Category Archives: Internet

UPDATED: Home-Free on Facebook? Think Again

English, Individual Rights, Internet, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Political Correctness, Private Property, Racism, Technology, The Zeitgeist

The following is an excerpt from “Home-Free on Facebook? Think Again,” now on WND.COM:

“… certain habitual social meddlers have tried to imply that the Facebook forum is racist.

In particular, a public-spirited ditz named Danah Boyd, who is ‘Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, and a Research Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.’

A while back, Boyd was given a significant cameo on CNN to discuss a deeply silly ‘research’ paper she had slapped together.

Boyd’s narrative, cloaked in the raiment of ‘research,’ is titled ‘White Flight in Networked Publics: How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook.’ Sic and sic again: Yes, not even Microsoft’s woefully inadequate grammar and syntax checks have caught up with such linguistic infelicities.

Boyd’s infantile efforts were published by Routledge in the Digital Race Anthology.

The banal Ms. Boyd claims to have smashed our ‘techno—utopian belief’ that the internet has eradicated undesirable divisions. All this was accomplishes not with evidence of rank racism, but with a smashing postmodern word salad—-‘spatial referents,’ ‘taste markers,’ ‘reproduction of social categories,’ on and on.”

Yes, “I am now convinced that American society will collapse upon itself like a black hole under the weight of a young (mostly WASP), idiocracy rising”

The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Home-Free on Facebook? Think Again.”

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. The “Temporarily out of stock” notice on Amazon is a function of a “temporary” publisher-printer glitch. This should be corrected shortly. Place your order, and the always-awesome Amazon will ship the book as soon as humanly possible.

Readily available is the lower-cost Kindle copy of “The Cannibal.” And you do not have to own a Kindle to download your copy of “The Cannibal”—all you need is a PC or a hand-held device (iPad or phone). This hyperlink describes the free Amazon software application for these devices. You don’t need a gadget to read “Into the Cannibal’s-Pot” on Kindle.

Help this work’s mission, and raise awareness of the issues covered in depth and detail in the book, by posting your reviews to Amazon. And you need not have have purchased the book from Amazon to review it on the site.

UPDATE (July 29): Kennon Gilson writes on WND’s Facebook thread:
“Thanks for the article. … Statistically, both women and minorities are over-represented in the Libertarian movement.
Like

Ilana Mercer replies: “You offer no proof for your assertion, KG. The lonely plight of libertarian men—at least hard-core libertarians who are strong on self-defense, guns, property rights, and against welfarism—has been a long-standing joke in the community. Of course, ‘Libertarians Lite,’ who conflate liberty with Gaga and Glee: they get plenty of dates.

UPDATED: ‘Likes’ As a Proxy for Populairty on WND

Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Internet, Media, Pseudoscience, Reason

My colleague Vox Day takes a columnist’s number of “Likes” on WND as a proxy for readership of that particular WND column. The problem with this analysis in my case is this: Vox Day’s weblog doesn’t have Facebook interface. Mine does. Many of my readers come first to Barely a Blog and will click the “Like” on the column’s blog post, rather than (or in addition to) clicking on WND’s full version of the column on its site, which these readers still read on WND. Some read the column on both sites and don’t click “Like.” (All readers of this space are encouraged to click the “Like” icons on both the BAB and the WND posts.)

For example, on WND, the column “Is Ron Paul Good For Israel?” has earned 56 “Likes,” as Vox has noted. But on Barely a Blog the post excerpting the same column has garnered 100 “Likes.” To the extent that the reader’s propensity to “Like” is statistically significant—and I doubt it—BAB “Likes” go toward my WND readership, since blog “Likers” almost always read the column in full on WND. (I only post the column to IlanaMercer.com a couple of days after the WND posting.)

Given that my blog interfaces with Facebook, Vox would have to factor in the “Likes” a WND column notice gets on Barely a Blog before he makes a definitive statement about the “Likes” on WND as a proxy for the WND column’s popularity.

Of course, my column’s existence has always been in peril, so far be it from me to claim popularity for it. This is as good a time as any to remind readers to support “Return to Reason” by clicking on the “Like” icons both on BAB and on WND.com.

If you like posts about this stuff, check out my old Alexa debunk. Alexa would have become far more accurate since I wrote “RANK INTERNET RATINGS.” This is because most of us no longer dial up to get an internet connection and thus no longer receive a new IP address each time we click on a site. The same person dialing up many times daily, yet being reflected as a new IP address each time: that’s what made for the promiscuous early Alexa readings.

UPDATE: Robert is right: The reader’s “Like” habits are too full of statistical holes to indicate very much. I almost never click “Like” when I read a column.

Kerry, the other thing patrons of this site can do to support this writer’s work is to review “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” on Amazon.

Watching The Words

Constitution, English, Glenn Beck, Internet, Journalism, Liberty, Literature, Media

Judge Andrew Napolitano delivered a fine editorial tonight on the not-so-wonderful-mind slot (The Glenn Beck Show). If only Fox News believed in the written word and posted the transcripts along with the image. (Good luck locating the same editorial on the Freedom Watch space.) For those of us who still like to read and post words, not images, FoxNews is one of the worst offenders. (I know, select transcripts will eventually propagate on the page, days later.) Reading is faster and more economical than watching a screen.

American Tyrants Seek Internet-Killing Powers

Democracy, Free Speech, Internet, Regulation

LET US WORRY ABOUT OUR OWN TYRANTS, SHALL WE? The American cognoscenti pompously carries forth about the individual rights of people in blighted and benighted spots like Egypt, Tunisia and China. It’s as though we in the US do not live under a massive, ever-accreting, highly sophisticated Managerial State; are not regulated to the hilt; are not stripped and groped when we travel abroad and across stateliness (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=575); do not sit in jail for decades on violating information socialism laws (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=576), and on ingesting an unapproved substance (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=308).

‘Get some perspective!

While pundits and politicians pontificate about the obvious need for liberty in Egypt, our legislators have decided to refine Hosni Mubarak’s methods and lunge for more of their pliant peoples’ liberties. It’s all very democratic, you know (which is why “democracy is for the dogs” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=333).

The brain infarct is that of Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Via WIRED:

Legislation granting the president internet-killing powers is to be re-introduced soon to a Senate committee, the proposal’s chief sponsor told Wired.com on Friday.
The resurgence of the so-called “kill switch” legislation came the same day Egyptians faced an internet blackout designed to counter massive demonstrations in that country.
The bill, which has bipartisan support, is being floated by Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The proposed legislation, which Collins said would not give the president the same power Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is exercising to quell dissent, sailed through the Homeland Security Committee in December but expired with the new Congress weeks later.
The bill is designed to protect against “significant” cyber threats before they cause damage, Collins said.
“My legislation would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency,” Collins said in an e-mail Friday. “It would give our nation the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant threat.”

MORE.