Joel Achenbach and Marjorie Williams
Are You a Pervert or a Detective?
By Marjorie Williams
Posted Monday, April 10, 2000, at 4:57 PM ETDear Joel,
Didn't catch Bill Joy's piece in Wired. (I don't read Wired, or the Industry Standard, or any of those. My theory is that my head will explode if I add any more magazines to my reading life.) But I really loved The Matrix. I don't worry very much about whether machines will dominate us and turn us into batteries. I only worry about whether Michael Saylor will figure out a way to dominate us and turn us into batteries. I am totally fascinated by Saylor, and not only because he recently did us all the favor of losing more than $6 billion in a day. He might be an entire new life form. Out of curiosity, I went downtown a few weeks ago to watch the breakfast at which he announced his plan to found a $100 million online university. (It was at that awful Reagan International Trade Center, which was surely designed by machines.) The plan has a few little kinks, such as his determination not to pay any of the professors and so on, but boy does he know how to sell. Think Dennis Quaid on amphetamines, but talking faster. His speech moved seamlessly from a sort of populist choler (he had to join the reserves in order to get a scholarship to MIT, he reminded the crowd; "we are ignorant, and we don't deserve to be ignorant") to a completely sinister peroration about how if you could educate online all the people in India who make $5 a year, you could put them to work writing code for you and pay them $50 a year instead. And he didn't even seem to know he was talking self-interest as well as world betterment, because apparently these distinctions have been rendered inoperative. There is no spoon.
I meant to ask you earlier what you thought of this morning's Post front-pager about the "cyber-Mom" who spends as much as 18 hours a day on the Internet trolling for pedophiles and then luring them ever deeper into yucky conversation with her various undercover (and underage) identities before turning them in to the police. I don't have any problem with people reporting child pornography and pedophilia they come across online; I even like the notion, as explained in the piece, of net vigilantes as a form of new-age neighborhood watch. But this woman seemed so invested in the fictional 14-year-olds she becomes, even using details from her own daughters' lives to help their verisimilitude. ("When her daughters, ages 11 and 14, make the honor roll, her characters do, too.") She's been responsible for several arrests, but something about the story gave me the utter creeps.
Are you all sloshing champagne on each other down at 1150 15th Street? (I should make it clear to our readers that whereas we're both technically Post columnists, I'm the kind of columnist that works at home in its bathrobe, whereas you're the kind that puts on grown-up clothes and goes to the office.) I just heard that the Post won at least two Pulitzers--Kate Boo for investigation and the peerless Henry Allen for criticism. Almost equally thrilling from the Post's point of view (though none of the supervising adults would ever admit to feeling this): The New York Times won zero Pulitzers. This is actually unfair. Jason DeParle, who was a finalist, certainly deserves one for his work on welfare reform. Anyway, I'm sure wild celebration prevails down there, and if you're crying inside, Joel, I won't tell anyone.
Best,
Marjorie
Are You a Pervert or a Detective?
By Marjorie Williams
Posted Monday, April 10, 2000, at 4:57 PM ETJoel Achenbach is a reporter for the Washington Post, where he also writes "Rough Draft," a thrice-weekly online column. Click here to buy his recent book on extraterrestrial life, Captured by Aliens. Marjorie Williams writes a weekly opinion column for the Washington Post Op-Ed page and is a contributing writer at Talk magazine. Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
Let me get this straight: they give out Pulitzer's for criticism [Monday]? Please--my heart is pounding, my blood pressure is rocketing, my hands now shake, please dear, please, please tell me, where do I sign up?
--Old Timer [who is well-known in The Fray for his expertise in this area.]
(To reply, click
here.)
Re: Elian Gonzales. I believe that immigration laws should be as open and welcoming as possible. But at the same time we need to look at the long-term situation of the country the people are fleeing. There is not always a whole lot we can do, and we also run the risk of becoming control freak America with it's thumb in every pie--oh, hang on, we already are that. Well, anyway, my point is that instead of trying to pass a bill to make Elian a citizen, why don't we lift the embargo and make life a little better for all Cubans?
--Anne
(To reply, click
here.)
"That's exactly what Castro wants us to do", I believe, is the stock response to either ending or continuing the embargo.
--Steve Dowling
(To reply, click
here.)
[This response almost
silenced
David Edelstein, but not quite:]
The embargo is a 40-year hissy fit, and it's time to give it a rest. Say what you will against Castro (I can say plenty), he'd have been long gone if the embargo had been lifted 25 years ago and Disney and all the other U.S. corporations had moved in with their sundry inducements to free (sic) enterprise.
--David Edelstein
(To reply, click
here.)
The question of why people hate Janet Reno [Thursday] is a bit intricate and since I do hate her, I'd like to take a stab at it--the question, not her (I don't hate anybody that much). Reno reminds me of the Greek tragedy Antigone which shows us that strict enforcement of the law, by the book, isn't always the best thing. The Waco invasion wasn't the best thing, for example. I believe the law justified her actions, that the operation was by the book. But that doesn't mean it was a good thing. With Elian, there's that potential again that Reno will embark on the legal course, but that it won't be the morally right course.
Reno does not respect people who defy her. She assumes they are wrong and she acts on that and she has a tremendous amount of power to enforce her interpretation of law. This is the crux of my anti-Renoism: She doesn't talk to people, she barks orders at them. When people ignore the lectures they get punished. Hey, that's her job. But it'd be nice to have a more philosophical sort wielding all that power--someone with a better sense of proportion who realizes that every act of defiance is unique and deserves unique treatment.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click
here.)
Don Porges writes in The Fray about Thursday's entry:
"Random number generator" isn't academic-speak; it's perfectly standard math-speak, and if you're using dice to demonstrate probabilities, then they are being used as random number generators.
The definition and connotations of "dice" are much more precise in naming the objects in question. My old TI-99 had a "random number generator" command in its BASIC programming. Since it was just code, it resembled nothing that would help baby get a new pair of shoes. Besides "dice" fits into a headline nicely.
--Charles
(To reply, click
here.)
[No proposals this week. But that doesn't mean the Breakfast Table went unappreciated:]
These guys were the best. And that's granting that there were some close competitors. But Joel and Marjorie are the BT gold standard. The King and Queen are dead! Bring on next week's random number generators!
--Mike
(To reply, click
here.)
(4/14)
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Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
Let me get this straight: they give out Pulitzer's for criticism [Monday]? Please--my heart is pounding, my blood pressure is rocketing, my hands now shake, please dear, please, please tell me, where do I sign up?
--Old Timer [who is well-known in The Fray for his expertise in this area.]
(To reply, click here.)
Re: Elian Gonzales. I believe that immigration laws should be as open and welcoming as possible. But at the same time we need to look at the long-term situation of the country the people are fleeing. There is not always a whole lot we can do, and we also run the risk of becoming control freak America with it's thumb in every pie--oh, hang on, we already are that. Well, anyway, my point is that instead of trying to pass a bill to make Elian a citizen, why don't we lift the embargo and make life a little better for all Cubans?
--Anne
(To reply, click here.)
"That's exactly what Castro wants us to do", I believe, is the stock response to either ending or continuing the embargo.
--Steve Dowling
(To reply, click here.)
[This response almost silenced David Edelstein, but not quite:]
The embargo is a 40-year hissy fit, and it's time to give it a rest. Say what you will against Castro (I can say plenty), he'd have been long gone if the embargo had been lifted 25 years ago and Disney and all the other U.S. corporations had moved in with their sundry inducements to free (sic) enterprise.
--David Edelstein
(To reply, click here.)
The question of why people hate Janet Reno [Thursday] is a bit intricate and since I do hate her, I'd like to take a stab at it--the question, not her (I don't hate anybody that much). Reno reminds me of the Greek tragedy Antigone which shows us that strict enforcement of the law, by the book, isn't always the best thing. The Waco invasion wasn't the best thing, for example. I believe the law justified her actions, that the operation was by the book. But that doesn't mean it was a good thing. With Elian, there's that potential again that Reno will embark on the legal course, but that it won't be the morally right course.
Reno does not respect people who defy her. She assumes they are wrong and she acts on that and she has a tremendous amount of power to enforce her interpretation of law. This is the crux of my anti-Renoism: She doesn't talk to people, she barks orders at them. When people ignore the lectures they get punished. Hey, that's her job. But it'd be nice to have a more philosophical sort wielding all that power--someone with a better sense of proportion who realizes that every act of defiance is unique and deserves unique treatment.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click here.)
Don Porges writes in The Fray about Thursday's entry:
The definition and connotations of "dice" are much more precise in naming the objects in question. My old TI-99 had a "random number generator" command in its BASIC programming. Since it was just code, it resembled nothing that would help baby get a new pair of shoes. Besides "dice" fits into a headline nicely.
--Charles
(To reply, click here.)
[No proposals this week. But that doesn't mean the Breakfast Table went unappreciated:]
These guys were the best. And that's granting that there were some close competitors. But Joel and Marjorie are the BT gold standard. The King and Queen are dead! Bring on next week's random number generators!
--Mike
(To reply, click here.)
(4/14)