Nathan's Notebook
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Nathan Bierma
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NBierma.com > Notebook [partial archive from 2001] Thursday, November 15, 2001
One possible bin Laden capture scenario is a Taliban leader succumbing to the lure of the U.S.' $25 million reward. Is everyone OK with funding these tyrants? Theoretically, couldn't anyone take over a weak nation, harbor an internationally-feared terrorist, wait for a rich country to put up the reward, and then turn him in for a solid profit? Some would see that as sound investing. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/ap_laden11152001.htm Another question that's bugging me: The right is blasting those who question U.S. policy in the Middle East for being blame-America. But think of it this way: If I intentionally stomp on your toe and you shoot my brother, you are evil and I will justifiably take revenge. But I was still a moron for stomping on your toe. And it would be odd of me to talk about a subsequent confrontation between us as "good versus evil" and a valiant struggle to protect my "way of life." Your awful evil doesn't make me really darn good. I'm still subject to answer for my earlier actions, and to say that is different than blaming me for the shooting. ABC execs try to expose NBC News for the cheesy, fluff-puffed, pseudo-drama operation it sadly is. Tough to do when your morning host is the maudlin Dianne Sawyer. Philly Inquirer TV column: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/11/15/magazine/SHIS15.htm You call it patriotism, I call it groupthink. The truth is in the middle ground, I guess. Mitch Albom highlights the tensions quite well in a column called "Patriotism is No Excuse for Stupidity." http://www.freep.com/sports/albom/mitch11_20011111.htm One of the biggest challenges of the digital age is forming any sense of digital history. What sort of permanent record can be left behind in an age of bytes, when texts are not physical objects but rather unseen bits that can be deleted at the press of a button? A good attempt to assemble a library of old Web pages is at web.archive.org. Interesting to see famous Web sites in their infancy: Yahoo, Amazon.com, New York Times, and ESPN SportsZone. Search at: http://www.archive.org/internet/ It's official: local TV news is a farce. The Project for Excellence in Journalism finds this hype industry exaggerates crime, sells out to advertisers, and is thinned out by budget cuts and over-airing (stations fill the air with "news" because it's cheaper than buying syndicated programming). We had a hunch about this, but it's depressing to see the numbers PEJ put together. For example, one of four stories in local news is about crime. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011114/us/tv_local_news_1.html Wednesday, November 14, 2001
Do you think in words? Are feelings thoughts? Are thoughts just chemical-electrical impulses bouncing around in the cerebrum like a pinball machine? Or are they somehow more spiritual, more visceral? The question was put to me today and I wasn't sure what to do with it. I guess I don't think in words; that's why writing is so hard--matching verbal symbols to the thought process isn't easy. I see an object or remember and experience and I have an emotional burst within. Often segmented words or phrases will leap up as a part of this, but they're more like chocolate chips in batter. The base is a texture of pleasure or anger, nostalgia or hope. No, thinking isn't just about words. That's why writing can be so satisfying--it's good to pull thoughts out of the oven and see how they turned out. VCR's still outnumber DVD players more than 4 to 1 in American homes, but sales of DVD's are catching up to video tapes: http://nytimes.com/2001/11/12/business/media/12DISC.html Our national epidemic: children of a consumer culture ingesting too much sugar, fat, and entertainment. The results aren't pretty, says the Arkansas Times: http://www.arktimes.com/011026coverstorya.html So much for the liberal media. They really distorted an albeit confusing story about the Florida election recount and vindicated Bush when in fact, the winner, and the correct re-counting method, is really a toss-up. The conservative dinosaur Chicago Tribune surprisingly was most frank about the sketchy results, as Jack Shafer writes in Slate: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058638 Trib story: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-ballots.story I'll be using nbierma.com/sampler for most of my links. To read NY Times articles, enter "nbiermaread" for both user name and password. Dizzying world events, mixed emotions. A plane crashes in New York, one of the worst accidents in recent years. And we seemed relieved that it was an accident; we're so fatigued from agonizng over hijackers crashing into buildings that this fails to fully seize us with natural shock and grief. Meanwhile, Kabul falls. We're supposed to cheer, to be glad that the Taliban is disintegrating, that rebuilding can begin. And I am glad. I'm also confused, as is the government, over whether the Northern Alliance really are good guys or only slightly less evil, and whether we're ready to build a stable coalition. Maureen Dowd touches on this pretty well in today's NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/opinion/14DOWD.html There's also a part of me that doesn't want us to get too excited about war and how well it works. The more war is made-for-TV, with rapid action and easy heroes, as with the Gulf War and (less so) now with Afghanistan, the less we are apt to hear the cries of the suffering civilians and to be self-critical in this and other situations. That was the only good part about Vietnam and America's response to it. It's been mostly lost in a flurry of patriotism of late. And oh by the way, anyone seen Osama bin Laden lately? He's still alive and well, and if he's not, how will we ever know? Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin visits from Russia, and seems to have an awful lot of leverage with the leader of the free world for an average politician in charge of a limping country. Should be interesting to hear NPR's interview and call-in session with him tonight: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/putin/ Dizzying world events, mixed emotions. Yup, I'm going blog. I've long dreaded doing this, dreaded joining the ranks, as I saw it, of the get-a-lifers who paste the most minute details and random emotions to the Web, wasting screen and storage space. ("Fed the dog at 8 this morning," "I'm in a really pissy mood. The end.") I also hate links without context or analysis, which blogs are full of. But regularly reorganizing and FTP-ing nbierma.com gets time-consuming and I can only do it at home, after a long day of looking at a computer screen at work. This way I can add something in a rare idle moment at work, or just after I get off the subway while it's still fresh on my mind. I'll try to make it worth reading and the links worth clicking, and not just to a niche audience, as with many blogs. I'll shoot for substance and analysis, of which there's way too little on the Web. We'll see how it goes. E-mail me and keep an occasional eye on nbierma.com |
