliner on Christmas Day.
• Lawrence Lessig: How could anyone be against transparency? Its virtues and its utilities seem so crushingly obvious. But I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement--if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness--will inspire not reform, but disgust.

I'm going to slip in a great interview from Arthur Magazine.

• Robert Fripp in conversation with John McLaughlin: Happily, my mother was an amateur musician; she was a violinist and there was always music going on in the house. We got a gramophone one day, and someone had Beethoven’s Ninth, and on the last record, which is at the end of the symphony, there’s a vocal quartet in which the writing is extraordinary.

The remainder of Sunday's round-up is the political section. I've often been at odds with the contrarian label. When prefering original sources, verifiable facts, and reasoned arguments is eschewed for slogans, of course everybody knows quotes and factoids, yeah, I get a bit cranky. Oh well.

• The Meaning of Toughness: It was power politics at its best: Cold, humiliating, threatening, and leaving the other side to face the consequences of defying American interests and policies. It is not by accident that in the Middle East the common wisdom is that Americans make you an offer you cannot refuse, while Europeans make you an offer you cannot understand.
• Terrible Analysis: It isn’t because Turkey is “moving decisively away from its longtime partnership with the United States,” and it isn’t even because the AKP government is bent on undermining the relationship with Israel. There has been a strong reaction because eight Turkish citizens were killed on a Turkish-flagged civilian ship in international waters by the armed forces of its ostensible ally while on a basically peaceful aid mission. Name me a government that would not have a strong reaction to such an episode.
• Letter From Kathmandu: Although the United States envisions Nepal as a stable and democratic buffer between China and India, the road ahead may be determined by those competing giants.
• Israel Without Clichés: The Israeli raid on the Free Gaza flotilla has generated an outpouring of clichés from the usual suspects. It is almost impossible to discuss the Middle East without resorting to tired accusations and ritual defenses: perhaps a little house cleaning is in order.
• God's work at Goldmans: The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize the troubled banks and break them up as necessary.