Making sausage

A reader of mine suggested I point out some cool new features of NetNewsWire 2, such as its ability to synchronize between machines. Right now I'll focus on its cool ability to highlight differences, or in other words, to track the modifications made to a blog entry. Let's try it out on "George Kaplan's" latest post to the Hardline, shall we?

We'll focus on the last paragraph. It started out as

Some readers may question the significance of these conversion stories. "Sure," they will say, "Flew and Sartre have come to believe in God, but why should we? If they jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" Well, they are right about one thing: knowing what we do about bridges, we should never jump off one only because someone else does. But it seems to me that we should be at least a little bit curious why someone, if we took him to be an otherwise reasonable chap, would do such a thing. This thinking would then bring us to investigate the matter further, considering all of the evidence available: a far more charitable and intellectually responsible approach than one which simply dismisses someone as a senile loon.

If you are a Hardline subscriber, you would have noticed that the post was updated a bit later. Apparently the people in charge of Catholic talking points sent George a memo, and reminded him that you should never refer to members of your own flock as "senile loons". So George spun it, and you would have seen this:

Some readers may question the significance of these conversion stories. "Sure," they will say, "Flew and Sartre have come to believe in God, but why should we? If they jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" Well, they are right about one thing: knowing what we do about bridges, we should never jump off one only because someone else does. But it seems to me that we should be at least a little bit curious why someone, if we took him to be an otherwise reasonable chap, would do such a thing. This thinking would then bring us to investigate the matter further, considering all of the evidence available: a far more charitable and intellectually responsible approach than one which simply dismisses someone as a senile loon ridicules those who have the courage and confidence to take the leap.

George Lakoff would be proud. But it still wasn't good enough for perfectionist George Kaplan, so he added extraneous insults about NPR and Newtonian physics. NetNewsWire would have shown it like this:

Some readers may question the significance of these conversion stories. "Sure," they will say, "Flew and Sartre have come to believe in God, but why should we? If they jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" Well, they are right about one thing: given what physics teaches us about gravity, and knowing what we do about bridges, we should never jump off one only because someone else does. But it seems to me that we should be at least a little bit curious why someone, if we took him to be an otherwise reasonable chap, would do such a thing. Perhaps the bridge was not as high as we originally thought; perhaps there was something at the bottom to cushion their fall; perhaps it was either jump or else be forced to attend a live broadcast of Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." This thinking would then bring us to investigate the matter further, considering all of the evidence available: a far more charitable and intellectually responsible approach than one which simply ridicules those who have the courage and confidence to take the leap.

I think this is a very handy feature. It shows you the editorial process up close by highlighting every little change that's made. What do you think, George?