Links and Minifeatures 2009 01 14 (Wednesday)

I really should apologize for an extended case of burn-out. I've been updating a lot more articles than I have writing new ones. Part of that is being busy, which is a good thing as far as it goes. Part of that is that I've been having difficulty with what a gamer like me might call "making my saving throw versus 'I Don't Wanna'". I have very little appetite for rehashing more of the same old thing in an entirely new article when it's so much easier and more efficient to update and re-publish an older one. The facts don't change. The basic computations don't change. Only the market changes, and I don't republish state of the market stuff.

I have entirely new articles I want to write. One that I've been thinking about today starts with a line I got from the military: "Quantity has a quality all its own." The article is created, the bones of an outline are present. The problem is self-motivation to actually flesh it out when I've been working completely hairy weeks and dealing with some stress-inducing individuals. When I'm done with all that, a turn of Stars! and a half hour reading on the couch with Julia before bed sound a lot more appealing than grinding away at the keyboard.

But it appears that the stress level and burn out may be receding. If you want to help them go away, make a comment, say something nice, or ask a question. You could even donate some cash - I've got domain re-registration coming up and it would be nice if this site actually paid for its costs. But I do apologize for the intermission, and I do think it may be ending.

Israel acts because the world won't defend it

The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

The Mideast's Ground Zero

CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel -- and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.

Rich people versus politicians

Legalized corruption is widespread, and that's the job of 35,000 Washington, D.C., lobbyists earning millions upon millions of dollars. They represent America's big and small corporations, big and small labor unions, and even foreign corporations and unions. They are not spending billions of dollars in political contributions to encourage and assist the White House and Congress to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. They are spending that money in the expectations of favors that will be bestowed on them at the expense of some other American or group of Americans.

Read the whole thing. This game of trying to get everyone else to pay for my goodies has got to stop. The people who actually end up paying for all of the goodies are taking their toys and going elsewhere. What happens when they're all gone? Or just enough of them? California is starting to wake up to precisely that situation.

Audience Atomization Overcome

That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another-- none of this is in their official job description. You won't find it taught in J-school, either. It's an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their "sphere placement" decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It's like trying to complain to your kid's teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values.