Considering the Source

This piece in the WAPO decribes how fighting political rumors only makes them worse and how correcting misinformation can increase its power.

Certainly a predisposition to buy into bad information does increases the odds that a person will keep believing it. As John Henry Newman once said, "men go by their sympathies, not by argument".

But even impartial information has to be received from an impartial source in order to be credible. Otherwise how will you know it's impartial? Conservatives perceive liberal bias more than liberals perceive conservative bias and have a right to be skeptical, if not quite to the point of using the source as a contrary indicator. In a July 2003 survey, a Pew study found that twice as many Americans (51 percent) believed news organizations have a liberal bias than a conservative bias (26 percent).

And the article above, from a Washington Post staff writer, relies on the work of political scientist Brendan Nyhan. A quick check of Nyhan's website reveals that he "co-edited Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin that was syndicated in Salon in 2002 and the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2004."

Call me cynical, but I have a predispostion to not accept self-described "non-partisan" labels from a writer that is syndicated by Salon and Philadelphia Inquirer. Salon's focus is liberal politics (if you want to trust Wikipedia), and the Inqurier not only endorsed Gore and Kerry but Sen. Arlen Specter with the admission that "preserving the legality of abortion plays no small part in this decision." In other words, save Roe v. Wade and vote Republican this time!

I think ultimately the key to fighting untruths coming from either a conservative or liberal source depends to a great extent on the self-policing of the community itself. Sadly, for Sarah Palin to NOT be perceived as some sort of Amazonian monster by the left is for the Daily Kos and the Washington Post to refute the charge. Similarly, it's more helpful to hear that Obama is not a Muslim from Michael Savage and the Washington Times.

You can say that self-policing doesn't work but this is the same as it ever was. To quote Newman again: "Quarry rock with razors, or moor a vessel with a thread of silk, then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man...It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing."
* * *
UPDATE/CORRECTION: I emailed the author of the study, Brendan Nyhan, and he said that they did attempt to vary the source:

"We then tried varying the source for both of the reasons you identify. Surprisingly, we found it didn't make much difference whether we attributed the articles to Fox News or the New York Times in the second round of experiments, although it's possible that our source manipulation was too subtle."

Charitable Giving in an Age of Affluence from Eric Scheske

God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road. - author Isak Dinesen


- Wondermark, via Darwin Catholic

From the way that the Leftists are railing
At Gubernatrix Sarah Palin,
It seems like they know
That the Story of O
May not, after all, be plain sailing. - Bob of Trousered Ape

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress. - John Adams

In terms of genre, Danny Gospel is not a novel, but a comic romance, a commedia. The romances that come to mind when I read this are Confederacy of Dunces (Toole), Wise Blood (O'Connor), The Last Gentleman (Percy), Invisible Man (Ellison), and Song of Solomon (Morrison). In fact, the story has a couple of hat tips in the direction of Wise Blood. I like romances, but my wife Karen doesn't, and she can smell them a good ways off. Romances are episodic and multi-climactic, and comic romances have a bit of coarseness: e.g. Dante's flatterers swimming in a river of shit. In general, romances end with marriages and reunions and reconciliations (think of Charles Dickens). Novels, on the other hand, mainly build toward a big climax at the end, even if they have a minor climax or two early on. Novels typically end with a dramatic resolution of the main conflict — for better or worse. I suspect the more negative reviews that this heartbreaking book have received are due in one way or another to the reader's unfamiliarity with commedia, or at least a preference for novels rather than commedias...I would also note: a novel about a "holy fool," a Dan Quixote, necessarily presents a problematic understanding of faith, which doesn't do justice to the "grandeur of reason." The task of a reviewer, however, is to evaluate how well a book accomplishes its aim, and not to argue that a different story should have been written. I'm saving the argument for next week. - Fred of Deep Furrows

[David Foster] Wallace transcended Philip Rahv’s famous division of writers into “palefaces” (like Henry James and T. S. Eliot, who specialized in heady, cultivated works rich in symbolism and allegory) and “redskins” (like Whitman and Dreiser, who embraced an earthier, more emotional naturalism). He also transcended Cyril Connolly’s division of writers into “mandarins” (like Proust, who favored ornate, even byzantine prose) and “vernacular” stylists (like Hemingway, who leaned toward more conversational tropes). - Michiko Kakutani in NY Times

It's the first time we ever played flashlight-tag in the house. - a co-worker, describing life without electricity post-Ike

I would add, if you don't know how to play an instrument or know how to sing songs with your family, start to learn now. (After all, we still need to live with joy!) - Jim Curley advice in preparation of calamity

I'm sick of the lipstick thing, but please. The fact that there is an old expression isn't enough. What if Obama opponents took to saying "pot calling the kettle black" or "call a spade a spade." - Ann Althouse submitted by Terrence of "The Provincial Emails"

I find it impossible to write an objective post about giving birth less than a week away from the event (right now my summary would be: "pain sucks"). - Mrs Darwin of "Darwin Catholic"

Should Obama Lose...

...these will likely be the reasons. They call the Republican party "the stupid party" but the Dems still have found a way to lose, what, five of the last seven presidential elections.

Tragic

Sad to hear that David Foster Wallace killed himself Friday. Salon's Troy Patterson writes:

Wallace's autobiographical I...was frequently to be seen sweating heavily in its nervousness, a condition exacerbated by its frequent worrying about serving the reader by working to get at that most un-Postmodern abstraction: the truth.

...there is an impulse—wholly human and totally ghoulish—to rifle through the work in search of clues and cries and suicide footnotes, and in the case of Wallace, the rifling requires no strain. Like any smart writer aspiring to greatness, despair was a regular theme, and "A Supposedly Fun Thing …" got some of its considerable energy from the author's association of "the ocean with dread and death."

Laura Miller adds that:

the one imperative that runs throughout all of his work is the intimate connection between humility and wisdom.

Campaign '08

Lest we fall in love too quickly in love with Gov. Palin, we are reminded that she, like the Emperor, may have no clothes, which is not as bad since the Emperor was likely a fat old guy with a beer gut. "Love moderately; long love doth so," wrote Shakespeare. The Bard knew what he was sayin'. When we love immoderately it means we are investing that person with qualities they can't live up to. (Even the saints required hagiographers.) No human, let alone politician, can bear scrutiny well, and certainly the MSM and the utopians are having a field day. Or as Bill Luse put it so well, "Praise Palin while you can."

I'd brought up earlier that I was concerned that if she became VP a promising career might be ruined simply by being tied to someone who is unpopular (in the way Condi Rice became tainted by being associated with Bush, and believe me, if McCain wins he'll have half the country hating him simply for having prevented the messiah-bama from winning the White House. Recall that Bush was hated before Iraq, simply because the vote was close in Florida.)

But it should've occurred to me that she may be tainted by her own choice. Experience itself is nearly always corrupting - there's a reason that the Blessed Mother almost always appears to the young - and that includes even the experience of running on a national ticket. I'm not pleased about the stem cell research radio ad. Not enough not to vote for McCain-Palin but sadly it does appear that McCain is influencing Palin on the issues rather than vice-versa.

(By the way, passion on the pro-life issue seems not a strong predictor of how someone looks at McCain. Look at how Fr. Pavone, a pro-life hero, and Judie Brown of ALL, another pro-life hero, disagree about McCain.)

* * *
On the flippant front, I was saddened to see no "White Guys of Irish Heritage for McCain" coalition on McCain's website (click to enlarge):

I certainly can't speak for those who live in the Pacific islands, but surely there's some inter-island rivalries. So I do wonder how the Pacific Islanders appreciate grouped together, let alone lumped with such a large group as Asian Americans :

I'm disappointed to see the many missing coalitions, such as:

Zamboni Drivers for McCain

Paleontologists for McCain

Palinologists for McCain

Supporters of the Restoration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for McCain

Irish-German-Americans for McCain

Pierogi lovers for McCain

Philatelics 'R McCainiacs

Generalizin' So You Don't Have To



Making sweeping statements based on anecdotal data is a bloggy thing to do, but this is a blog so I'll proceed accordingly...After watching "Baseball's Golden Age" on television, I'm interested in how the changes in baseball reflect the changes in society.

Characteristics of baseball during the '50s:

The individual respected. Griffith Stadium was built around existing homeowners who wouldn't sell - the outfield wall came bounding in. Can you even imagine that now? Quicker than you could say "eminent domain" those homes would be razed.

Idiosyncratic ballparks. Odd dimensions - 490 foot outs and 297 foot homers in same park. A hill in center field of old Crosley. More tolerance for eccentricity in humans and architecture back then? More creativity?

No such thing as pitch count. Complete games were routine. Pitchers today not reaching their potential while hitters reach it by cheating. Of top 25 career home run hitters, 10 are active or were active in the past few years. Of top 25 career victory leaders, four.

Pitchers threw inside then. Little fraternization with the other team; now all players feel a part of one big team, one product: MLB. Players feel no patriotism towards their team or league, don't care about All-Star game so MLB had to force care by giving winner home field advantage in Series. Greater toughness then, but at the cost of camaraderie between non-teammates? Are toughness and amiability mutually exclusive?

Biden in Catholic Mainstream after all...

Holy Cow!

(that's scriptural you know)...

I run by this tree all the time...



Photo from Dispatch. May God help the folks from Galveston and the Texas coast.

Rattle and Hum

'Twas a sunny Sunday when I lit out like Finn on a riverboat, beating down the bike path in lieu of a Sunday picnic.

I'd called my wife and proposed (well, I'd done that almost a decade ago) that either I go now, at noon, without her and sigh from the great height at the private spot at the local park, the one that overlooks a vista of forest that contains a little patch of meadow in the distance, though near enough to seem attainable.

It's a once-a-summer thing. We carry our chairs and take our dog and camp on a deck meant primarily for standing.

She says she prefers to go with me, later, around 5, and so I blaze the bike path veering off of it once to imbibe the sights of old farms and a second time to skirt the edge of new construction.

Then, ditching the bike, I take a short run that took me to the edge of a pond that had become a stream. The wind had picked up strangely though the sun was full. Usually a wind like this precedes a storm, but a storm seemed highly unlikely given the absence of cloud.

My legs protested harshly but I told them that the days were shortening and they would thank me, specifically tomorrow, when no workout would be necessary. The wind blew harder as if in reply.

Back at the homestead, fiercities continued. Now a maple tree swayed in agony and a giant limb broke off and speared the ground, creating a divet in the clay the size of a softball. The limb was so big as to be uncarryable, and I had to get out the chain saw make it into many pieces before carrying them, one-by-one, to the tree-line.

Out front the street became a race track of leaves, an Indy-500 of debris. The neighbor across the street was out, and we shared a shrug of the shoulders as we looked above us instead of below or around us. He pointed down the street and said something but I couldn't hear over the defeaning wind. Later I saw that a tree limb had come down and smashed the garage of a neighbor's house.

I went back in, thinking the best place to read is not under the porch canopy while a nearby tree rages. I noticed the cupboards were bare so I went out in search of dinner.

The $4.99 Dominoes Pizza deal looked good, but the blue-uniformed crew sat askew outside the store. Not open. McDonald's is the last refuge of a scoundrel but I wasn't interested in eating except as a satisfaction of appetite. "Closed! Electric out!" read the sign on the drive-thru.

The drive home was made interesting by large orange barrels that, with alarming randomness, gusted into the street. Drivers alternately swerved or came to sudden stops. Some got out of their cars and moved the barrels, though sometimes in the direction the wind was coming from.

A phone call revealed that 600,000 are without power in Southern Ohio. From West Chester to the west side of Cincinnati to most points in between, they have been without television since 2pm and thus missed the Bengals' loss (pardon the redundancy), proving there's always a silver lining to electrical outages.

Back home, the front yard is littered with new huge tree limbs. The backyard hammock had been twisted so hard that strands were breaking. Bird houses fell from limbs and all the bird seed flew out of the feeder. The white fence in the backyard was twisted and lying partially on its side. On the phone, my wife hears that my brother-in-law had a tree limb pierce a hole in their roof. I look out the window as shingles are being peeled off the shed's roof.

I retire to the book room to the accompaniment of the thunder of the birch tree whipping the siding. Our cat walks in and stops in mid-step upon the crash of the birch. The left paw hangs suspended in mid-air and only slowly comes down. He then moves with hurry, leaps atop the coffee table and atop the couch for a view through the window. His eyes widen in alertness and then he stares for a long time upward, at the ceiling, holding the unnatural pose. This, he thinks, is something unusual.

Hurricane Ike has arrived in Ohio; wind gusts of up to 70mph. How hard to imagine how incredibly worse a hurricane is, with 125mph sustained winds...

Got Two, Thanks

Had a Michael Scott moment, he of "That's what she said!" fame, when our aerobics instructor said, 'Grab a ball if you don't already have one.'

Video...

I tend to think I see more of the Catholic internet culture than my siblings thanks to the Catlick Blogosphere, but here my sister sent me this video from Catholic vote.com. Looks like it's been around and I've just not seen it before...

The Bright Side

Win or lose, the Palin pick has to help the perception of the popularity of the pro-life movement. Within the Republican party it certainly reinforces that in order to motivate the base (and by implication the party itself since the base is generally the excitable part), it's necessary if not sufficient to be pro-life. In the best case scenerio, maybe some in the Democratic party will take another look at the issue should they lose this election. Some might be tempted (by an angel) to whisper that it might be a good trade, that of abortion for, say, universal health care.

For all the liberal efforts to peel away evangelical voters with Jim Wallis & company, so far it seems it hasn't been enough to swing the election decidedly in Obama's favor.

Another interesting thing about the Palin pick is that the media having "been exposed" in Noonan's phrase, and I think the exposure is occuring for those less politically aware. I know a soccer mom who is a fan of Oprah and the Today show and in the past tended to accept the views of those folks somewhat uncritically, but I think now realizes that those whom she perceived as apolitical and on the side of the angels - those with whom she could so identify - now perceives things differently. Per usual, Peggy Noonan gets it.

The Gibson Doctrine

Wrote this parody, but boy was I behind the curve!

Week in Review

A fair day in September is worth at least three in July and we were given one Thursday. Any perfect one pre-Memorial or post-Labor feels like bonus, and I experienced what life was like for the retiree (Mom) and a semi-retiree (my uncle).

Took the half-day off and rode the truck to Xenia under the bluest September sky since that sad 9/11. It was a day made for riding and we took full advantage even if we did stop overly long at the Ye Olde Trail Tavern in Yellow Springs, the college town of Antioch. Expecting a moribund village in the wake of the closing of the college, instead we saw the vibrancy of the liberal. All around us were primary colors in the shop windows, with sweet naive sayings like “What goes around, comes around!”. I think: in the next world, yes. In this world Stalin died peacefully in his sleep.

The trail itself was bowl-like with a slight incline in the early miles, followed by a decline, followed by a long, slow incline leading to the city. The trail itself was disappointingly leafy, by which I mean it was somewhat unvarying in its lack of vistas. To ride through the shady tunnelled paths is too cave-like, too office-like. There is much to be said for a trail with a view, something a bit more like Mackinaw Island albeit without the lake. But that is small potatoes. The asphalt trail was not much-populated with “diehards”, the term Mom uses for fast cyclists wearing lycra.

It’s always funny how in a town the size of a thumbnail we could miss our tavern. When my uncle began questing out a second time in an unpromisingly northerly direction, I asked for directions -- not realizing I could’ve hit the tavern with a stone. Once inside the smell of the old boards hit us, built as it was around the time of the Irish famine. We sat in the charming front window and I enjoyed a pint of Guinness of unparalleled flavor (it was on tap) but poor Mom couldn’t eat or drink due to various digestive problems. Age is limiting such that if you don’t choose to be a monk at 40, you’ll be one not by choice at 90. I realized I must drink now, both for Mom & uncle, and so I ordered two 16 oz. Guinnesses despite not having any money. But then I was drinking for them so there’s a rough justice in their paying for me.

The bar area was made up of old black wood fronted by aging whiskeys and colorful taps. I look on with jealousy at the two or three others who, at this very small digit in the afternoon, feel care-free enough to mount a bar stool and drink a beer and more. That which is a vacation afternoon for me is a normal day for these.

My uncle's brother's ordination comes up. I recall it like it was yesterday. I was susceptible to beautiful liturgies and that was one. It feels ironic that the refrain that day stuck out the most was: “You are a priest forever, by the order of Melchizedek.” I’d never heard it before and it resonated in my 12-year old mind and I recall being comforted by it, by its permanence. We are only comforted by permanence, by the eternal, since we live in the temporal. And I say it was ironic but it really isn’t, because he’s still a priest in God’s eyes.

It was a September day when my biking companion came home from work and found my uncle priest and Grandma sitting on the back porch. They were unusually quiet. We read of the differences between the dutiful-to-the-point-of-stoic WWII generation and the Baby Boomers, but here was the clash of generational difference laid painfully bare, not something abstract as in a McInerney book but personal, touching not even on marriage, sacred as that is, but on the greatest calling of all. How it must’ve humbled her! Surely if anyone felt tempted to think “my kids are not like those other kids” she must’ve til then.

We re-enter the bike path and it’s all downhill for awhile at least. The sky slowly begins to take on that familiar late afternoon slant and eventually becomes the kind of light I see when I come home from work. We remind ourselves not to meet at the train station in Xenia but at the park with a pond next to a gothic Spanish-style courthouse, the one with gargolyes jutting out like stone leopards.
______________

At work, the big word thrown about lately is “engagement”. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a sit-in for “enthusiasm” which evidentally is too dated. (Who knew that words so quickly lose their flavor, like chewing gum on the bedpost over night?)

Our engagement scores are low and there’s hell to pay. Expect strenuous meetings and lots of one-on-one’s until the pestilent source of this disengagement can be identified and defeated. I tell my bosses’ bosses’ boss that most people are happy only when they’re complaining and so he shouldn’t take it so personally. Good Lord! I tell him it’s in the water since we’re living in decent economic times by historical standards but you’d think it’s the Great Depression. Of course, the real problem is that disengagement, to paraphrase the late Solzhenitsyn, goes right down the middle of every working heart.

I find myself disengaged in a positive way, that is I feel detached. I feel a healthy non-curiosity in the latest epochal crisis, such as whether a particular output Excel spreadsheet should have an extra column or not. “Whatever,” as the kids say. Let’s just say I was for the extra column before I was against it. I’ve decided that the secret of success in anything is to be enthused over minutiae. (Did I spell “minutiae” right?)

Having a half-day off on Thursday went a long way towards a faux feeling of control. I love my job because I think it’s proof that God never gives us more than we can handle, and yet at the same time I yearn for the sort of imaginary, romantic job that others search for in a far more active, incarnational way. I’m vaguely in favor of a high-paying 20-hour a week job that involves beer-drinking but haven’t updated my curriculum vitae accordingly yet.

O’er the ever shortening cube walls towers the resident Mormon whose height was no doubt abetted by lots of sleep during his growing years. It’s totally unfair, but I tend to think it helps his engagement that he never drink alcohol or caffeine since an extra column in an Excel spreadsheet takes on more significance when you know that’s the biggest high you’re going to have that day. He’s a nice, aw-shucks sort of guy and I have nothing against him other than he makes more work for me.