Pansopher's View

Drudge Report success irritates many

pansopher_blog@johnwithrow.com (John Withrow) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:56:00 +0000

I like to keep up with the latest, and generally *start* my news gathering at DrudgeReport.com, from there branching off to a dozen primary sites (and a host of lesser sources).

Apparently I'm not alone in appreciating the value that is Drudge. The scruffy, no-frills page has been in the top 10 news sites for years, and for the last several months has been #1 on Nielsen Online’s "Current Events & Global News Destinations" (ahead of also-ran news sites like Fox, CNN, AOL, Daily Kos, Yahoo!, Google, Netscape -- and the inimitable New York Times).

Of course, any news aggregator shows his stripes by what he chooses as newsworthy--as well as where he points you to get the story. Matt Drudge is mixed (I'll comment on that in a future post) but he's certainly not a leftist--which is refreshing as hell.

The more politically liberal viewers out there seem especially angst-ridden over Drudge's success, and one of their most repeated complaints is that he unfairly fools the net traffic stat-gatherers by auto-refreshing his page every few minutes, which (his detractors claim) falsely inflates the site's popularity.

They're mistaken; it doesn't work that way. But no matter how often the claim is shown to be erroneous, it keeps floating up as an "explanation" for Drudge's popularity. (I'll have something to say about that sort of recurring wishful thinking in a future post.)

Let me clarify it: DrudgeReport's auto-refresh (every 3 minutes) does not exaggerate the site's "session count." And it's that session count (unlike the more primitive "hit count") that the internet metrics folks use to measure a site's popularity.

Netratings.com (among other net traffic gathering sites) explains this every month. And see the recent page at the Newspaper Association of America for the full table of most popular News sites.

(You can also check the topic of "sessions" at Wikipedia, and delve into it at technical pages on the topic of session tracking.)

Actually, instead of inflating the statistics, Drudge's reported site numbers are perhaps lower than they might be, since many readers (me included) just keep a browser tab open to DrudgeReport all day, every day, and never close it -- which, ironically, works out to be a *single* session. (I routinely close that tab only when I reboot my system, which is about once every 2 weeks.) A session only counts more than once if you leave the domain for another website and then return again to Drudge (or open a new view of the page), but I just keep the page open and pop up new tabs for any news articles that Drudge points me to, reading them when I have the time.

So for me, an avid reader/scanner of news, I view the refreshed DrudgeReport page at least 300 times a month, but from all that I only generate 2 or 3 sessions. And with the prevalence of new tabbed browsers, I'd bet there are a lot of Drudge viewers like me.

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The Shape of Conversation

pansopher_blog@johnwithrow.com (John Withrow) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:48:00 +0000

Discussions are great fun, and not only for the content. We can enjoy the topic being discussed, and the minds we're discussing it with—but sometimes it's even more interesting to step back and look at the "shape" of conversation itself.

Conversations are carried on at different levels. There is the main subject and then various sub-levels underneath. Each of these sub-levels deals with issues that are successively more distant from — or subordinate to — the main subject. I can liken it to a series of threads, some long and some short, some continuous and some broken.

Generally, a single thread is declared (or tacitly agreed) to be the "main thread" of discussion. All other threads are classified relative to this. Some threads run parallel to this main thread.

Since we're already talking about threads, let's use a metaphor from weaving. In the fabric industry they call the threads that run long-wise the warp threads. When a speaker/discusser traverses a parallel thread ("walking a warp"?), this is normally considered merely an alternative way of walking the main thread — after all, you get to approximately the same place as you would if you had stayed on that main thread.

But there are also the threads that run at right angles to the main thread. Fabric makers call these perpendicular threads the woof. From the standpoint of the main discussion warp, woof threads are a detour; discussions that spring from such woof are considered digressions from the main topic.

In this model, a conversation can be a single thread or, more interestingly, a piece of fabric with both warp and woof. One-dimensional conversations are the most limited; they have only warp. The average conversation is two-dimensional; it digresses a bit, weaving in some woof with the warp. And from time-to-time, you find yourself in a very digressive conversation where there is as much woof as there is warp — so that you'd be hard-pressed to identify any single topic as the main one.

But all this is based on a flat piece of fabric. But some fabrics are multi-layered, which give us the possibility of traversing the layers. Conversationally, you could make a "meta-comment" — a comment about the discussion itself — which often engenders a "meta-conversation." This, strictly, is not the same as a digression from the main thrust of the discussion. It's not simply taking a detour to the same goal; it's stepping outside, or above, the original conversation, to look down at it from a new viewpoint. Following the fabric analogy, this requires looking at the third dimension of the cloth: the layer of the fabric.

The really skillful conversationalist can lithely skip from warp to woof to layer, never losing the thread of conversation. To such a person, 3-dimensional discussions are the most delightful. They require more effort, needing as they do an ongoing intellectual peripheral vision. But they offer far greater rewards, not only in what you may discover, but in the pleasure of getting there. A tapestry is so much richer than mere cheesecloth.

Now, if we carried this dimensions thing just one notch farther: What would the fourth dimension map to?

I leave that, dear reader, as an exercise for you.

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"Global Warming" also an attack on young minds

pansopher_blog@johnwithrow.com (John Withrow) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:59:00 +0000

In the seeming landslide of misinformation about "global warming," I often quail at the thought of the harm being done to the minds of children—both in form and content. They pack up their books and go off to school where they're filled to capacity with drivel (and worse)—and they innocently believe it when they hear that our planet is approaching doom and that Man is guilty for it.

Their teachers—far from being the shining defenders of rationality and truth—are generally agents (unwitting or not) of the very deception the kids need a defense for. And it's not only falsehoods about science and statistics and causality that are chalked onto the blank slates of those young minds: it's also the very style of mis-thinking that allows such falsehoods to exist and to drool out across the cultural mainstream.

So what are the kids "taught"?

Bad science, invalid statistics, unsound causal deductions (like "what comes before is inevitably the cause of what comes after"), a deep-seated fear of imminent doom, and an overarching feeling of guilt that they're a member of the race that "killed the planet."

That last might be the worst and most insidious of all, since young minds aren't up to the job of defending themselves against the assignment of unearned guilt, especially when meted out by people they trust.

I'll say more of this dangerous and disgusting attempt at corrupting our young citizens' minds in a separate post, but for now let me mention a piece of good news.

At least one author of childrens' books is fighting back. Al Sonja Rice-Schmidt, producer and writer of Emmy-nominated TV programs, is tackling the world of children’s literature with her book, Deb & Seby’s Real Deal on Global Warming. Currently the Co-Executive Producer of the Disney series, Cory in the House, Schmidt's foray into children’s books is aimed at easing their growing fears about warming trends, with a more positive perspective on man-made global warming.

Some of the topics she covers: "Who's telling us all this scary global warming stuff and why?" "We are Not all Doomed!" "How have 'x-treme greenie meanies' been the boss of us!" "Fact!! No debate!" "No Facts!! Prove it!!" "Earth's warming and cooling is so Old News!" and "Global Warming and other eco-oopsies"

It's about time someone wrote a counter-balance book for young minds on the scurrilous pseudo-topic of "global warming." It was published just in time for Earth Day 2008, and is available from Amazon and other outlets. It's aimed at ages 9 to 12.

As an interesting side note, the book's website has links to several pages over at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which claims to be "dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace." I know only a little about the CEI, but that statement of principles is an excellent start.

Right and Wrong - and the responsibility to make a choice

pansopher_blog@johnwithrow.com (John Withrow) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:29:00 +0000

There's a widespread tendency toward being subjectivist and/or relativist when folks think about morality.

Even otherwise reasonable people, trying to defend the freedom to decide moral questions for themselves, often mis-state that position so that it sounds subjectivist.

They say something like:
Right and wrong are only a matter of how every individual person sees it.

Let's look at this a bit closer with an eye to saying it more clearly.

Right and Wrong are indeed absolutes, but it's necessarily up to every individual to decide what to do about that. Each of us must choose what things are moral, since individuals must act, and human action requires, first, thought.

So the rightness/wrongness of a thing can be derived by looking at reality correctly -- but such looking must be done by each individual. It's not an easy process, especially on complex high-abstraction topics, but it's a requirement of living, foisted upon us by the nature of things.

Many people strain to avoid the necessity of moral choice — preferring instead to follow, in various degrees of blindness, the choices made by others before them, or by others around them. So we see folks following ideas from "moral leaders," or surrendering to the cultural mainstream — osmotically soaking up "what everybody knows" and letting thereby the mob's "judgment" replace their own. This is a dangerous method of living. Properly, no idea should exist in your mind without you having examined it before you put it there.

And it's not just a matter of whether we're "close-minded" or "open-minded." We should strive to be neither of those, but ... Active Minded. The active mind shines its spotlight on every question, taking the responsibility of making the moral choice, accepting the results of that choice, and learning constantly from the process.

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Meaning comes from Man

pansopher_blog@johnwithrow.com (John Withrow) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:40:00 +0000

The other day (actually 4 years ago, but I'm the same me as then, so it's still just "the other day"), I was sitting at Barnes and Noble, looking out the window and listening to Mark Knopfler's "Golden Heart"—and it struck me that I got pleasure from the complex patterns of green out there.

I pulled out the old notebook...

Sharp edged tree trunks, sparkling green leaves in the golden afternoon sun. Impossible complexity of living flecks, resting easy against the blue sky, unaware of their phenomenal nature. Mandelbrot knows; the leaves don't.

No trumpets blow, no spotlights flash, no magnificent voice says "Behold!" — unless I do.

Wonders are relative. Man is the measure. God's eyes don't count -- only ours.

Nature tosses off its marvelous unconscious shards of pattern. She's oblivious of their stature — so they have none. Except from us. It takes a person to see the passionless truth, to give it significance, to connect it with intentional life and thus bestow upon it splendor and merit.

Meaning and majesty come from the soul of Man.

Nature without Man is just scenery; Our passionate eyes give it value.

Morning!

pansopher_blog@johnwithrow.com (John Withrow) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:01:00 +0000

Just beginning this Pansopher BLOG, and already I like it.

Ahh... an infinite piece of paper and a tireless pen.
The dream of the ages for a writer with a yearn to speak.

And each new day brings with it a fresh blessing of ideas.

To live is to examine Life. Anything less is just watching the calendar turn.

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