An Essay about Essays

Lately I've been trying my hand at writing some small essays on things that interest me, and posting them here in my journal. I hope I haven't caused anyone to be too dreadfully bored yet. In some ways I'm trying to train myself to be a better writer by actually doing some writing. Another thing I'm working on is my ability to explain a position clearly so it makes sense. I have some vague hope of eventually getting some essays published in an online magazine like www.betterhumans.com, and I find I write better for an audience.

I just came across an essay about writing essays, and I'm happy to say that I pretty much agree with its content, which is not something I can say about all of the essays by this particular writer.  So, you can read that and get some insight into why I write as I do, without me having to go through all the work of trying to express it myself. I never have liked reinventing the wheel.

Terribly Biased Reporting.

I just came across a mention on Slashdot of Project Censored which claims that its mission is "to educate people about the role of independent journalism in a democratic society and to tell The News That Didn't Make the News and why." This all sounds laudable enough, as most of the world is well aware of how badly censored American media is. Canadian media is somewhat better, but only somewhat.

That said, a quick look at their list of "Censored" stories for 2005 shows a very strong bias in their reporting. (I also find it fascinating that they've declared 2004 to be already over, while there's still a full third of it left.) If you look at the individual articles, you see deceptive reporting practices, exactly the sort of thing they are supposedly railing against.

Lets take one example. In the #1 story in their list "Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy", they are beating a dead horse that I already discussed in one of my essays. The only reasons to promote their particular point of view is either 1) Ignorance (willful or otherwise) of economic facts, or 2) A desire to deceive. I was curious as to which it was, so I started reading. I had my answer by the third paragraph, which I will quote verbatim, to save you the effort of looking it up:

During the short boom of the late 1990s, conservative analysts asserted that, yes, the gap between rich and poor was growing, but that incomes for the poor were still increasing over previous levels. Today most economists, regardless of their political persuasion, agree that the data over the last 25 to 30 years is unequivocal. The top 5% is capturing an increasingly greater portion of the pie while the bottom 95% is clearly losing ground, and the highly touted American middle class is fast disappearing.

The blatant deception here clearly indicates that its the second case If its not immediately obvious to you, sentence #1 states that the poor are getting richer, while sentence #2 pretends to disagree but does nothing of the kind! Sentence #2 only says that the percentage of the total worlds wealth controlled by the poor is decreasing. This actually supports the conention in the first sentence (as explained in my essay), but is worded in such a way as to seem to be a refutation of it. This is not something that can happen by accident. Anyone who has access to the numbers needed to generate sentences #1 and #2 has all the data they need to see the actual increase in the wealth of the poor. Instead, they decided to use deceptive reporting practices to attempt to fool their readers.

Since this is the #1 article on a website supposedly dedicated to bringing truth back into journalism, I can only conclude that the entire website is dedicated to the dissemination of a particular brand of American "Liberal" propaganda.

A Swirl of thoughts on Programming.

I had an insight a few days ago; one that I'm still processing. I'm not sure I can put it all down in words and have the results make any sort of sense, but I think I want to try and capture the ideas while they are fresh. It all has to do with programming, category theory, fractal structures, editorial assistants, and my friend _sps_.

( It got big, so I cut it. )