progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital
Allow me to pick on Politico for a moment. While I found this article on groups who lobby for bicycle commuting to be interesting, this paragraph didn’t sound right to my ears:
About 57 million Americans ride bikes, according to a 2002 survey sponsored by the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The bicycling community is an eclectic collection of schoolchildren, bike messengers and everything in between. Many of these riders have their own organizations.
“[A]n eclectic collection of schoolchildren, bike messengers and everything in between.”
Okay, I give up. What’s between a school child and a bike messenger? What’s outside of those two extremes? I’m just saying that while I can see how you can have an eclectic collection of people of all nationalities, or an ecclective collection of musicians, I don’t think you can have an eclectic collection of everything between an apple and an orange.
I’m picking on the use of the word “between.” But there’s a bigger problem. One reason that people don’t bike to work is that other people like themeselves don’t bike to work. People are uncomfortable with doing things that are even a little outside of the orthodoxy. And, for good reason. Society tends to punish those who act in a way that’s outside of convention.
Let me give a real example from my college days. The summer before I started college we got a letter describing things we should bring with us for the fall. One item on the list was a backpack. I got by very well with cheap briefcases. But everyone else was going to be wearing backpacks, so I thought well, I’ll give it a shot.
Here’s what happened. I was wearing my backpack to campus one day when some people I knew from the dorm saw me and started to laugh. I asked them what was so funny. They told me that what was funny was that I was wearing my backpack the same way that a hiker would wear it with a strap over each shoulder. But people on the campus all wore their backpacks just over one shoulder. So they thought I looked pretty funny.
That’s how closely the idea of convention is defined. Wearing a backpack over both shoulders invites ridicule.
Soon after this incident, I put my backpack in the closet and went back to cheap briefcases.
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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.
95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. [Link]
A 22-year-old bicyclist was struck by a garbage truck and killed just north of Dupont Circle today, authorities said. Police and fire vehicles converged on the scene at 20th and R streets NW, snarling Connecticut Avenue traffic during the morning rush. [Link]
We're asking you to put some of the money you plan to give Obama "in escrow" until he demonstrates progressive leadership on the issues we care about, like warrantless wiretapping. [Link]
The report notes that the administration has gone to “unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost” of the wars. [Link]
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen said during his appearance at the National Press Club. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." [Link]
It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration. [Link]
"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be ans [Link]
It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. [Link]
BOULTON: There are those who would say look, lets take Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition and all those things and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom. BUSH: Of course, if you want to slander America. [Link]
In a subsequent e-mail to the employee, Cargol described himself as “a rub-your-belly, grab-your-balls, give-you-a-hug, slap-your-back, pull-your-dick, squeeze-your-hand, cheek-your-face, and pat-your-thigh kind of guy.” [Link]
Democracy Now! Radio and TV News [Link]
Let's take a look at how the Los Angeles Times covered the new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the claims made as part of selling the Iraq war, and compare it to how the editorial page of the Washington Post, by which I mean Fred Hiatt, sees the e [Link]
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" an [Link]
Hertzberg's analysis is noteworthy because he appears to be able to allow several ideas to coexist in his head simultaneously, which quite an achievement these days. [Link]
That night, George Stephanopoulos, who was then a top aide to Mr. Clinton, declared that it was “mathematically impossible for Brown to get the nomination” — the start of a campaign to declare Mr. Clinton the presumed nominee, even as several other [Link]
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