Hugh Hewitt on David Frum: “[I]t is the worst kind of drive-by punditry that I have seen in a long time from you.”

Galley Friend R.M. sends along a link to this old Mark Jenkins piece about a life well-lived:

Mike and I gravitated to each other as teenagers. We both lived on the edge of Laramie, the boundless prairie our backyard. We were predetermined to be wild and became perfectly matched partners in misadventure. Climbing came naturally to us, and we scaled everything in sight. University buildings, boulders, smokestacks, mountain walls—our adolescent enthusiasm and daring far exceeding our ability. Soon enough even wide-open Wyoming started feeling small. We lied about our ages, got jobs on the railroad, lived in a tent behind the Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, banked the cash, then left high school to spend half a year hitchhiking through Europe, Africa, and Russia, climbing and chasing girls. We got arrested in Tunisia, Luxembourg, and Leningrad. We got robbed. We slept in the dirt.

Adventure sounds so innocent to our ears today. It’s good to remember that it isn’t.

Terrific, heart-breaking stuff. Treat yourself.

Don’t miss it.

The big news yesterday was that Netflix is coming to the Playstation 3. But Joystiq noted that the manner in which Netflix is arriving (a Blu-ray disc, not a firmware update), may be the result of Netflix making an end-run around its exclusivity agreement with Microsoft:

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities noted that the Blu-ray disc required for Netflix playback on the PS3 may circumvent exclusivity clauses instituted by Microsoft. “We believe that the exclusive arrangement limits Netflix’s ability to appear on the ‘dashboard’ for the PS3 or the Wii.”

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The other interesting news comes from this release: You can now purchase HD streams of London theater productions for your PC. It’s a little pricey ($15), and it’s a pain to get onto your real TV screen. But it is kind of nifty.

Extolling the virtues of the internet, Tyler Cowen writes:

The arrival of virtually every new cultural medium has been greeted with the charge that it truncates attention spans and represents the beginning of cultural collapse—the novel (in the 18th century), the comic book, rock ‘n’ roll, television, and now the Web.

It’s unclear to me how this disproves the base charge. Imagine, for instance, putting forth this argument:

The arrival of virtually every social development since the 1960s–the rise of no-fault divorce, the birth-control pill, the spread of legalized abortion, the delay of first marriage–has been greeted with the charge that it depresses fertility rates.

Every one of those developments in fact was greeted with the argument that they would depress fertility. And sure enough, the American fertility rate has fallen steadily. Just because people keep lamenting new factors contributing to a phenomenon, doesn’t mean the phenomenon doesn’t exist. Pace Cowen, is there anyone who thinks television hasn’t corrupted intellectual life?

If Cowen wants to argue that the internet is a net good for cultural life, that’s fine. People on the internet love to hear that! And best of all, it’s a non-falsifiable proposition.

I’d just ask this: We’re almost two decades into the internet now. What towering works has it produced that will be read in 20 years? What intellects has it pushed forward that were hitherto ignored? Where is the web’s Irving Kristol or Isaiah Berlin or Richard Neuhaus? Or even William Buckley?

The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one. The web gives us Glenn Reynolds and Matt Yglesias and Kathryn Jean Lopez and Andrew Sullivan. I suspect that this is not an accident.

Update: Damon Linker takes another shot at the kind of intellectual rigor which the internet fosters.

Ever wanted to see an anvil shot 200 feet into the air? Stupid question. Who hasn’t?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhQ4dE_RGnQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Link courtesy Galley Friend B.W.

Young writers take note: That’s how you write self-promotion without sounding like an ass. That probably took him, what, an hour? And it’s so self-hating and funny! If you’re going to pimp your work, you ought to be entertaining when you do it.