Sexist Blog

Nice article at TECH CENTRAL STATION on blogs and economics.

If Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek had been watching last week as bloggers spontaneously responded to fraudulent documents aired by the program "60 Minutes", he would've grinned in humble satisfaction. Hayek's work centered on the effectiveness of spontaneous, decentralized organization, which is precisely what occurred on PowerlineBlog on September 9^th.  Regardless of the political consequences of the Killian Memo controversy, Hayek's work has been vindicated and his critics undermined. <?xml:namespace prefix = o />

Why is it that the blogosphere continues to thrive despite incessant warnings of misinformation and partisan gossip? As of this writing Technorati, an online link-tracking service, is tracking 3,872,561 blogs, hardly something to sneeze at. How is it that some of these relatively unknown bloggers, with no direct access to experts and forensics, were able to uncover the truth about these memos before anyone else? Is it only because CBS was consumed by its own bias? Or is there something remarkably efficient about the blogosphere? Despite the apparent truth of the former, students of Hayek know that the latter explanation is far more significant.

Hayek's work focused on how it is that complicated and reliable systems of cooperation come about without any centralized direction. When they do, they outperform systems of "command", systems that rely on central direction. Hayek was an economist and so his primary object of study was the market and how, seemingly counterintuitively, it can work without commands; and why it outperforms large scale centralized economies like the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Soviet Union. It doesn't take a directive from Washington to get Apple Computers to make more iPods. Why? Because the market tells Apple how many will sell.

Hayek theorized that markets worked better primarily because of their ability to facilitate the use of 'on the spot' knowledge, knowledge that is very unique to a particular person or place. Steve Jobs knows more about making iPods than George Bush. Everyone has something he knows more about than just about anyone else, even if that something is as basic as his own car. A command system requires the person with the knowledge to wait on the guy without it. A market system gives the person with knowledge the freedom and power to act on it.

Some of this seems rather commonsensical now, but at the time he was really rocking the boat. Economics had been dominated by a paradigm that sought the proper equation for centralized direction. Hayek shifted the paradigm, at least in some economics departments.

Today almost no one would disagree that spontaneous cooperation is better for some tasks, namely production and consumption. Yet, some critics still like to distinguish among kinds of knowledge.  For instance spontaneous systems are good at delivering cheese, but not very good at delivering something more intangible … like information … or fairness.

We've all heard critics of the Internet claim that, because no one "controls" it, no one can control it from disseminating the most outrageous rumors and conspiracies. A similar critique was leveled at Hayek's arguments about markets: Sure, markets (spontaneous systems) can deliver food at reasonable prices, but advertising and marketing often mislead people about which foods they should buy.

This traditional criticism of the internet has now been aimed at the blogosphere and is embodied by big journalists like Jonathan Klein who, while defending the CBS story to The Weekly Standard remarked, "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Klein misses the point that it's not whether you can trust some guy in his pajamas, but whether you can trust a spontaneous system of thousands of guys in their pajamas trading information and imparting small, sometimes deceivingly insignificant, bits of information.

What we've seen in the last few years is a gradual refutation of the Klein myth, that "Big Media" is more capable of sorting the truth than are 3,872,561 blogs. Slowly but surely a loose network of bloggers is sometimes beating the designed, controlled systems of checks and balances at deciphering what's true and what's not. This is exactly what Hayek would've predicted.

In 1997 CBS falsely reported that a US Customs agent was corrupt. It took three years of investigation to clear his name. It won't take a month to get to the bottom of this one.

Big media isn't dying. It never will. The proof of this is that most bloggers get the grist for their mills from traditional big media sources. The impact of the blogosphere is to change the way the media does business. Five years from now, the news channels doing well will be the ones who take the blogosphere seriously, finding ways to use it to better its own reporting and analysis.

Michael Van Winkle is a graduate student at the University of Chicago. He's is creator and editor of The Chicago Report.

I know, the summer's long gone, memories of topless beaches are hard to remember...

This site might refresh your memory.

A little directory of pictures taken on the Bulgarian coast.

Don't hesitate to vote for the nicest ass!

Sydney - A "wardrobe malfunction" of Janet Jackson proportions left Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins wearing little more than a red G-string after half of her gold dress dropped to the floor during a Sydney fashion show.

The 20-year-old former rugby cheerleader was modelling the seven-kilogram metallic lace dress at a fashion show for Westfield's shopping centres on Thursday when the bottom half snagged on her high heels and fell to the catwalk.

Showing the composure which helped her win the Miss Universe crown in June, Hawkins simply turned on her heels and sauntered back-stage to camera flashes and a few gasps from the audience.

Hawkins recently returned to Australia for the first time since winning the Miss Universe pageant and she was wearing the same lavish evening dress designed for the pageant.

Several landlords also advertise available housing where the payment is sexual favours, reported the Norwegian paper VG.

The ads do not specifically state that sex is offered, but the wording leaves little doubt.

«Alternative payment will be evaluated» and «can also give payment in form of the services you may want,» are examples of wording used.

Daniel, 27, said to VG that he had various services in mind, for example maintains of house and garden.

One landlord in Akershus said to the paper that he published an ad on the website in order to see if anyone would respond.

«I have heard such stories, and thought that maybe such things happened in real life too,» he stated.

Jørn A Henriksen, leader of Norsk studentunion (Norwegian student union) said he is surprised by this practice.

«I really hope that the housing situation is not that bad,» he said. «This is terrible. Tragic.»

A little article on porn queen Jenna Jameson

Why does government have to do it?

Why is government so scared of it?

Nudity is the best thing there has ever been (after sex and blowjobs), so why ban it if people agree or even pay to see it?

Government should get out of our lives, let us alone! and not tread on our liberties.

This article is about a naked pinata party, while here it is argued that porn is good for you (now, we all new that).

Enormous open directory...

 By the way, do you recognize this chick?

Another open directory jsut for you.

This is one of my little secret babe sites, enjoy!

  Chloe Jones

 Jenna Jameson

Nice open directory, just for you!

A pretty Eastern European chick...

Don't you just love Italy?

Pretty website with pics of Julia Chanel, french porn star.