I totally read it on Some Guy’s Blog

Because it’s not like they ever took hostages at an Olympic games.

(Via Schneier on Security.)

At Apparently Bloggers Aren’t Journalists, Coding Horror notes a situation in which a blogger makes an erroneous statement, which is then repeated by two other bloggers.

The real problem is that this erroneous information was echoed by blogger B, and then echoed again by blogger C. At no point did anyone stop to actually verify the claims of blogger A, even in the most rudimentary, basic of ways. All they had to do was download the SDK and look for themselves to confirm that his complaints were true. I’m talking five minutes, maximum.

But they didn’t.

Instead, they blindly parroted blogger A, assumed that all of his claims were valid, and perpetuated his mistake across the internet.

(Via Coding Horror.)

In the real world, mistakes of this nature have demonstrable consequences. Like, you’d stop trusting A, B, and C to advise you on certain matters. In the Net world, though, without careful preventative measures (not the Net’s forte), Google’s esteem for all three bloggers will increase, making their input more valuable to parties not aware of their inaccurate or ignorant analysis in the past.

Entrepreneurs and/or search whiz-kids can see $$$ in solving this problem (good luck!), but isn’t it amazing that we live in a world where being flat out wrong can be such a winning strategy? Being a prick has always had its upside, but being wrong?

When I got to thinking about the different Wikis that I either edit or visit on a regular basis, I came up with the following:

• Wikipedia
• CISV USA Wiki
• CVREG Trac
• Household Wiki
• Ubuntu Linux
• Work

That’s a lot of interactivity. And yet I still am working on coming up with a good explanation for a wiki! Feel free to help in the comments.

Articles by Jonathan Rauch: Ike, a Realist for Our Times

DWIGHT EISENHOWER, for all his rambling amiability, was capable of vehemence. He showed it memorably at a news conference on August 11, 1954. Ray L. Scherer of NBC asked him about “increasing suggestions that we should embark on a preventive war with the Communist world, some of these suggestions by people in high places.” Scherer was talking about Red China, which was rattling its sabers at Taiwan (then called Formosa) and would soon begin shelling Taiwanese forces in what would rapidly become a full-fledged crisis.

In those days, Communist China was the closest thing to today’s Iran: a rising regional power, radical, ideological, antagonistic, and increasingly bold. Ike’s secretary of State called the Chinese “an acute and imminent threat,” and compared their “aggressive fanaticism” to Hitler’s. Hawks clamored for action, saying that if the U.S. failed to defend Formosa, it would have to defend San Francisco later.

That was the climate in which Ike said:

All of us have heard this term “preventive war” since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it…. I would say a preventive war, if words mean anything, is to wage some sort of quick police action in order that you might avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later. A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today…. I don’t believe there is such a thing, and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.

Eisenhower’s attitude put him at odds with the hawks of both his time and ours; anyone speaking as categorically against preventive war today as he did in 1954 would be derided by mainstream Republicans as a “defeatocrat,” waiting for America’s enemies to gather strength and strike first. But the victor of World War II was assuredly no dove. He made clear his theoretical willingness to use nuclear weapons, he sent U.S. marines to Lebanon, and he said, “We do not escape war by surrendering on the installment plan.” The best way to see Eisenhower is as neither hawk nor dove but, so to speak, as a reptile: a cold-blooded realist.

…

In today’s America, hawks think that peace comes from American strength, deployed vigorously to deter adversaries and pre-empt threats. Doves think that peace comes from international cooperation, in which the United States must play a leading role. Reptiles are all for strength and diplomacy, but they believe that peace ultimately comes from something else: equilibrium.

If you find that intriguing, read the rest of this very good article.

I’ve tried other Desktop posting clients in the past. I have a feeling that this might be the first one that sticks. This is a test post to see whether I’ve managed to hook everything up correctly.

It’s cool that I can also edit these posts in TextMate.

So, I am still alive, and I’ll prove it by posting. I’ll use the first post about any particular topic to post any catchup material. I missed quite a bit of work this week with bronchitis. My tip: try to avoid getting bronchitis. Not fun.