Welsh Rarebit

BBC Online has a fine feature called The Day in Pictures, which today yielded A competitor in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales emerges from the water.
The nervous, fidgety part of my brain that’s still a hyperactive ten-year-old amped on heavily sweetened breakfast cereal and Tom and Jerry cartoons seized on this picture and caption like a GOP delegate who’s gotten his first taste of hotel cable porn:
• People go bog snorkeling?
• That is so cool!
• There’s a World Championship?
• Who wins, the person who sees the least?
• Are there bumper stickers: Snorkel Wales?
• Is this a mental condition caused by vowel deficiency?
• That is so cool!

A Theory of Flame Wars

Crossposted from ‘s thread: Dropping My Standards.
Every once in a great while I’ve given into the temptation and let fly with insults online. I’m a writer, and I was a sailor, so I have some fluency in the black arts, but it’s never really been satisfying. Why not?
I think may have hit the nail a glancing blow: there is no shame on the internet. When you call someone out in real life (assuming you’re more in the right than they), you silence them through embarrassment. Other people stare at the object of your ire and think to themselves, Whatever that person did, it must have been a real pisser for to call him a degraded, pus-sucking asswipe. All things being equal, if you have the moral authority on your side, the degraded pus-sucker slinks away. In the entire history of the internet, no one has ever slunk away in shame. Hence the existence of flame wars.
That brings me to the other reason why trading barbs online is unsatisfying. In real life moral outrage sometimes trumps other considerations, but more often the insulted and the insulting are engaged in subtle calculations of size, strength, and willingness to take the argument literally to the mat. Violence, or the credible threat of it, usually settles arguments definitively. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, merely that the world works that way. But people say things online so crude and insulting that they intuitively know they could never utter the remarks in real life, because it would invite immediate physical retribution. Online, of course, everyone is the same size (or at least their mouths are), and there’s no violent punctuation to stop pissing contests from evolving into flame wars.
Boy, I really went on a bit there. Well, the world is full of long-winded, self-important, hyphenated-insult douchebags.

The Rapa Nui Reading List

Reading lists are making the rounds in my little corner of the blogosphere: there’s one just downstream in this journal, and has an interesting genre reading list with a lot of fine titles. usually posts an interesting and eclectic monthly reading list, along with thumbnail reviews.
At a recent writer’s workshop, we were talking about books on war—which ones were worthwhile and which ones weren’t—and I made my own short list of the good ones (hence that topic’s preeminent position below). While I was at it, I added a few more books that have moved me, educated me or entertained me over the years. I make no claim that these are indispensable books, or great books, merely that they left a lasting impression on me, and that I was amply repaid for the time I’d invested in them. Maybe you’ll find them worth a read, too.

Copyright © Robert J. Howe