When DeLong is right he’s right. Even I’ll admit that, and he’s banned my comments. But he understands interpersonal communication about as well as an android, and when he’s wrong his head goes so far up his ass it’s back on top of his head.

And I’ll add one more thing to the list above, since I just read another stupid review of Dennett’s stupid book on religion:

Religious logic is nonsense (so religion serves no logical function)
Lets forget that sciptural interpretation is the origin of the rule of law.
Ask a lawyer or a historian if the constitution either a product or an example of scientific thought.

These people are stupid and can’t read.

If Achenbach had written the story you wanted, they probably wouldn’t have believed it, probably wouldn’t have read it, or would still have thought it supported their case and mailed it around.

So is it your contention that when the story talks about parallel earths, Achenbach is saying there really are parallel earths, and not in fact saying that the skeptics describe a non-real earth and therefore they are wrong?

Only if you’re using a specific rigid definition of journalistic writing style.

There are other perfectly acceptable styles of writing which are not out of bounds merely because they happen to be published in a newspaper.

“Nothing on the first page tells you anything bad about Bill Gray or his ideas. (In fairness to Aschenbach, the opening line may have been inserted by a copyeditor).”

I’m guessing Achenbach has little to say about where the page breaks fall. They were probably different on the web and in print.

Further, it seems entirely acceptable in a longer piece to use the first portion to set the stage for the reader and as a hook so that they bother reading onward to the second page.

Half the time these days, longer-format stories start with two pages of photography and a single paragraph hook that conveys little or no definitive information. Nothing substantive is found until page 3.

I think clearly saying they are talking about an Earth which is not the real one is a pretty clear statement that they’re wrong.

Are you aware that Achenbach has long been the Washington Post’s kinda-casual kinda funny-like-Dave Barry columnist?

This is a long-standing style he’s had. He’s not Walter Pincus, or even Steno Sue, and as far as I know has no pretensions to that kind or level of journalism.

Apparently, he’s doing some more serious pieces, but look where it is – in the Magazine. Which is where you get wordier stories, arranged more elaborately than a 500 word piece about a robbery, with subsections with their own headings and all that fancy-shmancy stuff.

I dunno, I think people are making a bit of a category error here. You may prefer a different article, but I find it difficult to complain about a story which quite explicitly paints the naysayers as loons living in a world which is not the real one.

It would have been very easy to do that without harming the piece in any way or changing it much at all, but it was not done because the media are intimidated and American journalism is spineless by choice.

As I’ve said several times, deniers believe that this piece makes them look good, and for a lot of Americans it does.

I am apparently closer to certain blocs of the American electorate than anyone else here except shinypenny. Most people here don’t know anyone who would misread this piece, but lots of people I know would. So you are finer people than I am! (And I am a snob, too—thank you Chris).

But Bush gets elected by the people I know (the famous whim voters, usually called swing voters), and for the Bush people there’s nothing to complain about in Achenbach’s piece (though they might complain anyway, just on general principles).

It’s already been reported that skeptics are emailing this around as supportative of their position.

Please don’t call me an elitist, and I won’t call you…. something worse. That was a silly thing to say. There really are a lot of stupid, dishonest people out there, and this country is suffering terribly from that fact.

In the world of today, being a professional journalist is not something to brag about. Many professional journalist seem to take pride in how much they make for doing bad work.

“Why should [Aschenbach] declare sides?” Because one side was clearly wrong, but many readers don’t know that.

What Aschenbach said was that it’s hard to have an intelligent argument about anything in this polarized country. What he meant, in this case, was that if he told the truth he would be attacked by a mob of fanatics. So he nuanced what he said in order to avoid attacks. And now he’s being attacked by the less-fearsome who wanted an explicit statement of the truth. There’s really no parity there, and I hope that n one thinks that there is.