Day: March 4, 2006

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Sunday-Sunday-SUNDAY!

When Amy & I picked a date for the wedding, we had to accommodate my conference schedule, the weather in New Orleans, and our magazine & catalog deadlines. We settled on March 12: not too hot and humid, low chance of northeasterners getting derailed by snow, no conference for a week or so. It looked like a good date.

Since then, we discovered that our wedding night overlaps with both the premiere of The Sopranos AND Selection Sunday.

No one in Amy’s family will have a problem with this, but my brother and some of my friends will be praying for the uninterrupted functioning of their TiVos.

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Breathe with me

I’ve long contended that conspiracy theories are a substitute-religion for the disillusioned; it gives them the opportunity to believe in a Greater Power, even if it’s just a power for evil. I think this ties into that Orwell passage I quoted a few weeks ago.

Brendan O’Neill at Spiked has a great piece on the mainstreaming of paranoia:

The rise of the conspiracy theory points to an important shift in journalism and public debate. There has been a move from debating the substance of someone’s beliefs or behaviour to focusing myopically on the motivations behind them; from challenging individuals over their words or actions to trying to uncover some deep, dark ulterior motive. This has had a deadening effect on public debate. It replaces a critical engagement with political developments with a destructive neverending search for the secret agenda. And it means that no one is ever truly held to account for what they say or do. After all, if Blair is merely the puppet of dark neocons forces when it comes to Iraq, then how can we hold him up to public ridicule for what has happened there?

This is not investigative journalism; it is gossip.

Read more, if you dare.