Interesting Links for 21-12-2012

[andrewducker]

• A success story from a magazine moving from print to digital.
  (tags: media printing computers web business )
• Now the KKK are picketing the Westboro Baptist Church. My brain just exploded
  (tags: viaJennieRigg EpicWTF usa homophobia racism lgbt )
• The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey - A welcome visit to the alternative sources
  (tags: history

Comments

[major_clanger]

Re the KKK/WBC spat, I am reminded of the famous description of fox-hunting: "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible".

[andrewducker]

Yes. I'm boggled by the whole thing. Phelps has a history of anti-racism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_phelps#Civil_rights_cases
which makes no sense to me, but then I don't live in the twisted structures inside in his head.

[nancylebov]

Hypothesis: Phelps is (or became) a naturally pugnacious, abusive person who figured out there was more money in real life trolling than in a normal law career.

[andrewducker]

It's an interesting theory - how would we formulate a test to differentiate between that, mental isssues, and genuine belief?

[nancylebov]

One paragraph down in the wikipedia article suggest that Phelps' sense of good will was at least not reliable.

Unfortunately, it would probably not be easy at this stage to find whether there was a big change in his personality between his anti-racist days and Westboro. There would be a lot of hindsight bias. If he was keeping a diary back to his anti-racist days, it could be informative.