Consider:

If I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy.
They'd write it on my grave or when they scattered my ashes.
On second thought I'd rather hang around and be there with my best friend,
If she wants me.

                  -- Belle and Sebastian, "If She Wants Me"

Did a large procession wave their torches as my head fell in the basket,
And was everybody dancing on the casket?
Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want
Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do.

                  -- They Might Be Giants, "Dead"

Some people say that LiveJournals are essentially a waste of time and space.  Some say that the only people who maintain LiveJournals are narcissistic belly-lint-contemplators with huge egos, an overinflated sense of self-worth, and a penchant for repetition.

I know this because I say all of these things. Nevertheless, here I am with my own LiveJournal, which you are now reading.  Rank hypocrisy? I disagree, as I object on principle to the idea of judging people by their reading habits. But returning to the question of those who would post their thoughts in a semi-public forum such as this.  Is it true that only narcissistic people maintain LiveJournals?  I answer this question with another question: Is it not true that only narcissistic people should maintain LiveJournals?  After all, if you, the author, do not hold yourself in high esteem, then why should I, the reader, do likewise?  And if you, the reader, do not appreciate the contributions of me, the author, does that not reflect on your own failings as a reader/author?

That is a question that I will leave to the philosophers.

More to the point, I recently read a post in a blog that I admire, Not This God, that purported to explain what the blogger does and does not seek to accomplish with his daily musings.  It included this statement:

I do not want to spend all my time commenting on things I've read online. Fark has links to much more interesting articles than I could ever find.

Now, I am confident that my fellow non-Deity did not intend this as a personal slight against Nadingo, but it stung nonetheless.   Does he suppose that it is a simple matter to seek out provocative articles and to comment insightfully upon them?  Can Fark really do as Nadingo does? 

Suffice to say, if you seek an aggregation of eyebrow-raising stories, sorted conveniently into such categories as "Dumbass," "Florida," and "Boobies," then look no further than www.Fark.com.  Regular Nadingo readers know that they can find more refined material here.

As someone who habitually rises far above my peers while making it look easy, I have only one thing to say to 100m Gold Medal Winner and World Record Setter Usain Bolt:

Welcome to the club.

If you wish to fully appreciate Bolt's greatness (and, by association, my own), this article is worth a read. Also see the comment by "You Can Call Me Ray" for a classic example of Nadingo's Law of the Internet.

I like to think of myself as a "connoisseur" of the internet.  Some might even call me an "addict."  Part of what I like so much about the internet is how a thing can go from a complete unknown to a worldwide sensation in the blink of an eye.  This can also be the worst part of the internet, however.  Most internet memes, such as "pwned," "Rickrolled," and "I can has [insert thing here]?" are the internet's version of inside jokes that aren't worth learning about if you don't already know them. 

However, some internet phenomena are actually worthy of their fame, such as the hamster dance, the dancing baby, those guys dancing on treadmills, and the guy who danced all over the world.   Basically, if I can watch a video of somebody dancing humorously, then the internet has done its job.

But of course, the internet can offer more than just passing fads and hilarious dancing.  Given the right set of circumstances, it can offer immortality.  Without the internet, nobody ever would have heard of Michael Wayne Godwin, an unremarkable lawyer at the Electric Frontier Foundation.  But thanks entirely to the wonders of this new medium, any participant in an online debate eventually becomes familiar with "Godwin's Law," which states:

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

and which in turn has given rise to numerous derivatives, such as "Quirk's Exception" and the "Maixner Fallacy"*

It should be obvious one does not have to be an Internet Lawyer to invent a Law of the Internet (get it?).  And really, can it really be so hard to coin an adage better than Godwin's tripe about Nazi hyperbole?  Of course it can't!  Which is why, without further adieu, I present to you:

Nadingo's Law of the Internet:

Responses to things tend to be more entertaining than things themselves.

I can already anticipate the critiques:  Too vague!  Too obvious!  Not even true!

In response, I submit to you, Exhibit 1.  Basically, a bunch of die-hard Hillary Clinton supporters have been bombarding DNC members and Democratic Superdelegates with emails requesting a roll call at the convention and other such nonsense.  I have no idea what their emails actually said, but it doesn't matter.  None of them could be remotely as entertaining as the responses they've been receiving, which include:

WA Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz: "Man, you have to chill. Try tennis."

and my favorite,

AZ superdelegate Carolyn Warner: “GOD WILL GUIDE THE HAND OF JUDGMENT THAT WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN! Do not email us again. Thank you."

If that example doesn't convince you, I present Exhibit 2.  Again, I'll summarize it for you, because that's just the kind of guy I am.

• Blog post with a lame attempt at baseball-related humor? meh.

• Blog comment insulting the author of the post? hilarious.
  

Nadingo's Law of the Internet.  It's real.











* Only one of these is made up

In Paul Krugman's latest column, he talks about how the Republican party relies on a lack of knowledge to score political points. I guess that might be putting it a bit mildly. What he actually says is this:

Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

which is pretty cool, I think.

Anyway, Tom Tomorrow seems to think that Krugman's column was inspired by his latest cartoon, but I know better. The clue is in this paragraph:

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

Hmm, "alleged wise men" advocating beating up an arbitrary target in the Middle East, just to show that we mean business?  Sound like anyone we know???  Krugman may or may not have been reading Tomorrow, but he certainly has been reading Nadingo.

I like reading Paul Krugman's columns.  They make me feel good about myself, because he talks about people I don't like, and he calls them all sorts of nasty names, like corrupt, incompetent, stupid, and malicious.  If I don't like people like that, then I must be the opposite of all of those things!  However, because I am a Complex and Self-Aware individual, I know not to trust something that panders to my previously-held beliefs.  If I read something that always makes me feel good about myself, chances are it's not exactly True.

I often wish that Krugman would occasionally say something nice about people I dislike, like how President Bush is really nice to his dog, or how John McCain makes fantastic barbecue ribs.  But alas, Krugman stubbornly refuses to praise any of the people I think are unworthy of praise, despite the fact that doing so would make him more credible in my eyes.  If Krugman were just a bit more even-handed with his praise and criticism, I would like him so much more!  But because he doesn't, I remain wary of him.  I can't help feeling a twinge of guilt every time I read his columns.  And because reading his columns causes me discomfort, I am confident -- as a Complex and Self-Aware individual -- that they must be True.

It's classic Greenwald.  Some might shy away from describing a political columnist with words like "depraved" and "sadistic" and comparing him unfavorably to a brutal third-world dictator,  but not him!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/16/friedman/index.html

To be fair, though, the clip of Friedman's 2003 interview is truly disgusting.  It takes some real cognitive dissonance (at best) to say things like that and then profess confusion as to why the rest of the world no longer sees the US as a bastion of moral leadership.

Curious about Friedman's history of outrageous comments, I checked out his wikipedia page and found this very apt criticism:

The man has a plan for everything. That is what makes reading him so funny. He cannot seem to appreciate that the world is a product of many thousands of generations' worth of evolutionary adjustments, compromises, and innovations that he could not possibly hope to know about...nor can he imagine that there is any situation—no matter how remote or complex—that his own little mind cannot improve.

Unfortunately, this criticism, made by Bill Bonner, concludes with this:

Thus does he urge America's voters to insist upon a "Green Election" in 2008.

Which ... uh ... is not really what I was expecting.

Curious about that Bill Bonner guy, I googled him and found his website, which includes this essay about global warming.  It really doesn't take long when you're reading this essay to conclude that he's both an idiot and an asshole.  Indeed, he writes ten full paragraphs criticizing climate change activists before he gets to any discussion of the science behind the threat.  But the best part by far has to be this section (emphasis of the truly absurd parts mine):

Why are rising temperatures a threat, anyway? Practically everyone we know welcomes warm weather…and looks forward to the mosquito months more than a white Christmas. You'd think a few more days of sunny skies and outdoor barbecues would be to their liking.

Today, in Paris, we saw several groups of American tourists - dressed for summer, with their shorts and flip-flops. How they must wish Europe were more like Florida and not gray and chilly.

Rising temperatures would be good for tourism, and for more practical reasons too. Growing seasons would be longer. The well-fed complainers have fingered carbon dioxide as the culprit, but we know that plants are fond of CO2. Longer growing seasons plus higher levels of CO2 boost crop yields, say the experts. And that helps keep people from starving.

Nonetheless, for reasons never fully explained to us, global warming is viewed not as a boon to humanity but as the dawn of its doomsday.

Hmm, perhaps nobody has bothered explaining to him why any significant change in global climate could cause all sorts of catastrophes because they can tell right away that it would do no good because the man is a BLITHERING IDIOT.

Also great is this:

The science is anything but clear. Even some of the world's greatest scientists are scratching their heads. The idea of global warming rests on three major things: A series of observations - melting ice, rising temperatures in certain places; a guess about how the earth's climate works - the so-called greenhouse hypothesis; and a proof, of sorts, based on some further observations that suggest that as CO2 levels have risen over the last century or so, temperatures have, as well. The hypothesis further supposes that higher CO2 levels are caused by humans.

But a quick reading of the literature yields more questions than proof. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have apparently risen 21% in the last century. But, during the Depression of the 1930s, when human CO2 emissions dropped 30%, CO2 in the atmosphere continued to rise. Maybe human activity really doesn't contribute that much to global CO2 levels. Even during the Eocene era, there was three to four times as much CO2 in the atmosphere, and that was 20 million years before the first SUV was built

And that, dear reader, is why a thorough understanding of a complex and serious problem requires a bit more than a "quick reading of the literature."