The blogs are going really well now, they are starting to take off. This is from Josh's blog:
If we have never been somewhere, what evidence do you have that that place actually exists? Sure you seen pictures or read about it but that could be pictures of anything. To take it even further...just because I've sat on a plane for 24 hours and landed in a place called "New Zealand" who's to say this is New Zealand ? I could be anywhere.
This is closer to the mark than you might think see this you tube clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wjPxl1DAE. Johnny Vaughan tackles the problem of empiricism. His victims allowed their apriori reasoning (this is what space travel looks like) to over-come the evidence of their senses. Space Cadets series on Channel Four.
PS - I see from the post below that M'learned friend Brian Thornton is 'doing' H L Mencken. He is a very funny brilliant American journalist - writer of comment and the journalist who covered the Scopes 'Monkey Trials' (look it up). Mencken was also the translator of Neitszche into the American language and he was a great devotee of Neitzche. Mencken's great book The American Language is a peerless exposition on good writing. He is a figure of the political right - a Conservative and a sceptic. But I like his fearless and unsentimental style and he is one of the journalists on whose work I base my own style (such as it is). The phrase 'Dog Bites Man is NOT news; Man bites Dog is NEWS is attributed to him and is still heard in every newsroom in the world as in "... that's not very man bites dog is it..." where the story has no angle.
Here's Mencken on the Scopes trial - a 'colour' (ie observational) feature to support the bare court report. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menk.htm -
powerful stuff - and no harm in practicising this guy's style on your blogs or wherever - just like in footballing terms you have to practice lets say the Cruyff Turn - it doesn't come naturally. Speaking of which... Hobbzy and Monday!
There's lots of journos making a bid to be the New HL Mencken - Richard Littlejohn being the main candidate and also Julie Birchill. Not the the sort of thing you can easily do in broadcast journalism. Stronger stuff in print, always...
