River Sims moves his blog
River Sims, of San Francisco’s Temenos Catholic Worker, writes the best Catholic Worker blog out there; it’s moved. This is great news, because the new blog has proper RSS feeds, etc.
River Sims in his apartment, with the infamous “Points for Jesus” t-shirt. Photo: Mike Benedetti.
Unreported story of the week
New Worcester Green Jobs Coalition forms.
Related:
- Thomas Friedman’s Argument For ‘Geo-Greenism’ is a good link to forward to friends who think “green jobs” are hippie nonsense.
- The Cringely Plan is short and provocative.
“Maui News kills online story comments”
Here’s the story, via Romenesko:
In a letter published in the newspaper and online Tuesday, [publisher] Bradley said the “frequency and vileness of the abusers’ postings have grown beyond the newspaper’s capacity to remove them in a timely manner.â€
How is it that websites with many times the readership of the Maui News and a fraction of the staff can maintain comments sections? I’m sure there’s an obvious reason why newspaper comments sections have been such trouble for them, but at this point I don’t get it. Our own Telegram & Gazette comments section is a good example of the problems many papers seem to be having. Their comments section is at about the third or fourth percentile in terms of functionality, and despite their best efforts they still have probably the lowest-quality Worcester conversation online, yet they have actual paid staff!
I attended a seminar recently which had the jaunty title “Comments Policies For Bloggers : How To Make Them Harsh And Unforgivingâ€.
A couple comments on the crisis
Megan McArdle:
I find it extraordinarily easy to sympathize with the bankers who genuinely believed that they had gotten better at pricing credit risk. I also find it extraordinarily easy to sympathize with people who dropped out of college to start a band. In neither case, however, do I wish to reward this behavior with large stacks of unearned money.
It’s instructive to view the US Treasury’s plans for a bail-out of the global financial system through the lens of the hollow state. By this measure, the bailout as it stands today, is a form of financial looting of the US Treasury (it isn’t socialism, since the government isn’t nationalizing the financial system). Trillions of dollars in government monies ($700 billion to begin with) will be infused directly into the coffers of corporations and wealthy individuals (via hedge funds). Specifically, the plan buys toxic assets at inflated prices and sells them back for nearly nothing — no equity or assets of real value are provided in exchange for the purchase. The national debt will likely grow 20-30% in a single year, with obligations extended to many trillions more in guarantees