Combat! - Page 193 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Combat! blog makes deadline, is not useful to you

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized November 18, 2013 2 Comments

As usual, the coffeeshop writer is looking at the internet.

Did you know that you can hire me to write or edit virtually anything? For an extra $20 an hour, I won’t even post your worst sentences on Facebook. I’m kidding—that portion of my integrity is not for sale at any price, but virtually everything else is. And let me tell you, business is booming. I know this reads like a sales pitch, but it’s actually an excuse. There is no Combat! blog today, because I am inundated with paying work. That’s a good problem to have, and it’s okay anyway, because last Monday I posted on Veteran’s Day without realizing it was a holiday. Sorry, veterans. I take the flag pin out of my lapel for one minute, and everything goes to hell. While I standardize serial commas, how about you read this long, hit-or-miss article from Salon about how Americans make their political decisions? It contains two elements of note. The first is this terrible sentence:

Growing up I always thought of elections as part of the natural world, much like gravity, the sun, and tall sequoias, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The thing about bad writing is that it invites you to agree that it’s good. The author’s basic idea—“I thought of elections as part of the natural world, like gravity”—is clear and well-conveyed, but then he adds “the sun” and “tall sequoias.” The first one adds no meaning to “gravity,” and the second has the same problem plus ostentatious lyricism. The natural world sure is beautiful, with its tall sequoias that necessitate a cliche at the end of the sentence to remind us what we were talking about.

The other interesting element in this essay is the revelation that 60% of Americans cannot name the three branches of government. Suddenly, the Republican plan to ruin Obama by sabotaging Congress makes a lot more sense. Anywhom, enjoy Salon as it continues its leftward slide into the Daily Kos. We’ll be back tomorrow with racial meme analysis or something.

Friday links! Comeuppance edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized November 15, 2013 1 Comment

White supremacist Craig Cobb, who recently learned he is 14% black

“Virtue is its own reward,” says the man who does not want to reward you for anything. It’s the consolation prize of aphorisms, implying not even that things will get better later, but that you should be more grateful for the injustice underway now. No wonder virtue is unpopular. Stupidity, on the other hand—along with arrogance, bigotry and old-fashioned bossiness—is going like hotcakes. Fortunately, the converse of our old saw is true: stupidity is its own punishment. Today is Friday, and those who deny the facts on the ground inevitably will be corrected. It happens to all of us. Won’t you enjoy your comeuppance with me?

DC circuit court in process of deciding net neutrality

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media November 14, 2013 1 Comment

The Internet

Back in 2010, Congress passed the the Open Internet Order, which authorizes the FCC to prevent internet service providers from blocking particular applications—such as file sharing or telephony—and from charging content providers to make their sites load faster than others. This broad set of rules is called net neutrality, and Verizon hates it. On Monday, lawyers for Verizon and the FCC delivered oral arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in an attempt to overturn/protect the Open Internet Order, respectively. You can read a broad summary of their positions here. Probably you should read it now, because by the end of the week Ars Technica could load really slowly as your ISP encourages you to get your news from Yahoo.

“Knockout game” maybe real, maybe racist news meme

By Dan Brooks in Hoaxes November 13, 2013 8 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0SbPxsK5s

The video above shows a 16-year old woman in London being knocked out by an unknown assailant, ostensibly as part of a new game among teenagers called “knockout.” The way knockout works is you arbitrarily choose a person and try to knock him or her out with one punch. Or the way knockout works is you gather together a bunch of news stories about street violence involving young black men, and you present it as a disturbing trend along the lines of wilding or flash mob robberies. It’s hard to tell.

Daniel Duane asks if it’s okay to kill cyclists

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture November 12, 2013 8 Comments

A multi-cycle pileup results in zero deaths.

The executive director of the San Francisco Bicycling Coalition does not know of “a single case” in which a driver who killed a cyclist has been prosecuted, except for DUIs and hit-and-runs. If you’re not drunk and you stay on the scene, you can pretty much run over every cyclist you see. In 2011, a teenager ran over a 49 year-old cyclist from behind, killing him, and was fined $42. In San Francisco last year, Amelie Le Moullac was in the bike lane when a delivery truck turned right and killed her. Police initially assumed it was Le Moullac’s fault, until surveillance video showed the truck driver turning through the bike lane in front of her at unsafe speed. Although the SFPD has acknowledged that the driver was at fault, no charges have been filed.