Virginian

Up men to your posts! Don't forget today that you are from old Virginia. -- George Pickett

Thursday, December 22, 2005

JMU Prof is a Prominent Pro-Evolution Blogger

In my quest to keep an eye out for Virginia links to big stories (this one being the Pennsylvania "intelligent design" ruling), I ran across a reference to this blog by JMU Professor Jason Rosenhouse.

Jews for Jesus Sues Blogger

This is kind of interesting. Essentially someone set up a blog called "Jews for Jesus" and made three posts, bashing the Jews for Jesus organization. Note that Jews for Jesus are suing Google, which owns Blogger. You know, if everybody gets this litigious about everything on the net, the courts are going to be gridlocked forever. In my view, this is kind of a variant on the Wikipedia problem-- Blogger/Google served as nothing more than an enabler, which allowed the poster to post his opinion. It seems like a court would have to impose a duty on Google/Blogger to monitor every post on every blog in order for Jews for Jesus to win. In my view, this would be similar to suing Bic for manufacturing the pen that a racist used to write a racist manifesto. Right now, for example, I could start a new blog called "Coke Sucks" and make some false posts about Coke being an evil corporation, etc; Jews for Jesus would have the law impose responsibility on Blogger/Google for my act. Baloney.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Wikipedia "Prankster" Admits Siegenthaler Post

Here's the story. I don't buy the guy's excuse (he says thought Wikipedia was a "prank" website-- s-u-r-e). It looks to me like he would not have come forward at all if he didn't know he was going be be caught anyway. At least Mr. Siegenthaler seems to have reacted properly to all of this.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Mark David Chapman: The Roanoker

Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. The Roanoke Times has a well-done piece concerning the fact that Chapman lived on Crystal Spring Avenue in South Roanoke when he was seven years old, in 1962. The article says that the narcissitic Chapman has a detailed recollection of his days in Roanoke, and that he began his fixation on death while living there.

This is the second notable Roanoker I did not previously know about who I have discovered lately. I read A Beautiful Mind last year ago (a great book; the film can only be said to have been "loosely inspired" by it), and learned that John Nash lived in the Raleigh Court area of Roanoke for several years in the mid-1960s, when Nash was consumed by his mental illness. Here is the New York Times piece upon which Sylvia Nassar based "A Beautiful Mind."

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The Hacks of Fleet Street

A great piece about the adventures of British journalists in literature by Christopher Hitchens. I read Waugh's hilarious Scoop a couple of years ago and I'm a big fan of Amis father and son.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Bad Week for the Wikipedia

This is a pretty good piece on two issues that cropped up with the Wikipedia last week-- one is the Siegenthaler story I discussed in a post on 12/1. Notably, that piece was created by an anonymous poster; Wikipedia will (wisely) stop allowing anonymous posters to create entries this week. The other part of the story concerns former MTV person Adam Curry, who changed an article about podcasting. Very interesting stuff.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Absinthe


When I was in law school one of my friends had a copy of this book (pictured--I'm pretty sure it was this one, anyway), which I read and enjoyed very much. Absinthe was a wormwood-based liquor which was banned in the US around the turn of the last century; its effects were reportedly more than alcoholic. Oscar Wilde "described the effects of absinthe as occurring in three stages, the first stage an ordinary alcoholic effect, the second engendering ‘monstrous and cruel things’, and the third stage engendering ‘wonderful and curious things.’"(Link).

This Wired article is about a New Orleans based scientist who has managed to figure out how to distill absinthe once again. The article is well-written and contains this important observation:

Americans drink to get drunk," observes Breaux (the scientist/distiller). "Whereas in France, getting drunk is just a consequence of sampling too much wine you really like."

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Umberto Eco on Christmas and Religion

I read Foucault's Pendulum last year and I was tremendously impressed with the breadth and depth of Umberto Eco's knowledge. Here is a piece he has just published in the UK Telegraph on Christmas and religion. It is worth reading; if for no other reason than the digs at Dan Brown and the DaVinci Code.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Wikipedia Horror Story

John Seigenthaler Sr. was an aide to President Kennedy. He later became President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and was an award-winning journalist for 43 years for The Tennessean, Nashville's morning newspaper. At his retirement he was editor, publisher and CEO of the Tennessean. In 1982, Seigenthaler became founding editorial director of USA TODAY and served in that position for a decade, retiring from both the Nashville and national newspapers in 1991. In 1986, Middle Tennessee State University established the "John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies," honoring Seigenthaler's "lifelong commitment to free expression values". He founded the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in 1991.

Got all that? Well, someone created a Wikipedia biography page for Mr. Seigenthaler that implicated him in the Kennedy assassination and also gave the impression that he fled to Russia thereafter. All of this was, of course, untrue. However, it stayed on Wikipedia for six months, and the information was picked up by at least a couple of other websites.

Mr. Seigenthaler has written a piece in USA Today about his experience. Here is a Slashdot thread about this matter. Unfortunately, he seems to be angry with the internet service provider of the alleged author of the slanderous piece. I think his anger is misdirected-- first of all, the piece could have come from any computer on the internet, or from any person who happened to pick up a wi-fi signal from the ISP. As one slashdot poster put it: "In related news, road builders will from now on be sued if any crime is commited with help of a road" Second, Mr. Seigenthaler should have corrected the slanderous piece, instead of trying for revenge against the poster. Finally, as a champion of the First Amendment, Mr. Sigenthaler should probably be more aware of the risks of free speech-- one risk is that the free speech might not be true.

Still, he was slandered, falsely, and he seems to have no recourse.

As the creator of a wikipedia page, I have to admit that it would have been incredibly easy to just make up facts. When submitted my article I also created an account, giving information concerning my identity and my email address, but I'm sure I could have submitted false information if I had wanted to. I wrote that page in July of this year; the content is unchanged, although the "history" reveals that it was copy edited in October. (I can't figure out what was changed; it was very minor). That editor, if he had wanted to, could have changed the facts too.

Notably, the page for Mr. Seigenthaler has now been corrected; it even contains information about today's USA Today piece.