April 30, 2002
I'd like to thank...
: I'm very proud and happy that two of my sites -- Epicurious and Style.com -- were nominated for Webbys.
Nonetheless, I was disappointed that the high-falutin' "International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences" did not see fit to notice and award the only new trend on the Internet in two years: Weblogs.
That's what is wrong with awards. They are always two steps behind.ntm fivre mp3
Extra! Extra!
: Click here to subscribe to the new L.A. paper. No, it doesn't exist yet. But if you all show passionate interest in the thing, then it will exist.
: Bennett on the paper.ntm fivre mp3
A year after
: ABC plans to devote a full day of programming to the one-year anniversary come Sept. 11.ntm fivre mp3
America
: Quick responds quickly to the post below.ntm fivre mp3
I'd like to thank...
: I'm very proud and happy that two of my sites -- Epicurious and Style.com -- were nominated for Webbys.
Nonetheless, I was disappointed that the high-falutin' "International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences" did not see fit to notice and award the only new trend on the Internet in two years: Weblogs.
That's what is wrong with awards. They are always two steps behind.ntm fivre mp3
Extra! Extra!
: Click here to subscribe to the new L.A. paper. No, it doesn't exist yet. But if you all show passionate interest in the thing, then it will exist.
: Bennett on the paper.ntm fivre mp3
A year after
: ABC plans to devote a full day of programming to the one-year anniversary come Sept. 11.ntm fivre mp3
America
: Quick responds quickly to the post below.ntm fivre mp3
April 29, 2002
A nation of ideas and ideals
: I spent last week vacationing in Williamsburg, soaking in history along with sunlight (thank you, God) and beer (ditto) and Busch Gardens water rides (a price of paternity).
Now it so happens that my son soon has to appear as Thomas Jefferson in a fourth-grade wax museum (no, I don't know what that is; it sounds like a teacher's clever way to get a little quiet -- "Johnny, make like wax!"). Anyway, it was fortuitous that an ersatz Thomas Jefferson happened to be speaking to a large assemblage of citizens (and tourists) behind the Governor's Palace the day we were there. My son stood at the feet of the great man and soaked up his ever word on a digital recorder. 1774 meets 2002.
I soaked up his words as well, for I found everything he had to say all the more relevant these days.
After the speech, while taking a walk with my son, I told him that now is a particularly good time for us to study our history, for we need to remind ourselves of what we're defending as others attack us; we need to remember the ideas and ideals we stand for; we need to reaffirm our belief in America. I'm not usually quite that dull and pontifical a dad (or at least I hope I'm not), but I meant what I said, for that afternoon, I heard Thomas eloquently recite our democratic creed:ntm fivre mp3
We believe in the right to free assembly and free speech.
We believe in the right of a people to elect their government.
We believe in the right of a people to self-determination.
We believe in freedom of religion.
We believe it is the responsibility of the majority to protect the rights of the minority.
We believe a government should represent its people.
We believe all people are created equal.ntm fivre mp3
This is what we believe as Americans. This is what we as Americans brought to the world now more than two centuries ago. This is the touchstone of modern civilization. This is democracy.
Now look at the combatants in the Middle East. How many uphold the right of their people to elect their government? One. How many do not allow their citizens free assembly and free speech and freedom of religion? Too many. How many treat all their people as equal? Too few. How many are fighting against the right of the Jews and the Palestinians to self-determination? How many of these people are attacking us for these beliefs, these ideals and ideals?ntm fivre mp3
Sorry to be so basic, so obvious, so fundamental. But I do think it is time to remind ourselves of these fundmentals. And I could tell that most or all of the 200-or-so citizen-tourists on that green lawn were inspired to hear Thomas Jefferson remind us of them, especially nowntm fivre mp3
: Andrea Harris echoes the same sentiment, less sentimentally: One effect of September 11th, on me anyway, was the immediate banishment from my psyche of any vestiges of the belief that there was something inherently wrong with being an American. Anyway, Opinion Journal is starting a new pro-Western Civilization column: The Western Front. Some might quibble: how much more pro-Western can the Wall Street Journal be? But not me. That column at Opinion Journal begins with something that will warm the hearts of many a blogger: a slap at a journalism prof. "The problem with America," a college professor told me recently, "is that it can't get over the idea that it is somehow special among nations." His name is Robert Jensen and he teaches journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. He's flat wrong. The problem with America and Western civilization in general is that it lost confidence in itself and started accepting relativist arguments....
The main purpose of this column will be to argue for rebuilding confidence in the West's ideal of human freedom--spiritual, political and economic liberty....
Now it's time for Western culture to stand up again. Worries about imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, should be cast off. Global free trade isn't imperialistic; it's the spread of a natural right, economic freedom. Demanding that a country respect its people's basic rights isn't imperialistic, and neither is standing for an unfettered media. The column has its predictably shrill moments (trying to blame the media for a lack of pride in all Western civilization... oh, give it up, Journal). And we still need to guard against jingoism and blind nationalism and smug superiority. We are not better because we are American. It is our ideas and ideals that are better. Indeed, as the column ends: Yet whatever its failures, the West is worth defending. Indeed, it is in rising above these shortcomings that give hope to the world, establish peace among men and spread freedom to lands that have known only tyranny. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Let's start acting like it. Tom would be proud. ntm fivre mp3
Searching searches
: Via Matthew Haughey, an impressive new meeting of Alexa and Google: search for a site and find out what people who visit that site also visit and find the links and a traffic ranking. Try NickDenton.org. (I am apparently disadvantaged by switching urls to buzzmachine.com; it hasn't scraped me for a bit under the new address.)ntm fivre mp3
Remember anthrax
: The NY Post -- with its cousin, the Weekly Standard -- have a sizable package today demanding action on anthrax and arguing that it's lazy of the feds to assume that this was a domestic attack. Here's the Standard piece, plus a Podhoretz column taking on the FBI, plus a Post editorial: Sadly, we have no answers this morning - just a growing conviction that Washington, and the FBI in particular, aren't even asking questions. The power of celebrity: Here's an observation Lileks and fellow parents of young ones will understand; others won't.
Tonight, Nick Jr. had a special saying goodbye to Steve, the host of Blue's Clues (he's "going to college") and saying hello to his "brother," Joe, the new host of the show. It was an event in my 5-year-old's life.
What's amazing is that even young children now understand the power of celebrity.
This, too, is American. ntm fivre mp3
Los Ahngeles in the summah
: It's sad when a Californian -- a Southern Californian, a Southern Californian politician -- tries to act all continental cosmopolitan -- and fails.
I was listening to NPR this afternoon report on the breakup of Los Angeles (potentially losing the Valley, the port, and Hollywood and leaving... what?) when the mayor complained that he didn't want to see the city become just a bunch of enclaves.
But he didn't say enclave. That is, he didn't say en-CLAYVE or ahn-CLAYVE.
He said ahn-clahve.
It was a small moment. But I enjoyed it.ntm fivre mp3
Rossi's art show is on
: Details here.ntm fivre mp3
A nation of ideas and ideals
: I spent last week vacationing in Williamsburg, soaking in history along with sunlight (thank you, God) and beer (ditto) and Busch Gardens water rides (a price of paternity).
Now it so happens that my son soon has to appear as Thomas Jefferson in a fourth-grade wax museum (no, I don't know what that is; it sounds like a teacher's clever way to get a little quiet -- "Johnny, make like wax!"). Anyway, it was fortuitous that an ersatz Thomas Jefferson happened to be speaking to a large assemblage of citizens (and tourists) behind the Governor's Palace the day we were there. My son stood at the feet of the great man and soaked up his ever word on a digital recorder. 1774 meets 2002.
I soaked up his words as well, for I found everything he had to say all the more relevant these days.
After the speech, while taking a walk with my son, I told him that now is a particularly good time for us to study our history, for we need to remind ourselves of what we're defending as others attack us; we need to remember the ideas and ideals we stand for; we need to reaffirm our belief in America. I'm not usually quite that dull and pontifical a dad (or at least I hope I'm not), but I meant what I said, for that afternoon, I heard Thomas eloquently recite our democratic creed:ntm fivre mp3
We believe in the right to free assembly and free speech.
We believe in the right of a people to elect their government.
We believe in the right of a people to self-determination.
We believe in freedom of religion.
We believe it is the responsibility of the majority to protect the rights of the minority.
We believe a government should represent its people.
We believe all people are created equal.ntm fivre mp3
This is what we believe as Americans. This is what we as Americans brought to the world now more than two centuries ago. This is the touchstone of modern civilization. This is democracy.
Now look at the combatants in the Middle East. How many uphold the right of their people to elect their government? One. How many do not allow their citizens free assembly and free speech and freedom of religion? Too many. How many treat all their people as equal? Too few. How many are fighting against the right of the Jews and the Palestinians to self-determination? How many of these people are attacking us for these beliefs, these ideals and ideals?ntm fivre mp3
Sorry to be so basic, so obvious, so fundamental. But I do think it is time to remind ourselves of these fundmentals. And I could tell that most or all of the 200-or-so citizen-tourists on that green lawn were inspired to hear Thomas Jefferson remind us of them, especially nowntm fivre mp3
: Andrea Harris echoes the same sentiment, less sentimentally: One effect of September 11th, on me anyway, was the immediate banishment from my psyche of any vestiges of the belief that there was something inherently wrong with being an American. Anyway, Opinion Journal is starting a new pro-Western Civilization column: The Western Front. Some might quibble: how much more pro-Western can the Wall Street Journal be? But not me. That column at Opinion Journal begins with something that will warm the hearts of many a blogger: a slap at a journalism prof. "The problem with America," a college professor told me recently, "is that it can't get over the idea that it is somehow special among nations." His name is Robert Jensen and he teaches journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. He's flat wrong. The problem with America and Western civilization in general is that it lost confidence in itself and started accepting relativist arguments....
The main purpose of this column will be to argue for rebuilding confidence in the West's ideal of human freedom--spiritual, political and economic liberty....
Now it's time for Western culture to stand up again. Worries about imperialism, especially cultural imperialism, should be cast off. Global free trade isn't imperialistic; it's the spread of a natural right, economic freedom. Demanding that a country respect its people's basic rights isn't imperialistic, and neither is standing for an unfettered media. The column has its predictably shrill moments (trying to blame the media for a lack of pride in all Western civilization... oh, give it up, Journal). And we still need to guard against jingoism and blind nationalism and smug superiority. We are not better because we are American. It is our ideas and ideals that are better. Indeed, as the column ends: Yet whatever its failures, the West is worth defending. Indeed, it is in rising above these shortcomings that give hope to the world, establish peace among men and spread freedom to lands that have known only tyranny. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Let's start acting like it. Tom would be proud. ntm fivre mp3
Searching searches
: Via Matthew Haughey, an impressive new meeting of Alexa and Google: search for a site and find out what people who visit that site also visit and find the links and a traffic ranking. Try NickDenton.org. (I am apparently disadvantaged by switching urls to buzzmachine.com; it hasn't scraped me for a bit under the new address.)ntm fivre mp3
Remember anthrax
: The NY Post -- with its cousin, the Weekly Standard -- have a sizable package today demanding action on anthrax and arguing that it's lazy of the feds to assume that this was a domestic attack. Here's the Standard piece, plus a Podhoretz column taking on the FBI, plus a Post editorial: Sadly, we have no answers this morning - just a growing conviction that Washington, and the FBI in particular, aren't even asking questions. The power of celebrity: Here's an observation Lileks and fellow parents of young ones will understand; others won't.
Tonight, Nick Jr. had a special saying goodbye to Steve, the host of Blue's Clues (he's "going to college") and saying hello to his "brother," Joe, the new host of the show. It was an event in my 5-year-old's life.
What's amazing is that even young children now understand the power of celebrity.
This, too, is American. ntm fivre mp3
Los Ahngeles in the summah
: It's sad when a Californian -- a Southern Californian, a Southern Californian politician -- tries to act all continental cosmopolitan -- and fails.
I was listening to NPR this afternoon report on the breakup of Los Angeles (potentially losing the Valley, the port, and Hollywood and leaving... what?) when the mayor complained that he didn't want to see the city become just a bunch of enclaves.
But he didn't say enclave. That is, he didn't say en-CLAYVE or ahn-CLAYVE.
He said ahn-clahve.
It was a small moment. But I enjoyed it.ntm fivre mp3
Rossi's art show is on
: Details here.ntm fivre mp3
April 28, 2002
The Mr. Bill Show
: I've seen the rumors that Bill Clinton is up to replace Bryant Gumbel in a few places.
I love the idea for one reason: It would be different. CBS has failed many times to create a successful morning show by copying the other successful shows.
Clinton would be entertaining. If you love him or hate him, you'll be entertained by him in any case. He's smart. He's born for media. He's charming. He's a supreme communicator. He'd have something to say. And wouldn't that be fun to watch?ntm fivre mp3
Search me
: Nick Denton added a cool Google search of his site to his page. I plan to steal it if he lets me.
: I just did it anyway. My son showed me how to create the Google search, then I stole Nick's adaptation of it. Thanks, Nick.ntm fivre mp3
Buzzzzz
: Kottke is trying to tell someone something: You know how after you poke a hornet's nest with a stick and all the hornets come streaming out and they are all buzzing around pissed off and they sting you with their stingers but it's not really their fault because they're hornets and that's all hornets know how to do even though all you would like is for them to stop stinging you and go back into their nest? Yeah, that. Get me rewrite: Ken Layne is right: It's apparently a good thing when Matt Welch loses his internet access for 40 hours, for he spends the time staring intently at the LA Times until the newsprint spontaneously combusts and then he writes about it. Go there and start with "One last note about the LA Times..." (well, that's a lie if I ever saw one) and keep reading. He gives you what should be a 101 course in journalism at the University of the Streets. ntm fivre mp3
Matt demonstrates why a reporter showing off his writing style ("He works amid ghosts. Downtown ghosts. Buildings and streets that once held a city together...") is a service to no reader (save perhaps the writer's possibly proud mother). I hate having to read a story for 10 paragraphs before getting to the point.
That, students, is why God invented The Lead (or, if you insist on not getting to the point in the first paragraph, at least get to it by the third in what became known as The Hook Graph). Getting to the point is the most basic service to the reader. The reader is busy. The reader bought a newspaper to find out what the hell is going on. So tell your dear reader.
When I was TV critic at People, I started ending my reviews with grades (which later became the essential conceit of Entertainment Weekly) and many colleagues actually got mad at me; they said that people wouldn't read the review if they could get a summary in one letter; I said that was exactly why I did it: It's a service to get to the point.
I've been telling some people lately that this is one lesson print can take back from the Web: Print, too, needs a good user interface. On the Web, we have very little space and time to get to the point and to entice our readers to invest the time in a scroll or a click. Print reporters and headline writers would do well to remember this even when writing for their captive readers: Get to the point in the head and lead and spare us your show-off style.ntm fivre mp3
Matt then respectfully takes the Times to task for not reporting until now on the new newspaper project, he, Ken, and a few others are working on. Reporting on yourself and your own industry is tough but necessary and it's pitiful that the Times came in last here. He also tweaks them for printing an unsubstantiated rumor that Rupert Murdoch is an investor. I wish Murdoch were involved and if he isn't, I hope the rumor at least gives him the idea. LA could use a NY Post. It is a far better model for an alternative paper than the NY Sun. The Post isn't about journalism. The Post isn't about showing off. The Post is about New York.
I love tabloids because they get to the point. They think like a reader. They fight on behalf of the reader. They respect for readers' time and don't waste it on pud-pulling stylistics. They aren't afraid to say something.ntm fivre mp3
And then (or actually, this being a weblog, first) Matt uses a Howard Rosenberg TV column to give a wise lecture on the virtues of covering news -- yes, even crime -- instead of just sucking thumbs in 17-part series, as too many columnists and prize-hungry newspaper editors do; again, they are more interested in showing off than actually serving the reader's needs. ntm fivre mp3
Read it all. And get ready to subscribe to the paper coming from Matt, Ken, et al.ntm fivre mp3
: I hate that I often dredge up stories from my professional past here. It's so damned egotistical (it's showing off) and it makes me seem like some old warhorse hack (it makes me feel as if I should start writing my memoirs... but I'm only half the age of Jim Bellows, who just wrote his).
Anyway, Matt's post about TV criticism in the LA Times reminded me of the time I almost went to work for the Times. So here's one last story from my past (that's a lie):
After I left San Francisco for New York, I quickly missed California. At first, I missed Northern California but soon it was generic California, anyplace with iceplant on the freeways. So I went job-hunting at the LA Times. I ended up seeing the then-editor of the entertainment section and he wanted to hire me as a second TV critic, besides Rosenberg. He said he wanted a critic "who actually watches TV." (I don't mean to slap Rosenberg; he has always been very nice to me,but it's what the guy said). I loved the idea; was going to take the job. But then, at the last minute, the entertainment editor got bad news: He wasn't allowed to hire another TV critic; office politics, he explained. But a top editor offered me a consolation prize: I could come to the paper to cover the LA Olympics Arts Festival. Me? Arts? I'm a TV guy, a tabloid guy, a mass guy, a guy of the people, a cultural slob! I don't do ballet. I don't do ethnic folk dance. I don't do performance art. What the hell would I do in that job except growl? I said no. My mentor and pal at People, Peter Travers (now the movie critic and more at Rolling Stone) used all this, without my knowledge, to get my other mentor at People, then-editor Pat Ryan, to make me TV critic at the magazine. And that's how I became a TV critic afterall. And the rest is... Entertainment Weekly.ntm fivre mp3
: Howard Owens also weighs in on the LA paper here (he could use permalinks; I went to some effort to get you this one), raising some concerns about the business of papers. I say it depends on the business plan. The new paper is not going to defeat the Times in classified ads or big display advertising; it can work as a business with extremely low costs and targeted advertising and a loyal audience paying a fair price. My one business concern for them is distribution. It's easy to distribute in New York; we have newsstands -- and we have sidewalks on which to place them. We also have homeless people happy to don ugly T-shirts and sell newspapers to people walking on said sidewalks. LA is going to be tough. They need creative distribution -- say, along with the morning copies of Variety, on freeway exit ramps, and such. Maybe parking valets can double as hawkers.ntm fivre mp3
The Mr. Bill Show
: I've seen the rumors that Bill Clinton is up to replace Bryant Gumbel in a few places.
I love the idea for one reason: It would be different. CBS has failed many times to create a successful morning show by copying the other successful shows.
Clinton would be entertaining. If you love him or hate him, you'll be entertained by him in any case. He's smart. He's born for media. He's charming. He's a supreme communicator. He'd have something to say. And wouldn't that be fun to watch?ntm fivre mp3
Search me
: Nick Denton added a cool Google search of his site to his page. I plan to steal it if he lets me.
: I just did it anyway. My son showed me how to create the Google search, then I stole Nick's adaptation of it. Thanks, Nick.ntm fivre mp3
Buzzzzz
: Kottke is trying to tell someone something: You know how after you poke a hornet's nest with a stick and all the hornets come streaming out and they are all buzzing around pissed off and they sting you with their stingers but it's not really their fault because they're hornets and that's all hornets know how to do even though all you would like is for them to stop stinging you and go back into their nest? Yeah, that. Get me rewrite: Ken Layne is right: It's apparently a good thing when Matt Welch loses his internet access for 40 hours, for he spends the time staring intently at the LA Times until the newsprint spontaneously combusts and then he writes about it. Go there and start with "One last note about the LA Times..." (well, that's a lie if I ever saw one) and keep reading. He gives you what should be a 101 course in journalism at the University of the Streets. ntm fivre mp3
Matt demonstrates why a reporter showing off his writing style ("He works amid ghosts. Downtown ghosts. Buildings and streets that once held a city together...") is a service to no reader (save perhaps the writer's possibly proud mother). I hate having to read a story for 10 paragraphs before getting to the point.
That, students, is why God invented The Lead (or, if you insist on not getting to the point in the first paragraph, at least get to it by the third in what became known as The Hook Graph). Getting to the point is the most basic service to the reader. The reader is busy. The reader bought a newspaper to find out what the hell is going on. So tell your dear reader.
When I was TV critic at People, I started ending my reviews with grades (which later became the essential conceit of Entertainment Weekly) and many colleagues actually got mad at me; they said that people wouldn't read the review if they could get a summary in one letter; I said that was exactly why I did it: It's a service to get to the point.
I've been telling some people lately that this is one lesson print can take back from the Web: Print, too, needs a good user interface. On the Web, we have very little space and time to get to the point and to entice our readers to invest the time in a scroll or a click. Print reporters and headline writers would do well to remember this even when writing for their captive readers: Get to the point in the head and lead and spare us your show-off style.ntm fivre mp3
Matt then respectfully takes the Times to task for not reporting until now on the new newspaper project, he, Ken, and a few others are working on. Reporting on yourself and your own industry is tough but necessary and it's pitiful that the Times came in last here. He also tweaks them for printing an unsubstantiated rumor that Rupert Murdoch is an investor. I wish Murdoch were involved and if he isn't, I hope the rumor at least gives him the idea. LA could use a NY Post. It is a far better model for an alternative paper than the NY Sun. The Post isn't about journalism. The Post isn't about showing off. The Post is about New York.
I love tabloids because they get to the point. They think like a reader. They fight on behalf of the reader. They respect for readers' time and don't waste it on pud-pulling stylistics. They aren't afraid to say something.ntm fivre mp3
And then (or actually, this being a weblog, first) Matt uses a Howard Rosenberg TV column to give a wise lecture on the virtues of covering news -- yes, even crime -- instead of just sucking thumbs in 17-part series, as too many columnists and prize-hungry newspaper editors do; again, they are more interested in showing off than actually serving the reader's needs. ntm fivre mp3
Read it all. And get ready to subscribe to the paper coming from Matt, Ken, et al.ntm fivre mp3
: I hate that I often dredge up stories from my professional past here. It's so damned egotistical (it's showing off) and it makes me seem like some old warhorse hack (it makes me feel as if I should start writing my memoirs... but I'm only half the age of Jim Bellows, who just wrote his).
Anyway, Matt's post about TV criticism in the LA Times reminded me of the time I almost went to work for the Times. So here's one last story from my past (that's a lie):
After I left San Francisco for New York, I quickly missed California. At first, I missed Northern California but soon it was generic California, anyplace with iceplant on the freeways. So I went job-hunting at the LA Times. I ended up seeing the then-editor of the entertainment section and he wanted to hire me as a second TV critic, besides Rosenberg. He said he wanted a critic "who actually watches TV." (I don't mean to slap Rosenberg; he has always been very nice to me,but it's what the guy said). I loved the idea; was going to take the job. But then, at the last minute, the entertainment editor got bad news: He wasn't allowed to hire another TV critic; office politics, he explained. But a top editor offered me a consolation prize: I could come to the paper to cover the LA Olympics Arts Festival. Me? Arts? I'm a TV guy, a tabloid guy, a mass guy, a guy of the people, a cultural slob! I don't do ballet. I don't do ethnic folk dance. I don't do performance art. What the hell would I do in that job except growl? I said no. My mentor and pal at People, Peter Travers (now the movie critic and more at Rolling Stone) used all this, without my knowledge, to get my other mentor at People, then-editor Pat Ryan, to make me TV critic at the magazine. And that's how I became a TV critic afterall. And the rest is... Entertainment Weekly.ntm fivre mp3
: Howard Owens also weighs in on the LA paper here (he could use permalinks; I went to some effort to get you this one), raising some concerns about the business of papers. I say it depends on the business plan. The new paper is not going to defeat the Times in classified ads or big display advertising; it can work as a business with extremely low costs and targeted advertising and a loyal audience paying a fair price. My one business concern for them is distribution. It's easy to distribute in New York; we have newsstands -- and we have sidewalks on which to place them. We also have homeless people happy to don ugly T-shirts and sell newspapers to people walking on said sidewalks. LA is going to be tough. They need creative distribution -- say, along with the morning copies of Variety, on freeway exit ramps, and such. Maybe parking valets can double as hawkers.ntm fivre mp3
April 27, 2002
Ovation
: I predict that when the Spiderman movie shows the World Trade Center towers, audiences everywhere will erupt in applause.ntm fivre mp3
Tragedy
: We are not the only country to suffer the tragedy of school shootings.ntm fivre mp3
Ovation
: I predict that when the Spiderman movie shows the World Trade Center towers, audiences everywhere will erupt in applause.ntm fivre mp3
Tragedy
: We are not the only country to suffer the tragedy of school shootings.ntm fivre mp3
April 26, 2002
Welcome home
: Mr. Hartung's LakeFX is back.ntm fivre mp3
Reply to sender
: Efrem (below) forwards the response he got from saudiembassy.net: Thanks Efram. We think the United States of Israel is a great little country too. Maybe one day it will be our fourteenth province. Just kidding. And Will Vehrs sends this to the Saudis: Align yourselves with freedom and democracy, not with
violence and oppression. Support peace with Israel, not the Intifada. Urge the Palestinians to accept the boundries of a new state and help them build a nation based on a free people and free markets. Seek the US as your partner in peace and prosperity; stop the support of dark forces that attempt to undermine the only nation that can offer you military and economic security.
You stand at a historic crossroads. Follow the suicide bombers and radical Islamofascists into the dustbin of history, or embrace peace and freedom, teach it to your children, and achieve greatness. ntm fivre mp3
Welcome home
: Mr. Hartung's LakeFX is back.ntm fivre mp3
Reply to sender
: Efrem (below) forwards the response he got from saudiembassy.net: Thanks Efram. We think the United States of Israel is a great little country too. Maybe one day it will be our fourteenth province. Just kidding. And Will Vehrs sends this to the Saudis: Align yourselves with freedom and democracy, not with
violence and oppression. Support peace with Israel, not the Intifada. Urge the Palestinians to accept the boundries of a new state and help them build a nation based on a free people and free markets. Seek the US as your partner in peace and prosperity; stop the support of dark forces that attempt to undermine the only nation that can offer you military and economic security.
You stand at a historic crossroads. Follow the suicide bombers and radical Islamofascists into the dustbin of history, or embrace peace and freedom, teach it to your children, and achieve greatness. ntm fivre mp3
April 25, 2002
Tell the Saudis what you think of them...
: Not that they listen but... Let's have a little fun.
So the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is threatening to threaten us with playing the oil card.
VodkaPundit says what the Prince can do with his threats.
Better yet, why don't we all tell the Prince ourselves!
The Saudi embassy has its own email address: info@saudiembassy.net
So send them email directly -- just in case they don't read blogs.
While you're at it, also CC this address I just created -- saudisuck@mail.com so we can all share.ntm fivre mp3
: And already, the mail bag starts filling up. This from Efrem Zionist Jr.: Hi! How y'all doin'? Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that I think--and I'm speaking as an American here--I think you've got a great little country. I don't care what anybody says, it's not just 865,000 square miles of crude oil, suicide pilots, and anti-Semitism. I think you're going to make a fine 51st state. Don't worry, the Pledge of Allegiance is easy to learn!
No, no, just kidding. I'm sure you'll start off as a terrortory of the United States. I mean territory. But no! I'm just joking, really. You know how us Jew-lovers are, always cracking wise.
So, which hand should I chop off for sending this? Kidding! A is for Andrew...: Jim Treacher starts the blogictionary. One true entry: Instalanche: A sudden influx of thousands of hits that threatens to crush your server, brought on by a link from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com. Appropriate for today, I suggest blogspotty: The reliability of Blogspot. ntm fivre mp3
The Wall, cont.
: Eric Olsen weighs in on the wall.
: And a reader, Steven Postrel, counters on Olsen's site.
We will soon build a wall between prowall and antiwall bloggers.ntm fivre mp3
Maybe the French are right
: Well that headline gets your attention, eh?
Those protesting French are protesting not only their own insane election returns but also the corporate performance at Vivendi. Shareholders and employees "stormed" (that's what the French always do: storm) the company's annual meeting.
A wonderful idea.
What if we did the same at AOL Time Warner's annual meeting? I said when the merger with AOL occurred that it was a big, fat mistake, that it was just Time Warner being frightened of its own future (and lack of strategy for it), that AOL was not worth anywhere near what was being calculated in the deal. Time Inc. had done things like this before; when I was there, they were afraid that Chris Whittle's company (which put magazine's in doctors' waiting rooms) was going to eat its lunch and so they bought a big piece of his pie for too much money. They ended up writing all that off when Whittle croaked.
So now it turns out that the AOL Time Warner merger was a $54 billion boo-boo.
I still own too much of their stock, having worked there for a decade.
I'm depressed.
Maybe I should do some storming.ntm fivre mp3
Oops
: I meant:
Blogger : Journalist :: Butterfly : Caterpillar.
It makes a big difference.ntm fivre mp3
Tell the Saudis what you think of them...
: Not that they listen but... Let's have a little fun.
So the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is threatening to threaten us with playing the oil card.
VodkaPundit says what the Prince can do with his threats.
Better yet, why don't we all tell the Prince ourselves!
The Saudi embassy has its own email address: info@saudiembassy.net
So send them email directly -- just in case they don't read blogs.
While you're at it, also CC this address I just created -- saudisuck@mail.com so we can all share.ntm fivre mp3
: And already, the mail bag starts filling up. This from Efrem Zionist Jr.: Hi! How y'all doin'? Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that I think--and I'm speaking as an American here--I think you've got a great little country. I don't care what anybody says, it's not just 865,000 square miles of crude oil, suicide pilots, and anti-Semitism. I think you're going to make a fine 51st state. Don't worry, the Pledge of Allegiance is easy to learn!
No, no, just kidding. I'm sure you'll start off as a terrortory of the United States. I mean territory. But no! I'm just joking, really. You know how us Jew-lovers are, always cracking wise.
So, which hand should I chop off for sending this? Kidding! A is for Andrew...: Jim Treacher starts the blogictionary. One true entry: Instalanche: A sudden influx of thousands of hits that threatens to crush your server, brought on by a link from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com. Appropriate for today, I suggest blogspotty: The reliability of Blogspot. ntm fivre mp3
The Wall, cont.
: Eric Olsen weighs in on the wall.
: And a reader, Steven Postrel, counters on Olsen's site.
We will soon build a wall between prowall and antiwall bloggers.ntm fivre mp3
Maybe the French are right
: Well that headline gets your attention, eh?
Those protesting French are protesting not only their own insane election returns but also the corporate performance at Vivendi. Shareholders and employees "stormed" (that's what the French always do: storm) the company's annual meeting.
A wonderful idea.
What if we did the same at AOL Time Warner's annual meeting? I said when the merger with AOL occurred that it was a big, fat mistake, that it was just Time Warner being frightened of its own future (and lack of strategy for it), that AOL was not worth anywhere near what was being calculated in the deal. Time Inc. had done things like this before; when I was there, they were afraid that Chris Whittle's company (which put magazine's in doctors' waiting rooms) was going to eat its lunch and so they bought a big piece of his pie for too much money. They ended up writing all that off when Whittle croaked.
So now it turns out that the AOL Time Warner merger was a $54 billion boo-boo.
I still own too much of their stock, having worked there for a decade.
I'm depressed.
Maybe I should do some storming.ntm fivre mp3
Oops
: I meant:
Blogger : Journalist :: Butterfly : Caterpillar.
It makes a big difference.ntm fivre mp3
April 24, 2002
Blogging is to heroin as....
: Bo Weevil is soliciting SAT questions. I nominate: Blogger : Journalist :: Caterpillar : Butterfly.ntm fivre mp3
The Wall
: Nick Denton joins the calls for building a wall between Arabs and Jews, between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as the only sensible course left to bring peace.
I understand the desire: Enough of all you hate-motivated Middle Easterners, enough of your murders, enough of your hate leeching out of the region and killing others -- us -- all around the world, enough! Just stay away from each other, damnit. It's like shouting at the kids in the back seat. Every parent in the world wants to build a wall between their kids sometimes. We want to build one between the Arabs and the Jews.
And Denton has a point: A wall may just buy the two generations the region needs to find peace.
But I doubt it.
A Wall was East Germany's solution to a different problem -- it was built to keep people in not out -- and it didn't work.
The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all.
The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era.
The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate.
Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.
I spent a lot of time in Berlin when the Wall was still up (I was working on a very bad novel about it that no one will ever read). When I first crossed over Checkpoint Charlie, I certainly was no fan of Communism, but I didn't fully realize the damage it caused. By the time I came back across to the West, I saw the damage clearly. I saw it in a simple sign: I can't tell you how happy I was to see the first Coke sign on our side; I celebrated all the choice we had.
The Berlin Wall only accentuated that contrast; it turned gray to black and white. And the media that flew over the Wall -- in the extreme, our decadent Dallas and Dynasty at the end -- only made the contrast more striking for people on the other side. The Wall turned out to be porous; it let images and ideas and jealousies and competition and dreams through from this side to that until such pressure built up on the other side and it simply had to blow. Media exploded that wall.
An Israeli wall would be just as pourous. The hate would still flow through.
And if this wall does prevent Palestinians from killing Israelis, the pressure will still build up; they and their alleged allies will aim their hatred elsewhere. They will attack Israeli's friends. They will kill us.
I wish I had a solution, like Denton. I don't. I know too little about the Middle East.
I wish a wall were a solution. I fear it is not.
The solution must come from self-interest, the need to begin cooperation or the need to end defeat. Mutual self-interest may well be impossible to find.
: Update: Don Wolff writes in email that I missed a successful wall: the DMZ in Korea. He says this keeps people of murderous intent from distrupting a democratic society.
Motive matters in how you judge success. If your aim is to cut off North Korea to the point that they're starved, then perhaps that wall is successful. You could measure the wall of water around Cuba similarly. If the goal of the Israeli wall were to cut off Palestine and starve them of attention and economics, I'm afraid that wouldn't work. The Palestinians have murderous allies.ntm fivre mp3
Blogging is to heroin as....
: Bo Weevil is soliciting SAT questions. I nominate: Blogger : Journalist :: Caterpillar : Butterfly.ntm fivre mp3
The Wall
: Nick Denton joins the calls for building a wall between Arabs and Jews, between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as the only sensible course left to bring peace.
I understand the desire: Enough of all you hate-motivated Middle Easterners, enough of your murders, enough of your hate leeching out of the region and killing others -- us -- all around the world, enough! Just stay away from each other, damnit. It's like shouting at the kids in the back seat. Every parent in the world wants to build a wall between their kids sometimes. We want to build one between the Arabs and the Jews.
And Denton has a point: A wall may just buy the two generations the region needs to find peace.
But I doubt it.
A Wall was East Germany's solution to a different problem -- it was built to keep people in not out -- and it didn't work.
The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all.
The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era.
The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate.
Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.
I spent a lot of time in Berlin when the Wall was still up (I was working on a very bad novel about it that no one will ever read). When I first crossed over Checkpoint Charlie, I certainly was no fan of Communism, but I didn't fully realize the damage it caused. By the time I came back across to the West, I saw the damage clearly. I saw it in a simple sign: I can't tell you how happy I was to see the first Coke sign on our side; I celebrated all the choice we had.
The Berlin Wall only accentuated that contrast; it turned gray to black and white. And the media that flew over the Wall -- in the extreme, our decadent Dallas and Dynasty at the end -- only made the contrast more striking for people on the other side. The Wall turned out to be porous; it let images and ideas and jealousies and competition and dreams through from this side to that until such pressure built up on the other side and it simply had to blow. Media exploded that wall.
An Israeli wall would be just as pourous. The hate would still flow through.
And if this wall does prevent Palestinians from killing Israelis, the pressure will still build up; they and their alleged allies will aim their hatred elsewhere. They will attack Israeli's friends. They will kill us.
I wish I had a solution, like Denton. I don't. I know too little about the Middle East.
I wish a wall were a solution. I fear it is not.
The solution must come from self-interest, the need to begin cooperation or the need to end defeat. Mutual self-interest may well be impossible to find.
: Update: Don Wolff writes in email that I missed a successful wall: the DMZ in Korea. He says this keeps people of murderous intent from distrupting a democratic society.
Motive matters in how you judge success. If your aim is to cut off North Korea to the point that they're starved, then perhaps that wall is successful. You could measure the wall of water around Cuba similarly. If the goal of the Israeli wall were to cut off Palestine and starve them of attention and economics, I'm afraid that wouldn't work. The Palestinians have murderous allies.ntm fivre mp3
April 23, 2002
Rub-off
: We can all tell from our traffic when we get an Instapundit link, as I was fortunate to get today for two posts (on Moussaoui and my hate mail from Bill Cosby, below).
I can also tell from my traffic when Blogspot is down, as it is right now; I get fewer links from all those Blogspot blogs and my traffic gets hit.
My luck that Blogspot goes down just as Instapundit.blogspot.com gives me a nod.ntm fivre mp3
Nevermind
: Mediaminded throws in the towel.
But Letter From Gotham gets back in the ring.ntm fivre mp3
Old way v. new way
: The accepted wisdom is that the Web is a rotten way to read newspapers. That's what I always thought and said.
But this week, I'm south of the center of the universe (and I'm on a dial-up connection) and so I'm reading the Washington Post on paper, the first I've done that in ages.
Especially since Sept. 11, I've been reading the Post online -- and I have to say, I prefer that. It's a combination of factors: The Post's web site it that good: well-organized, easy to browse, clean to read. And the Post on paper is oddly small; the size of the paper (the web, as we call it in the trade) is much narrower than the NY Times (to save money on paper) and it seems they try to cram more into that smaller space. I'm not alone. My wife found the Post hard to read.
Accepted wisdom is sometimes wrong.ntm fivre mp3
Leave it to Moussaoui
: We'll be watching Robert Blake on trial on TV when what we should be watching is Zacarias Moussaoui on the tube -- not because it would be entertaining to see this bozo defending himself but because it would project the perfect -- that is, perfectly accurate -- image of Muslim fanatics as dangerous and demented and just plain stupid.
This is why we should have cameras in all courtrooms, to let us see the truth.ntm fivre mp3
Rub-off
: We can all tell from our traffic when we get an Instapundit link, as I was fortunate to get today for two posts (on Moussaoui and my hate mail from Bill Cosby, below).
I can also tell from my traffic when Blogspot is down, as it is right now; I get fewer links from all those Blogspot blogs and my traffic gets hit.
My luck that Blogspot goes down just as Instapundit.blogspot.com gives me a nod.ntm fivre mp3
Nevermind
: Mediaminded throws in the towel.
But Letter From Gotham gets back in the ring.ntm fivre mp3
Old way v. new way
: The accepted wisdom is that the Web is a rotten way to read newspapers. That's what I always thought and said.
But this week, I'm south of the center of the universe (and I'm on a dial-up connection) and so I'm reading the Washington Post on paper, the first I've done that in ages.
Especially since Sept. 11, I've been reading the Post online -- and I have to say, I prefer that. It's a combination of factors: The Post's web site it that good: well-organized, easy to browse, clean to read. And the Post on paper is oddly small; the size of the paper (the web, as we call it in the trade) is much narrower than the NY Times (to save money on paper) and it seems they try to cram more into that smaller space. I'm not alone. My wife found the Post hard to read.
Accepted wisdom is sometimes wrong.ntm fivre mp3
Leave it to Moussaoui
: We'll be watching Robert Blake on trial on TV when what we should be watching is Zacarias Moussaoui on the tube -- not because it would be entertaining to see this bozo defending himself but because it would project the perfect -- that is, perfectly accurate -- image of Muslim fanatics as dangerous and demented and just plain stupid.
This is why we should have cameras in all courtrooms, to let us see the truth.ntm fivre mp3
April 21, 2002
Brush with infamy
: I made mention of hate mail from Bill Cosby below (in the item about Daddyhood) and Jim Treacher sent me email demanding:
"Bill Cosby sent you hate mail? Details, man! Details!"
Nothing I love better than someone who actually asks to hear one of my stories from my (not-so-)good(-not-so-)old-days. Pull up a chair, young man.
When I was the TV critic at People, I wrote many a rave review of Cosby's original family sitcom when it first appeared. I said that he saved sitcoms themselves (which were being written off about then). He (along with shows like Hill Street Blues) proved that you can make money with quality. He helped herald the real golden age of television. But then Cosby started reading his own PR and he turned haughty and his show turned into the weekly sermonette. I said his show went downhill (he saw it differently: as far as he was concerned, I turned on him). So I started getting the poison-pen letters. After I said that he was a has-been, he sent me a tin cup and a note asking where the flowers were for his funeral (a mixed metaphor I never fully groked). He went to a lot of trouble getting a test cover I had created for Entertainment Weekly before its launch -- a cover that touted the arrival of wise-ass women Roseanne and Murphy Brown and touted the end of the Cosby era -- and he had someone replace his image with mine and a coverline that said farewell to me when I left Entertainment Weekly.
I ended up on lots of enemies lists -- not just Cosby's and not just that anti-warblogger twit's.
: After Murphy Brown went bad (or I turned on the show, depending on your perspective), they wrote my name into the script with a network executive warning a Kathie-Lee clone not to get on the bad side of powerful people, like Johnny Carson or "Jeff Jarvis, that man is a bottomless pit of hate." I'm thinking about making up CafePress T-shirts with the slogan.
: Alan Thicke sent me mail begging me to stop making him my "personal whipping boy." I only begged him to stop making talk shows.
: Jay Leno called me to whine about my view in TV Guide that Johnny and Dave were both funnier.
: Bill Moyers complained to my bosses about me because I said that he was boring.
: But my proudest moment came years earlier. During my tenure as a columnist in San Francisco, I suggested that Frank Sinatra should have stayed retired and at a concert the next night, he stopped in the middle of singing My Way, of all songs, to call me "a bum."
Life doesn't get much sweeter.ntm fivre mp3
Lotto fever
: Max Power takes on my challenge to defend the economic impact of the lottery.ntm fivre mp3
Brush with infamy
: I made mention of hate mail from Bill Cosby below (in the item about Daddyhood) and Jim Treacher sent me email demanding:
"Bill Cosby sent you hate mail? Details, man! Details!"
Nothing I love better than someone who actually asks to hear one of my stories from my (not-so-)good(-not-so-)old-days. Pull up a chair, young man.
When I was the TV critic at People, I wrote many a rave review of Cosby's original family sitcom when it first appeared. I said that he saved sitcoms themselves (which were being written off about then). He (along with shows like Hill Street Blues) proved that you can make money with quality. He helped herald the real golden age of television. But then Cosby started reading his own PR and he turned haughty and his show turned into the weekly sermonette. I said his show went downhill (he saw it differently: as far as he was concerned, I turned on him). So I started getting the poison-pen letters. After I said that he was a has-been, he sent me a tin cup and a note asking where the flowers were for his funeral (a mixed metaphor I never fully groked). He went to a lot of trouble getting a test cover I had created for Entertainment Weekly before its launch -- a cover that touted the arrival of wise-ass women Roseanne and Murphy Brown and touted the end of the Cosby era -- and he had someone replace his image with mine and a coverline that said farewell to me when I left Entertainment Weekly.
I ended up on lots of enemies lists -- not just Cosby's and not just that anti-warblogger twit's.
: After Murphy Brown went bad (or I turned on the show, depending on your perspective), they wrote my name into the script with a network executive warning a Kathie-Lee clone not to get on the bad side of powerful people, like Johnny Carson or "Jeff Jarvis, that man is a bottomless pit of hate." I'm thinking about making up CafePress T-shirts with the slogan.
: Alan Thicke sent me mail begging me to stop making him my "personal whipping boy." I only begged him to stop making talk shows.
: Jay Leno called me to whine about my view in TV Guide that Johnny and Dave were both funnier.
: Bill Moyers complained to my bosses about me because I said that he was boring.
: But my proudest moment came years earlier. During my tenure as a columnist in San Francisco, I suggested that Frank Sinatra should have stayed retired and at a concert the next night, he stopped in the middle of singing My Way, of all songs, to call me "a bum."
Life doesn't get much sweeter.ntm fivre mp3
Lotto fever
: Max Power takes on my challenge to defend the economic impact of the lottery.ntm fivre mp3
April 20, 2002
Inked stained wretch vs. linked Layne kvetch
: I'm delighted for Matt Welch and Ken Layne that they're working on the not-so-secret project to start a new paper in L.A. (if New York's new paper is the Sun, should L.A.'s be the Moon?).
I have just one complaint, just one fear: They're already blogging less. What happens when they have to publish or perish? Will the boys still blog?
: Update: Layne doth protest. Good. We'll keep him honest.
He also brags about posting more than I do. Hey, I'm on vacation... sort of.ntm fivre mp3
Storms
: Whenever I think I've finished cataloguing the changes from that day, another one pops up.
I got caught in an awful storm last night as I drove home: 76 mph winds, dust and debris flying everywhere, the sky suddenly dark, huge flashes from some transformer blowing up, vision cut off from all the rain.
I didn't get a flashback to 9.11; this was just rain; I don' t have PTSD.
But I did realize that I approached the danger in a wholly new way. I found myself going through a calculus of risk, as I did that day: Could I be hurt? Could I be killed? Is there an escape? How was I stupid enough to end up trapped here? I then found myself with a very calculated calm, forcing myself to keep my wits to keep safe.
Just another change for the list.ntm fivre mp3
D.C.
: My uncle and his mate wanted to take us into Washington today to show the kids the sights. But the anti-globo bozos took over the city. So much for our capital.ntm fivre mp3
Outa here
: Going on vacation. Will post between raindrops.ntm fivre mp3
Inked stained wretch vs. linked Layne kvetch
: I'm delighted for Matt Welch and Ken Layne that they're working on the not-so-secret project to start a new paper in L.A. (if New York's new paper is the Sun, should L.A.'s be the Moon?).
I have just one complaint, just one fear: They're already blogging less. What happens when they have to publish or perish? Will the boys still blog?
: Update: Layne doth protest. Good. We'll keep him honest.
He also brags about posting more than I do. Hey, I'm on vacation... sort of.ntm fivre mp3
Storms
: Whenever I think I've finished cataloguing the changes from that day, another one pops up.
I got caught in an awful storm last night as I drove home: 76 mph winds, dust and debris flying everywhere, the sky suddenly dark, huge flashes from some transformer blowing up, vision cut off from all the rain.
I didn't get a flashback to 9.11; this was just rain; I don' t have PTSD.
But I did realize that I approached the danger in a wholly new way. I found myself going through a calculus of risk, as I did that day: Could I be hurt? Could I be killed? Is there an escape? How was I stupid enough to end up trapped here? I then found myself with a very calculated calm, forcing myself to keep my wits to keep safe.
Just another change for the list.ntm fivre mp3
D.C.
: My uncle and his mate wanted to take us into Washington today to show the kids the sights. But the anti-globo bozos took over the city. So much for our capital.ntm fivre mp3
Outa here
: Going on vacation. Will post between raindrops.ntm fivre mp3
April 19, 2002
Daddy
: Lileks explains kids to those who don't have them as his adorable Gnat enters into the wonderful world of conversation: Imagine if your dog or cat began to talk. Imagine if you had rudimentary conversations. You'd love your pet if they didn't speak, but man! Imagine if they could! That's what it's like....
I’m well aware that I’m missing much in life because we have the Gnat. Travel, freedom, money, salty lingo - all are curtailed now....
Those of you who think that kids will come along some day, and wonder what that might mean, how it will change things - I can only note a moment today in the Mall of America with my Gnat. We always end our trips to the Mall with a cookie. A rare treat, since we don’t have cookies at home. (Jell-o Fat Free Pudding for Daddy, yes, but that’s another story.) We sat on a bridge over a stream as we snacked, alone in a leafy glade in the biggest mall in America. Gnat beamed as she chewed her ration.
“Num,” she said, grinning. “Nice. Cookie nice." Pause, chew, swallow, smile. "Daddy nice.”
I have never been happier in my life, or loved anyone more. Beautifully said, of course.
I'll bet some kid will be born because of this. It's amazing how little it can take to inspire fertility: a blackout, a terrorist attack (yes, 9.11 led to a baby boom), even a TV show.
I used to be scared of the little beasts. But then a friend had one and I held him and I realized that he didn't know what to expect of me; I was safe.
And here's an embarrassing revelation: I actually give Bill Cosby some credit for my having a family. His old sitcom made having a family look like fun. Real and frustrating but fun. I liked his show then. Cosby and I ended up feuding later because I didn't like his later seasons; he sent me poison-pen mail of all sorts. Hey, I was a critic. I had to have an opinion. But I will always be grateful to him for making fatherhood look doable. I hope Lileks inspires others.
And as to you, Mr. Lileks: It only gets better. ntm fivre mp3
9.11 show update
: I ran into David Friend -- the Vanity Fair editor who helped bring the great 9.11 show to CBS on the six-month anniversary -- in the elevator at work yesterday. After I congratulated him on his great show, he reported good news: They have deals to show the movie in countries around the world. And the show will be rerun on CBS on September 11, 2002.ntm fivre mp3
Offtrak
: I'm heading off to vacation in my car tomorrow. We were going to go to Disneyworld but, as I wrote earlier, we decided not to; fear of flying, you know. I had thought of switching instead to the Amtrak AutoTrain. Glad we didn't.
If this train accident had happened a few months ago, we all would have wondered or at least asked whether it could be a terrorist act. I haven't heard that not. ntm fivre mp3
Everything new is old again
: Nick Denton calls the feud developing between pioneer bloggers and warbloggers.
It's a simple case of the pioneers being jealous of the attention the newcomers are getting. The same exact thing has happened at every stage of the Internet's development -- with usenet (which started as a nice communications tool and soon became filled with the dogmatic blatherings of nerds without lives and then descended into spam) and with gopher and with the web and now with weblogs. The early adopters want it to be theirs; they don't like new neighbors; they also don't want to see their invention ruined by the clumsy. They become old farts at a remarkably young age. They can act just like old-media publishers who are fearful of losing control of the medium.
That's life. The Internet belongs to the audience. It belongs to the people. There is no way to control it. There is no way to own it.
Mind you, I love all the pioneers (except when Blogger is down; I was going to publish this last night!). They invented a whole new kind of commentary, reporting, publishing, storytelling. They did a great job. They're still doing a great job. They gave birth to a brilliant child. But now it's time for the child to grow up and move out of the house.
: One more thing:
On this warblogger thing. I don't get my knickers in knots about the word. No, everything here isn't about war. But that did inspire me to start. I had followed blogging for ages; I got my company to invest in Blogger; I have my blogging stripes. But I didn't blog because I didn't have anything to say... until 9.11 and then I had much I had to say. That started the addiction. I have no problem with acknowledging that genesis. Call me a warblogger or blogger or just an ass; I don't much care. I'll write about what I want to write about without editors; that's the joy of this, isn't it?
: Bennett is really pissed about this warblogger debate thing. The War Blog Book project has a lot of the limp-wristed html technicians who falsely consider themselves the pioneers of the web all upset, over their presumed exclusion. Call it BlogBurn: First, Sarge called it quits (with all the credibility of the retirements of Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Michael Jordan; he's back already).
Now Letter from Gotham flames out (going through about 100,000 gallons of jet fuel on the way).
Blogging is hard work. ntm fivre mp3
Daddy
: Lileks explains kids to those who don't have them as his adorable Gnat enters into the wonderful world of conversation: Imagine if your dog or cat began to talk. Imagine if you had rudimentary conversations. You'd love your pet if they didn't speak, but man! Imagine if they could! That's what it's like....
I’m well aware that I’m missing much in life because we have the Gnat. Travel, freedom, money, salty lingo - all are curtailed now....
Those of you who think that kids will come along some day, and wonder what that might mean, how it will change things - I can only note a moment today in the Mall of America with my Gnat. We always end our trips to the Mall with a cookie. A rare treat, since we don’t have cookies at home. (Jell-o Fat Free Pudding for Daddy, yes, but that’s another story.) We sat on a bridge over a stream as we snacked, alone in a leafy glade in the biggest mall in America. Gnat beamed as she chewed her ration.
“Num,” she said, grinning. “Nice. Cookie nice." Pause, chew, swallow, smile. "Daddy nice.”
I have never been happier in my life, or loved anyone more. Beautifully said, of course.
I'll bet some kid will be born because of this. It's amazing how little it can take to inspire fertility: a blackout, a terrorist attack (yes, 9.11 led to a baby boom), even a TV show.
I used to be scared of the little beasts. But then a friend had one and I held him and I realized that he didn't know what to expect of me; I was safe.
And here's an embarrassing revelation: I actually give Bill Cosby some credit for my having a family. His old sitcom made having a family look like fun. Real and frustrating but fun. I liked his show then. Cosby and I ended up feuding later because I didn't like his later seasons; he sent me poison-pen mail of all sorts. Hey, I was a critic. I had to have an opinion. But I will always be grateful to him for making fatherhood look doable. I hope Lileks inspires others.
And as to you, Mr. Lileks: It only gets better. ntm fivre mp3
9.11 show update
: I ran into David Friend -- the Vanity Fair editor who helped bring the great 9.11 show to CBS on the six-month anniversary -- in the elevator at work yesterday. After I congratulated him on his great show, he reported good news: They have deals to show the movie in countries around the world. And the show will be rerun on CBS on September 11, 2002.ntm fivre mp3
Offtrak
: I'm heading off to vacation in my car tomorrow. We were going to go to Disneyworld but, as I wrote earlier, we decided not to; fear of flying, you know. I had thought of switching instead to the Amtrak AutoTrain. Glad we didn't.
If this train accident had happened a few months ago, we all would have wondered or at least asked whether it could be a terrorist act. I haven't heard that not. ntm fivre mp3
Everything new is old again
: Nick Denton calls the feud developing between pioneer bloggers and warbloggers.
It's a simple case of the pioneers being jealous of the attention the newcomers are getting. The same exact thing has happened at every stage of the Internet's development -- with usenet (which started as a nice communications tool and soon became filled with the dogmatic blatherings of nerds without lives and then descended into spam) and with gopher and with the web and now with weblogs. The early adopters want it to be theirs; they don't like new neighbors; they also don't want to see their invention ruined by the clumsy. They become old farts at a remarkably young age. They can act just like old-media publishers who are fearful of losing control of the medium.
That's life. The Internet belongs to the audience. It belongs to the people. There is no way to control it. There is no way to own it.
Mind you, I love all the pioneers (except when Blogger is down; I was going to publish this last night!). They invented a whole new kind of commentary, reporting, publishing, storytelling. They did a great job. They're still doing a great job. They gave birth to a brilliant child. But now it's time for the child to grow up and move out of the house.
: One more thing:
On this warblogger thing. I don't get my knickers in knots about the word. No, everything here isn't about war. But that did inspire me to start. I had followed blogging for ages; I got my company to invest in Blogger; I have my blogging stripes. But I didn't blog because I didn't have anything to say... until 9.11 and then I had much I had to say. That started the addiction. I have no problem with acknowledging that genesis. Call me a warblogger or blogger or just an ass; I don't much care. I'll write about what I want to write about without editors; that's the joy of this, isn't it?
: Bennett is really pissed about this warblogger debate thing. The War Blog Book project has a lot of the limp-wristed html technicians who falsely consider themselves the pioneers of the web all upset, over their presumed exclusion. Call it BlogBurn: First, Sarge called it quits (with all the credibility of the retirements of Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Michael Jordan; he's back already).
Now Letter from Gotham flames out (going through about 100,000 gallons of jet fuel on the way).
Blogging is hard work. ntm fivre mp3
April 18, 2002
Here we go again...
: Robert Blake and his bodyguard arrested tonight in the killing of his wife.
It's starting with echoes of O.J.: Helicopters following a white vehicle with the suspect inside as it wends its way through L.A.'s freeways. And Geraldo's preening. So is Greta. Deja view.
This will be the test of whether we are a newly serious America or whether we love filthy gossip best: Will Blake push the Middle East and terrorism down and off the front page?
Geraldo is treating this murder trial as "entertainment" -- "a welcome diversion" -- from the gore of 9.11 and the Middle East.
There's no clash of civilizations in this story.
And at least there's no race card ths time.ntm fivre mp3
Those wacky French
: Thousands of employees and Frech people rallied against the firing of the head of Canal Plus. Can you imagine Americans rallying on behalf of any fired executive? ntm fivre mp3
Less dead
: Nick Denton has a correction/clarification on the suitcase bomb sweats below.ntm fivre mp3
Here we go again...
: Robert Blake and his bodyguard arrested tonight in the killing of his wife.
It's starting with echoes of O.J.: Helicopters following a white vehicle with the suspect inside as it wends its way through L.A.'s freeways. And Geraldo's preening. So is Greta. Deja view.
This will be the test of whether we are a newly serious America or whether we love filthy gossip best: Will Blake push the Middle East and terrorism down and off the front page?
Geraldo is treating this murder trial as "entertainment" -- "a welcome diversion" -- from the gore of 9.11 and the Middle East.
There's no clash of civilizations in this story.
And at least there's no race card ths time.ntm fivre mp3
Those wacky French
: Thousands of employees and Frech people rallied against the firing of the head of Canal Plus. Can you imagine Americans rallying on behalf of any fired executive? ntm fivre mp3
Less dead
: Nick Denton has a correction/clarification on the suitcase bomb sweats below.ntm fivre mp3
April 17, 2002
Freaked
: Years ago, when I was Sunday editor of the SF Examiner, it came out that the neutron bomb (you remember: it destroys life but leaves buildings intact) had been developed across the way at the Livermore Labs and in my sensationalistic effort to scare the bejesus out of the readers, I took an aerial photo of San Francisco, placed the epicenter of a neutron bomb smack-dab on the Transamerica Pyramid and drew concentric circles of death and destruction out from there: Would YOU survive?
Now, thanks to PBS [via Nick Denton] we can all play the same fun game with a suitcase bomb set off in Manhattan. How dead would I be? Very. Whether I'm working in New York or Jersey City that day, I'm just plain dead.
See, too the fallout map. Even Philly is sick.
You can detonate the bomb wherever you are.
When I did this in the '70s in San Francisco, it was smart-assed sensationalism; it was fun.
This is now real. No fun.
If that didn't freak me enough, I go now to the Washington Times -- usually a scary experience but especially so today. They visit a tunnel in West Virginia where officials are training for responses to terrorist attacks in subway tunnels. "The Marines say the Washington Metro and New York subways are among the top targets for which they are training."
Oh, joy.
I honestly sit on the PATH train these days and have daymares (v. nightmares) about blasts and flooding and grappling in the dark with no air and no escape.
Now I get to worry about gas, too. And more.
This, too is real: The Defense Department set up the facility in the abandoned turnpike tunnel two years ago after a Border Patrol agent stopped an Islamic extremist trying to cross the Canadian border with material for a large bomb in his trunk. An investigation revealed that the explosives were part of a plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
Defense Department analysts realized that the United States increasingly was becoming a target for terrorists with conventional bombs, toxic chemicals, biological agents or nuclear weapons. Blog book debate: I get pissy about the people who would try to edit the blogbook according to the demands of a mob -- here. ntm fivre mp3
Eclipse
: The Sun isn't online (yet), but the competition is: Five days a week we take a piece of the Sun — a news item, an editorial — and rip it into finely shredded, easily digestible bits. It's guaranteed fun. Sunshine: A lovely letter from Gotham on the return of sunwhine, good weather, and tourists to New York yesterday.
Jersey City, on the other hand, is fermenting in the heat already.
: Bill Quick just caught me in my typo above: "sunwhine." We've decided it should mean something. I think that should be "conservative complaint from a new New York newspaper, specifically, any mention of Hillary Clinton." ntm fivre mp3
Freaked
: Years ago, when I was Sunday editor of the SF Examiner, it came out that the neutron bomb (you remember: it destroys life but leaves buildings intact) had been developed across the way at the Livermore Labs and in my sensationalistic effort to scare the bejesus out of the readers, I took an aerial photo of San Francisco, placed the epicenter of a neutron bomb smack-dab on the Transamerica Pyramid and drew concentric circles of death and destruction out from there: Would YOU survive?
Now, thanks to PBS [via Nick Denton] we can all play the same fun game with a suitcase bomb set off in Manhattan. How dead would I be? Very. Whether I'm working in New York or Jersey City that day, I'm just plain dead.
See, too the fallout map. Even Philly is sick.
You can detonate the bomb wherever you are.
When I did this in the '70s in San Francisco, it was smart-assed sensationalism; it was fun.
This is now real. No fun.
If that didn't freak me enough, I go now to the Washington Times -- usually a scary experience but especially so today. They visit a tunnel in West Virginia where officials are training for responses to terrorist attacks in subway tunnels. "The Marines say the Washington Metro and New York subways are among the top targets for which they are training."
Oh, joy.
I honestly sit on the PATH train these days and have daymares (v. nightmares) about blasts and flooding and grappling in the dark with no air and no escape.
Now I get to worry about gas, too. And more.
This, too is real: The Defense Department set up the facility in the abandoned turnpike tunnel two years ago after a Border Patrol agent stopped an Islamic extremist trying to cross the Canadian border with material for a large bomb in his trunk. An investigation revealed that the explosives were part of a plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
Defense Department analysts realized that the United States increasingly was becoming a target for terrorists with conventional bombs, toxic chemicals, biological agents or nuclear weapons. Blog book debate: I get pissy about the people who would try to edit the blogbook according to the demands of a mob -- here. ntm fivre mp3
Eclipse
: The Sun isn't online (yet), but the competition is: Five days a week we take a piece of the Sun — a news item, an editorial — and rip it into finely shredded, easily digestible bits. It's guaranteed fun. Sunshine: A lovely letter from Gotham on the return of sunwhine, good weather, and tourists to New York yesterday.
Jersey City, on the other hand, is fermenting in the heat already.
: Bill Quick just caught me in my typo above: "sunwhine." We've decided it should mean something. I think that should be "conservative complaint from a new New York newspaper, specifically, any mention of Hillary Clinton." ntm fivre mp3
April 16, 2002
The blog book
: I'll be contributing to the blog book project as soon as I find more than 10 minutes to finish the email/post I started. In the meantime, note VodkaSchpundit's well-worded take on the concept: Jeff Jarvis takes another navel gaze at the warblogs, and comes up with some fine lint.
The point I found most interesting? Blogs work like Memento. More lottery madness: No, I'm not buying one.
: Jim Treacher saw the same TV piece about the lottery trailer-to-Tara tale that I saw (a few posts down). His take: Probably bought his lottery ticket with his bottle deposit money or something. Rags to riches, the American dream, etc. That was less than eight months ago, and in that time, this genetic cautionary tale has bought three houses (the one they showed would make Liberace go, "It's a bit much, dear, isn't it?"), seven luxury cars, jewelry out the ass, plasma-screen TVs and computers in every room, robots, a customized golfcart made out of a humvee for his daughter... Makes Ozzy's pad look like a studio apartment. : Gregory Taylor, a Northwestern (may alma mater) law prof, asks whether I'm being hypocritical (a common state of being for me): But isn't it contradictory to object on the grounds that the lotto takes money from those that can least afford it ("trailer trash") and at the same time complain that the winners waste the money because they come from the class of people who play? In other words, lotto is bad because it takes money from the underclass AND because it gives money to the underclass? Ah, but it takes from millions of poor people and gives it all to one poor person, who spends it stupidly; see above.
: Gunner20 also forwards a link to an anti-Lotto site in Tennessee. Where does the professor from Knoxville stand on this?
: Matt Welch sends email on the lottery, taking a stand that is either moralistic or libertarian (who has been spiking Matt's beer?); you decide: Speaking of the lottery, my argument against it is this -- the state should not be involved in actively promoting vice to its own citizens, let alone (maybe to a lesser extent) depending on levies from said vice to fill a budget. I don't want the state spending money on anti-smoking billboards, and I don't want the state spending money on pro-lottery commercials. I want the state to govern. How's that? ntm fivre mp3
Goob
: Mac Thomason has no idea why he's posting this: George "Goober" Lindsey on AL.com's chat today at 2p CT. That's one of my services. I'm so goshderned proud.ntm fivre mp3
Sun spotty
: Got the NY Sun today. But it wasn't easy. It was sold out already throughout Penn Station and nearby. That means somebody in the circulation department didn't do a good job; that means lost sales. But there were guys in yellow T-shirts outside selling it. Too bad they don't put any of it online for all you conservatives in Blogland.
: Read Ken Layne's celebration of newspapers, inspired by the rising Sun.
: If the Sun did have a web site, I'd be able to point you to the text of Elie Wiesel's speech at the pro-Israel rally in Washington yesterday. If the Sun had a web site, I'd be able to point you to its very good editorial explaining why the war in the Middle East remains a war against not just Israel but a war against Jews.
But the Sun doesn't have a web site. How odd for a paper born of the web?ntm fivre mp3
Redistribution of idiocy
: So the PowerWhatever lottery is up to $325 million heading higher, maybe to a record by the end of the day.
I find it tragic.
I sit on the PATH train from NY to NJ and see guys who clearly don't have much money carrying a thick pile of lottery tickets -- which means they now have even less money -- as they head to the nearest newsstand to buy more tickets and lose even more money. I see the line at that newsstand, held in by police barricades, snaking around and around, packed with people -- almost all of them minorities and, by all appearances, most of them poor. I come in my building and Bob the guard, who doesn't have a bank account and pays $9 to cash his Social Security check, is shaking head head over missing the number... again.
This is the most regressive -- the most cynical -- tax ever created. The poor pay it.
But even worse is where the money goes.
I watched TV this weekend as it followed up on a guy who won $195 million in a lottery. All that money is going to fund the world's worst interior design and most overpriced cars, a tribute to the taste of trailer trash.
It's a tragedy to steal this money from the poor. It's a tragedy to waste it on the stupid.
Imagine what you could do with $325 million if you had brains. You could start a company. You could employ thousands. You could create billions of wealth. You could pay billions of taxes.
I'll just bet that a smart econ Ph.D candidate could write a helluva dissertation on that, proving that lotteries are helping to depress our economy, redistributing wealth in the most unproductive manner possible.
Hey all you economist bloggers -- you, you, or you -- tackle that one. Calculate the total amount of income -- income at its most spendable -- drained from the economy; how much spending power did we lose? Then look at where the winnings went; what did it build? Then look at the net income to the government for all this and who paid and how much it cost to generate that income. Then answer the question: Are we better off?ntm fivre mp3
The blog book
: I'll be contributing to the blog book project as soon as I find more than 10 minutes to finish the email/post I started. In the meantime, note VodkaSchpundit's well-worded take on the concept: Jeff Jarvis takes another navel gaze at the warblogs, and comes up with some fine lint.
The point I found most interesting? Blogs work like Memento. More lottery madness: No, I'm not buying one.
: Jim Treacher saw the same TV piece about the lottery trailer-to-Tara tale that I saw (a few posts down). His take: Probably bought his lottery ticket with his bottle deposit money or something. Rags to riches, the American dream, etc. That was less than eight months ago, and in that time, this genetic cautionary tale has bought three houses (the one they showed would make Liberace go, "It's a bit much, dear, isn't it?"), seven luxury cars, jewelry out the ass, plasma-screen TVs and computers in every room, robots, a customized golfcart made out of a humvee for his daughter... Makes Ozzy's pad look like a studio apartment. : Gregory Taylor, a Northwestern (may alma mater) law prof, asks whether I'm being hypocritical (a common state of being for me): But isn't it contradictory to object on the grounds that the lotto takes money from those that can least afford it ("trailer trash") and at the same time complain that the winners waste the money because they come from the class of people who play? In other words, lotto is bad because it takes money from the underclass AND because it gives money to the underclass? Ah, but it takes from millions of poor people and gives it all to one poor person, who spends it stupidly; see above.
: Gunner20 also forwards a link to an anti-Lotto site in Tennessee. Where does the professor from Knoxville stand on this?
: Matt Welch sends email on the lottery, taking a stand that is either moralistic or libertarian (who has been spiking Matt's beer?); you decide: Speaking of the lottery, my argument against it is this -- the state should not be involved in actively promoting vice to its own citizens, let alone (maybe to a lesser extent) depending on levies from said vice to fill a budget. I don't want the state spending money on anti-smoking billboards, and I don't want the state spending money on pro-lottery commercials. I want the state to govern. How's that? ntm fivre mp3
Goob
: Mac Thomason has no idea why he's posting this: George "Goober" Lindsey on AL.com's chat today at 2p CT. That's one of my services. I'm so goshderned proud.ntm fivre mp3
Sun spotty
: Got the NY Sun today. But it wasn't easy. It was sold out already throughout Penn Station and nearby. That means somebody in the circulation department didn't do a good job; that means lost sales. But there were guys in yellow T-shirts outside selling it. Too bad they don't put any of it online for all you conservatives in Blogland.
: Read Ken Layne's celebration of newspapers, inspired by the rising Sun.
: If the Sun did have a web site, I'd be able to point you to the text of Elie Wiesel's speech at the pro-Israel rally in Washington yesterday. If the Sun had a web site, I'd be able to point you to its very good editorial explaining why the war in the Middle East remains a war against not just Israel but a war against Jews.
But the Sun doesn't have a web site. How odd for a paper born of the web?ntm fivre mp3
Redistribution of idiocy
: So the PowerWhatever lottery is up to $325 million heading higher, maybe to a record by the end of the day.
I find it tragic.
I sit on the PATH train from NY to NJ and see guys who clearly don't have much money carrying a thick pile of lottery tickets -- which means they now have even less money -- as they head to the nearest newsstand to buy more tickets and lose even more money. I see the line at that newsstand, held in by police barricades, snaking around and around, packed with people -- almost all of them minorities and, by all appearances, most of them poor. I come in my building and Bob the guard, who doesn't have a bank account and pays $9 to cash his Social Security check, is shaking head head over missing the number... again.
This is the most regressive -- the most cynical -- tax ever created. The poor pay it.
But even worse is where the money goes.
I watched TV this weekend as it followed up on a guy who won $195 million in a lottery. All that money is going to fund the world's worst interior design and most overpriced cars, a tribute to the taste of trailer trash.
It's a tragedy to steal this money from the poor. It's a tragedy to waste it on the stupid.
Imagine what you could do with $325 million if you had brains. You could start a company. You could employ thousands. You could create billions of wealth. You could pay billions of taxes.
I'll just bet that a smart econ Ph.D candidate could write a helluva dissertation on that, proving that lotteries are helping to depress our economy, redistributing wealth in the most unproductive manner possible.
Hey all you economist bloggers -- you, you, or you -- tackle that one. Calculate the total amount of income -- income at its most spendable -- drained from the economy; how much spending power did we lose? Then look at where the winnings went; what did it build? Then look at the net income to the government for all this and who paid and how much it cost to generate that income. Then answer the question: Are we better off?ntm fivre mp3
April 15, 2002
Ch-ch-ch-changes
: I was walking on Times Square at lunchtime. Saw a guy with three fanny packs around his waste. A year ago, I would have thought: "Tourist dork." Now I think: "Dynamite?"ntm fivre mp3
PULO
: Charles Johnson has been speculating on the odor inside Arafat's compound. This report from the NY TImes doesn't help the image: "I am down to the last analgesics," said Dr. Zedi Abu Shawish, a surgeon and deputy director of hospitals for the West Bank who said he has been caring for a half dozen wounded Palestinian fighters inside with dwindling supplies left by the Red Cross, performing an amputation below the knee on one man with just local anesthetic. "I need first of all the water. It's the most important here for us, because if I have more diarrhea here, it will be messy." ntm fivre mp3
Ch-ch-ch-changes
: I was walking on Times Square at lunchtime. Saw a guy with three fanny packs around his waste. A year ago, I would have thought: "Tourist dork." Now I think: "Dynamite?"ntm fivre mp3
PULO
: Charles Johnson has been speculating on the odor inside Arafat's compound. This report from the NY TImes doesn't help the image: "I am down to the last analgesics," said Dr. Zedi Abu Shawish, a surgeon and deputy director of hospitals for the West Bank who said he has been caring for a half dozen wounded Palestinian fighters inside with dwindling supplies left by the Red Cross, performing an amputation below the knee on one man with just local anesthetic. "I need first of all the water. It's the most important here for us, because if I have more diarrhea here, it will be messy." ntm fivre mp3
April 14, 2002
Blog publishing
: Matt Welch reveals that many months ago, he, Ken Layne, Tim Blair, and I, plus a few others, thought of bringing our weblog-inspired writing together for a book on 9.11 and its aftermath. But we were all too busy -- blogging, among other more or less lucrative things -- and never got around to it.
Now Welch is properly pissed that we didn't publish our book while other, opposing fraternities of fools did publish their books. He's urging someone to pick up the torch. I'll cheer that on.
I'll also admit that I had another book idea as well. I love this new genre, these weblogs, for many reasons, among them: This is a new form of storytelling in reverse, with the present on top of the past. Here, the beginning is the end of the story. Here, the reader starts off smarter than the writer, knowing how things will turn out and then reading back in time to find out how it all came to be. Every entry in these web diaries is immediate and reflects the moment in which it is written but also reflects the wisdom that came before.
I read back over my own weblog with its often achingly (and frequently embarrassingly) raw and personal recollections of September 11 and what followed and saw that progression myself; I saw the change in me, played in reverse. I saw, too, the unique flavor of the weblog. I'm not saying it was good; I'm too close to it and I admire too many other bloggers too much to think that. But still, I did wonder whether there might be a book in this. I wasn't sure and so I contacted an agent, since agents are supposed to know such things, eh? Unfortunately, I hadn't had an agent in years, having been too busy earning a living to write in the last decade or so. So I made contact with the first agent I could find via a friend of a friend. That was three and a half months ago. In all that time, I had one love-ya-babe conversation and just waited. I tried reminding the agency that this 9.11 thing is fairly timely and we should decide one way or the other now; the agent was too busy to deal with it. Only Friday did I get the answer: This 9.11 thing is timely, the agent opined, and now we're late. I didn't have the to say that if we'd done this around the New Year (when I made the first contact, damnit) we might have acted in time. But surprise of surprises, there are other 9.11 books coming out now. So it's too late.
A good agent is as hard to find as a good contractor.
Now the truth is that there were probably many other good reasons why this would not work as a book, from the quality of my prose to the difficulties of capturing the richness of content the Web offers via simple links. And I am late to the book party. And that's fine.
But here's the point: I do believe that one way or another, blogs will yield books, good books. Blogs will yield new and exciting authors with new voices (start with that list at the top of this post). Blogs will yield new ways to tell stories, where today follows yesterday, where the audience is wiser than the author (an appropriate product of the first medium owned by its audience). There has been a great deal of talk lately about how blogs will or should change news and the news business. But I think an even bigger opportunity -- and more needed -- is for blogs to change book publishing and even writing itself. Blogs can bring new voices and immediacy and passion and wit and generosity to the stuffy, hidebound, predictable, dull medium of books.
So far, the first and only indication I've seen that anyone in the old medium notices the new one comes in the announcement that Bertelsmann has signed right-wing Web site Newsmax to a deal to start a publishing imprint. It's a step -- in the wrong direction, perhaps, but a step nonetheless.
If anybody wants to see a box of printouts from this blog, lemme know.
But if anybody wants to mine blogs for new authors, I'll stand up and cheer.
I'll buy those books.ntm fivre mp3
: I'm glad Oliver Willis sent me links to his posts on this topic. I remembered his view that books will become the killer ap of bloggers but couldn't find it last night.
: Relevant to 9.11 books (not blog books): Today's NY Times roundup.
: One of the first blog books should be Will Warren's collected verse and punchlines in iambic pentameter. Today: Amazonian Dowd.ntm fivre mp3
Faith
: Too bad that Beliefnet.com filed Chapter 11. It's a good site. [via Holy Weblog]ntm fivre mp3
Golem
: A nice post from Eric Olsen on Sharon as Israel's Golem, inspired by the play's timely run in New York.ntm fivre mp3
Blog publishing
: Matt Welch reveals that many months ago, he, Ken Layne, Tim Blair, and I, plus a few others, thought of bringing our weblog-inspired writing together for a book on 9.11 and its aftermath. But we were all too busy -- blogging, among other more or less lucrative things -- and never got around to it.
Now Welch is properly pissed that we didn't publish our book while other, opposing fraternities of fools did publish their books. He's urging someone to pick up the torch. I'll cheer that on.
I'll also admit that I had another book idea as well. I love this new genre, these weblogs, for many reasons, among them: This is a new form of storytelling in reverse, with the present on top of the past. Here, the beginning is the end of the story. Here, the reader starts off smarter than the writer, knowing how things will turn out and then reading back in time to find out how it all came to be. Every entry in these web diaries is immediate and reflects the moment in which it is written but also reflects the wisdom that came before.
I read back over my own weblog with its often achingly (and frequently embarrassingly) raw and personal recollections of September 11 and what followed and saw that progression myself; I saw the change in me, played in reverse. I saw, too, the unique flavor of the weblog. I'm not saying it was good; I'm too close to it and I admire too many other bloggers too much to think that. But still, I did wonder whether there might be a book in this. I wasn't sure and so I contacted an agent, since agents are supposed to know such things, eh? Unfortunately, I hadn't had an agent in years, having been too busy earning a living to write in the last decade or so. So I made contact with the first agent I could find via a friend of a friend. That was three and a half months ago. In all that time, I had one love-ya-babe conversation and just waited. I tried reminding the agency that this 9.11 thing is fairly timely and we should decide one way or the other now; the agent was too busy to deal with it. Only Friday did I get the answer: This 9.11 thing is timely, the agent opined, and now we're late. I didn't have the to say that if we'd done this around the New Year (when I made the first contact, damnit) we might have acted in time. But surprise of surprises, there are other 9.11 books coming out now. So it's too late.
A good agent is as hard to find as a good contractor.
Now the truth is that there were probably many other good reasons why this would not work as a book, from the quality of my prose to the difficulties of capturing the richness of content the Web offers via simple links. And I am late to the book party. And that's fine.
But here's the point: I do believe that one way or another, blogs will yield books, good books. Blogs will yield new and exciting authors with new voices (start with that list at the top of this post). Blogs will yield new ways to tell stories, where today follows yesterday, where the audience is wiser than the author (an appropriate product of the first medium owned by its audience). There has been a great deal of talk lately about how blogs will or should change news and the news business. But I think an even bigger opportunity -- and more needed -- is for blogs to change book publishing and even writing itself. Blogs can bring new voices and immediacy and passion and wit and generosity to the stuffy, hidebound, predictable, dull medium of books.
So far, the first and only indication I've seen that anyone in the old medium notices the new one comes in the announcement that Bertelsmann has signed right-wing Web site Newsmax to a deal to start a publishing imprint. It's a step -- in the wrong direction, perhaps, but a step nonetheless.
If anybody wants to see a box of printouts from this blog, lemme know.
But if anybody wants to mine blogs for new authors, I'll stand up and cheer.
I'll buy those books.ntm fivre mp3
: I'm glad Oliver Willis sent me links to his posts on this topic. I remembered his view that books will become the killer ap of bloggers but couldn't find it last night.
: Relevant to 9.11 books (not blog books): Today's NY Times roundup.
: One of the first blog books should be Will Warren's collected verse and punchlines in iambic pentameter. Today: Amazonian Dowd.ntm fivre mp3
Faith
: Too bad that Beliefnet.com filed Chapter 11. It's a good site. [via Holy Weblog]ntm fivre mp3
Golem
: A nice post from Eric Olsen on Sharon as Israel's Golem, inspired by the play's timely run in New York.ntm fivre mp3
April 13, 2002
Through the political prism, from red to blue
: The weekend brings two opposing takes on the same Bush Administration tactics in the Middle East.
Here's Andrew Sullivan in the Times of London coming off like a bit of sycophant again as he finds every reason to call Bush brilliant and ignores every reasonable reason to think otherwise.
And then here's Frank Rich in the New York Times coming off like the emcee at a roast as he barbecues George W. for his disengagement and his black-and-white world view and giving him and his team no credit for seeing an inch past their noses.
If we're to believe Sullivan, the Bush White House is engaged in a terribly cynical strategy: We scold Israel even as we wink and let them continue their attack and we do this only for international consumption, so we can say we tried and then go out and finish Dad's war against Iraq.
If we're to believe Rich, the Bush White House is filled with naive moralists and diplomatic dunderheads who wish we could stay on the sidelines and let this be someone else's war.
The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle, between red and blue.
Yes, our wrist-slapping of Sharon and Colin Powell's foot-dragging journey across the Middle East (with an itinerary that reminded me of one of those old Family Circle cartoons, with a youngster's defiantly circuitous route home) are cynical. Surely we can't believe the world is so stupid.
And yes, Bush stayed out for too long and did too little and now is paying the price.
True, too, that Bush will find it hard to defend his very own doctrine that admirably called a terrorist a terrorist now that he is refusing to label the terrorist of terrorists one himself, now that he is about to reward him for terror with a meeting by the secretary of state.
These two pieces balance each other neatly, for they show that even as we debate whether Bush sees the world in black or white or gray, the truth is that the color of this world is brown, the color of the muddy mess in which we find ourselves, the color of bullshit.ntm fivre mp3
Through the political prism, from red to blue
: The weekend brings two opposing takes on the same Bush Administration tactics in the Middle East.
Here's Andrew Sullivan in the Times of London coming off like a bit of sycophant again as he finds every reason to call Bush brilliant and ignores every reasonable reason to think otherwise.
And then here's Frank Rich in the New York Times coming off like the emcee at a roast as he barbecues George W. for his disengagement and his black-and-white world view and giving him and his team no credit for seeing an inch past their noses.
If we're to believe Sullivan, the Bush White House is engaged in a terribly cynical strategy: We scold Israel even as we wink and let them continue their attack and we do this only for international consumption, so we can say we tried and then go out and finish Dad's war against Iraq.
If we're to believe Rich, the Bush White House is filled with naive moralists and diplomatic dunderheads who wish we could stay on the sidelines and let this be someone else's war.
The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle, between red and blue.
Yes, our wrist-slapping of Sharon and Colin Powell's foot-dragging journey across the Middle East (with an itinerary that reminded me of one of those old Family Circle cartoons, with a youngster's defiantly circuitous route home) are cynical. Surely we can't believe the world is so stupid.
And yes, Bush stayed out for too long and did too little and now is paying the price.
True, too, that Bush will find it hard to defend his very own doctrine that admirably called a terrorist a terrorist now that he is refusing to label the terrorist of terrorists one himself, now that he is about to reward him for terror with a meeting by the secretary of state.
These two pieces balance each other neatly, for they show that even as we debate whether Bush sees the world in black or white or gray, the truth is that the color of this world is brown, the color of the muddy mess in which we find ourselves, the color of bullshit.ntm fivre mp3
: If you see this, I've succeeded in posting via email. My only regret is
that Nick Denton beat me to it. Drat.ntm fivre mp3
: If you see this, I've succeeded in posting via email. My only regret is
that Nick Denton beat me to it. Drat.ntm fivre mp3
And he'll write it on a blackboard 100 times
: So Arafat finally condemned the bombings in an effort to meet Powell's conditions for a meeting. The statement: We are condemning strongly all the attacks which are targeting civilians from both sides and especially the attack that took place against Israeli citizens yesterday in Jerusalem. BFD
: The full text of Arafat's statement is about as strong as a marshmallow. ntm fivre mp3
And he'll write it on a blackboard 100 times
: So Arafat finally condemned the bombings in an effort to meet Powell's conditions for a meeting. The statement: We are condemning strongly all the attacks which are targeting civilians from both sides and especially the attack that took place against Israeli citizens yesterday in Jerusalem. BFD
: The full text of Arafat's statement is about as strong as a marshmallow. ntm fivre mp3
April 12, 2002
Fitting
: So the latest is that Colin Powell's meeting with Arafat is put off from Saturday to Sunday. Let's hope he's using the time to get fitted with a belt of explosives. Now that is how we should negotiate with Arafat! ntm fivre mp3
Consequences
: FoxNews reports that in the aftermath of today's suicide/homicide bombing, Powell is now reconsidering meeting Arafat. Thank God. There has to be some consequence to the horrid acts he controls. ntm fivre mp3
Food market -- yeah, that's a military target
: The mayor of Jerusalem -- just on FoxNews -- had only moments before been in the marketplace the latest Palestinian suicide/homicide/bomber/slime just attacked, killing at least 6 and injuring more than 70. He was buying a cake for his shabbos meal. He was pissed. He should be. So should we. So should Europe. So should the entire damned civilized world. Back off? Now? Are we nuts?ntm fivre mp3
Hairy belly alert
: Dan Hartung sends me this picture of Palestinians in the new international sign of surrender -- "Shirts Up!" instead of "Hands Up!" (see yesterday's post). By the way, these guys aren't starving.ntm fivre mp3
Fitting
: So the latest is that Colin Powell's meeting with Arafat is put off from Saturday to Sunday. Let's hope he's using the time to get fitted with a belt of explosives. Now that is how we should negotiate with Arafat! ntm fivre mp3
Consequences
: FoxNews reports that in the aftermath of today's suicide/homicide bombing, Powell is now reconsidering meeting Arafat. Thank God. There has to be some consequence to the horrid acts he controls. ntm fivre mp3
Food market -- yeah, that's a military target
: The mayor of Jerusalem -- just on FoxNews -- had only moments before been in the marketplace the latest Palestinian suicide/homicide/bomber/slime just attacked, killing at least 6 and injuring more than 70. He was buying a cake for his shabbos meal. He was pissed. He should be. So should we. So should Europe. So should the entire damned civilized world. Back off? Now? Are we nuts?ntm fivre mp3
Hairy belly alert
: Dan Hartung sends me this picture of Palestinians in the new international sign of surrender -- "Shirts Up!" instead of "Hands Up!" (see yesterday's post). By the way, these guys aren't starving.ntm fivre mp3
April 11, 2002
Terrorists are our enemy
: Jonah Goldberg has a particularly FOS (full of it) column today arguing that we should end our war on terrorism because terrorism is not an "ism," like communism or fascism; it is a means.
Bull.
Terrorists purposely targetinnocent civilians for their political ends. Terrorism is wrong. It is evil. Those who harbor terrorists are terrorists. (Listen to me spouting Bush!). Terrorism is a wrong in and of itself. Terrorists are our enemies, for we have been attacked by them.
Goldberg proceeds to give inane examples to try to prove his point. He asks whether we'd be against Irish terrorists if they started their crimes again. You bet. Would we invade? No. England doesn't need the help. But would we go after those here who harbor and support such terrorists? Yes. He asks what we'd do if terrorist rebels got started in godless China. Well, if they purposely targeted civilians to cause terror in the population for their political ends, no matter how noble, I sure as hell hope we would not support them.
Terrorists are our enemy.
That is why I hope Bush keeps winking and Sharon keeps digging them out. Every terrorist he catches is one who cannot blow himself and innocent children up in Israel... or here.
Terrorists are our enemy.
The president says it. I agree. I just wish he'd mean it. ntm fivre mp3
A proper memorial
: The punchline to Myron Magnet's piece in City Journal about a proper 9.11 memorial: Whatever monument we finally choose, it should rise in a square amid a rebuilt center of business, not in the midst of a 16-acre necropolis. Even though emotions are raw, we have to keep in mind that we are building for the ages. Fifty years from now, the best memorial to those who died in the attack will be that their monument adorns what is still the world trade center. They believed in the ceaseless activity of commerce and finance that extends prosperity and freedom around the globe. They wanted to be where the action is. And future generations should remember them in the midst of the energetic, ever-striving, optimistic world that they helped to create, that their murderers sought to annihilate, and that we will keep forever alive. Been hitting the hummus too much, fella?: There is a new international signal of surrender, thanks to the suicide/homicide bombing lunatics in the Middle East: Pulling up your shirt to show your naked belly, not covered with dynamite. I can't find the picture online but I saw it in the paper the other day as Palestinians surrendered to Israelis on the West Bank. They didn't have their hands up. They had their shirts up. ntm fivre mp3
Bloghdad
: Via Tal G, a blog in Persian. Of course, I can't read a character of it but I checked out the links, thinking I'd find incendiary stuff. No, just links to news, tech, and movies. Hoping for some translation...ntm fivre mp3
Blogs re blogs
: Tim O'Reilly [via Boing] with pithiness on blogging: These daily diaries of links and reflections on links are the new medium of communication for the technical elite. Replacing the high-cost, high-octane, venture-funded Web site with one that is intensely personal and built around the connectivity between people and ideas, they are creating a new set of synapses for the global brain. It's no accident that weblogs are increasingly turning up as the top hits on search engines, since they trade in the same currency as the best search engines--human intelligence, as reflected in who's already paying attention to what.
Weblogs aren't just the next generation of personal home pages, representing a return to text over design and, lightweight content management systems. They are also a platform for experimentation with the way the Web works: collective bookmarking, virtual communities, tools for syndication, referral, and Web services. : Arnold Kling at Econoblog: My view is that blogging "professionally" is like participating in an open source software project. The economic benefit consists of an enhanced reputation that could be used in other ways. : David Weinberger will be blogging from China for the Boston Globe, of all papers. Guess they're trying to make up to us for the sin of A Beem.
: Ken Goldstein adds -- and adds and adds -- his two cents on blog traffic. ntm fivre mp3
Terrorists are our enemy
: Jonah Goldberg has a particularly FOS (full of it) column today arguing that we should end our war on terrorism because terrorism is not an "ism," like communism or fascism; it is a means.
Bull.
Terrorists purposely targetinnocent civilians for their political ends. Terrorism is wrong. It is evil. Those who harbor terrorists are terrorists. (Listen to me spouting Bush!). Terrorism is a wrong in and of itself. Terrorists are our enemies, for we have been attacked by them.
Goldberg proceeds to give inane examples to try to prove his point. He asks whether we'd be against Irish terrorists if they started their crimes again. You bet. Would we invade? No. England doesn't need the help. But would we go after those here who harbor and support such terrorists? Yes. He asks what we'd do if terrorist rebels got started in godless China. Well, if they purposely targeted civilians to cause terror in the population for their political ends, no matter how noble, I sure as hell hope we would not support them.
Terrorists are our enemy.
That is why I hope Bush keeps winking and Sharon keeps digging them out. Every terrorist he catches is one who cannot blow himself and innocent children up in Israel... or here.
Terrorists are our enemy.
The president says it. I agree. I just wish he'd mean it. ntm fivre mp3
A proper memorial
: The punchline to Myron Magnet's piece in City Journal about a proper 9.11 memorial: Whatever monument we finally choose, it should rise in a square amid a rebuilt center of business, not in the midst of a 16-acre necropolis. Even though emotions are raw, we have to keep in mind that we are building for the ages. Fifty years from now, the best memorial to those who died in the attack will be that their monument adorns what is still the world trade center. They believed in the ceaseless activity of commerce and finance that extends prosperity and freedom around the globe. They wanted to be where the action is. And future generations should remember them in the midst of the energetic, ever-striving, optimistic world that they helped to create, that their murderers sought to annihilate, and that we will keep forever alive. Been hitting the hummus too much, fella?: There is a new international signal of surrender, thanks to the suicide/homicide bombing lunatics in the Middle East: Pulling up your shirt to show your naked belly, not covered with dynamite. I can't find the picture online but I saw it in the paper the other day as Palestinians surrendered to Israelis on the West Bank. They didn't have their hands up. They had their shirts up. ntm fivre mp3
Bloghdad
: Via Tal G, a blog in Persian. Of course, I can't read a character of it but I checked out the links, thinking I'd find incendiary stuff. No, just links to news, tech, and movies. Hoping for some translation...ntm fivre mp3
Blogs re blogs
: Tim O'Reilly [via Boing] with pithiness on blogging: These daily diaries of links and reflections on links are the new medium of communication for the technical elite. Replacing the high-cost, high-octane, venture-funded Web site with one that is intensely personal and built around the connectivity between people and ideas, they are creating a new set of synapses for the global brain. It's no accident that weblogs are increasingly turning up as the top hits on search engines, since they trade in the same currency as the best search engines--human intelligence, as reflected in who's already paying attention to what.
Weblogs aren't just the next generation of personal home pages, representing a return to text over design and, lightweight content management systems. They are also a platform for experimentation with the way the Web works: collective bookmarking, virtual communities, tools for syndication, referral, and Web services. : Arnold Kling at Econoblog: My view is that blogging "professionally" is like participating in an open source software project. The economic benefit consists of an enhanced reputation that could be used in other ways. : David Weinberger will be blogging from China for the Boston Globe, of all papers. Guess they're trying to make up to us for the sin of A Beem.
: Ken Goldstein adds -- and adds and adds -- his two cents on blog traffic. ntm fivre mp3
April 10, 2002
Aw, shucks
: I am so damned honored and delighted to be on the warblogger watch list for my crimes against humanity [via Clay Waters].
This is the Nixon enemies list of the new millenium.ntm fivre mp3
Obsession
: Rossi is worried that she's obsessing on 9.11. I think I've become the Norma Rae of 9/11.
Seriously.
I'm starting to make myself (and evidently all or most of my friends) rather ill as I stand grim-faced on a table and hold a sign that reads, "WTC!"
It's not that I'm not interested in moving on.
It's just that, the more time goes by, the less other people talk about it, the more I feel obligated to fill in the gap. I know the feeling. That's why I keep this blog, so I obsess on 9.11 here and act normal in public. Let's make this just our secret, eh? ntm fivre mp3
A mitzvah
: Somebody bought away Rossi's Blogspot ad. She asked where it was me, since I'm a fan. I had to admit it wasn't. But I decided this means I should do it for somebody else. I did it for a nice Catholic mom's site. Congregationalist performs mitvah for Catholic. Ah, the diversity of the blog.ntm fivre mp3
The mother of invention
: There's a war raging around him but Israeli blogger Tal G is innovating for blogdom. He calls it a killer ap. I wouldn't use that phrase where he is. Anyway... So here's an idea: a tool - call it PunditPal - that presents pre-specified "third party" content together with web pages viewed. So suppose you like James Lileks - when you browse to some outrageous NY Times article that Lileks has ripped apart(and linked to), his takedown would automatically appear in a separate pane. Scintillating: Matt Welch adds two cents to the plans for blog newspapers (below). I think one main other thing the best bloggers bring, is a kind of personality that is no longer easily found at newspapers, due to the effects of cookie-cutter professionalization, monopoly hierarchy, or weird luck.... The audience has latched on to some of the bloggers for precisely this reason, I think, and a newspaper -- local or national -- could liven up their pages considerably simply by doing a better job at recognizing emerging talent, some of which is right in their back yard. Note, too the crossover artists. No, not Dolly Parton. I mean James Lileks. ntm fivre mp3
The Daily Blog
: Glenn Reynolds has a vision of the future of news that I've been playing with for sometime (and I know a few other very smart people who are playing with variations on the same theme... and you know who you are): Blogs as a new generation of online national newspapers.
Essential to this vision is the assumption that news is becoming a commodity. News is not a commodity when you get real reporters doing real reporting and uncovering real news; witness the Pulitizers this season and how the big boys with the big resources managed to tackle the 9.11 story and truly inform us.
But workaday news coverage -- of press conferences, press releases, earnings announcements, trials, campaigns, even games -- is pretty much a commodity, whether it's in print or on TV (that's why broadcast and news networks keep talking about pooling resources) or on radio (that's how Metro can provide vanilla news to radio stations just as it provides vanilla, private-labeled traffic) or online. You and I can all watch the same presidential press conference and the people sitting in that room with George hear nothing different from what we hear and add no real value; that is commodity news. In his Tech Central Station column, Reynolds recognizes the impact of this trend even in big newspapers: The sad truth is that even top-of-the-line mainstream news institutions like The New York Times are becoming more like webloggers all the time, cutting the size and number of foreign bureaus, and relying more and more on wire services for original reporting to which they add commentary and "news analysis." That opens an opportunity for a widely-dispersed network of individuals to make a contribution.
The big thing that mainstream journalism brings is reach and trustworthiness. Critics of media bias may joke about the latter, but though reporters for outlets like Reuters or The New York Times may -- and do -- slant their reporting from time to time, their affiliation with institutions that have a long-term interest in reputation limits how far they can go. When you rely on a report from one of those journalistic organs, you're relying on their reputation. And so where does this lead? In Reynolds' view: An organization that put together a network of freelance journalists under a framework that allowed for that [Amazon] sort of reputation-rating, and that paid based on the number of pageviews and the ratings that each story received, would be more like a traditional newspaper than like a weblog, but it would still be a major change from the newspapers of today. Interestingly, it might well be possible to knit together a network of webloggers into the beginnings of such an organization. With greater reach and lower costs than a traditional newspaper, it might bring something new and competitive to the news business. It's important to focus on who is bringing what value to the audience. Bloggers -- individually and as a group -- bring two things of value, as I see it:
The first and (some would disagree) most important value is selection. Bloggers (with or without lives) spend a great deal of time combing the Web and other media (witness the various Punditwatches) to find the best (and worst) of what's being reported; they sift so you don't have to. Individually, some are great at this (starting with the amazing Professor Reynolds himself). Collectively, the world of bloggers is also good at spotting and creating buzz (see Blogdex and Daypop). That is why I got this domain name: We are a buzzmachine.
The second value bloggers bring is perspective. Bloggers ask questions and poke holes and give their opinions about the news everybody has and that makes the news often more interesting or just entertaining. That is why most bloggers do it.
But traditional news organizations bring value that bloggers do not, besides real reporting. They bring consistency and reliability and jugment. I can read my favorite five or 10 bloggers every day and I will not get as complete and well-rounded a view of the world as I would leafing throught the New York Times because there are many things in there that are important, that I need to know, but that did not happen to interest my set of bloggers. The New York Times and my local paper also bring news judgment; you can quibble with their choices but you cannot quibble with the notion that they give me an easy way to find out what's most important today.
And there is a fourth element of news value that bloggers (apart from one I can name) do not bring: Local. A vision of a blog newspaper works nationally; it is the new USA Today. But right now, it's hard to bring real local reporting and news to the venture; that will remain a strength of local newspapers (along with local advertising and classified). And, yes, I am associated professionally with local newspapers; I know their strength (and the wise newspaper person recognizes the potential of weblogs as well).
Still, Reynolds is right: There is the start of something new here. I just hope I'm part of it. Glenn Reynolds, Nick Denton, Ken Layne, or Matt Welch -- just keep me in mind.
: Eric Olsen has many thoughts and posts on this and on blog traffic here. ntm fivre mp3
Whew
: This made me glad I'm not in school anymore. ntm fivre mp3
Middle East 101
: A good graphic primer on the origins of the Middle East war(s) from the Guardian.ntm fivre mp3
Aw, shucks
: I am so damned honored and delighted to be on the warblogger watch list for my crimes against humanity [via Clay Waters].
This is the Nixon enemies list of the new millenium.ntm fivre mp3
Obsession
: Rossi is worried that she's obsessing on 9.11. I think I've become the Norma Rae of 9/11.
Seriously.
I'm starting to make myself (and evidently all or most of my friends) rather ill as I stand grim-faced on a table and hold a sign that reads, "WTC!"
It's not that I'm not interested in moving on.
It's just that, the more time goes by, the less other people talk about it, the more I feel obligated to fill in the gap. I know the feeling. That's why I keep this blog, so I obsess on 9.11 here and act normal in public. Let's make this just our secret, eh? ntm fivre mp3
A mitzvah
: Somebody bought away Rossi's Blogspot ad. She asked where it was me, since I'm a fan. I had to admit it wasn't. But I decided this means I should do it for somebody else. I did it for a nice Catholic mom's site. Congregationalist performs mitvah for Catholic. Ah, the diversity of the blog.ntm fivre mp3
The mother of invention
: There's a war raging around him but Israeli blogger Tal G is innovating for blogdom. He calls it a killer ap. I wouldn't use that phrase where he is. Anyway... So here's an idea: a tool - call it PunditPal - that presents pre-specified "third party" content together with web pages viewed. So suppose you like James Lileks - when you browse to some outrageous NY Times article that Lileks has ripped apart(and linked to), his takedown would automatically appear in a separate pane. Scintillating: Matt Welch adds two cents to the plans for blog newspapers (below). I think one main other thing the best bloggers bring, is a kind of personality that is no longer easily found at newspapers, due to the effects of cookie-cutter professionalization, monopoly hierarchy, or weird luck.... The audience has latched on to some of the bloggers for precisely this reason, I think, and a newspaper -- local or national -- could liven up their pages considerably simply by doing a better job at recognizing emerging talent, some of which is right in their back yard. Note, too the crossover artists. No, not Dolly Parton. I mean James Lileks. ntm fivre mp3
The Daily Blog
: Glenn Reynolds has a vision of the future of news that I've been playing with for sometime (and I know a few other very smart people who are playing with variations on the same theme... and you know who you are): Blogs as a new generation of online national newspapers.
Essential to this vision is the assumption that news is becoming a commodity. News is not a commodity when you get real reporters doing real reporting and uncovering real news; witness the Pulitizers this season and how the big boys with the big resources managed to tackle the 9.11 story and truly inform us.
But workaday news coverage -- of press conferences, press releases, earnings announcements, trials, campaigns, even games -- is pretty much a commodity, whether it's in print or on TV (that's why broadcast and news networks keep talking about pooling resources) or on radio (that's how Metro can provide vanilla news to radio stations just as it provides vanilla, private-labeled traffic) or online. You and I can all watch the same presidential press conference and the people sitting in that room with George hear nothing different from what we hear and add no real value; that is commodity news. In his Tech Central Station column, Reynolds recognizes the impact of this trend even in big newspapers: The sad truth is that even top-of-the-line mainstream news institutions like The New York Times are becoming more like webloggers all the time, cutting the size and number of foreign bureaus, and relying more and more on wire services for original reporting to which they add commentary and "news analysis." That opens an opportunity for a widely-dispersed network of individuals to make a contribution.
The big thing that mainstream journalism brings is reach and trustworthiness. Critics of media bias may joke about the latter, but though reporters for outlets like Reuters or The New York Times may -- and do -- slant their reporting from time to time, their affiliation with institutions that have a long-term interest in reputation limits how far they can go. When you rely on a report from one of those journalistic organs, you're relying on their reputation. And so where does this lead? In Reynolds' view: An organization that put together a network of freelance journalists under a framework that allowed for that [Amazon] sort of reputation-rating, and that paid based on the number of pageviews and the ratings that each story received, would be more like a traditional newspaper than like a weblog, but it would still be a major change from the newspapers of today. Interestingly, it might well be possible to knit together a network of webloggers into the beginnings of such an organization. With greater reach and lower costs than a traditional newspaper, it might bring something new and competitive to the news business. It's important to focus on who is bringing what value to the audience. Bloggers -- individually and as a group -- bring two things of value, as I see it:
The first and (some would disagree) most important value is selection. Bloggers (with or without lives) spend a great deal of time combing the Web and other media (witness the various Punditwatches) to find the best (and worst) of what's being reported; they sift so you don't have to. Individually, some are great at this (starting with the amazing Professor Reynolds himself). Collectively, the world of bloggers is also good at spotting and creating buzz (see Blogdex and Daypop). That is why I got this domain name: We are a buzzmachine.
The second value bloggers bring is perspective. Bloggers ask questions and poke holes and give their opinions about the news everybody has and that makes the news often more interesting or just entertaining. That is why most bloggers do it.
But traditional news organizations bring value that bloggers do not, besides real reporting. They bring consistency and reliability and jugment. I can read my favorite five or 10 bloggers every day and I will not get as complete and well-rounded a view of the world as I would leafing throught the New York Times because there are many things in there that are important, that I need to know, but that did not happen to interest my set of bloggers. The New York Times and my local paper also bring news judgment; you can quibble with their choices but you cannot quibble with the notion that they give me an easy way to find out what's most important today.
And there is a fourth element of news value that bloggers (apart from one I can name) do not bring: Local. A vision of a blog newspaper works nationally; it is the new USA Today. But right now, it's hard to bring real local reporting and news to the venture; that will remain a strength of local newspapers (along with local advertising and classified). And, yes, I am associated professionally with local newspapers; I know their strength (and the wise newspaper person recognizes the potential of weblogs as well).
Still, Reynolds is right: There is the start of something new here. I just hope I'm part of it. Glenn Reynolds, Nick Denton, Ken Layne, or Matt Welch -- just keep me in mind.
: Eric Olsen has many thoughts and posts on this and on blog traffic here. ntm fivre mp3
Whew
: This made me glad I'm not in school anymore. ntm fivre mp3
Middle East 101
: A good graphic primer on the origins of the Middle East war(s) from the Guardian.ntm fivre mp3
April 09, 2002
Guerilla media
: It sure beat the media big guys: An American serving in the Israeli army in Jenin called Howard Stern's show on his mobile phone this morning and reported on the attack on Israeli soldiers there hours before the same news was on CNN (according to a colleague who monitored both). Just a guy with a phone.ntm fivre mp3
Today in the Muddle East
: How dare the EU consider sanctions against Israel? Europe had better watch its anti-Semitic reputation.
: Powell offers observers to babysit a ceasefire. Uh-oh. We end up on the ground there; we end up the enemy.
: The Saudi crown prince warns that continued Israeli military action will endanger American interests. Is that a threat?
: The blind Egyptian cleric who masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center passed messages to his cohorts through his American attorney, now arrested.
: Rand Simberg is pissed at the church for being pissed at Israelis for answering sniper fire in Bethlehem -- and not being pissed at the Palestinians who took over the church with weapons in hand. "Christians everywhere should be outraged."ntm fivre mp3
Numbers game
: There's much buzz today about blog numbers -- from John Scalzi (the first piece, the second) and in response from Matt Welch, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and Tom Tomorrow.
Well this is something I actually know something about. It's part of my day job. I even did time -- and, oh, yes, it was a sentence for bad behavior -- on the Audit Bureau of Circulation committee that set definitions of page views, visits, unique users, and such for the online and publishing industry (alongside the Internet Advertising Bureau and others).
So here are the boring facts:
: A page view is probably the best measure for bloggers. That is defined, simply, as any page requested by a user. I count that in two ways: My ISP gives me stats that count the HTML files served as pages; I also use a counter that counts each time its graphic is called up on a page. I get up to a few thousand page views a day.
: "Hits" and "files" are meaningless. Each time a browser goes to a server to get a new image, that's a "hit" on a "file" and obviously, the more files you have a page, the more hits you'll have (thus graphically lavish Tony Pierce or Photodude would have more hits per page than the spare, Shaker Drudge or Instapundit).
: Visits are a bullshit measure. Some services count a visit as a continuous string of page views from one user or one IP address. But for many reasons, that falls apart quickly (you could go off to another site and then come back and you may or may not be counted as one "visit," for example). Ignore visits.
: Unique visitors are a great measure -- that's the measure of actual people who come to a site in a day or, cumulatively, in a month; that's the real circulation or, in ad jargon, the "reach." However, the ONLY reliable way to count that is via registration or cookies (so each user has a unique identity). No small-fry site will have the technology to do that reliably.
Thus, I suggest that Blogdom settle on a standard for traffic bragging: page views. You count the actual HTML pages you serve (or you count along with a counter) and that's the most accurate number to report.
Now to the real ego question: How big is big? Obviously, it's not hard for a big media site with big media advertising to out-do a blogger. The sites I work on (at Advance.net each do tens of millions of page views in a month; as I've said before, just the high-school wrestling forums on just NJ.com can do 250,000 page views in a day).
I'd say that Glenn Reynolds' 43,000 page views in a day holds up quite respectably next to that considering that he has no promotion, no advertising, and his content is essentially one-page deep.
More important, add Reynolds to Sullivan, Welch, Layne, all the folks on my right column (and, humbly, me) and you have a very respectable audience across Blogdom. That is growing. That is worth paying attention to.
: Update: Glenn Reynolds links to this item, causing traffic about traffic, and Rebecca Blood responds, via him, arguing against page views as the standard and in favor of unique IP addresses as a proxy for unique users and audience size. Only problem with that is, most counters and basic ISPs do not provide that data. And IP addresses do change if you keep coming back through, for example, AOL, so it's a less accurate measure.
I'd say what we're trying to measure is heat and buzz and page views do that well. Yes, people go to Instapundit often in a day and that's because Glenn provides new content and real value about 22 hours a day (what does your wife say about all this, Glenn?).
There's also some discussion of the value of search engine traffic. Anybody who finds a site via a search engine is, of course, quite valid; that's how people find half the content on the Internet. Search engines that spider sites to catalogue them should not be counted but that's more of an issue for big sites than for simple blogs (though we do get spidered); I'd count that as digital dust.
End of statistical nerdfest.ntm fivre mp3
Guerilla media
: It sure beat the media big guys: An American serving in the Israeli army in Jenin called Howard Stern's show on his mobile phone this morning and reported on the attack on Israeli soldiers there hours before the same news was on CNN (according to a colleague who monitored both). Just a guy with a phone.ntm fivre mp3
Today in the Muddle East
: How dare the EU consider sanctions against Israel? Europe had better watch its anti-Semitic reputation.
: Powell offers observers to babysit a ceasefire. Uh-oh. We end up on the ground there; we end up the enemy.
: The Saudi crown prince warns that continued Israeli military action will endanger American interests. Is that a threat?
: The blind Egyptian cleric who masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center passed messages to his cohorts through his American attorney, now arrested.
: Rand Simberg is pissed at the church for being pissed at Israelis for answering sniper fire in Bethlehem -- and not being pissed at the Palestinians who took over the church with weapons in hand. "Christians everywhere should be outraged."ntm fivre mp3
Numbers game
: There's much buzz today about blog numbers -- from John Scalzi (the first piece, the second) and in response from Matt Welch, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and Tom Tomorrow.
Well this is something I actually know something about. It's part of my day job. I even did time -- and, oh, yes, it was a sentence for bad behavior -- on the Audit Bureau of Circulation committee that set definitions of page views, visits, unique users, and such for the online and publishing industry (alongside the Internet Advertising Bureau and others).
So here are the boring facts:
: A page view is probably the best measure for bloggers. That is defined, simply, as any page requested by a user. I count that in two ways: My ISP gives me stats that count the HTML files served as pages; I also use a counter that counts each time its graphic is called up on a page. I get up to a few thousand page views a day.
: "Hits" and "files" are meaningless. Each time a browser goes to a server to get a new image, that's a "hit" on a "file" and obviously, the more files you have a page, the more hits you'll have (thus graphically lavish Tony Pierce or Photodude would have more hits per page than the spare, Shaker Drudge or Instapundit).
: Visits are a bullshit measure. Some services count a visit as a continuous string of page views from one user or one IP address. But for many reasons, that falls apart quickly (you could go off to another site and then come back and you may or may not be counted as one "visit," for example). Ignore visits.
: Unique visitors are a great measure -- that's the measure of actual people who come to a site in a day or, cumulatively, in a month; that's the real circulation or, in ad jargon, the "reach." However, the ONLY reliable way to count that is via registration or cookies (so each user has a unique identity). No small-fry site will have the technology to do that reliably.
Thus, I suggest that Blogdom settle on a standard for traffic bragging: page views. You count the actual HTML pages you serve (or you count along with a counter) and that's the most accurate number to report.
Now to the real ego question: How big is big? Obviously, it's not hard for a big media site with big media advertising to out-do a blogger. The sites I work on (at Advance.net each do tens of millions of page views in a month; as I've said before, just the high-school wrestling forums on just NJ.com can do 250,000 page views in a day).
I'd say that Glenn Reynolds' 43,000 page views in a day holds up quite respectably next to that considering that he has no promotion, no advertising, and his content is essentially one-page deep.
More important, add Reynolds to Sullivan, Welch, Layne, all the folks on my right column (and, humbly, me) and you have a very respectable audience across Blogdom. That is growing. That is worth paying attention to.
: Update: Glenn Reynolds links to this item, causing traffic about traffic, and Rebecca Blood responds, via him, arguing against page views as the standard and in favor of unique IP addresses as a proxy for unique users and audience size. Only problem with that is, most counters and basic ISPs do not provide that data. And IP addresses do change if you keep coming back through, for example, AOL, so it's a less accurate measure.
I'd say what we're trying to measure is heat and buzz and page views do that well. Yes, people go to Instapundit often in a day and that's because Glenn provides new content and real value about 22 hours a day (what does your wife say about all this, Glenn?).
There's also some discussion of the value of search engine traffic. Anybody who finds a site via a search engine is, of course, quite valid; that's how people find half the content on the Internet. Search engines that spider sites to catalogue them should not be counted but that's more of an issue for big sites than for simple blogs (though we do get spidered); I'd count that as digital dust.
End of statistical nerdfest.ntm fivre mp3
April 08, 2002
I'd like to thank...
: The Pulitzers have been announced and the big guys trounced the rest of the industry. The NY Times took most, winning for the Nation Challenged section, for photography, and for Thomas Friedman; the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and LA Times took most of the rest. Good for them all.
If I ran a paper, I wouldn't even enter these contests. In most years -- when there isn't an earth-shattering event such as 9.11 to give the big guys with the big resources the edge -- The Pulitzers and other prizes skew journalism away from the audience, motivating papers to create long, boring, self-important pieces that are aimed at fellow journalists, not at the people who buy and read and need newspapers.ntm fivre mp3
4/5ths
: I keep telling Nick Denton I want him to hire me when he starts his next company. Here's why: I intend my next company to be different. No more late nights. No more monomaniac workaholics. Less heat, more light. If I keep my nerve, I’m going to institute a four-day week as the norm. Call it the 80% company....
Employ only 80%-ers. Close down on Fridays. That way an employer can hire people with a life outside work, and give them a career path. Yes, you too can become a CEO one day. An 80% CEO, that is. War: Tal G reports from Israel: Since the IDF moved into Area A, the jihad-bombings and shootings have almost totally ceased. Consequently the atmosphere here in Jerusalem is a lot different. People are going out a bit more, but the city still seems quiet; walking around last night I felt like I was in a quiet little village.... I think that people feel safer, but know that this is likely to last only as long as it takes for Fatah, Hamas etc. to regroup. Then the IDF will have to go back in again. ntm fivre mp3
The quality of the enemy
: David Warren gives us an oddly hopeful column as he head's off on a month's vacation. He's assuming the world will not blow up while he's gone. On the one hand, in "Islamism" or "Jihadism" we are dealing with a worldview, an ideology, more murderous than Nazism. It is also, arguably, more widely diffused. On the other hand, it is pathetically organized.
These next few years will be a very rough ride. But the same Western values that make us so much better organized, to say nothing of sane, will, in the end, ensure that we prevail. Like every fanatical ideology before it, Islamism won't work, can't, and in the end even its exponents will tire of their failure. ntm fivre mp3
I'd like to thank...
: The Pulitzers have been announced and the big guys trounced the rest of the industry. The NY Times took most, winning for the Nation Challenged section, for photography, and for Thomas Friedman; the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and LA Times took most of the rest. Good for them all.
If I ran a paper, I wouldn't even enter these contests. In most years -- when there isn't an earth-shattering event such as 9.11 to give the big guys with the big resources the edge -- The Pulitzers and other prizes skew journalism away from the audience, motivating papers to create long, boring, self-important pieces that are aimed at fellow journalists, not at the people who buy and read and need newspapers.ntm fivre mp3
4/5ths
: I keep telling Nick Denton I want him to hire me when he starts his next company. Here's why: I intend my next company to be different. No more late nights. No more monomaniac workaholics. Less heat, more light. If I keep my nerve, I’m going to institute a four-day week as the norm. Call it the 80% company....
Employ only 80%-ers. Close down on Fridays. That way an employer can hire people with a life outside work, and give them a career path. Yes, you too can become a CEO one day. An 80% CEO, that is. War: Tal G reports from Israel: Since the IDF moved into Area A, the jihad-bombings and shootings have almost totally ceased. Consequently the atmosphere here in Jerusalem is a lot different. People are going out a bit more, but the city still seems quiet; walking around last night I felt like I was in a quiet little village.... I think that people feel safer, but know that this is likely to last only as long as it takes for Fatah, Hamas etc. to regroup. Then the IDF will have to go back in again. ntm fivre mp3
The quality of the enemy
: David Warren gives us an oddly hopeful column as he head's off on a month's vacation. He's assuming the world will not blow up while he's gone. On the one hand, in "Islamism" or "Jihadism" we are dealing with a worldview, an ideology, more murderous than Nazism. It is also, arguably, more widely diffused. On the other hand, it is pathetically organized.
These next few years will be a very rough ride. But the same Western values that make us so much better organized, to say nothing of sane, will, in the end, ensure that we prevail. Like every fanatical ideology before it, Islamism won't work, can't, and in the end even its exponents will tire of their failure. ntm fivre mp3
April 07, 2002
Objects
: The squeegee that saved lives in an elevator of the World Trade Center on 9.11 is being donated to the Smithsonian. "It's collected not as a squeegee handle itself," the curator tells the Washington Post, "but as evidence of life's affirmation."
If you never read the amazing story of this by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times, read it now.ntm fivre mp3
How does 'King George' sound?
: Robert Cooper, a British diplomat, argues in the Guardian that what the world needs now is a new form of colonialism.
The troublespots in the world, he says, are "premodern states -- often former colonies -- whose failures have led to a Hobbesian war of all against all: countries such as Somalia and, until recently, Afghanistan." He also lists Chechnya and other former Soviet lands, every major drug-producing country in the world, major parts of South America, Burma, and much of Africa. Their threat: The pre-modern state may be too weak even to secure its own territory, let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can provide a base for non-state actors who may represent a danger to the postmodern world. If drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates use pre-modern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states may have to respond. If they become too dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive imperialism. The West's response to Afghanistan can be seen in this light.
How should we deal with the pre-modern chaos? To become involved in a zone of chaos is risky; if the intervention is prolonged it may become unsustainable in public opinion; if the intervention is unsuccessful it may be damaging to the government that ordered it. But the risks of letting countries rot, as the West did Afghanistan, may be even greater. Right. Zone of chaos = quagmire = Vietnam = death = political defeat = military defeat. So what's Cooper's solution? What is needed is a new kind of imperialism, one compatible with human rights and cosmopolitan values: an imperialism which aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.
We already have voluntary imperialism of the global economy through institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. These multilateral institutions provide help to states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for assistance.
The second form of postmodern imperialism might be called the imperialism of neighbours. Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can ignore. But terrorism is precisely what makes this impossible. So with all good intention, we take on an imperialistic, colonial, avuncular relationship with Afghanistan and Palestine and a couple of former Soviet states and a few fun spots in South America and Africa and what would we get for our expense and trouble and risk? Attacks, that's what.
Nice try. ntm fivre mp3
Busy, busy, busy
: Oprah's just so darned busy. She can't do her book club anymore because she's so darned busy. (Jonathan Franzen: Stand down.). She can't go to Afghanistan because she's so darned busy.
I say that Martha Stewart should be the new Oprah.
Oprah's just too darned busy to be Oprah. ntm fivre mp3
Can't tell the players without...
: A Who's Who of murderous slime.ntm fivre mp3
Biting the hand that feeds
: William Quick bites the hand that feeds his blog, moving back to Blogspot (to get the free bandwidth) but complaining about Blogger. Bloggers are tough customers.ntm fivre mp3
Poop
: Jamie Lee Curtis gets a patent on a new diaper.ntm fivre mp3
Objects
: The squeegee that saved lives in an elevator of the World Trade Center on 9.11 is being donated to the Smithsonian. "It's collected not as a squeegee handle itself," the curator tells the Washington Post, "but as evidence of life's affirmation."
If you never read the amazing story of this by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times, read it now.ntm fivre mp3
How does 'King George' sound?
: Robert Cooper, a British diplomat, argues in the Guardian that what the world needs now is a new form of colonialism.
The troublespots in the world, he says, are "premodern states -- often former colonies -- whose failures have led to a Hobbesian war of all against all: countries such as Somalia and, until recently, Afghanistan." He also lists Chechnya and other former Soviet lands, every major drug-producing country in the world, major parts of South America, Burma, and much of Africa. Their threat: The pre-modern state may be too weak even to secure its own territory, let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can provide a base for non-state actors who may represent a danger to the postmodern world. If drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates use pre-modern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states may have to respond. If they become too dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive imperialism. The West's response to Afghanistan can be seen in this light.
How should we deal with the pre-modern chaos? To become involved in a zone of chaos is risky; if the intervention is prolonged it may become unsustainable in public opinion; if the intervention is unsuccessful it may be damaging to the government that ordered it. But the risks of letting countries rot, as the West did Afghanistan, may be even greater. Right. Zone of chaos = quagmire = Vietnam = death = political defeat = military defeat. So what's Cooper's solution? What is needed is a new kind of imperialism, one compatible with human rights and cosmopolitan values: an imperialism which aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.
We already have voluntary imperialism of the global economy through institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. These multilateral institutions provide help to states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for assistance.
The second form of postmodern imperialism might be called the imperialism of neighbours. Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can ignore. But terrorism is precisely what makes this impossible. So with all good intention, we take on an imperialistic, colonial, avuncular relationship with Afghanistan and Palestine and a couple of former Soviet states and a few fun spots in South America and Africa and what would we get for our expense and trouble and risk? Attacks, that's what.
Nice try. ntm fivre mp3
Busy, busy, busy
: Oprah's just so darned busy. She can't do her book club anymore because she's so darned busy. (Jonathan Franzen: Stand down.). She can't go to Afghanistan because she's so darned busy.
I say that Martha Stewart should be the new Oprah.
Oprah's just too darned busy to be Oprah. ntm fivre mp3
Can't tell the players without...
: A Who's Who of murderous slime.ntm fivre mp3
Biting the hand that feeds
: William Quick bites the hand that feeds his blog, moving back to Blogspot (to get the free bandwidth) but complaining about Blogger. Bloggers are tough customers.ntm fivre mp3
Poop
: Jamie Lee Curtis gets a patent on a new diaper.ntm fivre mp3
April 06, 2002
There's a reason they call it 'insta'
: Says David Warren: "What do you make of Bush's speech? Cave in? Or prelude to something bigger?"
This was the question flashed at me by an American blogger within seconds of President Bush concluding his address on Thursday. The speed of modern thought is astonishing, impressive. The answer here. ntm fivre mp3
Dear Mr. Ayatollah
: Andrea Harris has nice things to say about my Age of Emotions post, below (of which I am rather proud, if I do say so myself) and then she one-ups me. I won't quote it so I keep my PG rating.ntm fivre mp3
Blogrolling
: Reid Stott tackles the same issues I tackled in my post on the Age of Emotions (below) and the same ones Matt Welch did in a good post. Read them all.
: Eric Olsen has thoughtful posts on whether there are one or two wars in the Middle East -- a war for Palestinian sovereignty and/or a war of murderous Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semites. Are they one and the same? Read him, Norman Podhoretz, Amos Oz, and Charles Johnson on the topic.
: Read Charles Johnson on many topics.
: Virginia Postrel did a far better job than I could have finding the bull in Norah Vincent's thin-as-electrons analysis of blogs as conservative voices that tweak big, liberal media. I'm media. I'm blog. What does that make me? Confused? [via known liberal Matt Welch}
: Tal G takes a stroll in Israel and he sees: "2 camera crews (I think one was British; the other spoke French) .. and a car with multiple Danish flag stickers and "TV" written with masking tape on the side. This latter trick (the "TV" thing) is done I think by most journalists that drive around the Palestinian territories. At the risk of oversimplifiying, it's code for "don't shoot me". "
: Jacob Shwirtz on why we should rebuild at WTC: "I would rather be able to bring my children to a redeveloped World Trade Center (with appropriate historical markings, etc.), than a World Trade Cemetery."
: Jim Treacher has found his blog voice, all right. He gives big-time Salon a better punchline for the George W Bush meets Ozzy Osbourne for dinner story: " 'Perhaps Ozzy and George could share their '70s memory.' Because it's singular, see? Between the two of them? Okay, but it was worth every penny you paid for it."
: I asked whether there were any pro-Palestinian blogs (since every blog I see has the good sense to be against terrorism). Here are a few from readers: Electronic Intifada, Common Dreams. That's all? Majority rules.
: The new Rossi is up. That always makes me happy. This time, it's about her feeling old. Since she's probably about half my age, that makes me feel doubly old.
: Matthew Yglesias finally has larger TYPE. I was afraid his font was just another young person's way to make me feel old.
: I'm only 47. Yes, only.
: I wish I had time to read half of what den Beste writes. But I don't. I'm getting old. I have only so much time left.
: Via Relapsed Catholic, why do people say Jesus H. Christ? "The H stands for Harold, as in, "Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name" (snort)."
: Mark Steyn is great and note that bloggers are not bigoted about print wretches; we all love him. Here's why: "All civilized people can agree that killing Jews is wrong. Well, killing six million of them 60 years ago is wrong. Killing a couple of dozen every 48 hours or so, that's a different matter. The official position of Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, speaking from his beach in Barbados, is that Israel's response to the Passover massacre is "disproportionate."" Read on.
: I, too, miss Thomas Nephew but fear not; I've heard from him; he's safe but busy.
: Great Welch post on the insecurity of the gatekeepers.ntm fivre mp3
There's a reason they call it 'insta'
: Says David Warren: "What do you make of Bush's speech? Cave in? Or prelude to something bigger?"
This was the question flashed at me by an American blogger within seconds of President Bush concluding his address on Thursday. The speed of modern thought is astonishing, impressive. The answer here. ntm fivre mp3
Dear Mr. Ayatollah
: Andrea Harris has nice things to say about my Age of Emotions post, below (of which I am rather proud, if I do say so myself) and then she one-ups me. I won't quote it so I keep my PG rating.ntm fivre mp3
Blogrolling
: Reid Stott tackles the same issues I tackled in my post on the Age of Emotions (below) and the same ones Matt Welch did in a good post. Read them all.
: Eric Olsen has thoughtful posts on whether there are one or two wars in the Middle East -- a war for Palestinian sovereignty and/or a war of murderous Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semites. Are they one and the same? Read him, Norman Podhoretz, Amos Oz, and Charles Johnson on the topic.
: Read Charles Johnson on many topics.
: Virginia Postrel did a far better job than I could have finding the bull in Norah Vincent's thin-as-electrons analysis of blogs as conservative voices that tweak big, liberal media. I'm media. I'm blog. What does that make me? Confused? [via known liberal Matt Welch}
: Tal G takes a stroll in Israel and he sees: "2 camera crews (I think one was British; the other spoke French) .. and a car with multiple Danish flag stickers and "TV" written with masking tape on the side. This latter trick (the "TV" thing) is done I think by most journalists that drive around the Palestinian territories. At the risk of oversimplifiying, it's code for "don't shoot me". "
: Jacob Shwirtz on why we should rebuild at WTC: "I would rather be able to bring my children to a redeveloped World Trade Center (with appropriate historical markings, etc.), than a World Trade Cemetery."
: Jim Treacher has found his blog voice, all right. He gives big-time Salon a better punchline for the George W Bush meets Ozzy Osbourne for dinner story: " 'Perhaps Ozzy and George could share their '70s memory.' Because it's singular, see? Between the two of them? Okay, but it was worth every penny you paid for it."
: I asked whether there were any pro-Palestinian blogs (since every blog I see has the good sense to be against terrorism). Here are a few from readers: Electronic Intifada, Common Dreams. That's all? Majority rules.
: The new Rossi is up. That always makes me happy. This time, it's about her feeling old. Since she's probably about half my age, that makes me feel doubly old.
: Matthew Yglesias finally has larger TYPE. I was afraid his font was just another young person's way to make me feel old.
: I'm only 47. Yes, only.
: I wish I had time to read half of what den Beste writes. But I don't. I'm getting old. I have only so much time left.
: Via Relapsed Catholic, why do people say Jesus H. Christ? "The H stands for Harold, as in, "Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name" (snort)."
: Mark Steyn is great and note that bloggers are not bigoted about print wretches; we all love him. Here's why: "All civilized people can agree that killing Jews is wrong. Well, killing six million of them 60 years ago is wrong. Killing a couple of dozen every 48 hours or so, that's a different matter. The official position of Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, speaking from his beach in Barbados, is that Israel's response to the Passover massacre is "disproportionate."" Read on.
: I, too, miss Thomas Nephew but fear not; I've heard from him; he's safe but busy.
: Great Welch post on the insecurity of the gatekeepers.ntm fivre mp3
April 05, 2002
Iranian criminals
: In the Tehran Times, Ayatollah Khamenei says America is in league with "Zionist crimes" and calls for an oil embargo against Israel and its allies (read: us). It gets better/worse: On Bush's calling the Palestinians "terrorist" the Leader asked, "Can a nation which has been a victim of Israeli suppression and crimes for years and sends its young people out to defend them be called terrorist?... Referring to the failure of Adolph Hitler's Nazism and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the Leader said that the U.S. logic of the bully was doomed to failure too. So this is Iranian logic: A nation that straps bombs to its young to murder cannot be called terrorist but we can be likened to Hitler? What oil-soaked slime they are. ntm fivre mp3
The Age of Emotions
: The keyword of this war has become "humiliation."
In their often-pathetic effort to find tit-for-tat criticism of the Israelis for retaliating against Palestinian suicide-murderers, the Pope, The New York Times, and now even the President have complained that Israeli is "humliating" Palestinians and have urged them to stop.
Humiliation is suddenly a sin akin to murder -- even sending your own children to murder, even accepting money for their deaths. In what world is humiliation equivalent to terrorism? In a world where emotions matter most.
It's not happening just in the Middle East, of course. Emotions rule America.
This is now a country where politicians and artists and educators and business people who "offend" can come under attack from anyone -- leftie PC harpies or rightie fundamentalist loons -- and lose their jobs.
Listen to the streets, where "disrespect" is a verb and a justification for a fight.
"Humiliation," "offense," "disrespect" -- these are only emotions. But we've made them real. We've made them weapons.
Calling Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud! Look what you have done:
A century of therapy and psychoshit has brought us to the Age of Emotions, when feelings -- not intelligence, not reason, not law, not morality, not ethics -- but self-centered feelings can drive political discourse and even war.
It's time to take the world off the couch and off its meds and wake up to the obvious: Terrorism and murder and terrorists and murderers are permanently evil and they don't get time off that sentence because their feelings are hurt; they can't use that as an excuse to commit their evils.
To hell with the emotions of the terrorists. And I don't give a damn if that offends you.ntm fivre mp3
Instapundit v. Economist
: I side with Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds is quite right when he complains about this line in The Economist: Yet Palestine does not fit the September 11th template. For this is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause: the independent statehood that America itself has taken pains to say it supports. There is no mitigating factor that justifies terrorism.
Now that we are a victim of mass terrorism, we should understand that in our very soul.
I even got into a fight with my minister about this and he recalled it just this weekend: He, like others, says that the conditions the Palestinians have lived in and their goal for a state are sympathetic. But that has absolutely no relation to their actions of late. Can anything justify selling your children to murder? Could anything justify the Holocaust. Of course not. ntm fivre mp3
Iranian criminals
: In the Tehran Times, Ayatollah Khamenei says America is in league with "Zionist crimes" and calls for an oil embargo against Israel and its allies (read: us). It gets better/worse: On Bush's calling the Palestinians "terrorist" the Leader asked, "Can a nation which has been a victim of Israeli suppression and crimes for years and sends its young people out to defend them be called terrorist?... Referring to the failure of Adolph Hitler's Nazism and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the Leader said that the U.S. logic of the bully was doomed to failure too. So this is Iranian logic: A nation that straps bombs to its young to murder cannot be called terrorist but we can be likened to Hitler? What oil-soaked slime they are. ntm fivre mp3
The Age of Emotions
: The keyword of this war has become "humiliation."
In their often-pathetic effort to find tit-for-tat criticism of the Israelis for retaliating against Palestinian suicide-murderers, the Pope, The New York Times, and now even the President have complained that Israeli is "humliating" Palestinians and have urged them to stop.
Humiliation is suddenly a sin akin to murder -- even sending your own children to murder, even accepting money for their deaths. In what world is humiliation equivalent to terrorism? In a world where emotions matter most.
It's not happening just in the Middle East, of course. Emotions rule America.
This is now a country where politicians and artists and educators and business people who "offend" can come under attack from anyone -- leftie PC harpies or rightie fundamentalist loons -- and lose their jobs.
Listen to the streets, where "disrespect" is a verb and a justification for a fight.
"Humiliation," "offense," "disrespect" -- these are only emotions. But we've made them real. We've made them weapons.
Calling Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud! Look what you have done:
A century of therapy and psychoshit has brought us to the Age of Emotions, when feelings -- not intelligence, not reason, not law, not morality, not ethics -- but self-centered feelings can drive political discourse and even war.
It's time to take the world off the couch and off its meds and wake up to the obvious: Terrorism and murder and terrorists and murderers are permanently evil and they don't get time off that sentence because their feelings are hurt; they can't use that as an excuse to commit their evils.
To hell with the emotions of the terrorists. And I don't give a damn if that offends you.ntm fivre mp3
Instapundit v. Economist
: I side with Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds is quite right when he complains about this line in The Economist: Yet Palestine does not fit the September 11th template. For this is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause: the independent statehood that America itself has taken pains to say it supports. There is no mitigating factor that justifies terrorism.
Now that we are a victim of mass terrorism, we should understand that in our very soul.
I even got into a fight with my minister about this and he recalled it just this weekend: He, like others, says that the conditions the Palestinians have lived in and their goal for a state are sympathetic. But that has absolutely no relation to their actions of late. Can anything justify selling your children to murder? Could anything justify the Holocaust. Of course not. ntm fivre mp3
April 04, 2002
Spade meet spade
: Am I blind? Perhaps I just have a narrow world view but I can't find one blogger who is siding with the Palestinians against the Israelis. (Can you?)
So how come Bush is finding it so hard to call a terrorist a terrorist?
I feel a need to restate the obvious, following George Orwell's "famous dicta" as paraphrased by Norman Podhoretz (see below): "There comes a point when the primary duty of an honest man is to restate the obvious."
The painfully obvious:
Terrorists are the enemy. Terrorists are our enemy. Period.ntm fivre mp3
Newspeak
: In the Jerusalem Post, Norman Podhoretz takes George Bush to task for waffling not just on the politics of the war in the Middle East but also on the language of it. Never, says Podhoretz... ...did he permit himself to be bamboozled by the idea so dear to so many denizens of those communities that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Taking the opposite position, he declared repeatedly that terrorism was itself evil, under any and all circumstances. From which it followed that there could be no such thing as a good terrorist. Right. It has become known as the Bush doctrine: a terrorist is a terrorist; anyone who harbors a terrorist is a terrorist. Unless, apparently, his name is Yasser.
Podhoretz says it with greater subtlety. He complains about Bush falling prey to the phrase "circle of violence" to describe what's happening over there in hell now. A linguistic child of the concept of moral equivalence, the words "cycle of violence" allow of no distinction between terrorist attacks and retaliation against them. They allow of no distinction between the deliberate murder of civilians and the inadvertent harm done to civilians in a military action. And in the context of the "Arab-Israeli conflict" (itself a deceptive label for what should actually be called "the Arab war against Israel"), to speak of a "cycle of violence" is to conjure up a Hatfield-McCoy type of feud between equally irrational parties....
Bush's occasional surrender to the "cycle of violence" cliche has, in short, marked the limit of his power to resist political speech that defends the indefensible, and befogged the incandescent clarity about terrorism he began to achieve after September 11. Podhoretz says Bush is leaving it to Donald Rumsfeld to be honest and blunt, as he was just the other day Sounding like Bush when he had been at his best, Rumsfeld declared: "Murderers are not martyrs. Targeting civilians is immoral, whatever the excuse. Terrorists have declared war on civilization, and states like Iran, Iraq, and Syria are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing." Amen. Amen. Amen.
Bush's word waffling worried Podhoretz greatly: As a Jew, I tremble for the harm that may come to Israel through President Bush's loss of clarity -- and with it his ability to restate the obvious. But as an American who believes with all his heart and soul in the necessity of my country's war against terrorism, and in the justice of our cause, I also worry about the moral and intellectual and strategic damage done to that cause by the refusal to face the plain truth that the despots who tyrannize over most of the Muslim world hate the United States, "the Great Satan," even more than they hate Israel, "the Little Satan." The pen can be mightier than the sword. It can also be weaker. ntm fivre mp3
Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist?
: That is the simple question of the day.
I just watched an anchor on FoxNews go ballistic on the point.
The pressure is on from the right to get George Bush to hold to his own Bush doctrine and declare that those who harbor (or sponsor or breed) terrorists are terrorists.
The diplomatic, strategic, and tactical complications are obvious.
But the line is clear: We were attacked by terrorists. Terrorists are our enemy now, too.
Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist?ntm fivre mp3
Absolut pundit
: He's back.ntm fivre mp3
Spade meet spade
: Am I blind? Perhaps I just have a narrow world view but I can't find one blogger who is siding with the Palestinians against the Israelis. (Can you?)
So how come Bush is finding it so hard to call a terrorist a terrorist?
I feel a need to restate the obvious, following George Orwell's "famous dicta" as paraphrased by Norman Podhoretz (see below): "There comes a point when the primary duty of an honest man is to restate the obvious."
The painfully obvious:
Terrorists are the enemy. Terrorists are our enemy. Period.ntm fivre mp3
Newspeak
: In the Jerusalem Post, Norman Podhoretz takes George Bush to task for waffling not just on the politics of the war in the Middle East but also on the language of it. Never, says Podhoretz... ...did he permit himself to be bamboozled by the idea so dear to so many denizens of those communities that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Taking the opposite position, he declared repeatedly that terrorism was itself evil, under any and all circumstances. From which it followed that there could be no such thing as a good terrorist. Right. It has become known as the Bush doctrine: a terrorist is a terrorist; anyone who harbors a terrorist is a terrorist. Unless, apparently, his name is Yasser.
Podhoretz says it with greater subtlety. He complains about Bush falling prey to the phrase "circle of violence" to describe what's happening over there in hell now. A linguistic child of the concept of moral equivalence, the words "cycle of violence" allow of no distinction between terrorist attacks and retaliation against them. They allow of no distinction between the deliberate murder of civilians and the inadvertent harm done to civilians in a military action. And in the context of the "Arab-Israeli conflict" (itself a deceptive label for what should actually be called "the Arab war against Israel"), to speak of a "cycle of violence" is to conjure up a Hatfield-McCoy type of feud between equally irrational parties....
Bush's occasional surrender to the "cycle of violence" cliche has, in short, marked the limit of his power to resist political speech that defends the indefensible, and befogged the incandescent clarity about terrorism he began to achieve after September 11. Podhoretz says Bush is leaving it to Donald Rumsfeld to be honest and blunt, as he was just the other day Sounding like Bush when he had been at his best, Rumsfeld declared: "Murderers are not martyrs. Targeting civilians is immoral, whatever the excuse. Terrorists have declared war on civilization, and states like Iran, Iraq, and Syria are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing." Amen. Amen. Amen.
Bush's word waffling worried Podhoretz greatly: As a Jew, I tremble for the harm that may come to Israel through President Bush's loss of clarity -- and with it his ability to restate the obvious. But as an American who believes with all his heart and soul in the necessity of my country's war against terrorism, and in the justice of our cause, I also worry about the moral and intellectual and strategic damage done to that cause by the refusal to face the plain truth that the despots who tyrannize over most of the Muslim world hate the United States, "the Great Satan," even more than they hate Israel, "the Little Satan." The pen can be mightier than the sword. It can also be weaker. ntm fivre mp3
Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist?
: That is the simple question of the day.
I just watched an anchor on FoxNews go ballistic on the point.
The pressure is on from the right to get George Bush to hold to his own Bush doctrine and declare that those who harbor (or sponsor or breed) terrorists are terrorists.
The diplomatic, strategic, and tactical complications are obvious.
But the line is clear: We were attacked by terrorists. Terrorists are our enemy now, too.
Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist?ntm fivre mp3
Absolut pundit
: He's back.ntm fivre mp3
April 03, 2002
Hey, Mr. Pope, you twit
: So the Pope scolds Israeli for "humiliating" the Palestinians. Oh, for Christ's sake.
How about condemning the Palestinians for selling their own children as murderers who are killing innocent Israelis, Mr. Pope?
Says the Times of London (with my italics): The Vatican also denounced suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism by Palestinian extremists against Israeli civilians, reflecting the Pope’s growing alarm over the threat to Jerusalem’s Holy Sites posed by the fighting. It said that the Pope believed that reprisals and revenge attacks did nothing but feed the sense of frustration and hatred in “this dramatic situation”.
The burden of the Vatican’s remarks was, however, seen by diplomats as anti-Israeli, with the statement calling on Israel to use proportionate force in acts of legitimate self-defence. It said Israel should respect United Nations resolutions, a reference to Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas.
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, accused Israel of desecrating the birthplace of Jesus, as Israeli tanks encircled Manger Square in Bethlehem. And what would you call "proportionate response," Pope guy? Murdering hundreds of innocent Palestinians, perhaps?
And what about the armed Palestinians who entered the birthplace of Christ? How is that not desecration?
You might want to be concerned about the Vatican's history of standing back and letting anti-Semites murder Jews, eh?
But screw history. You have plenty of problems today, Pope boy.
Your church is responsible for hiding the molesters of children and you're not taking action to fix it. It's so bad that the usually conservative, cautious talk radio I sometimes suffer here in Jersey (just to get the traffic report) has not hesitated to devote hours to all the reasons why no one should trust you or your church.
You have problems, Mr. Pope.
You have a moral credibility gap the size of Siberia. ntm fivre mp3
The real quagmire
: Thomas Friedman can't make up his mind. A few columns ago, he was insisting that American troops had to go to Israel and the nascent Palestine to keep the peace (on the assumption there will be a peace to keep).
Today, he is warning: "President Bush needs to be careful that America doesn't get sucked into something very dangerous here." Well, yeah.
Yet Friedman still plays Palestinian polyanna as he tries to get us on the ground over there: People say that U.S. troops there would be shot at like U.S. troops in Beirut. I disagree. U.S. troops that are the midwife of a Palestinian state and supervise a return of Muslim sovereignty over the holy mosques in Jerusalem would be the key to solving all the contradictions of U.S. policy in the Middle East, not new targets. And what happens the first time that the Palestinians unleash more suicide-murderers -- whether or not they are sanctioned by the alleged leadership or come from pissy splinters -- and our troops have to go ferret out the ferrets and bring them to justice or disarm them? Who are the Palestinians going to be mad at? Us. Who are they going to bomb? Us. Where are they going to do it? There and here. And if they don't, other insane Arabs will... again.
Yes, we have a role in trying to bring and keep peace to the Middle East but we must not lose sight of the fact that we, too, are hated. We learned that all too well on 9.11. We cannot afford to forget that. Ever. ntm fivre mp3
A thank-you note
: I'm really bad at sending thank-you notes. I was a rotten grandson and a worse nephew.
That occurred to me today as I read James Lilek's latest bleat with the last word (we all hope) on that flaming jackass from beantown. It occurred to me today because I never sent Lileks a thank-you note. Every day, he gives us quips and bon mots and observations and bleats and wisdom and entertainment and he does it, as he says, because he's having fun and he's assuming we are. It's a gift he gives us. So thanks, Lileks.
: Jim Treacher sends better thank-you notes than I do. Aunt Edith would be so proud.
: And thanks to Matt Welch today for his heartfelt piece on discovering that a neighbor died on 9.11. The ripples have not stopped.ntm fivre mp3
Hey, Mr. Pope, you twit
: So the Pope scolds Israeli for "humiliating" the Palestinians. Oh, for Christ's sake.
How about condemning the Palestinians for selling their own children as murderers who are killing innocent Israelis, Mr. Pope?
Says the Times of London (with my italics): The Vatican also denounced suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism by Palestinian extremists against Israeli civilians, reflecting the Pope’s growing alarm over the threat to Jerusalem’s Holy Sites posed by the fighting. It said that the Pope believed that reprisals and revenge attacks did nothing but feed the sense of frustration and hatred in “this dramatic situation”.
The burden of the Vatican’s remarks was, however, seen by diplomats as anti-Israeli, with the statement calling on Israel to use proportionate force in acts of legitimate self-defence. It said Israel should respect United Nations resolutions, a reference to Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas.
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, accused Israel of desecrating the birthplace of Jesus, as Israeli tanks encircled Manger Square in Bethlehem. And what would you call "proportionate response," Pope guy? Murdering hundreds of innocent Palestinians, perhaps?
And what about the armed Palestinians who entered the birthplace of Christ? How is that not desecration?
You might want to be concerned about the Vatican's history of standing back and letting anti-Semites murder Jews, eh?
But screw history. You have plenty of problems today, Pope boy.
Your church is responsible for hiding the molesters of children and you're not taking action to fix it. It's so bad that the usually conservative, cautious talk radio I sometimes suffer here in Jersey (just to get the traffic report) has not hesitated to devote hours to all the reasons why no one should trust you or your church.
You have problems, Mr. Pope.
You have a moral credibility gap the size of Siberia. ntm fivre mp3
The real quagmire
: Thomas Friedman can't make up his mind. A few columns ago, he was insisting that American troops had to go to Israel and the nascent Palestine to keep the peace (on the assumption there will be a peace to keep).
Today, he is warning: "President Bush needs to be careful that America doesn't get sucked into something very dangerous here." Well, yeah.
Yet Friedman still plays Palestinian polyanna as he tries to get us on the ground over there: People say that U.S. troops there would be shot at like U.S. troops in Beirut. I disagree. U.S. troops that are the midwife of a Palestinian state and supervise a return of Muslim sovereignty over the holy mosques in Jerusalem would be the key to solving all the contradictions of U.S. policy in the Middle East, not new targets. And what happens the first time that the Palestinians unleash more suicide-murderers -- whether or not they are sanctioned by the alleged leadership or come from pissy splinters -- and our troops have to go ferret out the ferrets and bring them to justice or disarm them? Who are the Palestinians going to be mad at? Us. Who are they going to bomb? Us. Where are they going to do it? There and here. And if they don't, other insane Arabs will... again.
Yes, we have a role in trying to bring and keep peace to the Middle East but we must not lose sight of the fact that we, too, are hated. We learned that all too well on 9.11. We cannot afford to forget that. Ever. ntm fivre mp3
A thank-you note
: I'm really bad at sending thank-you notes. I was a rotten grandson and a worse nephew.
That occurred to me today as I read James Lilek's latest bleat with the last word (we all hope) on that flaming jackass from beantown. It occurred to me today because I never sent Lileks a thank-you note. Every day, he gives us quips and bon mots and observations and bleats and wisdom and entertainment and he does it, as he says, because he's having fun and he's assuming we are. It's a gift he gives us. So thanks, Lileks.
: Jim Treacher sends better thank-you notes than I do. Aunt Edith would be so proud.
: And thanks to Matt Welch today for his heartfelt piece on discovering that a neighbor died on 9.11. The ripples have not stopped.ntm fivre mp3
April 02, 2002
Do not turn off the lights: If you've ever imagined what a soul looks like, it looks like the two towers of lights over Manhattan.
At dusk, the lights at the World Trade Center come on and you can barely see them, they are so light against a light sky, barely there, almost a secret.
Then, as the night grows deeper, the light grows stronger, clearer, more beautiful, more moving.
I took the pilgrimage to see the lights tonight because they will soon be turned off.
I drove down through Jersey City's seedy side -- well, seedier side -- to Liberty State Park and people were gathering by the water to see the lights.
It was so much better than going to Ground Zero. There was no tacky tourist honky tonk here, no souvenirs of terror, no tourists gaping at the hole, fewer tourists taking pictures. One group did try to take a picture of themselves with Manhattan in the background, the flash on their camera lighting the light. But this scene was filled with life: people with proper reverance but without a hush walking to the water; lots of sound from kids running around and helicopters and planes and boats; the sight of office and apartment buildings across the water all filled with life and lights.
I was more moved by the towers of light than by anything I have seen or read or heard about September 11.
And that is why I appeal to Mayor Bloomberg to leave the lights lit.
They are all we have now from the towers and the day. They are a tremendous symbol of hope and assurance. They are beautiful. I can't bear the thought that they will be turned off and that the hole in our city will go dark again.
Please don't turn out our lights. ntm fivre mp3
Old v. new
: I hold dual citizenship in old media and new (my InstaResume here). Today, once again, there is much buzz about these two media spheres -- the media Flintstones against the media Jetsons -- thanks to a blog-baiting column by a flaming jackass in beantown and retorts by Glenn Reynolds, James Lileks, Matt Welch and by the end of today, surely many more.
But everybody's been getting this slightly wrong. This is not about making a choice: old media or new media. They aren't competitors. They are different.
New media is fundamentally new for one essential reason: The Web is owned by its audience. That cannot be said of any other medium; publishers, editors, producers, moguls own the printing presses and transmitters and they have always made their living deciding what we should know; they stand proudly on the other side of the barrier to entry.
On the Web, anyone can be a protopublisher. The people post in forums (we get thousands of posts a day from the audience on my company's sites); they create web pages; they broadcast; now they write weblogs.
Collectively, this gives the Web its voice. That is the voice of the people.
Some old-media people aren't sure what to do with that; some (like the beantown bozo) try to dismiss it; some are even scared by it. But the wise mediaman will just listen to that voice. The Web gives us an entirely new relationship to the audience, an entirely new way to hear what the people are thinking, what interests and concerns and excites them. There is no better way -- no, no other way -- to do that.
When that gullible gasbag in Boston -- and the odd other old media types like him -- denegrate weblogs and the Web, they are dismissing their very own audience. They are showing a complete lack of respect, even disdain, for their audience. They don't want to hear what the audience to say. They want the audience to listen to them, not vice versa. As Lileks (who, I hope, hires me when he starts his paper) says with characteristic eloquence: "The newspaper is a lecture. The web is a conversation."
But on our part, we in the new media world also should not dismiss the old. We do not have reporters and photographers out there asking hard questions and ferretting out facts and even risking their lives to inform us; old media operations do. Daniel Pearl was not a blogger; he was a reporter and that is an honorable and vital title. Let us be grateful for the work they do. Without it, we would know nothing; we would just be blathering.
What old media does best is give us the facts. Credibility is their asset.
What new media does best is give us perspective -- a new perspective, the too-long-unheard perspective of the people. The people are our asset.
And new media does that best in weblogs because these are products of passionate interest where quality rises to the top. Nobody's getting rich or famous (yet) blogging; we do it because we love it (I do it because I learn); and the best ones succeed because they're the better than the worst ones and the audience knows the difference. Weblogs as a whole do an amazing job of editing the world of news, finding the best, warning of the worst, asking questions, poking holes, adding perspective and opinion and the voice of the people.
Both are valuable. Only the blind cannot see that.ntm fivre mp3
The terrorist vacation
: I'm amazed that anyone is talking about exile for Yasser Arafat.
Picture it: Arafat -- fat, sassy, and tanned under his pathetic beard of 10 hairs -- is sitting on the sand in Casablanca, snarfing down the hummus and couscous as he gets on his mobile phone back home: "Send in another suicide bomber," he orders. "Make it a young one this time... No, we just bombed a mall. How about a hospital? Have we done a school yet? Screw the peace process."
He will make his people suffer and delight in making his enemy suffer as he basks.
Bad idea.ntm fivre mp3
Do not turn off the lights: If you've ever imagined what a soul looks like, it looks like the two towers of lights over Manhattan.
At dusk, the lights at the World Trade Center come on and you can barely see them, they are so light against a light sky, barely there, almost a secret.
Then, as the night grows deeper, the light grows stronger, clearer, more beautiful, more moving.
I took the pilgrimage to see the lights tonight because they will soon be turned off.
I drove down through Jersey City's seedy side -- well, seedier side -- to Liberty State Park and people were gathering by the water to see the lights.
It was so much better than going to Ground Zero. There was no tacky tourist honky tonk here, no souvenirs of terror, no tourists gaping at the hole, fewer tourists taking pictures. One group did try to take a picture of themselves with Manhattan in the background, the flash on their camera lighting the light. But this scene was filled with life: people with proper reverance but without a hush walking to the water; lots of sound from kids running around and helicopters and planes and boats; the sight of office and apartment buildings across the water all filled with life and lights.
I was more moved by the towers of light than by anything I have seen or read or heard about September 11.
And that is why I appeal to Mayor Bloomberg to leave the lights lit.
They are all we have now from the towers and the day. They are a tremendous symbol of hope and assurance. They are beautiful. I can't bear the thought that they will be turned off and that the hole in our city will go dark again.
Please don't turn out our lights. ntm fivre mp3
Old v. new
: I hold dual citizenship in old media and new (my InstaResume here). Today, once again, there is much buzz about these two media spheres -- the media Flintstones against the media Jetsons -- thanks to a blog-baiting column by a flaming jackass in beantown and retorts by Glenn Reynolds, James Lileks, Matt Welch and by the end of today, surely many more.
But everybody's been getting this slightly wrong. This is not about making a choice: old media or new media. They aren't competitors. They are different.
New media is fundamentally new for one essential reason: The Web is owned by its audience. That cannot be said of any other medium; publishers, editors, producers, moguls own the printing presses and transmitters and they have always made their living deciding what we should know; they stand proudly on the other side of the barrier to entry.
On the Web, anyone can be a protopublisher. The people post in forums (we get thousands of posts a day from the audience on my company's sites); they create web pages; they broadcast; now they write weblogs.
Collectively, this gives the Web its voice. That is the voice of the people.
Some old-media people aren't sure what to do with that; some (like the beantown bozo) try to dismiss it; some are even scared by it. But the wise mediaman will just listen to that voice. The Web gives us an entirely new relationship to the audience, an entirely new way to hear what the people are thinking, what interests and concerns and excites them. There is no better way -- no, no other way -- to do that.
When that gullible gasbag in Boston -- and the odd other old media types like him -- denegrate weblogs and the Web, they are dismissing their very own audience. They are showing a complete lack of respect, even disdain, for their audience. They don't want to hear what the audience to say. They want the audience to listen to them, not vice versa. As Lileks (who, I hope, hires me when he starts his paper) says with characteristic eloquence: "The newspaper is a lecture. The web is a conversation."
But on our part, we in the new media world also should not dismiss the old. We do not have reporters and photographers out there asking hard questions and ferretting out facts and even risking their lives to inform us; old media operations do. Daniel Pearl was not a blogger; he was a reporter and that is an honorable and vital title. Let us be grateful for the work they do. Without it, we would know nothing; we would just be blathering.
What old media does best is give us the facts. Credibility is their asset.
What new media does best is give us perspective -- a new perspective, the too-long-unheard perspective of the people. The people are our asset.
And new media does that best in weblogs because these are products of passionate interest where quality rises to the top. Nobody's getting rich or famous (yet) blogging; we do it because we love it (I do it because I learn); and the best ones succeed because they're the better than the worst ones and the audience knows the difference. Weblogs as a whole do an amazing job of editing the world of news, finding the best, warning of the worst, asking questions, poking holes, adding perspective and opinion and the voice of the people.
Both are valuable. Only the blind cannot see that.ntm fivre mp3
The terrorist vacation
: I'm amazed that anyone is talking about exile for Yasser Arafat.
Picture it: Arafat -- fat, sassy, and tanned under his pathetic beard of 10 hairs -- is sitting on the sand in Casablanca, snarfing down the hummus and couscous as he gets on his mobile phone back home: "Send in another suicide bomber," he orders. "Make it a young one this time... No, we just bombed a mall. How about a hospital? Have we done a school yet? Screw the peace process."
He will make his people suffer and delight in making his enemy suffer as he basks.
Bad idea.ntm fivre mp3
April 01, 2002
Fools
: So Glenn Reynolds finally had to make it clear that he wasn't bought by AOL (who'd want to be with their stock -- too damned much of which I own -- causing flushing noises everytime it passes by on the ticker). It was only a clever Register April 1 gift to the gullible.
I wish Reynolds would out the Big Media guy who called him thinking this was real.
Note also a fine April foolishness from F'd company. ntm fivre mp3
From the front
: A new blog from Israel [via Letter from Gotham]. These days here in Jerusalem, a security guard is posted outside just about every place that you might go. In front of Mega-groceries the other night there were two middle-aged guys standing in front with long guns and their fingers on the trigger. ntm fivre mp3
Fools
: So Glenn Reynolds finally had to make it clear that he wasn't bought by AOL (who'd want to be with their stock -- too damned much of which I own -- causing flushing noises everytime it passes by on the ticker). It was only a clever Register April 1 gift to the gullible.
I wish Reynolds would out the Big Media guy who called him thinking this was real.
Note also a fine April foolishness from F'd company. ntm fivre mp3
From the front
: A new blog from Israel [via Letter from Gotham]. These days here in Jerusalem, a security guard is posted outside just about every place that you might go. In front of Mega-groceries the other night there were two middle-aged guys standing in front with long guns and their fingers on the trigger. ntm fivre mp3
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Current Home
9.11: My story
: My audio narrative of Sept. 11
: My story of Sept. 11
Recent posts of note
: The me in media
: We won't have to explain when...
: Super-duper reporting machine
: Weblogs and big media
: A new Iraqi blogger
: Link to a story on hyperlocal blogs
: Interview with a dinosaur
: Fisking Andy Rooney
: Blogs as buzzmachines
: Jay Rosen, Part I
: Jay Rosen, Part II
: The post-Internet newspaper
: 9.11 registry
: Online News Association
: 9.11 2003 morning ... afternoon
: PBSification of 9.11
... NY Post column
: Free content
Stuff
: Hyperlocal blog on Bernards NJ
: Confess
ions of a warblogger
Video weblogs:
: Vlogs - video weblogs:
State of the art.
: The start of
vlogs
: Watch vlogs
: VLOG showcase
B-Roll: Hourly
: Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit
: Cory Doctorow: BoingBoing
: Gawker
B-Roll: Daily
: Glenn Reynolds.com on MSNBC.com
: James Lileks
: Jay Rosen's PressThink
: Elizabeth Spiers/NY Mag's Kicker
: A Small Victory
: Nick Denton
: Dan Gillmor
: Josh Marshall
: Atrios
: Matt Welch
: Dave Winer
: Doc Searls
: Richard Bennett
: Metafilter
: MSNBC Weblog Central
B-Roll: New
: David Isenberg
: Jay Rosen's PressThink
: Zeyad's Healing Iraq
: Om Malik
: Daniel Drezner
: Winds of Change
: Dead Parrots Society
: Fred Wilson's A VC
: Adam Curry
: Everything in Moderation
: Venture Blog
: Ed Sim's Beyond VC
: Pejman
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B-Roll: Presidential
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Network explorer
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B-Roll: Deutsch
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Witchcraft
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: eDings
: Netzeitung (web-only paper auf Deutsch)
: A ja!
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this blog
Family
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: My sister
JEFF JARVIS is former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He was until recently president & creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Now he is working with The New York Times Company at About.com on content development and strategy and consulting for Advance, Fairchild, and the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, where he lead the creation of the curriculum for the new media program. He says he is at work on a book.
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It's mine, I tell you, mine! All mine! You can't have it because it's mine! You can read it (please); you can quote it (thanks); but I still own it because it's mine! I own it and you don't. Nya-nya-nya. So there.
COPYRIGHT 2001-2003-20?? by Jeff Jarvis
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