CUT ON THE BIAS has moved here (off of Blogspot). Please adjust your links accordingly.

FOOLED BY THE HYPE: Yes, that would be me. The New York Times article about blogs is now online and David Gallagher is a man of his word: it’s a well-done and fair piece, despite the rather, ahem, overstated hype (quoted below) that the Times sent out to its affiliates. I’d hoped that was the case.

By the way, the reason I’m holding the microphone in the picture is that when the photographer showed up I was doing some experiments with the soon-to-appear “Radio InstaPundit” service. No, really. It’ll be NPR-style commentaries and monologues, and maybe even the occasional interview, streaming in MP3 and RealAudio. I had planned to have it up and running by tomorrow, but the audio hosting site that I’m using is undergoing a server upgrade and won’t accept uploads at the moment. Stay, er, tuned.

AMERICA: Too rich? Or just right?

JOANNE JACOBS talks about grade inflation. We have blind grading, meaning that I just found out today (I wasn’t in the office on Friday) who got what grades (the exams come with random ID numbers on them, and we turn in grades keyed to those numbers). It’s always sad — I don’t like giving low grades, though I gave more than usual this time, as I used a new exam approach that was either harder, or less prone to encouraging my sympathies (the students thought it was harder). I’m sure that if each exam had a name on it I’d be inclined to go softer on the low end. Anonymous grading doesn’t put an end to grade inflation, of course — you still know that someone will be unhappy with a low grade even if you don’t know who — but it probably helps.

HMM. Dave Winer and I (and some other folks, actually) were suspicious of a New York Times story on weblogs, since it seemed that they might be trying to hype a nonexistent feud between techies and political bloggers. Here’s how the New York Times service is hyping the story to its affiliates, courtesy of an InstaPundit reader who works at a newspaper and who may not want his name used:

BLOG-PURISTS-PUNDITS (Undated) — In the latest version of the Net techies being outraged by the onslaught of the opportunists, purists in the Weblog or “blog” community are fighting with pundits who are using the diary-like blog format to publish political commentary. “Warbloggers” is the derisive term for the pundits, whom the purists accuse of turning the Web log medium into the text equivalent of talk radio. By David F. Gallagher.

Well, I’ll have to wait and read the story to see if this is actually representative, but I have to say that Gallagher told me that it wasn’t going to be this kind of a story. After hearing of Dave’s concerns I went to the trouble to telephone him and specifically raise the issue, and he specifically denied that this was how the story was being cast. This item itself contains a howler — since the term “warblog” appears to have been invented by Matt Welch, one of the punditloggers himself. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Dave Winer has posted on this too. I’ve emailed Gallagher, too, to see what he has to say. And Matt Welch points out that the Times has turned me and Dave — who didn’t really know each other very well — into friends. Maybe it should start trying to gin up a war between Sharon and Arafat, instead of calling for peace. . . .

IBERO-BLOGGERS JOHN AND ANTONIO deconstruct charges of “Jingoism” with a bracing dose of historical literacy of the sort their critics generally lack. Read it.

IT’S REAL WRATH-OF-GOD STUFF in Colorado.

UPDATE: Robin Roberts emails:

You linked to a news article on the Glenwood Springs fire in Colorado. Right now, I’m on the east side of the Denver metro area and the sky is just solid orange overcast. Not clouds, but smoke from the Hayman fire which is 55 miles south-southwest as the crow flies. Sitting here in my basement office smells strongly of smoke although the house is closed up tight.

Wrath of god indeed.

But at least no oceans boiling or cats and dogs living together.

PUNDITWATCH IS UP!

EUROTOPIA: Jim Bennett has some thoughts.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE NEWS BUSINESS: A dialogue. I guess this is why blogging is so popular.

ERIC S. RAYMOND, who seems to be developing into an Den Beste – style essay-blogger, has some lengthy ruminations on why pornography is (usually) bad and what that means.

UPDATE: Here’s a response to Raymond. Be sure to click on “comments” and read the observations of Jacqueline and Elizabeth, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A regular InstaPundit reader (and if I hadn’t gotten thoughtful email from her before, I’d assume this was just a shameless effort at promoting her site, but I have) sends this email:

Suicidegirls is a website that depicts girls in various stages of undress, but also provides the girls with their own journals (blogs?).

Here is one of the girls’ takes on dancing (stripping).

For the record, the girls either provide images of themselves or choose what sort of set they want to shoot and ask our photographer (one of the girls on the site – Missy) to shoot it for them.

I’m not saying we’re the epitome of morality, but we try to present a kind of erotica where the models decide exactly how they are depicted and are given a forum to explain themselves and to present the other sides of their personality. We are often called blogger porn (on sites like metafilter and in various blogs) – but I’m not sure that¹s an accurate term, either way, I’m a loyal reader of your site, and thought I’d send you a link to mine.

“Blogger porn.” Now there’s a niche market. I can’t help but feel, though, that with a name like “Suicidegirls” it’s going to be hard to project a really positive image. But it’s certainly free of the teased-blonde-hair phenomenon that Eric identifies.

JON GARTHWAITE points to this story on Islamic terrorists’ use of the Web for secret yet in-plain-view communication and asks if they’re using Blogger.

Well, if they’re hosting on Blogspot, many lives may have been saved by the outages. . . .

OKAY, I’ve been interviewed a lot by journalists writing about the weblog phenomenon. Being interviewed is nice in that it concentrates your mind on things you might not think about otherwise. Anyway, I’ve combined some of the questions and answers and put them over at InstaPundit EXTRA! for the benefit of anyone who’s interested.

BLOGSPOT IS DOWN. VERY DOWN. I don’t know how long it will last (you can check Rand Simberg’s blogspot-o-meter). I will note that my move off of blogspot didn’t seem to improve its reliability, for those who thought that it was InstaPundit’s bandwidth that was causing the problems.

UPDATE: Seems to be back up now.

MANUFACTURING DISSENT: Matt Welch delivers a sound Fisking to the lies of Noam Chomsky, Marc Herold, etc., in The National Post. Excerpt:

Like Chomsky’s bogus prognosis, Herold’s study turned out to be notable mostly for being so wildly off-base, yet so enduringly popular among anti-war circles. Within days of publication, an army of amateur online writers picked through Herold’s math and discovered several instances of double-counting and heavy reliance on the Afghan Islamic Press, which got its data from the Taliban. Later, The Associated Press, Reuters and other organizations conducted their own inquiries into civilian deaths, arriving at numbers between 600 and 1,500.

In the real world of intellectual rigour and academic standards, such peer review might conceivably lead to recalculation and revision. In the fantasyland of the anti-U.S. Left, it does not even break the stride on the march to the printing press. For, despite being thoroughly discredited on arrival in 2001, Chomsky’s “silent genocide” charge and Herold’s 3,700-dead-Afghans howler have shown up, unaltered, in slim paperbacks that have been climbing the charts in 2002: Chomsky’s best-selling pamphlet 9-11, and a City Lights Books offering titled September 11 and the U.S. War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke.

If these books have their fingers on the pulse of the anti-U.S. Left, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the patient is in need of some serious attention.

Indeed.

IS ARAFAT MAKING A NUCLEAR THREAT HERE? That depends on what you mean by “disastrous explosion.”

C-LOG writes: “This is precisely the problem FBI and CIA officials had pre-9/11. Should they have arrest Arafat because he threaten an explosion? or should they chalk his statement up to political rhetoric?” Well, that’s where it’s not like pre-9/11. Arrest him? Just kill him. I’m with Den Beste on this, I think. He’s outlived any usefulness he might have — except perhaps as a warning to whoever comes next about what happens if you make what even seem to be nuclear threats.

Yeah, the Vatican and the EU will complain. So what?

UPDATE: Reader Laurence Simon writes:

Not a serious threat at all, but extremely clever. He’s just seeing that “Sum of All Fears” is a hit at the box office, the Bush Administration didn’t think it was good timing of the release of the picture so it boosted the hype, so Arafat is trying to use the plot from “The Mouse That Roared” to his own advantage.

It’s too bad that Peter Sellers is not with us anymore, because he could make one heck of an Arafat. And Ariel Sharon. And Yasser Rabbo. And George Bush. Heck, he could probably do Kofi Annan, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Simon has expanded on this theme over on his page.

VATICAN SUICIDE! Check out these comments on the American press’s coverage of the Catholic sex scandals, from Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga. It’s not the Church’s fault for covering up thousands of instances of abuse, and leaving the perpetrators in a position to do it again. Oh, no. It’s the press’s fault for reporting it! Oh, and it’s the Jews’ fault, too, since they’re just trying to get back at the Church for its pro-Palestinian position. I would say that we’re seeing not just sympathy for Palestinians, but an adoption of Arafat-like attitudes toward the value of external scrutiny.

Moral authority? What frickin’ moral authority? You wouldn’t have to look far to find hookers and publicans with a better moral compass. Hmm. . . .

UPDATE: Here’s more damning evidence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gregory Popcak writes that the Bishops are guilty of a mortal sin for covering the offenses up. And Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic spotted my reference above, emailing:

Matthew 21: 32

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Just when we think the Curia can’t get any dumber…

Sigh…

Yes, that was the reference. Some things don’t change, apparently.

I’ve mostly stayed out of this whole matter, since it’s being amply addressed over at The Corner, and by the many erudite Catholic bloggers — and I have enough stuff to worry about as it is. But public statements like the one above — and the Vatican’s siding with Palestinians in the most atrocious ways — suggest to me that the Church’s lack of a moral compass has consequences that make it an issue for everyone. John Paul II came in with moral clarity. He’s not going out the same way. And when a potential successor feels free to mouth off as the Cardinal does, above, then there’s something deeply, deeply wrong, and it’s going to have serious consequences for the Church. As it should.

HERE’S A PRETTY PERSUASIVE CASE for why this country needs more armed liberals. And more Armed Liberals, too.