The best can be the enemy of the good. I’m sure that we all appreciate N.Z.’s contributions at the Truth Laid Bear, but efforts at making the system fiddle-proof, which began late last year have produced paralysis for about a month now. Most bloggers experienced dizzying evolutionary regresssion, followed by an inexplicable return to something which looked a like one’s old position in the Great Chain of Being, but the link count seems to have remained broken. My own precious small number of links from Glenn Reynolds and Power Line stayed missing, and what Technorati counts as around 200 comes out as 119.

N.Z. ought to figure that however you change the rules, you can never eliminate the game, as Larry the Liquidator (played by Danny DeVito) observed in the 1991 film Other People’s Money. There are a lot of bloggers out there, and whatever method of automated link measuring is used to keep score, some people will get obsessive about scoring, and someone’s ingenuity will find a way to game the system for extra links. C’est la guerre. Who cares? Most of us are content to inch our way up the ladder without unbecoming haste. On the whole, I bet most of us would be content to see TTLB operating normally. My advice is: just put it back the way it was.

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PJM may not yet have replaced the New York Times as the news source of record, but it’s time to get over the carping and hysteria. PJM is, at this, point, not bad. I read it. Over time it improves. Someday it may be hot stuff; and, who knows? maybe Frank J. will get his yacht in the end, but please let’s all the rest of us be good sports about the whole thing.

For God’s sake, kindly pull the plug on the pathetic PJM Death Pool, which is itself seriously moribund. Time to finish it off.

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Podcasting.

I understand the impulse. The thought of doing one myself, interviewing a celebrity, crossed my own vainglorious mind just the other day. But I concluded upon reflection that it’s a bad idea. There are some bloggers I like, Ann Althouse and Glenn Reynolds, for instance, who do podcasts. I’d love to hear what they have to say, but podcasts are just too slow, too time-consuming. Most of us read a lot faster than anyone can talk.

I wonder: Do you suppose it would be possible to use voice recognition software to capture and produce transcripts of podcasts by eminent blog personalities, which might then be posted as texts for the I’d-rather-be-reading crowd? A choice would be nice.

Just yesterday, I dropped in on YARGB, and found a posting by Seneca the Younger linking Tyler Cowen‘s survey of recordings of Don Giovanni.

Having my own very decided opinions on the subject ï¼u02c6though our household has never really recovered from the trauma associated with the transition from LP recordings to CDs, and we abandoned any effort to stay courant years ago)ï¼u0152I was quite interested in reading what someone (inevitably) younger and more in touch with developments in recent years, would have to say. I was particularly interested in seeing which versions made the list.

I was very pleased to see that Mr. Cowen was well informed, and basically sound. I thought his opinions came close to being spot on, but I differ with him on a small number of points:

The Klemperer Magic Flute is a version of serious merit, and I think it deserves a high rank among versions of that opera, but it is the historic late 1930s Beecham recording, the first, which remains the best.

In the first place, Sir Thomas Beecham was one of the two greatest conducter interpreters of Mozart of the last century, the other being Bruno Walther. Beecham’s lucid and precise rationalism is equally appropriate to Mozart as Walther’s warm Romanticism. And Beecham’s conducting was accompanied in the historic first recording by an impossible-to-equal group of singers. Gerhard Hüsch is the best of all possible Papagenos. Helge Rosvaenge, Tiana Lemnitz, and Erna Berger were all also extraordinary performers of legendary stature. Klemperer is pretty much at his best in his version, but I’m afraid Thomas Beecham’s best day is a lot better than Otto Klemperer’s best day. Walter Berry is a fine singer, but Hüsch is a demigod.

Cowen correctly identifies the best Giovanni as the Fürtwangler 1953 Salzburg Festspiele recording, with Cesare Siepi, Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, Walter Berry, Otto Edelmann, Elizabeth Grümmer, and Raffaele Arie, but he is somewhat agnostic about the best choice among Fürtwangler Salzburg recordings of different years. I know two of them well. The 1953 was available long ago (via Discophile on St. Mark’s Place) on the luxury pirate BJR label. The 1954 could be gotten on the humble Everest label. Cowen’s friends are right: Fürtwangler was better in the 1953 recording, bringing a completely passionate identification to the music, resulting in an emphatically right momentum.

Best of all, Mr. Cowen’s Amazon link went to a page on which this magnificent recording was accompanied by a review written for Amazon by Jeff Lipscomb of Sacramento, California. Jeff Lipscomb is a find. He is a superb reviewer working on the basis of a serious listening background with excellent taste. I have not yet had time to read all 30 pages of Lipscomb reviews, but I know already that my music collection and Amazon’s bottom line will both soon be richer for these.

Yesterday, surfing around the Blogosphere, I found that Stop the ACLU (from a perspective on the political Right) is listing Best New Blogs of 2005.

Meanwhile, Wampum (from a perspective decidedly on the Left) is posting the first voting round for the 2005 Koufax Awards: (some (120+/-) Blogs Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.

Opinions differ. I do like many of the blogs on Stop the ACLU‘s list myself, but there is one truly exceptional new blog, clearly deserving of wider recognition, which I have decided to name Never Yet Melted’s Best New Blog of 2005.

YARGB (Yet Another Really Great Blog) – Flares into Darkness, founded September 16, 2005, combines that great title with a superb selection of postings provided by an extremely talented group of twenty-four (!) contributors. Despite YARGB‘s being hardly older than this blog, once I discovered its existence, I soon found it as reliable in quality as the members of the select group of blogs I bookmarked long ago under the label: “Essential Blogs.” I try to avoid parasitically linking material from exactly the same blogs day after day, but I have found I can count on finding at least one item I like well enough to link just about everyday on YARGB.

Right Wing News emailed more than 230 “right of center” bloggers and asked for a 1 to 5 list of candidates they would most like to see being the Republican nominee for President in 2008 and the list of candidates they’d least like to see nominated.

(Votes were weighted as follows:
1) Worth 2 points
2 or 3) Worth 1.5 points
4 or 5) Worth 1 point)

Results:

Top Most Desired:

1) Condoleeza Rice (65.5)
2) Rudy Giuliani (58.0)
3) George Allen (42.0)
4) Newt Gingrich (32.0)
5) Dick Cheney (26.0)

Top Least Desired:

1) John McCain (74.5)
2) Chuck Hagel (55.5)
3) Bill Frist (43.5)
4) George Pataki (33.0)
5) Jeb Bush (22.0)

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Frankly, I do not see how anybody who claims to be conservative could consider supporting Guiliani in the remotest of circumstances. My own list would look like:

Most Desired:

1) Dick Cheney
2) Newt Gingrich
3) Is there anybody else genuinely conservative, articulate, and reasonably intelligent?

Least Desired:

1) I wouldn’t have thought of Chuck Hagel as a potential Republican choice, but if he’s on the list, he gets my number 1 vote
2) John McCain
3) Rudy Giuliani
4) George Pataki

Dr. Rusty Shackleford at Jawa Report celebrates his blog’s anniversary by reporting its role in bringing about the arrest of Jordanian-born Mohammed Radwan Obeid who had fraudulently obtained US citizenship, and was engaged in attempting to organize a terrorist cell using a free computer in a Miami County, Ohio public library.

Hat tip to PJM.

From an interview with Jeff Goldstein by Norman Geras:

What would you do with the UN? > Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. Either that, or provide John Bolton’s moustache ‘Regis’ with a handful of armed deputies, a couple barrels of whiskey, and two weeks alone with all the UN diplomats and their staffs. When the doors swing open, all the UN’s problems will be solved.

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker rubs it in:

Yesterday, we caught Slate cluelessly recycling the fake photo the New York Times posted to its home page last Saturday. In less than an hour, Slate removed the photo without comment. Then AT pointed out their lack of decency in failing to acknowledge their publication of a fake. Slate eventually added a paragraph explaining their error.

Time Magazine needs to broaden its sources, though. It repeated the same error, as noticed by blogger The Spirit of Entebbe and several emailers.

The MSM, which is best referred to as the antique media, have a general disdain for the blogosphere, often citing their own “fact checkers” and layers of editors. It turns out that the peer review function of the blogosphere, lnked by instantaneous email and suffused with the ethic of admitting and correcting mistakes, is far, far more effective than the creaky 19th century bureaucratic model in use at places like Time Magazine, and even websites like Slate staffed with antique media personnel.

The antique media death spiral accelerates.

And who can blame him?

The Times originally posted this picture, captioned: “Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border ” The same photo with corrected caption is now here.

Skeptics on Free Republic and Reason noticed that the photo actually featured an (unfired) artillery round. Thomas Lifson of American Thinker supplies the whole story.

One more instance of MSM misreporting has been debunked by the Blogosphere, and this one demonstrates all too clearly the unbecoming eagerness of the MSM to publish, in time of war, when US forces are operating under fire overseas, reports damaging to the reputation of American forces, reports calculated to manipulate the emotions of its readers in favor of the enemy. So eager is the liberal MSM to engage in this kind of journalistic treason that it will consistently publish uncritically, not only staged propaganda photographs like the one above, but also the most hostile and partisan characterizations of US war actions , and evaluations of their results, by foreign adversaries.

Susan G., over on Daily Kos, waxes indignant over the president’s imaginary transgressions, strikes a pose of death-defying resolve, and formally spurns the protection of her own government.

Mr. Bush, I’ve decided the price is too high for my conscience. If Gitmo – and the torture and denial of due process accompanying it – is a necessary part of protecting me, I hereby officially release you from the obligation. I’m opting out of this protection racket you’ve set up. Think of me as just one less tile on the human shield you’ve created, using the safety and fear of American citizens to hide behind while you seize more power.

After years of soul-searching, I’ve decided to take my chances in a risky and unpredictable world – one from which your administration can’t fully insulate me anyway, even with the best of intentions – than to live my life duct-taped and “safe” in a wire-tapped American closet where I’m not free to tell you I think you’re a nincompoop and a danger to humankind…

Stop trying to terrorize me with Islamic boogeymen…

Unlike an apparent majority of American voters, I don’t think membership in our national cult of exceptionalism has automatically exempted me from personal death. The fact that I was born on a certain continent in a certain era does not automatically signal to me that nothing bad – especially dying – will befall me.

I can live with the fact that someday I will die, no matter how many of my “freedoms” you take away. Please, direct your future energies toward protecting those who think denial of death and bargaining away the raucous, electrically vivid and unpredictable present moment is a wonderful way to live a life. Count me out…

no matter how many rights you take away from me, you can’t protect me from my biggest fear: You.

Exactly of what rights Mr. Bush may have deprived this lady is unclear. Certainly her right to indulge in adolescent displays of self importance appears untouched. Her right to throw around wild accusations seems completely intact. And her fuzzy-thinking privileges appear inviolate.

If the lady has any genuine complaints, they ought to be directed at the Left, of whose pathological culture of ersatz self-righteousness and perpetual indignation she is obviously a disastrous product.

Edward Everett Hale, during another time when many Americans were indulging in public expressions of disloyalty (1863), published his famous story The Man Without a Country. I wonder if Susan G. has ever read it.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch thinks it should, and may, happen.

John Hinderaker at Power Line quotes the article below, containing news you won’t find in the New York Times.

The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. – because it would tend to support President Bush’s use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups.

News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported in the American media.

Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and railway stations, and the terrorists’ goal, he said, was to exceed the devastation caused by 9/11.

Italian authorities stepped up their internal surveillance programs after July’s terrorist bombings in London. Their domestic wiretaps picked up phone conversations by Algerian Yamine Bouhrama that discussed terrorist attacks in Italy and abroad.

Italian authorities arrested Bouhrama on November 15 and he remains in prison. Authorities later arrested two other men, Achour Rabah and Tartaq Sami, who are believed to be Bouhrama’s chief aides in planning the attacks.

The arrests were a major coup for Italian anti-terror forces, and the story was carried in most major newspapers from Europe to China.

“U.S. terror attacks foiled,” read the headline in England’s Sunday Times. In France, a headline from Agence France Presse proclaimed, “Three Algerians arrested in Italy over plot targeting U.S.”

Curiously, what was deemed worthy of a worldwide media blitz abroad was virtually ignored by the U.S. media, and conservative media watchdog groups are saying that is no accident.

“My impression is that the major media want to use the NSA story to try and impeach the president,” says Cliff Kincaid, editor of the Accuracy in Media Report published by the grassroots Accuracy in Media organization.

“If you remind people that terrorists actually are planning to kill us, that tends to support the case made by President Bush. They will ignore any issue that shows that this kind of [wiretapping] tactic can work in the war on terror.”

“The mainstream media have framed the story as one of the nefarious President Bush ‘spying on U.S. citizens,’ where the average American is a victim not a beneficiary,” commented Brent Baker, vice president of the Media Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to encouraging balanced news coverage, “so journalists have little interest in any evidence that the program has helped save lives by uncovering terrorist plans.”

The Associated Press version of the story did not disclose that the men planned to target the U.S. Nor did it report that the evidence against the suspects was gathered via a wiretapping surveillance operation.

Furthermore, only one American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is known to have published the story that the AP distributed. It ran on page A-6 under the headline “Italy Charges 3 Algerians.” The Inquirer report also made no mention of the plot to target the U.S. – although foreign publications included this information in the headlines and lead sentences of their stories. Nor did it advise readers that domestic wiretaps played a key role in nabbing the suspected terrorists.

One obvious question media critics are now raising: Did the American media intentionally ignore an important story because it didn’t fit into their agenda of attacking President George Bush for using wiretapping to spy on potential terrorists in the U.S.?

“It’s clear to me,” says AIM’s Kincaid, “that they’re trying their best to make this NSA program to be an impeachable offense, saying it is directed at ordinary Americans. That’s why they keep referring to this as a ‘program of spying on Americans’ – whereas the president keeps pointing out it’s a program designed to uncover al-Qaida operations on American soil.”

There is a quotation unverifiedly attributed to both Lenin and Stalin which boasts: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Microsoft has joined Yahoo in selling rope to the Communist Chinese regime. Rebecca MacKinnon reports that on New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the Michael Anti blog written by Zhao Jing. What you get when you attempt to visit his blog now is this. (The Google cache of his blog up until Dec.22nd is here.)

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Microsoft will, of course, have to go a little further to equal Yahoo, which earlier this year assisted the Chinese government in identifying and prosecuting the journalist Shi Tao, and sending him to prison for ten years.