Solipsisms

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

You readers have probably heard me say that I’m skeptical of any news/media that I don’t report, write or edit myself. Sometimes, I’m not even too sure about my own stuff. In some ways, it’s related to my nature—I’m pretty much suspicious of everything. But it’s also related to the way I think the media should work. I’m a big subscriber to the “marketplace of ideas” theory that says people are smart enough to compare good ideas and bad ideas to decide which is the “better” idea. But to do this, people have to hear the bad ideas, if only to shout them down. Obviously, they also have to hear the good ideas.

But, I’ll tell you, it’s a long freakin’ view. When you talk about issues like creationism vs. Darwinism or human-caused vs. naturally occurring global warming or environmentalism vs. consumerism or deism vs. humanism, humanity swings like a century-arc pendulum.

What’s odd about the two paragraphs immediately above this one is I hadn’t really intended to write about that topic. The writing business is funny, and sometimes writers are surprised by things that lurk just below the surface. I’d intended to mention a blog a buddy, Terry McCarthy, is writing in Baghdad. He’s working for ABC News, and the blog is called “Bizarre Bazaar.”

You can find it at http://blogs.abcnews.com/bizarrebazaar.

McCarthy was the West Coast Bureau Chief when I was stringing for Time magazine. He’s more hawkish than I, but he’s spent some time in Nevada (including Burning Man), and I tend to trust him when he writes something. At any rate, if you want first-hand accounts of what’s happening in Iraq these days, you’ll want to check out this blog.