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Parlez-vous Francais? If you do, you might want to check out the blog of Norodom Sihanouk, the former king of Cambodia. Our French has slipped a bit since high school, so we won’t subject you to our tortured translations. Thankfully, this report did the work for us — on March 4, for example, one Sihanouk posting “commented on the U.S. State Department’s recent report that criticized Cambodia on human rights issues. He claimed the report was critical of some Cambodian political parties for ‘being racist and for inciting hatred of Vietnamese’ and then, without any elaboration, said: ‘The USA, on the contrary, thinks that people are not strict enough against Muslims who are capable of being terrorists, or are suspected of being terrorists.'” The blog is here — just click on “Royal Messages 2005,” which you’ll find underneath the lovely picture of their majesties King and Queen Sihanouk, who apparently live in a house made entirely of gold.
Economist Angry Bear, meanwhile, don’t much like him some Greenspan. The Bear disputes the Fed chair’s Senate testimony and writes that Greenspan “has fallen to the level of the Club for Growth with assertions sine reasoning or evidence. He may have done some great service in the past as Fed chairman, but he is truly being a hack and a discredit to the economic profession with this kind of partisan testimony.” (If it weren’t for the economic analysis, incidentally, we’d be inclined to think that The Bear is actually a Donkey named Reid. But we doubt the minority leader spends much time putting together graphs like this one, which makes the case that Greenspan’s support for Bush’s tax cuts was never justified.)
Relapsed Catholic Kathy Shaidle, meanwhile, notes that Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone is urging people not to buy Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code, which has been successful, the Cardinal says, because of “a great anti-Catholic prejudice.” (No disrespect to the Cardinal, but we can’t help but note here that anti-Catholic isn’t exactly the most pressing prejudice society is facing right now.) According to Shaidle, Brown’s book is perhaps not one to show off on the subway:
The few people I’ve met who’ve read the book are cradle Catholics with vague, inarticulate resentments about the Church, of the “a priest told me it was a sin to chew gum in Grade 4” variety. These resentments are typically the public masks of more private resentments of which only they are aware. These readers aren’t highly educated and so are particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories, which, as Robert Fulford once said, are the dullard’s substitute for real history.
Ouch! And here we thought people just liked the plot.
Finally, we turn to a post from Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide, which we stumbled onto via Elisabeth “another boring academic has a
blog?” Carnell. Here’s Carnell’s summary of the Edies’ conclusions about the benefits of blogs and blogging:
1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.
Well, yeah, that and Lohan gossip.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.