I've Been Semi-Fisked!

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my main goal as a blogger is to seize power. Well, I seem to have made quite the stride toward that goal, in that I have apparently taken possession (at least temporarily) of Owen’s nemesis, Jay Bullock, a.k.a. Folkbum.

Jay responded here to the column I wrote on education funding (his response was also posted on Fighting Bob, here), and then responded here to another column I wrote on the same subject.

I know you've all already memorized every word of my own columns, so quick go take a few minutes to read Folkbum's stuff.

Back? Good. I hate nitpicky point by point responses, so I’ll respond quickly to a few points before asking the rest of you a question.

1. My title “Wisconsin Has Great Schools” wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. The evidence clearly shows that it’s true, compared to schools in other states.

2. Jay writes: “‘Adequate funding,’ according to WEAC, has nothing to do with spending ‘a lot more.’ It has to do, rather, with spending a lot smarter.” I find it difficult, if not impossible, to take that statement seriously.

3. I don’t take shots at teachers, only at the teacher’s union.

4. I disagree that I'm describing "bare bones" education. In fact, I think I'm fairly accurately describing the services Wisconsin currently provides.

5. I'm not "dismissing" poor and minority students. I'm saying there's a limit to the government's responsibility toward their educations.

Jay had some larger points, to which I’ll try to respond more fully later on – I'm really busy this week catching up at work, since I don’t get my summers off.

Oops. That sounded like a shot at teachers. I hereby retract the above statement.

Now to my question: at one point, Jay writes “Lance Burri seems to be on vacation. He's not just ignoring me.”

Well, it’s true I wasn’t ignoring him, but his first post was up about a week before I left on vacation. Since I don’t check his blog regularly, I didn’t know he was semi-fisking me.

So, my question for all of you: how do you know when somebody’s writing about you? I’m already signed up for Technorati (although I’m not entirely sure how it works) and have an automated Google search set up, but neither did me any good in this case.