On The Third Hand

Friday, 11 Jan 2002

Matt Welch, that is. He thinks we (America) should apologize more. He quotes a speech by James Dobbins, in which Dobbins says ""The Afghan people paid a great price for this decade of neglect and abuse. On Sept. 11, the United States and the rest of the international community also paid a great price." Matt thinks that Dobbins was thusly admitting the 'blowback' theory. He might have been, I know nothing about Dobbins. However, we did not abuse Afghanistan, their neighbors (mostly fellow Muslims) did. We also did not neglect them, except in not interfering in their country. That may have been a mistake. We could word our apology for it as follows: "We are ever so sorry for believing you could and should run your country as you wished. We should have known better. We apologize sincerely for not conquering all your neighbors so we could prevent them from interfering as well."

Somehow I don't think that is a good idea. I do agree with Matt that we owe apologies to a lot of people over the drug war. I also think we owe apologies for propping up "our friends the Saudis". The only problem is we still are in the drug war, and we are still propping up the Saudi government. So, lets try first things first, ok? First we get the government policies looked at, and then we change what we are doing, and then we apologize for things that were directly our fault. We do not; however, apologize for allowing people to make their own countries into hell on earth, no matter how much they want to blame us. We don't rule the world; that is not our fault.

Oh, and I hope Matt had a great time, and would like to welcome him home.

Natalie has also been writing about the possibility of using micropayment for blogs. She points out quite a number of potential problems in that model. I agree with all of them, and would add that many would simply refuse to pay. I far prefer Matt Welch's comparison of blogging to busking. The thing about both blogging and playing music in the street is that people see value differently. A busker, for instance, might play an almost unknown song that a listener heard as a child and hasn't heard in years. That listener might be inspired to throw a good tip into the hat, while another listener is left cold. The same thing applies to blogging. An article might be very useful to one person, and unhelpful to another. I'd rather let people tell me with tips when I've "done good" than charge for everything I say. In addition, I think that charging would tempt me to start saying things that I think people want to hear --similar to Matt's comment about shameless buskers playing Beatles songs.

"Love love me do... you know I love you..." Ok, ok. I'll stop.

Natalie Solent invites herself to dine with Tim Blair and bunch of stupid left-wing urban intellectuals. He spoofed them, she's spoofing him. I think we are getting just a touch recursive here. Nonetheless, it's a hoot.

The FBI is investigating an alleged plot to kill Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida. Personally, I think it's much more likely they were intending to blow up the excessively phallic Florida Capitol building.

William Quick tore a rant by Harry Browne into very tiny shreds. Good job! Whenever anyone of any political tilt gets silly, they need to be taken down a peg or two. I'm tempted to take a few other of his articles apart.

Yesterday, I was right in the middle of a post about how all those who use blogger, which has been unfortunately down lately should get their own hosts -- when I noticed my site was down. It proceeded to go up and down all day. The server was down for hours last night; out of its rack, being completely rebuilt from the ground up and having all software reinstalled. The people I host with are a good bunch and I've rarely had any trouble. Until I started writing that post. The universe is a perverse place. I'm sorry if anyone tried to view the site last night, and couldn't access it.