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New blog network: FreethoughtBlogs

New blog network: FreethoughtBlogs published on No Comments on New blog network: FreethoughtBlogs

My friend Ed Brayton who currently blogs at Dispatches From the Culture Wars on Scienceblogs is launching a new blogging network specifically for skeptical/humanist concerns called FreethoughtBlogs on Monday, August 1st. You can see the event announcement on Facebook here, and here is the description given:

A new blog network is hitting the web on August 1. Led by two of the most prominent and widely read secular-minded blogs in the country – PZ Myers’ Pharyngula and Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars – Freethoughtblogs.com will be THE central gathering place for atheists, humanists, skeptics and freethinkers in the blogosphere. Freethoughtblogs will be more than just a place for people to read the opinions of their favorite bloggers. It will be a community of like-minded people exchanging ideas and joining forces to advocate for a more secular and rational world.  The network will launch Aug. 1 with a handful of blogs with many more to be added after the first three months of operation. Here are the five blogs that will lead the way: Pharyngula. PZ Myers has built one of the most popular atheist blogs in the world. Never one to shy away from controversy, Myers has built an astonishing following over the last few years and has traveled around the world speaking to skeptical audiences. As a PhD biologist he is the scourge of creationists everywhere but he takes on a wide range of subjects in his blogging, including religious criticism, women’s rights and progressive politics.  Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Ed Brayton was raised by a Pentecostal and an atheist, sealing his fate forever as someone who is endlessly fascinated by how religion intersects with other subject, particularly science, law, history and politics. He is a popular speaker for secular organizations around the country, has appeared on the Rachel Maddow show and is pretty certain he’s the only person who has ever made fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.  The Digital Cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are shy and elusive creatures; when necessary, they hide in their own ink. This particular cuttlefish has chosen as its habitat the comment threads of science, religion, and news sites, where it feeds on the opinions of those who are emboldened by the cloak of internet anonymity. Cuttlefish is an atheist, a skeptic, and is madly, passionately in love with science. The Digital Cuttlefish has, since October of 2007, been a repository of commentary and satire, usually (but not exclusively) in verse and now moves to Freethoughtblogs.  This Week in Christian Nationalism. Chris Rodda is the author of “Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History.” Since the release of her book in 2006, Chris has been blogging at Talk2Action.org and Huffington Post about the use of historical revisionism in everything from education to legislation. Chris is now launching her own blog on Freethoughtblogs.com that will accompany her weekly podcast, This Week in Christian Nationalism. Zingularity. Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew is a 40 something former stock and bond trader and one time moderate conservative. He grew up in the Southwest and has long been fascinated by science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics, and astronomy. He is a frequest contributor to the popular progressive website Daily Kos and now blogs at Zingularity, where legit science disappears forever down an event horizon of petty snark and cynicism. If you would be so kind as to help us have a successful launch, please post the above information, or at least a link to the new network, on your Facebook pages, on your own blogs and in forums in which you participate that might be interested in it.  We want this to quickly become the most important gathering place for the skeptical community in the blogosphere.

I’m very interested to see what will come of this project, and wishing it success….not that they’ll need my wishes, as this is a very good crew of bloggers with dedicated audiences who will hopefully form a lasting community.

Quote of the day

Quote of the day published on 1 Comment on Quote of the day

From Glenn Greenwald, via Ed Brayton of Dispatches who says it’s true for him as well:

I always tell people who want to start blogs, it’s a great way to have an outlet. I don’t think I’d be able to pay attention to political issues if I didn’t have the outlet of my blog, like if I just had to keep all that anger and frustration inside and read about lies and have no means of addressing them and exposing them. It’s a healthy way, ultimately, to expunge these negative emotions.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case for everyone who blogs about politics. It certainly is for me when I write about politics. But blogging is also about pointing to things in the world that are cool or uplifting or fascinating and saying “Hey, this is cool/uplifting/fascinating, check it out.” I suspect that it’s hard to maintain sanity without having a least a little bit of the latter to go along with the former. Some people only point out the good stuff, the cute stuff, the funny stuff, and that’s okay too. But others of us have to, as Greenwald says, expunge the negative emotions. Insofar as Greenwald does it he’s helping the world by criticizing things that very much need to be criticized, so I’m grateful he has those emotions to expunge. Ed, too. For me it might be a little more about personal therapy. 😉

Perspectives on the Huffington Post suit

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A group of volunteer bloggers who have written for the Huffington Post have come together in a class-action lawsuit against the newly AOL-owned site to the tune of $105 million, headed by a journalist called Jon Tasini. Their argument is that HuffPo has taken advantage of them and owes them back pay for all of the work they’ve done with no contract for payment and from which the site made a profit. HuffPo is going to respond, I assume, by pointing out that a) there was no promise to pay them, b) they knew this, c) could leave at any point if this agreement was not satisfactory, and e) they nevertheless benefited from the arrangement through gained exposure.  But here are some opinions from people who are more informed on the matter than I:

Tasini himself:

“Arianna Huffington is pursuing the Wal-Martization of creative content and a Third World class of creative people,” Tasini said in a press release. “Actually, that is unfair to Wal-Mart because at least Wal-Mart pays its workers something for the value those workers create. In Arianna Huffington’s business model, economic gain is only reserved for her. Everyone else, apparently, is expected to work for free regardless of the value they create. Greed and selfishness is the order of the day.”

David Goldstein, former HuffPo contributor:

I wouldn’t mind getting a share of the $105 million class action lawsuit Jonathan Tasini is filing on behalf of exploited, unpaid bloggers like me. I mean, The Stranger only pays marginally more than Huffington Post, so, well, I could really use the money.  That said, I agree with Eli, in that as a writer giving away my work for free, I knew exactly what I was getting. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. At least in direct monetary compensation.  But it wasn’t exactly a one-way street. Arianna Huffington got free content from folks like me, and in exchange I got a larger audience and a slightly enhanced national profile. Furthermore, the bulk of my eighty-some posts at HuffPo were cross-posts, so they didn’t take much extra work, and they all linked back to HA, both bumping my traffic, and more importantly, my Google ranking.  All in all, not an entirely bad deal for me, and no hard feelings. It would have been nice if Arianna had shared the wealth of her AOL windfall with those of us who helped make it possible, if only a token gesture. You know, like a buck or two a post. Or maybe a gift certificate to Olive Garden. But I wasn’t expecting it.  In fact, if I have any ambivalence (if not downright regrets) over my career as a blogger, it’s got more to do with the way I sold myself cheap at my own blog, rather than the eyes-wide-open arrangement I had at HuffPo. For six years I obsessively covered Washington state and local politics for free, mostly full-time. How could that not help but contribute to the devaluation of the profession, negatively impacting not only my own finances, but those of my colleagues in the legacy press? 

 Radley Balko, criminal justice journalist newly hired by HuffPo, on his blog:

I realize this is going to look like I’m just shilling for my future employer, but really, what the hell am I missing about this Huffington Post controversy?  A bunch of people agreed to write for Huffington Post for free. Or rather, in exchange for a platform that gave them access to a pretty large audience. They did this knowing full well that the goal of Huffington Post has always been to eventually become profitable. If they agreed to sit behind their keyboards and voluntarily churn out free content, how exactly have they been exploited? And on what basis could they possibly argue that those prior agreements should change now that the site has been purchased by AOL?  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written for free over the years. It’s how you get a foot in the door. It has never occurred to me to go back and sue all of those publications. Come to think of it, I’ve been writing for all of you for free for the last nine years. Expect a visit from my process server soon. 

Although I can sympathize with Tasini’s issue and Goldstein’s complaints, this can’t be about “fair.” If things were fair, all good writers would get paid well for their work and poor writers wouldn’t get hired for anything. But since contracts are what matter here and HuffPo made no agreement to pay these writers for their work (so far as I understand), there shouldn’t be any way for them to demand payment after the fact regardless of how much work they did. If they’re not happy about that, they’re free (again, so far as I know) to refuse to do any more writing without pay, and to bitterly condemn the HuffPo’s business model to anyone who will listen. Which is what they have been doing.

Please don’t molest the feminist bloggers

Please don’t molest the feminist bloggers published on 2 Comments on Please don’t molest the feminist bloggers
From the wonderful xkcd.com

Poor Jen McCreight. Seriously. If all she did was post about things that offend her, I could understand people thinking that she’s too sensitive and probably a miserable person generally– even though, of course, there are more than enough offensive things happening every second of every day that documenting them could be a full-time job for many people. But she seems to be a pretty upbeat, curious, enthusiastic person who blogs on a variety of topics, and when she does post about something that bothers her, people pop in and pronounce such comments a sign of everything that’s wrong with feminism. Or, if they’re even less charitable, women. On what planet does that make sense?

To return to a comparison I made before, nobody would disavow the cause of racial equality if someone involved in that effort accused someone unfairly of racism. They wouldn’t throw up their hands and say “Can’t anyone make a joke anymore? I just don’t understand these anti-racists!” Yet for some reason it’s perfectly okay to say such things if the topic at hand is sexism instead. That’s not to say that Jen’s complaint is justified or unjustified (though my opinion on that will be clear if you read the comments on that post), but that its legitimacy is entirely beside the point. Even if she made the stupidest accusation ever (and I’m willing to grant that accusations of bias can be terribly stupid), that wouldn’t come close to legitimizing bashing the entire enterprise of feminism.

Being specific about why you disagree with the offense someone has taken says “I share your concerns. I just don’t think that this is a case in which something harmful has been said or done for a reason that I can articulate.” Taking the opportunity to say “I don’t understand you ______ people,” on the other hand, says “I don’t give a damn about your concerns, and I’m using this particular event of your offense as an excuse to dismiss them.” Big difference. If you honestly don’t care, what are you doing on the blog of a person who does care, aside from trolling? What actual contribution are you making?

Yes, yes, it’s important to have a thick skin. Everybody with a blog knows that, especially the ones which allow comments. But honestly, intellectual laziness can be exhausting. And it’s the height of intellectual laziness to seize on a single comment, let alone a single blog, single person, or single group, and use that as basis for dismissing an entire movement.

I’m tempted to get into a discussion about whether sex-based forms of bigotry are the most permissible these days, but a) that’s a huge topic and b) it’s really hard to approach objectivity on that sort of thing.  Regardless, it isn’t necessary to make the basic point that replying to complaints of prejudice, justified or otherwise, with prejudice makes a person a jerk.