January 31, 2006
The Great Zucchini
The Washington Post has published the best article I've read in a long time... about a man who calls himself The Great Zucchini.
This unmarried, 35-year-old community college dropout makes more than $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek. Not bad for a complete idiot.Read the whole thing--you won't be sorry.
Posted by Conor at 11:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Ideas, Words & Action: Introducing The Missing Link
As his native England celebrated victory in World War II George Orwell penned Politics and the English Language, an essay known to serious Anglophile writers ever since. As a classic, we take its existence for granted today--it seems perfectly natural that Orwell, one of the leading writers of his generation, should hold forth on the relationship between ideas, words and real world consequences.
Yet every time I read the essay's opening line--"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way..."--I can't help thinking that many WWII generation Britons must have thought it a rather frivolous topic for 1946.
"The Nazis are defeated, Europe is in shambles, a hostile Communist empire is seizing half of Europe," I imagine them thinking, "and this pointy headed intellectual is lamenting the poor quality of our writing?"
As I launch this blog I'm keenly aware that poor writing isn't the most pressing problem contemporary America faces. My generation must confront old foes--terrorism, infectious disease and civilizational conflict are notable--made more powerful than ever before by technology.
As Richard Posner wrote this week in The New Republic:
Washington, D.C. could be destroyed by an atomic bomb the size of a suitcase. Portions of the city could be rendered uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, merely by the explosion of a conventional bomb that had been coated with radioactive material. The smallpox virus--bioengineered to make it even more toxic and the vaccine against it ineffectual, then aerosolized and sprayed in a major airport--could kill millions of people. Our terrorist enemies have the will to do such things. They may soon have the means as well. Access to weapons of mass destruction is becoming ever easier. With the September 11 attacks now more than four years in the past, forgetfulness and complacency are the order of the day. Are we safer today, or do we just feel safer?
Even apart from those perils our society faces challenges unknown. We can hardly predict them, or so suggests the fact that a man or woman in 1906 could hardly have anticipated WWI, WWII and the rise of the Soviet Empire as the defining challenges of the last century.
Whether confronting the defining challenges of our time or the lesser decisions faced by every free people success depends on the same factors. We will succeed (or fail) based on the strength of our ideas, our success communicating them and the actions that result.
Amid all that Orwell comforts me.
A man of words, he confronted the issues of his time--most notably fascism, communism and imperialism--better than any writer then or since. His moral compass, acute for pointing him past the great evils of the 20th Century, seems downright remarkable when one realizes that it guided him past even those moral pitfalls that typically ensnared his fellow socialists.
How is it, I long wondered, that this prolific writer largely managed to avoid even those orthodoxies of thought his ideology made him particularly susceptible to?
As a young man Orwell began to answer that question, noting that he had a great facility with words and an ability to confront uncomfortable truths, even those inconvenient to his worldview.
Years later Politics and the English Language explained how those talents are inextricably related:
It [the English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts…If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
If those skeptical Britons would've read to that passage in Orwell's essay they'd have understood immediately that improving the way we talk about ideas can drastically improve the ideas that result.
That ethic--I'd call it his writing style--enabled Orwell to oppose the 20th Century's most destructive ideologies as effectively as anyone. Even today we use the term Orwellian to describe both dishonest rhetoric and creeping totalitarianism. Meanwhile his mistakes--most notably his support of socialism--are hardly remembered because they are of little consequence: a person who refuses to advance his or her ideas dishonestly can hardly do much to further an unreasonable cause.
As I pen The Missing Link I will labor to emulate the writing style I've just described on topics as grave as terrorism... and as frivolous as the latest cultural trends (e.g. my disdain for the wedding industry's absurd decadence - who knew ribbon could be so expensive!). Every post will aspire to originality, aiming to inform, to provoke thought, to stimulate conversation among readers in comments and to entertain. Whether linking to the best pieces from around the Web or sharing my own ideas, I'll maintain an ethic and style so ruthlessly honest that my inevitable mistakes will prove as harmless as possible.
You can help this blog thrive.
Orwell sent his typewritten pages to publishers and printers before they reached their audience. I type my writing onto a screen and press a button. In an instant you can submit comments that fact-check my entries and challenge my arguments. Even on those topics where my expertise is greatest the combined knowledge of my readers far surpasses it.
In short, your participation is vital to this blog's success and can greatly influence its content, so comment and e-mail often. E-mail should be sent to conor.friedersdorf@dailybulletin.com
Finally, a bit about me: I began my professional career in 2002 as a beat reporter for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. In 2004 I took a year off to travel around Europe and live in Seville, one of my favorite cities in the world.
While abroad I began my first foray into blogging - my Web design skills have improved, no? Since my return I've been a columnist and immigration blogger for the San Bernardino Sun and the Daily Bulletin. Additionally I do writing and editing for The Claremont Institute.
With this blog I'll expand my reach from immigration politics and policy to a broad range of current events, cultural trends and other topics of interest.
I hope you'll join me.
Finally, thanks are due to the San Bernardino Sun -- particularly to Steve Lambert, Frank Pine, Louis Amestoy and Gina Dvorak -- for making this site possible.
Posted by Conor at 11:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack