Quote of the day, on blogging killing good writing

Occasionally over the years I have attempted to argue that factual accuracy is overrated. I won't bore you with the reasons, but it struck me as a good, solid, counterintuitive belief to lug around and display occasionally. Never did it occur to me, until I read Felix's blog post, that it might be possible, without seeming insane, to argue that all aspects of good writing — accuracy, logic, spelling, graceful turns of phrase, wisdom and insight, puns (only good ones), punctuation, proper grammar and syntax (and what is the difference between those two again?) — are all overrated.

Awesome, right?

That wonderful prose was from Michael Kinsley, who worries about the lack of good quality professional writing.

"America was a rich country. Not now"

Once the taxi driver sniffed out that I am from America, he did not hesitate to share with me his opinions of the country and its recent presidents. 

The driver, Tasleem, came out swinging: "America was a rich country. Not now." Before I could think of reasons, he explained that it was because of wars.  "First Afghanistan. Then Iraq."

If only the US hadn't wasted its own resources on a war in Iraq! To think of the enormous destruction to life and property in Iraq from this war alone is enough of a nightmare. 

Tasleem added about the presidents: "I didn't like Bush and Clinton. Obama makes America better."

I didn't want to ask him what his beef was with Clinton.  Bush is understandable; whoever likes Bush, eh :)

We were nearing my destination, Humayun's Tomb.  Tasleem said, "Obama also came to see Humayun's Tomb.  He was here."

I didn't know until then that Obama had been to this historic site.  I wondered what criteria his staff employed in order to decide on Humayun's Tomb.

I wandered through the outer areas of the tomb complex, which were in various states of disrepair.  The Mughal Empire was a rich and powerful entity once, and now the remnants don't adequately convey the might and grandeur that was once the realm of the Mughals.  I hoped that the US was still far away from losing its premier status in the world, and that the end is nowhere on the horizon.

At a spot among the ruins, I set the camera on auto-timer, and got myself a visual proof of my presence amidst the ruins.

And then I finally walked up to Humayun's Tomb itself.  It was magnificent. 

More on why I hate Facebook

Adding to my notes on my love-hate (increasingly "hate" alone!) relationship with Facebook ...

Being on terra cognita (!) means that I can finally read some interesting stuff, like this James Fallows post, in which he summarizes a couple of essays on how Facebook is rapidly changing the internet, for worse.

- Google's business success depended on a worldwide internet structure as open, untrammeled, and transparent as possible. Therefore most of what Google did for its own corporate interest also advanced those aims -- or at least did not impede them.

- Facebook's business success depends on an internet structure that is increasingly "gated" and segregated into proprietary realms. Therefore most of what Facebook has done is to induce maximum sharing of personal information within its propriety sphere, while erecting barriers to the flow of information from one realm to another.

- The shift of business advantage from the "public" to the "private" model means more than a different subset of people becoming zillionaires. It will also affect the fundamental structure of the Internet and its value to the 99.999% of us who are neither Google nor Facebook IPO-beneficiaries. Already its effects are being seen, as all these pieces argue, with Google's promotion of its "G+" and social-search features. Facebook's ascent leaves Google with no choice but to compete on those terms.

Even during the old, old days, when AOL was my dial-up connection to the internet, post-college, I rarely ever made use of its proprietary services.  I was far more keen on whatever was available in the freer internet and the web.  That AOL world was nothing compared to the ultra-creepy Facebook.

Fallows adds:

It's also a battle with important "externality" effects on the rest of us. For instance: Google's success has depended on people spending as much time within its online ecosystem as possible. Thus it had an incentive to offer, free, services like Google Earth, whose commercial predecessors charged subscribers thousands of dollars per year. Or Google Maps, which is expensive to maintain. Facebook's success mainly depends on having users share more and more of their personal information within the Facebook environment. Its business logic leads to fewer "public goods."

To wax geostrategic for a moment, this argument over the Internet "commons" is very much like debates through the post-World War II era about the conflict between relatively open and relatively closed political and economic systems. Ie, the more a closed or beggar-thy-neighbor regime prospers, the worse behavior it evokes -- for survival reasons -- from all other participants.

Yep, Facebook is forcing everybody into evil ways.  That is not a good development at all.  I am sure somebody will soon figure a way out of this Facebook-imposed business model.  I hope.