Now we're in trouble

I try not to let Metafilter color the bloggage here too much, but I can't really help but draw some attention to this one. To explain, Metafilter is an experiment of Matt Haughey, a noted blogger, where each member can post links and comments to a collective weblog. Basically, since I joined the membership has gone from around 12-1500 members to around 5000 members, and the pace of posting has greatly increased and the quality of discussion has decreased. Matt has signalled that he's sick of it and is going to change everything. I personally feel like a kid in second grade whose class has just gotten really badly yelled at. I don't think I'm personally part of the problem, but then again, we're all in trouble. I also feel like a profound geek for even explaining this here. Every time I tell Mag anything about Metafilter she makes fun of me. Yesterday I cracked myself up on some inside MeFi joke and then had to explain to her the whole thing, at the end of which she just pronounced me the biggest nerd on earth. Great. But if not for MeFi, I wouldn't have known anything about Dahler Mehndi or AYBABTU. And then where would I be? (I think I've just answered my own question. Maybe I just need to swear the whole damn thing off for a while.)

Ok, let's start this whole bloggage over again, then.

Correction!

Ignore the previous section. Tough to do, right? Well, that's another lesson the web could learn. If we write stuff without fact checking, then everything goes to hell. Case in point: two weeks ago, 'net gossipmonger Matt Drudge posted a link about how noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin had optioned her latest book about Abraham Lincoln to Steven Spielberg for use as a movie. Within hours, this story was posted everywhere including this Mefi link (DOH! Ignore that, too). The reason it was newsworthy was the claim that Goodwin and Spielberg intended to portray Lincoln in an excessively negative light. The problem? It ain't true, says Goodwin herself. No one asked her what the angle was going to be. Of course, the corrections have been half-assed and also getting no publicity. This is a consistent problem with the 'net. I blogged the same day this came out about another case where this was true, that is, the Mexican butterfly slaughter. Want another example? I bet all of you heard the news that Bush was the rightful winner of Florida, according to the Miami Herald's major news release yesterday. How many of you heard that the paper backed off that conclusion today? No? All of us in the media need to do a better job getting the stories right and not just out there fast. Let's all remember what happened on election night. I feel better now.

I guess I am a nerd

My favorite recurring theme: PIES IN FACE. The latest update is an Aussie named Duff who pied himself and then laid a big wet one on the Australian prime minister. I notice in that last sentence that I have committed a major grammatical faux pas, in verbing the noun "pie." At least it's not nouning a verb, which is worse as I see it. The worst example in common usage is "disconnect," as in, "there's a logical disconnect in Bush's attitude towards China versus his stance on Cuba." That's almost as irritating as forgetting that hopefully is an adverb.

Anyone want an opportunity to put their elite hacker (1337 h4x0r) decoding skills to work? here ya go.

Finally, a novel way to tell if we're in a recession. Count the times the word "recession" is mentioned in major news outlet stories, and you have the "r word" recession guage. Very clever. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go re-tape the nosepiece of my glasses.

Happy Birthday, Valerie!

Val is my kid sister who lives in Boiling Springs, NC. She's only 17, although on this night she fooled some gullible waiters. Heh heh.