Comments on: Cure Your Tunnel Vision

By: Torture of U.S. Children Continues » Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:02:38 +0000

[...] Cure Your Tunnel Vision Political Buttons 50 State Activism [...]

By: Damen

Damen — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:32:55 +0000

To be honest, I rarely find these things out on my own. I frequent another forum and the posters there will often pop on with some little known story from whatever corner of the map they post from. I’m not really sure how they find them, if I knew I’d be more than happy to share that knowledge.

But what I have noticed is that I can find quite a lot of interesting stories just by looking at Yahoo News or Google News.

For example, just by peeking at Google News and Yahoo News, I’ve found:

Senator Ensign is announcing his resignation: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-22/nevada-senator-ensign-announces-resignation-effective-may-3-1-.html

Police are using iPhone 4 tracking data in criminal convictions: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383945,00.asp

Obama has given the OK for deploying Predator Drones over Libya: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110421/ap_on_re_us/us_us_libya;_ylt=AlbX_xrV_2cgRc9wd32k36ms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlb2ducHUyBHBvcwM4MARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNvYmFtYW9rc3VzZW8-

The unemployment rate in my home state of Oklahoma dropped in March: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/04/21/business-ok-oklahoma-unemployment_8428273.html

Also from Oklahoma, we’ve got two more nigh draconian anti-abortion bills on the books: http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-todays-lady-news-042111/

And Terry Jones is up to his bigoted hijinks again, this time wanting to protest in front of the largest Mosque in the USA: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/21/us-protest-mosque-idUSTRE73K8ID20110421

Granted, these are somewhat more well-known stories. But you can do a rather generic search for, say, “child labor laws” and end up finding nuggets of information like, for example, Maine trying to loosen child labor laws, ensure that anyone under the age of 20 can be paid $5.25 an hour and 16 – 17 years olds can work longer hours than the 20 a week they’re already restricted to: http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/03/29/politics/bill-to-loosen-child-labor-restrictions-heads-to-maine-senate/

By: J. Clifford

J. Clifford — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:47:04 +0000

Peregrin asked that I pass this note along:

“Damen, I respect your breadth of reading, and I’m glad that you’re still here, because you’re obviously reflective about what you read.

As for me, I write somewhat often (really just three or four times a week, though yes, twice today) about the American involvement in the war in Libya. That’s because I think that it’s important when this nation is taken to war with almost no advance notice, in violation of the Constitution and the law. When an issue is important to me, I don’t like to let it drop.

I try to keep in mind that we have many readers, some of them frequent like yourself, but some of them coming only once or twice. That’s why I write about some topics repeatedly, while mixing in other topics as well.

Topics I’ve written about this week include: The 10 Commandments resolution introduced by Louis Gohmert, a peace march in Upstate New York, the Roy Moore for President bore, the PowerShift weekend of activism and the relationship between liberals and Barack Obama, budget cuts to WIC and spending on nuclear submarines, and the shooting of protesters in Iraq.”

As for myself, this week, I’ve written about Libya, true, but also about multilevel marketing and a short piece noting the Gary Johnson for President campaign. As Jim has said, as we’re currently structured, we can’t possibly cover all the good stories that are out there. We don’t have interns. Maybe we should get some.

By: » Writing with Specificity vs. Breadth: What’s best for Irregular Times? - Irregular Times

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:43:51 +0000

[...] Long-time reader Damen writes a diary today in which he notes the appearance of “tunnel vision” in the subject matter of writing at Irregular Times lately: a lot of consideration of the Patriot Act, the war in Libya and Americans Elect, to the detriment of a number of other subjects of interest. [...]

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:10:31 +0000

Something else occurs to me, a more structural point: I don’t watch cable or network TV, so the Rachel Maddow show isn’t something I’ve actually seen. It’s not a source for me as it is for many people on the left, and therefore I hadn’t even heard about the Florida kerfuffle, I’ll have to look into that.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 21:39:40 +0000

Thanks for your honest words.

I’ll tell you in few words why we haven’t covered all those topics — unlike DailyKos or the RachelMaddow Show, we’re not llcs with research staffs. It’s just us, and that means our ability to write on subjects is limited, especially as we’ve moved to writing more on the basis of our own research. That means yup, we’re going to miss some things.

Do you have any ideas about how we could expand coverage within our time constraints?

Again, thanks.