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Younghusband
Author

Younghusband

Date

July 2nd, 2006

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Watch out North Korea!

GI Korea reports that our Bob was sighted at the Korean DMZ by the News21 team.

… were just about to leave when a man walked out of a different office and introduced himself as Bob Kaplan. I recognized that his name sounded vaguely familiar but was too tired to process why, so I shook his hand and introduced myself. Katie, on the other hand, asked him if by Bob, he meant Robert, and if by “Robert Kaplan,” he meant Robert Kaplan, contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and author of Imperial Grunts…

Lucky! Read what he says about the military as a corporation, and the writing skills of bloggers.

Comments to this entry

The Marmot’s Hole » Blog Archive » Kaplan At The JSA
July 2, 2006
11:39 pm
[...] News 21’s Catherine (via Coming Anarchy’s Younghusband) reports a Kaplan sighting—at the JSA. Coukl this sighting presage a book, or at least an article, on the North Korean missile crisis or the JSA? A travelogue-cum-IR book similar to Eastward to Tartary would be an incredible addition to the sparse assortment of professional opinions written for a popular audience on the Koreas. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
Curzon
July 3, 2006
5:18 am
At some point he commented on how he thought that blogging makes people worse writers.


I can see how that can be true. Looking through the archives, I don't believe it is true here. And certainly it's a good thing for me as someone who is not a professional writer -- like a daily workout, blogging keeps my writing and edit skills up to snuff.
Kirk H. Sowell
July 3, 2006
8:59 pm
Curzon: I agree, but I think it depends on what kind of writing you do. If you do serious writing on your blog, then blogging helps because you are constantly going through the exercise of thinking through an argument and laying out your analysis. I've also noticed that it improves my spelling, since I copy and paste the preview onto a word document before publishing and do a spell check. So I've noticed that I have to correct fewer words than I used to. But I think that Kaplan was probably thinking about the more typcial blog, where the blogger just writes "Whoa dude, I can't believe this happened" and then just links to the story.
GI Korea
July 3, 2006
9:14 pm
I have to agree with the above arguements that regular blogging does improve writing skills especially as mentioned, spelling skills because I definitely do not misspell as many words as I used too. Anyway I am extremely jealous of the News21 team. What a lucky break for them.
Gollios
July 5, 2006
7:47 pm
I think a great deal depends on the kind of blogging/commenting you do. The posts at CA tend to be well written, and a lot of serious discussion takes place. Comments are substantive and the quality of writing is high.

However, if you look at, say, DailyKos or LittleGreenFootballs you'll get a lot of pure emoting and some howlingly bad writing. Blogging is just a tool--quality depends on who is writing and why.
Sonagi
July 5, 2006
11:53 pm
Better spell check "argument," GI Korea ;)