A thought, RFC

For the uninitiated, RFC is request for comments. Frequently something scholars or engineers put forth when they have an idea they think is going in a good direction, but fear they are being one-sided or blinded to any opposing viewpoint.

An apt request.

I am starting to doubt the future of the pundit. Perhaps that rabble-rouser Michael Moore had a point. Perhaps the pundits are angry because they are losing power.

See, that last post, the one about Ollie North is typical. I, the blogger, get this email, get angry, research it, and send it back out, with corrections, to the person who sent it originally, with a request that he send the corrections to all of his friends, the ones he passed it to initially.

But the pundits do not do this. They take something like this and heat it up and pass it around. I even doubt the person who sent it to me will retract its damaging statements. And because of things like that, we, no, nearly everyone, is learning to distrust people who provide uncorrobrated evidence. Perhaps the greatest strength of a blog is the ability to include hyperlinks to our sources, ones that ... Demonstrate a) that we have done some research and are not just noisy and b) our claims are supported by evidence, which makes them harder to attack with anything other than "the liberal media" or "your liberal bias" I'm beginning to suspect "liberal" is a codeword for "true" and "liberal bias" is a verb, meaning "to research and report fact"

Just an idea ....