The View from Nowhere

The View from Nowhere: Questions and Answers

In pro journalism, American style, the View from Nowhere is a bid for trust that advertises the viewlessness of the news producer. Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position “impartial.” Second, it’s a means of defense against a style of criticism that is fully anticipated: charges of bias originating in partisan politics and the two-party system. Third: it’s an attempt to secure a kind of universal legitimacy that is implicitly denied to those who stake out positions or betray a point of view. American journalists have almost a lust for the View from Nowhere because they think it has more authority than any other possible stance.

[I]t has unearned authority in the American press. If in doing the serious work of journalism–digging, reporting, verification, mastering a beat–you develop a view, expressing that view does not diminish your authority. It may even add to it. The View from Nowhere doesn’t know from this.

That’s in the context of politics, where you have two (or possibly more) opinions or ideologies. It’s worse in science, where the rush to be in between (i.e. nowhere) means you move away from where the evidence is, and can give undeserved weight to groundless rants.

Now You're Cooking With Gas

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“Pyro board” is unfortunately as detailed as it gets; it appears to be a 2-D version of a Rubens tube. The sound waves give you high- and low-pressure regions, which show up as little/no flame or big flame (lower pressure = more flow, from Bernoulli’s principle).

The video of a one-dimensional system I linked to a while ago has some explanation to go along with it.