Chamblee54

PG thought he was in for a low key evening of photo editing and bloggingheads. Little did he know that he would have to stop the diavlog after 41 minutes to write an angry comment. He should have known, even free entertainment has a price.
The squawking heads were Glenn Greenwald and David Frum. The affair was a technical disaster. Mr. Greenwald had the microphone about a foot away from his mouth, and you had to turn the volume way up to hear him. The problem there was, Mr. Frum was speaking at a normal volume, and when it was his turn you had to turn the volume back down. To compensate for this, Mr. Frum spent the first part of the debate in a room with low lights, and then moved to another room while the discussion took place, with the camera shaking and somebody’s dog barking. It makes one long for the black and white days of goodnight david and goodnight chet.
A few days ago this blog published a discussion about the pedantic phrase epistemic closure. The response here was rather typical…while the normal commenters about EC talk about conservatives, the talkers tonight are squealing that liberals do it too. This line of twowrongsmakearight thinking pulled PG’s chain in a few minutes, but at first it was what was expected. Mr. Frum had an amusing comment about EC at 22:33 “I used to like the term until my logician friends explained to me that it doesn’t mean what everybody thinks it means. …..I will only use it one more time, at the risk of sounding like an idiot. “
The chat wandered over to the war on terror, and the erosion of civil liberties in America. At 38:45, Mr. Frum suggests that BHO is epistemically open. Then, at roughly the 41:00 mark, Mr. Greenwald suggests that liberals owe GWB an apology. He said that BHO is violating many of the same liberties as GWB, but is criticized much less. Mr. Greenwald used the phrase “your president”. This made PG put the diavlog on hold, minimize the pictures he was editing, and send this comment to Bloggingheads.
At the 41:00 mark, Mr. Greenwald starts to talk about how BHO is continuing some of the more abhorrent policies of GWB. He makes the comment that “the left” owes GWB an apology…they trashed him for being a war criminal, but don’t say anything when “your president” does the same thing. Yes he did use the phrase “your president”.
Excuse me sir, but he is your president just as much as he is mine. One of the concerns I had about BHO was that he would take the erosion of civil liberties of the GWB regime, and take them to new depths. As soon as there was a fig leaf terror incident, then we would lose that many more rights.
This diavlog (spell check suggestion: diagnose) is a technical nightmare. Mr. Greenwald needs top volume to be heard, and then Mr. Frum blasts you back when he speaks again. This is a serious problem.
I wrote a feature…”[URL=”https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/epistemic-closure-for-dummies/”%5DEpistemic closure for dummies[/URL]”…at Chamblee54 a few days ago. It was amusing to hear Mr. Frum admit that BHO was epistemically open. The rushnazi crowd might not like it though.
Tonight’s photo editing is pictures of African Americans from 1899, taken for an exhibition in Paris. When I post about this diavlog…assuming I don’t shoot the volume control… I will post a link.
The conversation went on for another twenty minutes or so. There were ups and downs, on the volume knob and elsewhere. The last thing Mr. Frum said was “We have hit the fundamental epistemic divide”
Pictures for this episode are from The Library of Congress. The story goes that: “The Paris Exposition of 1900 included a display devoted to the history and “present conditions” of African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois and special agent Thomas J. Calloway spearheaded the planning, collection and installation of the exhibit materials, which included 500 photographs.”