It is an excellent post and the mention of Dean's World was truly nice.

Speaking of Dean's World, I notice this morning something new in the address bar of my browser: a little blue "DW" icon. Very nice!

>>It’s not all about millions of citizen journalists competing with each other, all clamoring to be heard.

Well maybe not millions but when you take into account the assorted discussion boards and chat lines on the internet, it's easy to see that there are plenty of people trying to be heard about one thing or another. So many voices, so little power. Sort of depressing.

I watched Frontline last night and they did a story on Rwanda.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/

We all seem to have plenty of information these days but the bad shit still keeps happening.

I think we have a tremendous amount of power, Ralph. But interests and opinions do conflict.

And bad things are always going to happen. It's too easy to get yourself depressed, thinking that just because bad things happen, nothing's getting better. But in most ways, the world's a better place today than ever, and getting better, for most people.

I dunno Dean. Much of it reminds me of Big Time Wrestling. Half of what I read is either an attempt to build one side up or an attempt to tear the other side down. So much of this discourse doesn't address the real issues and problems the country and the world face. It is becoming impossible to seperate the wheat from the chafe.

The world is getting better? Better than the Halocaust which was better than slavery which was better than the crusades? That is a questionable assertion you make Dean.

Well, Ralph, it's always two steps forward and one step back. But really, there is no more slavery in most (not all) of the world, the Holocaust is over- hopefully forever, but there's still a lot of anti-semitism. Communism was by far the biggest killer of mankind and its day is pretty much over (with Kim Il as a notable exception). So, while it's obvious that these evils could rise again, they probably won't, and we need to work hard at squashing them once and for all.

Also, if you wish to condemn the Crusades, you have to also condemn the Romans who took Jerusalem from the Jews, then the Muslims who conquered Jerusalem after the fall of the Empire, and then Turks who began killing the Christians who came on pilgrimages, which then precipitated the Crusades. That piece of ground has been fought over ever since the First Temple, so no one is blameless there, Ralph. Don't accept the PC version of events.

But, really, would you like to live a hundred or thousand years ago? Myself, being female, would answer that with a big fat, "Not on your life."

We've doubled our lifespans in the last hundred years. People whose families were laborers can have sons and daughters who are professionals. The list goes on and on. Yes, there are certainly challenges, but I wouldn't trade this world for any other that we've had in the past- except maybe Sept. 10, 2001. For that, I am nostalgic.

I stick pretty closely to the forerunners of the weblog: The online diary. News is news is news, and commentary is commentary is commentary. Most of it, no matter how well-reasoned and informative, will tend to drain down into a small number of well-defined buckets.

You can't define a human life so easily. The vast majority of personal values are chosen in response to personal experiences, not newscasts, not State of the Union speeches, and not punditry. We decide what to believe based on what happens to us personally.

Personal narratives, for that reason, tend to be more powerful, evoke stronger feelings, and leave more lasting impressions than more formal news writing. Discussing war is one thing, but discussing one's personal experience with war is another. Ditto for any number of other topics.

I think blogs are powerful in the eyes of other bloggers, and that power is real; but in the scope of the culture, it's our personal experiences that shape us, and the personal experiences we share online outshine any thoughtful analysis.