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May 31, 2002

And the winner is St-t-t-t-t-t-uttering John!
: Just listened to The Flunkie v. The Junkie in the Brawl at the Trump Taj Mahal (while I was working very hard, of course) on Howard Stern. Brilliant frigging radio. Brilliant.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
: Sarges comes out. Your turn, A.

Spam calling
: You think we have problems with spam. I get the Japan Internet Report newsletter by Tim Clark and he says spam on fabled Japanese mobile phones is torture:

Of the 900 million messages that go through DoCoMo's servers each day, 880 million (98%) are spam, according to the company. The problem is that, regardless of the source of the message, subscriber phones ring (or vibrate) every time mail arrives. Nearly everyone who owns an Internet-enabled cellular telephone has been inconvenienced as a result....One colleague of mine was being woken up repeatedly during the night by the increasing number of unsolicited messages. After resorting to turning off his phone at night, he would find 20 or more spam messages on his handset in the morning.
Meanwhile, a test conducted by Net Village and Digital Street using an i-mode phone with an as-issued e-mail address (telephonenumber@docomo.ne.jp) found that the handset received 857 spam messages in August of last year, 2,898 in December last year, 2,945 in January this year, and 2,578 in February of this year.
Like the landline Internet everywhere else, the mobile Internet in Japan is now awash in junk mail. With e-mail transmissions accounting for 80% of Internet-enabled mobile phone activity, and 98% of that activity spam, we can calculate that more than three-quarters of all data-phone activity is basically garbage.

Harvard jihad
: Matthew Yglesias' scoop on the Harvard jihad speech makes it into the Washington Post. Matthew beat them to it by nine days.

I'll be your server...
: I don't know what they're up to with this (read: how they'll make money) but Amazon has a beta of a very nice service displaying hundreds of restaurant menus for five cities: NY, SF, DC, Seattle, Chicago. Via Metafilter.

LINK | Comments (0)

And the winner is St-t-t-t-t-t-uttering John!
: Just listened to The Flunkie v. The Junkie in the Brawl at the Trump Taj Mahal (while I was working very hard, of course) on Howard Stern. Brilliant frigging radio. Brilliant.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
: Sarges comes out. Your turn, A.

Spam calling
: You think we have problems with spam. I get the Japan Internet Report newsletter by Tim Clark and he says spam on fabled Japanese mobile phones is torture:

Of the 900 million messages that go through DoCoMo's servers each day, 880 million (98%) are spam, according to the company. The problem is that, regardless of the source of the message, subscriber phones ring (or vibrate) every time mail arrives. Nearly everyone who owns an Internet-enabled cellular telephone has been inconvenienced as a result....One colleague of mine was being woken up repeatedly during the night by the increasing number of unsolicited messages. After resorting to turning off his phone at night, he would find 20 or more spam messages on his handset in the morning.
Meanwhile, a test conducted by Net Village and Digital Street using an i-mode phone with an as-issued e-mail address (telephonenumber@docomo.ne.jp) found that the handset received 857 spam messages in August of last year, 2,898 in December last year, 2,945 in January this year, and 2,578 in February of this year.
Like the landline Internet everywhere else, the mobile Internet in Japan is now awash in junk mail. With e-mail transmissions accounting for 80% of Internet-enabled mobile phone activity, and 98% of that activity spam, we can calculate that more than three-quarters of all data-phone activity is basically garbage.

Harvard jihad
: Matthew Yglesias' scoop on the Harvard jihad speech makes it into the Washington Post. Matthew beat them to it by nine days.

I'll be your server...
: I don't know what they're up to with this (read: how they'll make money) but Amazon has a beta of a very nice service displaying hundreds of restaurant menus for five cities: NY, SF, DC, Seattle, Chicago. Via Metafilter.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 29, 2002

Star Wars meets graphic geeks
: I don't speak Spanish but it doesn't matter; I can see that this is a killer great graphic on Star Wars, tracking the characters and locales through the entire saga. From the graphic geniuses at El Pais.

Friggin' Bungling Idiots
: I'm watching John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller on FoxNews now. Almost sad. Ashcroft doth protest too much; he's heaping too much support on Mueller; won't last. Mueller looks like a nervous account executive giving his final PowerPoint presentation in dire hopes of holding onto an account he messed up. He's reading his priorities to us.
They both should take lessons from Donald Rumsfeld. Granted, Rummy didn't get bin Laden or Mullah Omar but he bleeds confidence. These guys ooze insecurity. Not what we need right now.

Templinks
: Andrew Sullivan is big enough to thank Eric Olsen for pointing out that his permalinks were broken. He says they are fixed. I tried to use them. This link does not take me to the item in which all this happens. It takes me to the previous day. Oh, well.

The exploding Apple
: Just another commute in New York: I arrive on the PATH and they've shut down 34th Street and environs -- the Empire State Building, Macy's, Herald Square -- because of explosions.
Yes, we all thought what you think we thought. But it's happening enough that nobody panicked or ran. They just grumbled.
Turns out that manhole covers were blowing off because of other problems underground. It happens. It's New York.

LINK | Comments (0)

Star Wars meets graphic geeks
: I don't speak Spanish but it doesn't matter; I can see that this is a killer great graphic on Star Wars, tracking the characters and locales through the entire saga. From the graphic geniuses at El Pais.

Friggin' Bungling Idiots
: I'm watching John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller on FoxNews now. Almost sad. Ashcroft doth protest too much; he's heaping too much support on Mueller; won't last. Mueller looks like a nervous account executive giving his final PowerPoint presentation in dire hopes of holding onto an account he messed up. He's reading his priorities to us.
They both should take lessons from Donald Rumsfeld. Granted, Rummy didn't get bin Laden or Mullah Omar but he bleeds confidence. These guys ooze insecurity. Not what we need right now.

Templinks
: Andrew Sullivan is big enough to thank Eric Olsen for pointing out that his permalinks were broken. He says they are fixed. I tried to use them. This link does not take me to the item in which all this happens. It takes me to the previous day. Oh, well.

The exploding Apple
: Just another commute in New York: I arrive on the PATH and they've shut down 34th Street and environs -- the Empire State Building, Macy's, Herald Square -- because of explosions.
Yes, we all thought what you think we thought. But it's happening enough that nobody panicked or ran. They just grumbled.
Turns out that manhole covers were blowing off because of other problems underground. It happens. It's New York.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 28, 2002

Impact
: I was reading Rossi. If you read me regularly, you know that makes me happy. I like her writing. I like her soul.
She started with an observation that echoed mine from the last week, the Week of 100 Terror Warnings. She and I had the same reaction to helicopters. Since 9.11, they seem like bees drawn to bad news, hovering and buzzing over the city, trained like their explosive-sniffing cousins to find 11 o'clock video, their honey. They scare me now because I wonder what they're buzzing about, I wonder what's wrong.
Rossi writes:

Now they say the work at ground zero will end and there will be a ceremony and all those men will try to go on with their lives and so will we, and I'm sitting here wondering why I don't feel happy that the work is ending.
Maybe some part of me feels that as long as there are people there working and searching for bodies and answers, there is some kind of hope.
Hope for what, I don't know.
It's been a rough week for me, to tell you the truth.
First there were the terror alerts, rekindling all my paranoias. I climbed the stairs to the roof the morning after the alerts hit the airwaves to have my coffee in the sun. It was a beautiful crisp morning.
It was hard not to feel an eerie deja vu sipping my coffee as countless helicopters whirled by. Most of them whirled about downtown.
The Brooklyn Bridge was just off to the downtown east of me.
The World Trade Center had been just off to the downtown west.
I don't think the helicopters would have bothered me much if it weren't such a pretty morning.
Pretty, crisp, sunny mornings tend to make me nervous now.
What I mostly felt, as I watched far too many helicopters whirl by, was lonely.

And this leads to something far more important that Rossi has to say, another observation, another emotion that I've shared: The impact of 9.11 is loneliness of one mutation or another.
For Rossi, it's a very sad loneliness now. But I'll let her tell you about that.

Pop this!
: Wow, AOL decides that customers may actually deserve respect:

America Online subscribers may finally get some relief from the barrage of aggressive pop-up advertisements that greet them when signing on and off the online service. Reducing the number of pop-up ads is a part of the online service company’s grand scheme to get back on the growth track, people familiar with the company’s plans say.

Now if only they can decide that shareholders deserve respect, too.

Back
: Since starting this thing soon after 9.11, I've basically not missed a day (except for Blogger outages). I missed yesterday. Nick Denton scolded me. I was doing important things. But now I'm back on the couch, my blogoffice. I'm back until I fall asleep.............

Holywood
: If this weren't about our lives at stake, this would be funny.
So the latest New York terror warnings came from references made by a jailed terrorist to the movie Godzilla:

The captured Zubaida told his CIA and FBI interrogators in the course of marathon debriefings that al Qaeda terror cells had discussed the possibility of hitting "the statue in the water," meaning the Statue of Liberty, in a new wave of attacks on the city, the sources said.
Zubaida, who speaks English, also mentioned "the bridge in that movie," referring to the 1998 American remake of the Japanese Godzilla series in which the monster emerges at the Battery.
Puzzled interrogators had to view a tape of the movie to learn that the final scene involved Godzilla's demise after becoming tangled in the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge.

So what else should we fear that they saw? Bruce Willis Diehard movies? Put more highrises and airports on alert! King King? Evacuate the Empire State Building. Bridges of Madison County? Oh, we don't need terrorists to destroy our bridges; we're doing that quite effectively domestically.

Map thyself
: I always do what Nick Denton says. So I just mapped myself. If you're in New York, do likewise.

LINK | Comments (0)

Impact
: I was reading Rossi. If you read me regularly, you know that makes me happy. I like her writing. I like her soul.
She started with an observation that echoed mine from the last week, the Week of 100 Terror Warnings. She and I had the same reaction to helicopters. Since 9.11, they seem like bees drawn to bad news, hovering and buzzing over the city, trained like their explosive-sniffing cousins to find 11 o'clock video, their honey. They scare me now because I wonder what they're buzzing about, I wonder what's wrong.
Rossi writes:

Now they say the work at ground zero will end and there will be a ceremony and all those men will try to go on with their lives and so will we, and I'm sitting here wondering why I don't feel happy that the work is ending.
Maybe some part of me feels that as long as there are people there working and searching for bodies and answers, there is some kind of hope.
Hope for what, I don't know.
It's been a rough week for me, to tell you the truth.
First there were the terror alerts, rekindling all my paranoias. I climbed the stairs to the roof the morning after the alerts hit the airwaves to have my coffee in the sun. It was a beautiful crisp morning.
It was hard not to feel an eerie deja vu sipping my coffee as countless helicopters whirled by. Most of them whirled about downtown.
The Brooklyn Bridge was just off to the downtown east of me.
The World Trade Center had been just off to the downtown west.
I don't think the helicopters would have bothered me much if it weren't such a pretty morning.
Pretty, crisp, sunny mornings tend to make me nervous now.
What I mostly felt, as I watched far too many helicopters whirl by, was lonely.

And this leads to something far more important that Rossi has to say, another observation, another emotion that I've shared: The impact of 9.11 is loneliness of one mutation or another.
For Rossi, it's a very sad loneliness now. But I'll let her tell you about that.

Pop this!
: Wow, AOL decides that customers may actually deserve respect:

America Online subscribers may finally get some relief from the barrage of aggressive pop-up advertisements that greet them when signing on and off the online service. Reducing the number of pop-up ads is a part of the online service company’s grand scheme to get back on the growth track, people familiar with the company’s plans say.

Now if only they can decide that shareholders deserve respect, too.

Back
: Since starting this thing soon after 9.11, I've basically not missed a day (except for Blogger outages). I missed yesterday. Nick Denton scolded me. I was doing important things. But now I'm back on the couch, my blogoffice. I'm back until I fall asleep.............

Holywood
: If this weren't about our lives at stake, this would be funny.
So the latest New York terror warnings came from references made by a jailed terrorist to the movie Godzilla:

The captured Zubaida told his CIA and FBI interrogators in the course of marathon debriefings that al Qaeda terror cells had discussed the possibility of hitting "the statue in the water," meaning the Statue of Liberty, in a new wave of attacks on the city, the sources said.
Zubaida, who speaks English, also mentioned "the bridge in that movie," referring to the 1998 American remake of the Japanese Godzilla series in which the monster emerges at the Battery.
Puzzled interrogators had to view a tape of the movie to learn that the final scene involved Godzilla's demise after becoming tangled in the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge.

So what else should we fear that they saw? Bruce Willis Diehard movies? Put more highrises and airports on alert! King King? Evacuate the Empire State Building. Bridges of Madison County? Oh, we don't need terrorists to destroy our bridges; we're doing that quite effectively domestically.

Map thyself
: I always do what Nick Denton says. So I just mapped myself. If you're in New York, do likewise.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 26, 2002

A campaign for a new Memorial Day
: I want to see Congress and the President expand the role of Memorial Day to commemorate not only Americans in uniform who gave their lives to protect us but also civilian victims of terrorism whose lives were taken in attacks on this country.
It is fitting and proper to remember these heroes as well, for their sacrifice is every bit as great. Without chosing to, they fought our war.
As President Bush said in his Memorial Day proclamation: "The tradition of Memorial Day reinforces our Nation's resolve to never forget those who gave their last full measure for America."
These, too, gave their all.
And so at 3 p.m on Monday, at the National Moment of Remembrance, lets us recall and give tribute to the victims of all wars and terrorist attacks.

: And go to Photodude to remember the soldiers who have lost their lives in this war.

Never enough, always too much
: I wonder when and whether I will ever hear too much detail about what happened on 9.11 and whether I will ever hear enough.
Today's New York Times has an amazing story that ticks down the final 102 minutes in the lives of the victims in the World Trade Center, pieced together from witnesses who escaped, from phone calls, from BlackBerry messages, and from email sent to family and colleagues. It is harrowing and horrifying. But it is also inspiring, for even in the darkest moments of fear and pain, these people tried to help each other. They acted with heroism.

: Two days ago, I heard on NPR a report about a man with the New York coroner's office who was about a half-block from where I was when the south tower came down. He was struck by large pieces of debris before he could find haven under a fire truck; his head and hand were split open; he was battered all over his body; he lost blood and consciousness. He survived, but he does not know how. And now he is trying desperately to find out how. The radio report recounts how he found the New Jersey State Police trooper who got him from the edge of the river onto a boat and over to Jersey City and a hospital. He got to thank that trooper.
But he still does not know how he made it, injured badly, from the site of his fall to the river.
In his voice, you hear not only gratitude but the desperation that comes from having been so close to the edge.

: And tonight is the HBO's show about the day. I will watch. I have to watch. Not watching is, for me, unthinkable. It would be like trying to forget. And we can't forget.

: And so I watched. I had to wait until the children went to bed; we don't want them to see this. I'll save it for them when they are older -- not old enough to understand; that day will never come.
Watching again brings back all the sadness and fear and anger and pain and admiration and sickness.
I feel ill now, not just about 9.11 but about our distance from it. The farther we get from that day, the more we succeed at returning to normal with everything good and bad that brings. It is the bad side of normal that is harder to bear now -- the pettiness, the politics, the sniping, the selfishness -- and when I watch this show, when I am reminded of the importance of what happened that day, of the life and death of that day, it only widens the gap between then and now, between the petty and the profound, between heroes and idiots. I don't have much tolerance for normal right now.
That is why I must watch.

: Mayor Rudolph Guliani on the HBO show, speaking to a memorial service: "The tears have to make you stronger. Every time you cry, you have to remember that we're right and they are wrong."

Quote
: "People here always thought the enemy was Microsoft, not Mohamed Atta," said the former vice chair of Travelocity.com in Thomas Friedman's colum on technology after 9.11.

LINK | Comments (0)

A campaign for a new Memorial Day
: I want to see Congress and the President expand the role of Memorial Day to commemorate not only Americans in uniform who gave their lives to protect us but also civilian victims of terrorism whose lives were taken in attacks on this country.
It is fitting and proper to remember these heroes as well, for their sacrifice is every bit as great. Without chosing to, they fought our war.
As President Bush said in his Memorial Day proclamation: "The tradition of Memorial Day reinforces our Nation's resolve to never forget those who gave their last full measure for America."
These, too, gave their all.
And so at 3 p.m on Monday, at the National Moment of Remembrance, lets us recall and give tribute to the victims of all wars and terrorist attacks.

: And go to Photodude to remember the soldiers who have lost their lives in this war.

Never enough, always too much
: I wonder when and whether I will ever hear too much detail about what happened on 9.11 and whether I will ever hear enough.
Today's New York Times has an amazing story that ticks down the final 102 minutes in the lives of the victims in the World Trade Center, pieced together from witnesses who escaped, from phone calls, from BlackBerry messages, and from email sent to family and colleagues. It is harrowing and horrifying. But it is also inspiring, for even in the darkest moments of fear and pain, these people tried to help each other. They acted with heroism.

: Two days ago, I heard on NPR a report about a man with the New York coroner's office who was about a half-block from where I was when the south tower came down. He was struck by large pieces of debris before he could find haven under a fire truck; his head and hand were split open; he was battered all over his body; he lost blood and consciousness. He survived, but he does not know how. And now he is trying desperately to find out how. The radio report recounts how he found the New Jersey State Police trooper who got him from the edge of the river onto a boat and over to Jersey City and a hospital. He got to thank that trooper.
But he still does not know how he made it, injured badly, from the site of his fall to the river.
In his voice, you hear not only gratitude but the desperation that comes from having been so close to the edge.

: And tonight is the HBO's show about the day. I will watch. I have to watch. Not watching is, for me, unthinkable. It would be like trying to forget. And we can't forget.

: And so I watched. I had to wait until the children went to bed; we don't want them to see this. I'll save it for them when they are older -- not old enough to understand; that day will never come.
Watching again brings back all the sadness and fear and anger and pain and admiration and sickness.
I feel ill now, not just about 9.11 but about our distance from it. The farther we get from that day, the more we succeed at returning to normal with everything good and bad that brings. It is the bad side of normal that is harder to bear now -- the pettiness, the politics, the sniping, the selfishness -- and when I watch this show, when I am reminded of the importance of what happened that day, of the life and death of that day, it only widens the gap between then and now, between the petty and the profound, between heroes and idiots. I don't have much tolerance for normal right now.
That is why I must watch.

: Mayor Rudolph Guliani on the HBO show, speaking to a memorial service: "The tears have to make you stronger. Every time you cry, you have to remember that we're right and they are wrong."

Quote
: "People here always thought the enemy was Microsoft, not Mohamed Atta," said the former vice chair of Travelocity.com in Thomas Friedman's colum on technology after 9.11.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 25, 2002

Fame
: This handout shot for the Treo has appeared so far in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. Friends are impressed that I am on this very important calendar.
What's it all about? Oh, I'm not telling. But it's big. Very big.

LINK | Comments (0)

Fame
: This handout shot for the Treo has appeared so far in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. Friends are impressed that I am on this very important calendar.
What's it all about? Oh, I'm not telling. But it's big. Very big.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 24, 2002

Michael Moore = Jerry Lewis (+ many pounds)
: Shift, the Canadian mag/site, wonders why Michael Moore's documentary, Bowling for Columbine, is the first chosen to show at Cannes since 1956.
I say it's the same reason the French take a shining to Jerry Lewis:
They like things that irritate Americans.

What they didn't know...
: My wise wife asks: If the families of the 9.11 victims knew what we knew today (so far) about the FBI's bungling of the unconnected dots of clues leading to the terrorist attack, would they have signed on for government grants of money that came with the stipulation that they cannot sue?

Target: Ramallah
: Ken Layne finds two cogent paragraphs in an LA Times story that says there may be evidence tying shoe-bomber Richard Reid with Hamas and Hezbollah. If that's the case, Ken says quite rightly, then there should be no difference between our response to bin Laden in Afghanistan and our response to these murderers.

Priests and pain
: Peter Manseau writes at Killing the Buddah about his father the former priest watching TV news today:

My father watches and shakes his head. He knew all these guys, knows some of them still. Together they'd grown from altar boys into men of God. John Geoghan, who once remarked he preferred the children of poor families because they were more affectionate, more in need, was a year ahead of my father at the archdiocese seminary. And Paul Shanley -- accused of raping a Catholic school boy in, among other places, a confessional -- ministered to junkies and street kids in Boston all through the 60s. So did Dad. And so did his good friend George Spagnolia, who thirty years ago offered his church for the wedding of the priest and the nun who would be my father and mother, and who, just last month, left his parish following allegations of abuse. Few in his parish believed the charges against him, but when he admitted he was gay and had not always been celibate, Catholic assumptions pushed him out the door.
Dad's even dealt with Cardinal Bernard Law, the man at the center of this mess. While shuffling known child-abusers from church to church to save face and hold the priest-shortage at bay, Cardinal Law sought to get priests like my father off the books. A priest who married and refused to be laicized -- refused in a sense to declare that he was unfit to be a priest -- was thought to be an embarrassment, a public flouter of the authority of the church. The current cardinal and his predecessors have repeatedly called on my father finally to resign his ordination....

Did He walk on water, or surf it?
: A surfer's Bible in -- you get two guesses; no, not SoCal -- Australia:

Make God first and he will blow your mind on a daily basis -- without a hangover!

Over to you, Bleah. [via Holy Weblog]

Moving day
: Brian Linse gets his own domain. Update those bookmarks.
[For those of you who don't know how to update bookmarks, on Internet Explorer, right-click on the line in your favorites, click on properties, and change the address. Repeat for Instapundit.

Poison ivy
: I've been busy and so I missed my first opportunity to link to Matthew Yglesias' reporting on the Jihad commencement speech at Harvard. The story keeps developing; Yglesias met with mucketymucks at Harvard about it today. Good reading.

Assuming the worst
: An apartment building in Encino explodes into flames. We're all wondering the same thing: Is this the apartment attack the FBI has been warning about? The FBI is going to the site to investigate.
: I have a miserable, rotten chest cold. No, that's not news. But I have to say that even that makes me ask stupid, paranoid questions. There have been mysterious piles of a white powdery substance showing up on streets around my neighborhood. Looks like sand. But then I got to hacking and I ask: Anthrax?
Well, more absurd things have happened or threaten to. You can see them all on Drudge:
: Now the FBI warns about scuba-diving terrorists.
They're watching too much James Bond.

Biting the hand
: Andrew Sullivan (he without the working permalinks) is still whining about not writing for the NY Times after he attacks them (or he's assuming it's because he attacks them; could just be because they don't like is writing; it happens; that's what editors do). But we haven't heard a peep from him about the affair of the NY Post columnist who was canned after attacking his paper. I think they should start the Association of Canned Complaining Journalists.

LINK | Comments (0)

Michael Moore = Jerry Lewis (+ many pounds)
: Shift, the Canadian mag/site, wonders why Michael Moore's documentary, Bowling for Columbine, is the first chosen to show at Cannes since 1956.
I say it's the same reason the French take a shining to Jerry Lewis:
They like things that irritate Americans.

What they didn't know...
: My wise wife asks: If the families of the 9.11 victims knew what we knew today (so far) about the FBI's bungling of the unconnected dots of clues leading to the terrorist attack, would they have signed on for government grants of money that came with the stipulation that they cannot sue?

Target: Ramallah
: Ken Layne finds two cogent paragraphs in an LA Times story that says there may be evidence tying shoe-bomber Richard Reid with Hamas and Hezbollah. If that's the case, Ken says quite rightly, then there should be no difference between our response to bin Laden in Afghanistan and our response to these murderers.

Priests and pain
: Peter Manseau writes at Killing the Buddah about his father the former priest watching TV news today:

My father watches and shakes his head. He knew all these guys, knows some of them still. Together they'd grown from altar boys into men of God. John Geoghan, who once remarked he preferred the children of poor families because they were more affectionate, more in need, was a year ahead of my father at the archdiocese seminary. And Paul Shanley -- accused of raping a Catholic school boy in, among other places, a confessional -- ministered to junkies and street kids in Boston all through the 60s. So did Dad. And so did his good friend George Spagnolia, who thirty years ago offered his church for the wedding of the priest and the nun who would be my father and mother, and who, just last month, left his parish following allegations of abuse. Few in his parish believed the charges against him, but when he admitted he was gay and had not always been celibate, Catholic assumptions pushed him out the door.
Dad's even dealt with Cardinal Bernard Law, the man at the center of this mess. While shuffling known child-abusers from church to church to save face and hold the priest-shortage at bay, Cardinal Law sought to get priests like my father off the books. A priest who married and refused to be laicized -- refused in a sense to declare that he was unfit to be a priest -- was thought to be an embarrassment, a public flouter of the authority of the church. The current cardinal and his predecessors have repeatedly called on my father finally to resign his ordination....

Did He walk on water, or surf it?
: A surfer's Bible in -- you get two guesses; no, not SoCal -- Australia:

Make God first and he will blow your mind on a daily basis -- without a hangover!

Over to you, Bleah. [via Holy Weblog]

Moving day
: Brian Linse gets his own domain. Update those bookmarks.
[For those of you who don't know how to update bookmarks, on Internet Explorer, right-click on the line in your favorites, click on properties, and change the address. Repeat for Instapundit.

Poison ivy
: I've been busy and so I missed my first opportunity to link to Matthew Yglesias' reporting on the Jihad commencement speech at Harvard. The story keeps developing; Yglesias met with mucketymucks at Harvard about it today. Good reading.

Assuming the worst
: An apartment building in Encino explodes into flames. We're all wondering the same thing: Is this the apartment attack the FBI has been warning about? The FBI is going to the site to investigate.
: I have a miserable, rotten chest cold. No, that's not news. But I have to say that even that makes me ask stupid, paranoid questions. There have been mysterious piles of a white powdery substance showing up on streets around my neighborhood. Looks like sand. But then I got to hacking and I ask: Anthrax?
Well, more absurd things have happened or threaten to. You can see them all on Drudge:
: Now the FBI warns about scuba-diving terrorists.
They're watching too much James Bond.

Biting the hand
: Andrew Sullivan (he without the working permalinks) is still whining about not writing for the NY Times after he attacks them (or he's assuming it's because he attacks them; could just be because they don't like is writing; it happens; that's what editors do). But we haven't heard a peep from him about the affair of the NY Post columnist who was canned after attacking his paper. I think they should start the Association of Canned Complaining Journalists.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 23, 2002

Grrrrrr
: Extremely, extraordinarily, excessively, extra grumpy today. I have my reasons. Sparing you that and my growling posts. Be grateful. Damnit.

LINK | Comments (0)

Grrrrrr
: Extremely, extraordinarily, excessively, extra grumpy today. I have my reasons. Sparing you that and my growling posts. Be grateful. Damnit.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 22, 2002

Educating Europe
: As Bush lands in Germany, David Warren educates Europe on American determination:

I am struck both by the number of web readers I have in New York, and by what they write to me. On Sept. 11th, at least 20 million people could actually see the smoke and debris uttering from the former WTC with their own eyes. It is now written into each of their souls. I have yet to hear from even one of them who is not willing, in reply to further such attacks from the same family of terrorist fanatics, to take out every single Islamic regime, whether "radical" or "moderate". I don't think we in Canada, let alone those in Europe, fully appreciate the "commitment" there. That e.g. the moment the U.S. enters Iraq, Hillary Clinton will cry: "Get 'im!"

Target
: Just heard on NBC news that the target of the Pennsylvania jet was the White House.
Remember that bin Laden goes after targets he misses until he gets them.
The administration should warn itself.

Batteries included
: I'm nominated as sexiest male blogger. Vote early. Vote often. (on the right-hand column.)
Gray beards are very sexy. Ignore the picture of me on the site. Character acting, you know.

Then...
: So I stopped by Bryant Park to see David Blaine standing atop a 90-foot tower with no ropes, no nets, for 36 hours before he jumps off in the dying embers of prime time tonight.
It's New York.
Everybody's trying very hard to be blase. (Or maybe watching a guy standing there is just boring). Some folks are standing around looking up. The chairs in the park are all turned to the tower where Blaine is statueing. Many are trying to read papers. There are plenty of factotums behind the barricades who are trying to act all rock-show important with their IDs and walkie-talkies and dress blacks. Just another day in New York.
But then it hit me: What if he does, God forbid, fall?
The last thing New York needs is another person falling to his death. The poll he's standing on even looks like a pillar of the World Trade Center.
I've seen enough of that for a lifetime, for eternity. I could not bear seeing it again. The chills came back.
And so, you see, that is what life in New York is really like these days. We find our distractions where we may (and you have to work hard to distract a New Yorker). But even so, even in an absurd event such as this, everything points back to Then.
Does this remind you of Then? Where were you Then? Are you OK since Then? You can't escape Then.

NY TO TERRORISTS: F*** OFF
: In the greatest tradition of tabloids, the New York Post tells New Yorkers to keep a stiff upper lip and stiff middle finger aimed at the terrorist threats against our city.

New York stood, stout-hearted, when the Twin Towers fell.
Ah, but now comes word from Washington - from the FBI itself - meant to send New Yorkers scuttering headlong into hiding.
To fear fear itself.
Threats against New York City have been made by terrorists, says the FBI.
No specifics, apart from the usual suspects - the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and so on.
But run anyway - run and hide!
Hadn't FBI Director Robert Mueller already warned all of America that additional terrorist violence is "inevitable."
"We will not be able to stop it!" exclaimed the director.
Mr. Director! Please!
There is a war on.
That's defeatist talk - and defeatism is not the American way.
It most certainly is not the New York way.
New Yorkers don't hide!...
Go away, Mr. Mueller.
Come back when you have something useful to say - or don't come back at all.
New Yorkers aren't afraid.
Not of fear.
Not of anything.

Well, we talk a good game.
Lileks and Layne both write about New York, wondering what it's like to live there these days.
It's OK -- until we get a reminder of what it's really like, until we see a shrine at a firehouse, as Lileks did; until we read yet more profiles of victims in Times; until we see the pictures of Ground Zero on the TV most every night; until we get another warning and threat and, no matter how stupid or cynical or absurd the warnings are, we have to take it seriously; it happened here.
So the impact is still real. I wanted to take my kids into the city this weekend. Probably won't now. I get sweaty palms on the PATH train. I walk faster past the Empire State Building.
But I'll get past it. I'm going to wander by Bryant Park and see David Blaine standing on a ten-story pole with, according to Howard, lots of beautiful babes at the base.
Fight absurdity with absurdity. That's the New York way.

American knowhow
: Atta cased the World Trade Center days before the attack so he could use his American-made global positioning system to bring them down.

LINK | Comments (0)

Educating Europe
: As Bush lands in Germany, David Warren educates Europe on American determination:

I am struck both by the number of web readers I have in New York, and by what they write to me. On Sept. 11th, at least 20 million people could actually see the smoke and debris uttering from the former WTC with their own eyes. It is now written into each of their souls. I have yet to hear from even one of them who is not willing, in reply to further such attacks from the same family of terrorist fanatics, to take out every single Islamic regime, whether "radical" or "moderate". I don't think we in Canada, let alone those in Europe, fully appreciate the "commitment" there. That e.g. the moment the U.S. enters Iraq, Hillary Clinton will cry: "Get 'im!"

Target
: Just heard on NBC news that the target of the Pennsylvania jet was the White House.
Remember that bin Laden goes after targets he misses until he gets them.
The administration should warn itself.

Batteries included
: I'm nominated as sexiest male blogger. Vote early. Vote often. (on the right-hand column.)
Gray beards are very sexy. Ignore the picture of me on the site. Character acting, you know.

Then...
: So I stopped by Bryant Park to see David Blaine standing atop a 90-foot tower with no ropes, no nets, for 36 hours before he jumps off in the dying embers of prime time tonight.
It's New York.
Everybody's trying very hard to be blase. (Or maybe watching a guy standing there is just boring). Some folks are standing around looking up. The chairs in the park are all turned to the tower where Blaine is statueing. Many are trying to read papers. There are plenty of factotums behind the barricades who are trying to act all rock-show important with their IDs and walkie-talkies and dress blacks. Just another day in New York.
But then it hit me: What if he does, God forbid, fall?
The last thing New York needs is another person falling to his death. The poll he's standing on even looks like a pillar of the World Trade Center.
I've seen enough of that for a lifetime, for eternity. I could not bear seeing it again. The chills came back.
And so, you see, that is what life in New York is really like these days. We find our distractions where we may (and you have to work hard to distract a New Yorker). But even so, even in an absurd event such as this, everything points back to Then.
Does this remind you of Then? Where were you Then? Are you OK since Then? You can't escape Then.

NY TO TERRORISTS: F*** OFF
: In the greatest tradition of tabloids, the New York Post tells New Yorkers to keep a stiff upper lip and stiff middle finger aimed at the terrorist threats against our city.

New York stood, stout-hearted, when the Twin Towers fell.
Ah, but now comes word from Washington - from the FBI itself - meant to send New Yorkers scuttering headlong into hiding.
To fear fear itself.
Threats against New York City have been made by terrorists, says the FBI.
No specifics, apart from the usual suspects - the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and so on.
But run anyway - run and hide!
Hadn't FBI Director Robert Mueller already warned all of America that additional terrorist violence is "inevitable."
"We will not be able to stop it!" exclaimed the director.
Mr. Director! Please!
There is a war on.
That's defeatist talk - and defeatism is not the American way.
It most certainly is not the New York way.
New Yorkers don't hide!...
Go away, Mr. Mueller.
Come back when you have something useful to say - or don't come back at all.
New Yorkers aren't afraid.
Not of fear.
Not of anything.

Well, we talk a good game.
Lileks and Layne both write about New York, wondering what it's like to live there these days.
It's OK -- until we get a reminder of what it's really like, until we see a shrine at a firehouse, as Lileks did; until we read yet more profiles of victims in Times; until we see the pictures of Ground Zero on the TV most every night; until we get another warning and threat and, no matter how stupid or cynical or absurd the warnings are, we have to take it seriously; it happened here.
So the impact is still real. I wanted to take my kids into the city this weekend. Probably won't now. I get sweaty palms on the PATH train. I walk faster past the Empire State Building.
But I'll get past it. I'm going to wander by Bryant Park and see David Blaine standing on a ten-story pole with, according to Howard, lots of beautiful babes at the base.
Fight absurdity with absurdity. That's the New York way.

American knowhow
: Atta cased the World Trade Center days before the attack so he could use his American-made global positioning system to bring them down.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 21, 2002

The video
: Damien Perry on the Pearl video. Don't watch it. Read him instead.

Blog story du jour
: Sure to be No. 1 on the Blogdex hit parade tomorrow:

SUDDENLY, WEB COMMUNITIES have become one of the hottest topics on the wired frontier: You can see it in the rapid commercialization of the grass-roots Web log movement, as well as the latest research into how the Web organizes itself and how Internet users connect to each other.
Such research builds upon previous studies into the structure of the Web — a structure that scientists have found parallels natural phenomena ranging from genetic code to our planet’s biosphere and beyond.
Like those natural examples, the Web follows a power-law distribution — meaning there are a lot of sparsely connected sites and a very small number of highly connected sites....

Citizenship can be hazardous to your health
: Living in New York is like worrying about cancer and all the many ways it can get you. Now that our government in Washington is covering its ass and warning us at every possible turn, we now fear we can die:
: At the Statue of Liberty or Brooklyn Bridge, not to mention the Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge.
: Via nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
: On the harbor, as Fleet Week commences.
: On airplanes, where pilots will be unarmed.
: Via anthrax.
: At the shakey hands of suicide bombers.
: Hit by falling investors who jump out of windows thanks to the terror these warnings is causing on the stock market.
And that is all from just one day.

Terror's toll
: The government releases its annual terror report:

A total of 3,547 people were killed in international terrorist attacks in 2001, "the highest annual death toll from terrorism ever recorded," according to the U.S. State Department's annual terrorism report.
Of the total fatalities, 90 percent occurred in the September 11th attacks on the United States, the "Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2001" report said. By comparison, in 2000, 409 people died in international terrorist attacks....
"The number of persons wounded in terrorist attacks in 2001 was 1,080, up from 796 wounded the previous year," the report said. "Violence in the Middle East and South Asia also accounted for the increase in casualty totals for 2001."
The annual report, which is double in size from previous years, notes that eight other U.S. citizens were killed and 15 wounded in other acts of terrorism last year.

Lileks does New York
: He doesn't write. He doesn't call. He doesn't visit. Sniff.

Muse
: You never know what is going to inspire Will Warren. And that's half the fun.

He's baaaa-ch
: Treacher is back and he's still pissed.

Instapundit needs links!
: How's that for a delicious switch? All grateful citizens of the 'sphere should link to Glenn Reynolds' address today because he's in the process of moving and until his new address works -- which will be www.instapundit.com -- this address will work. The site looks great.

Dangling
: I'm delighted to see the someone -- read: the White House -- is hanging John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller out to dry over the hero FBI agent's memo about Arab pilot/murderers. The NY Times says today that our crack crimefighters read the memo shortly after 9.11 and never told Bush. You know damned well that that was leaked from the White House to cover their ass. I say that's good news if it can start an avalanche against these idiots.
You know what I want: Bring on Rudy!

: Meanwhile, watch out for growing public resentment. Howard Stern went on the offensive again this morning, screaming -- quite rightly -- that Cheney and Mueller are just saying that we're going to be attacked and there's nothing they can do about it so they're just going to lie down and take it. He says get rid of them.
Go, Howard!

: More devastating stuff on Ashcroft. I'm going to start collecting this stuff like Beanie Babies. From the Guardian:

He has accused his critics of undermining the fight against terrorism. But it is becoming clear that before September 11 he had little interest in counter-terrorism, and diverted resources from measures to prevent terrorism towards those aimed at more traditional targets, such as drugs and child pornography
In the late 90s the threat of a terrorist attack on US soil became a near obsession in the Clinton administration, particularly in the justice department under Janet Reno. But her successor had other ideas.
On September 10 last year, the last day of what is now seen as a bygone age of innocence, Mr Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House. It covered 68 programmes, none of them related to counter-terrorism.
He also sent a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities. Counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats.
Nevertheless, he began using a chartered private jet to travel around the country, rather than take commercial airliners as Ms Reno had done. A justice department spokesman said this was done as a result of an FBI "threat assessment" on Mr Ashcroft, but insisted that the assessment was not specifically linked to al-Qaida.

So he flew safe while we didn't. So he knew this while we didn't.

LINK | Comments (0)

The video
: Damien Perry on the Pearl video. Don't watch it. Read him instead.

Blog story du jour
: Sure to be No. 1 on the Blogdex hit parade tomorrow:

SUDDENLY, WEB COMMUNITIES have become one of the hottest topics on the wired frontier: You can see it in the rapid commercialization of the grass-roots Web log movement, as well as the latest research into how the Web organizes itself and how Internet users connect to each other.
Such research builds upon previous studies into the structure of the Web — a structure that scientists have found parallels natural phenomena ranging from genetic code to our planet’s biosphere and beyond.
Like those natural examples, the Web follows a power-law distribution — meaning there are a lot of sparsely connected sites and a very small number of highly connected sites....

Citizenship can be hazardous to your health
: Living in New York is like worrying about cancer and all the many ways it can get you. Now that our government in Washington is covering its ass and warning us at every possible turn, we now fear we can die:
: At the Statue of Liberty or Brooklyn Bridge, not to mention the Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge.
: Via nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
: On the harbor, as Fleet Week commences.
: On airplanes, where pilots will be unarmed.
: Via anthrax.
: At the shakey hands of suicide bombers.
: Hit by falling investors who jump out of windows thanks to the terror these warnings is causing on the stock market.
And that is all from just one day.

Terror's toll
: The government releases its annual terror report:

A total of 3,547 people were killed in international terrorist attacks in 2001, "the highest annual death toll from terrorism ever recorded," according to the U.S. State Department's annual terrorism report.
Of the total fatalities, 90 percent occurred in the September 11th attacks on the United States, the "Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2001" report said. By comparison, in 2000, 409 people died in international terrorist attacks....
"The number of persons wounded in terrorist attacks in 2001 was 1,080, up from 796 wounded the previous year," the report said. "Violence in the Middle East and South Asia also accounted for the increase in casualty totals for 2001."
The annual report, which is double in size from previous years, notes that eight other U.S. citizens were killed and 15 wounded in other acts of terrorism last year.

Lileks does New York
: He doesn't write. He doesn't call. He doesn't visit. Sniff.

Muse
: You never know what is going to inspire Will Warren. And that's half the fun.

He's baaaa-ch
: Treacher is back and he's still pissed.

Instapundit needs links!
: How's that for a delicious switch? All grateful citizens of the 'sphere should link to Glenn Reynolds' address today because he's in the process of moving and until his new address works -- which will be www.instapundit.com -- this address will work. The site looks great.

Dangling
: I'm delighted to see the someone -- read: the White House -- is hanging John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller out to dry over the hero FBI agent's memo about Arab pilot/murderers. The NY Times says today that our crack crimefighters read the memo shortly after 9.11 and never told Bush. You know damned well that that was leaked from the White House to cover their ass. I say that's good news if it can start an avalanche against these idiots.
You know what I want: Bring on Rudy!

: Meanwhile, watch out for growing public resentment. Howard Stern went on the offensive again this morning, screaming -- quite rightly -- that Cheney and Mueller are just saying that we're going to be attacked and there's nothing they can do about it so they're just going to lie down and take it. He says get rid of them.
Go, Howard!

: More devastating stuff on Ashcroft. I'm going to start collecting this stuff like Beanie Babies. From the Guardian:

He has accused his critics of undermining the fight against terrorism. But it is becoming clear that before September 11 he had little interest in counter-terrorism, and diverted resources from measures to prevent terrorism towards those aimed at more traditional targets, such as drugs and child pornography
In the late 90s the threat of a terrorist attack on US soil became a near obsession in the Clinton administration, particularly in the justice department under Janet Reno. But her successor had other ideas.
On September 10 last year, the last day of what is now seen as a bygone age of innocence, Mr Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House. It covered 68 programmes, none of them related to counter-terrorism.
He also sent a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities. Counter-terrorism was not on the list. He turned down an FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorist threats.
Nevertheless, he began using a chartered private jet to travel around the country, rather than take commercial airliners as Ms Reno had done. A justice department spokesman said this was done as a result of an FBI "threat assessment" on Mr Ashcroft, but insisted that the assessment was not specifically linked to al-Qaida.

So he flew safe while we didn't. So he knew this while we didn't.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 20, 2002

Blogging as exhibitionism
: There are all kinds of things I cannot say on my blog.
At a recent school event for my kid, a neighbor said that he'd read my blog. I was flattered and shocked. And I realized that I can't write about the neighbors.
Some colleagues read it. Can't talk about work.
Family either.
I now understand the appeal of anonyblogs. I'm thinking of taking on a personality, a nom de post, so I can say what I really think. And I'm not telling anybody.

The (aggressive) pursuit of happiness
: Every six months or so, I get fed up with the modern American quest for spirtuality. When I lived in California, that happened every week or so.
Spirituality is, too often, just another way to say self-indulgence: What will make me happy?
I want to slap its practitioners.
Sunday night, I watched much of the end of Survivor and was disgusted by the faux ethnic/religious/spiritual clapcrap: the survivor ladies paddling to an island to spend the afternoon painting (they called it tattooing) symbols on their arms and legs to connect them to some bogus spirituality. They'd have been better off doing their hair.
Next I watched the wonderful Six Feet Under where, at least, they made fun of the screwed up shrink parents' renewal vows, revealing the vacuum of their souls.
And today, I pick up the New York Times and read about a new program at -- one guess -- Berkeley promoting the study of peace and love:

The new institution, the Center for the Development of Peace and Well-Being, already nicknamed the joy center, will scientifically explore "inner peace" as it relates to individuals, relationships and communities...

Good, God, I wish cliches were most self-aware.
The world is a screwed-up place that requires real morality and hard work and we can't solve problems with mumbo-dumbo-jumbo whose only aim is to make us feel good. Sometimes, we should feel bad so we work on the cure and not the symptoms, so we worry about others' problems and needs and not just our own.
I'm not feeling like peace and love these days. We're still at war.

Accountability
: Howard Stern reliably delivers the pulse of America and this morning, he's pissed at the Bush administration over the 9.11 warnings. Howard says they could have done simple things once warned about hijackings and Arab pilots. They could have put air marshals in planes. They could have looked at the rosters of other flight schools. They could have tightened airport security. Stern likes Bush. But he has said from the start that Bush is a Type B personality and it doesn't surprise him that his administration did not jump on these warnings. He says that this should cost him another term.
I wouldn't go that far.
Nonetheless, the pundits and pollsters should listen to Howard's pulse.

What is needed is cabinet-level accountabilty. We don't have that today. Cheney is the one being sent out there to draw lightning; he's the one who warns of another attack so they can say we-told-you-so; he's the one who refuses to release the hero-FBI agent's memo. Poor Dick. Meanwhile, the heads of the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Transportation Department are getting free rides. They are the ones who should be feeling the power of vox pop voltage.

There is one answer: RUDY!
Stern says Rudy should be President.
I wouldn't go that far.
Rudy should be attorney general; I've been saying that since October.
We now have an attorney general who's there to push the far-right agenda -- guns, abortion, prayer -- and make the far-right happy when what we should have as attorney general is somebody who knows how to catch criminals and protect the people. That is the real job. And the man who could do it: Rudy Guiliani.
A strong crime fighter should be attorney general. That person should be responsible for homeland security so there is cabinet-level accountablity. And if Dick Cheney wants to make himself useful, he should take charge of making sure the FBI, the CIA, and the military communicate, compare notes, connect dots, and work hard to prevent the next attack (just take Ken Layne's wise suggestion: stop complaining about your old computers and just start a cross-agency Terror Blog).

Howard says that Cheney should not just say that we're going to get attacked and leave it at that. Howard says Cheney should warn that if we get attack, we are going to nuke the Palestinians or Saudi Arabia, pick a country, any country.
I might go that far.

: Update: Matthew Yglesias gives all the good reasons why Rudy won't get the job. Still, it would be nice.

Repetitive stress
: Amy Langfield is typing again and it's a good thing.

LINK | Comments (2)

Blogging as exhibitionism
: There are all kinds of things I cannot say on my blog.
At a recent school event for my kid, a neighbor said that he'd read my blog. I was flattered and shocked. And I realized that I can't write about the neighbors.
Some colleagues read it. Can't talk about work.
Family either.
I now understand the appeal of anonyblogs. I'm thinking of taking on a personality, a nom de post, so I can say what I really think. And I'm not telling anybody.

The (aggressive) pursuit of happiness
: Every six months or so, I get fed up with the modern American quest for spirtuality. When I lived in California, that happened every week or so.
Spirituality is, too often, just another way to say self-indulgence: What will make me happy?
I want to slap its practitioners.
Sunday night, I watched much of the end of Survivor and was disgusted by the faux ethnic/religious/spiritual clapcrap: the survivor ladies paddling to an island to spend the afternoon painting (they called it tattooing) symbols on their arms and legs to connect them to some bogus spirituality. They'd have been better off doing their hair.
Next I watched the wonderful Six Feet Under where, at least, they made fun of the screwed up shrink parents' renewal vows, revealing the vacuum of their souls.
And today, I pick up the New York Times and read about a new program at -- one guess -- Berkeley promoting the study of peace and love:

The new institution, the Center for the Development of Peace and Well-Being, already nicknamed the joy center, will scientifically explore "inner peace" as it relates to individuals, relationships and communities...

Good, God, I wish cliches were most self-aware.
The world is a screwed-up place that requires real morality and hard work and we can't solve problems with mumbo-dumbo-jumbo whose only aim is to make us feel good. Sometimes, we should feel bad so we work on the cure and not the symptoms, so we worry about others' problems and needs and not just our own.
I'm not feeling like peace and love these days. We're still at war.

Accountability
: Howard Stern reliably delivers the pulse of America and this morning, he's pissed at the Bush administration over the 9.11 warnings. Howard says they could have done simple things once warned about hijackings and Arab pilots. They could have put air marshals in planes. They could have looked at the rosters of other flight schools. They could have tightened airport security. Stern likes Bush. But he has said from the start that Bush is a Type B personality and it doesn't surprise him that his administration did not jump on these warnings. He says that this should cost him another term.
I wouldn't go that far.
Nonetheless, the pundits and pollsters should listen to Howard's pulse.

What is needed is cabinet-level accountabilty. We don't have that today. Cheney is the one being sent out there to draw lightning; he's the one who warns of another attack so they can say we-told-you-so; he's the one who refuses to release the hero-FBI agent's memo. Poor Dick. Meanwhile, the heads of the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Transportation Department are getting free rides. They are the ones who should be feeling the power of vox pop voltage.

There is one answer: RUDY!
Stern says Rudy should be President.
I wouldn't go that far.
Rudy should be attorney general; I've been saying that since October.
We now have an attorney general who's there to push the far-right agenda -- guns, abortion, prayer -- and make the far-right happy when what we should have as attorney general is somebody who knows how to catch criminals and protect the people. That is the real job. And the man who could do it: Rudy Guiliani.
A strong crime fighter should be attorney general. That person should be responsible for homeland security so there is cabinet-level accountablity. And if Dick Cheney wants to make himself useful, he should take charge of making sure the FBI, the CIA, and the military communicate, compare notes, connect dots, and work hard to prevent the next attack (just take Ken Layne's wise suggestion: stop complaining about your old computers and just start a cross-agency Terror Blog).

Howard says that Cheney should not just say that we're going to get attacked and leave it at that. Howard says Cheney should warn that if we get attack, we are going to nuke the Palestinians or Saudi Arabia, pick a country, any country.
I might go that far.

: Update: Matthew Yglesias gives all the good reasons why Rudy won't get the job. Still, it would be nice.

Repetitive stress
: Amy Langfield is typing again and it's a good thing.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 19, 2002

Who's the cynic?
: Pardon me for thinking it's cynical of Dick Cheney to warn that another terrorist attack is imminent.
Classic CYA.
So now whenever whatever attack happens, the White House can say that they did warn us this time -- even though the warning is utterly nonspecific, utterly unhelpful, utterly uninformative (because they don't know much more).
You could say I'm the cynic for saying this. Or you could say that Cheney et al are the cynics.

LINK | Comments (0)

Who's the cynic?
: Pardon me for thinking it's cynical of Dick Cheney to warn that another terrorist attack is imminent.
Classic CYA.
So now whenever whatever attack happens, the White House can say that they did warn us this time -- even though the warning is utterly nonspecific, utterly unhelpful, utterly uninformative (because they don't know much more).
You could say I'm the cynic for saying this. Or you could say that Cheney et al are the cynics.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 18, 2002

Children of WWII... Kennedy... Vietnam... 9.11
: As I write this, I am watching Path to War on HBO. It is the story of Lyndon Johnson's reputedly reluctant escalation of the Vietnam War. I'm watching this as if it were fiction. I keep hoping it will turn out differently, that Johnson will stop and do the right thing, that he will pull back, pull out, end it before it's too late. Of course, he does not. And that changed the lives of my generation. Too many died. Many fought. And many of us fought against the war. I never had to make my hard decision between jail and Canada; going to war was not a choice. I was let off by my low age and high lottery number. Even so, Vietnam made me much of what I am today. It molded my morality. It threatened to tear into my family. It knocked the foundation out from under my respect for authority. It tainted my perspective on patriotism. It made me into a pacifist. It defined my age.

I was talking Friday with the best newspaper editor I know -- my boss now and again -- about children today and how 9.11 will affect them and mold their lives. My wise friend wasn't sure that this would define their age; he said the story is not over yet. I believe it will define them though I agree that it is certainly too soon for them or us to know how.

When John Kennedy was killed, I was in third grade. Of course, I remember the scene: A black minister worked as the custodian -- to earn enough to support his family and church -- in my school -- a Friends school, as it happens -- and we saw his face at our door, crying, telling the teacher what had happened as we were shuttled onto buses to go home. I knew this was important but I did not know what it meant, none of us did for decades, not for a generation. The same was true of Vietnam. The symptoms are too many and too obvious to list but it took a generation for them to become obvious. And this story, too, is not over.

I believe that today's children will be the generation of 9.11. Read the Washington Post on the "heirs to a nation's pain," the children of the victims. Read about our well-meaning outpouring of sympathy and respect that often makes the pain sharper for them.

Virtually nothing is more devastating for a child than a parent's death. How much greater the grief, though, when it seems on constant public display?

The pain is felt in each single heart.

All 4-year-old An Nguyen knows now is that his father is gone. It could take him years to grasp why.
Most mornings, he bounds happily into his preschool classroom, eager to write, draw, paint, sing. But if any of the other boys or girls do not show, his smiles and mood dissolve. An's father, Navy contractor Khang Nguyen, never came back. What if they don't either?

But for the future, this is but the first snowflake on the mountain. The avalanche is yet to come. I cannot predict what impact this will have on this generation, on their safety, politics, patriotism, religion, morality, their lives; these changes cannot be obvious today. But they will reach far, from the children of the victims, to the children of the survivors, to the children of the soldiers, to the children who witnessed this, to every child.

I look at my own son and daughter and wonder how they will remember this time, how they will interpret the impact on them and their family and nation. I don't know yet. I may never know.

Imagining evil
: Thomas Friedman says the press has the story -- as my father would say it -- bassackwards:

The failure to prevent Sept. 11 was not a failure of intelligence or coordination. It was a failure of imagination. Even if all the raw intelligence signals had been shared among the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the White House, I'm convinced that there was no one there who would have put them all together, who would have imagined evil on the scale Osama bin Laden did.
Osama bin Laden was (or is) a unique character. He's a combination of Charles Manson and Jack Welch — a truly evil, twisted personality, but with the organizational skills of a top corporate manager, who translated his evil into a global campaign that rocked a superpower. In some ways, I'm glad that America (outside Hollywood) is not full of people with bin Laden-like imaginations. One Timothy McVeigh is enough.
Imagining evil of this magnitude simply does not come naturally to the American character, which is why, even after we are repeatedly confronted with it, we keep reverting to our natural, naïvely optimistic selves.

Once launched with these well-thought words, Friedman pushes two agenda -- the need to enlist us all, especially the young, in a holy war of energy independence and the need to start an "office of evil," whose job it will be to take the intelligence and connect the dots to draw a picture of the hell these devils are building.

Alexa's abacus
: Richard Bennett writes today about the change in Alexa's rankings. The changes help, with the rather major exceptions Bennett points out.
I also note that my crisis.blogspot.com address is more up-to-date than my www.buzzmachine.com address, which I've been using for five months now.
Note also that this is only the rankings among people who've bothered to download the Alexa bar, an idiosyncratic demographic for sure.

Life happens
: Proving Locke's point (below): Read Dawn Olsen's story of d-i-v-o-r-c-e.

Blogboy
: Christopher "Rage Boy" "Gonzo Marketing" "Cluetrain" Locke on blogs and life:

We're talking about our lives. What they feel like from the inside. What really matters to us and what doesn't -- like whether business thinks the net is a failure. Talking about our lives. Writing as if our lives depended on it. And there was never a place to do that before.

[via Doc]

Whistle blown
: This is what I've been waiting for: The name of the one intelligent guy in FBI intelligence, the one who wrote the memo warning about Arabs in the cockpit. His name is Kenneth Williams. And he's a hero of the unsung variety.

But his former colleagues at the FBI said Friday that Williams' knowledge of terrorism alone should have been enough for superiors to immediately act on his suspicions.
"Nobody listened to him," said one top former FBI official who first learned about the memo several weeks before its existence surfaced publicly, creating a firestorm in Congress.
Other former colleagues of Williams, who refused to discuss the memo, offered high praise for the agent's work in the Phoenix counterterrorism unit.
"Anyone in FBI management who wouldn't take what Ken Williams said seriously is a fool," said Ronald Myers, who served for 31 years in the FBI before retiring in 2000. "If Ken says something, it's true."
Added Williams' former FBI swat team leader Roger Browning: "On a scale of 1 to 10, he's a 10. Maybe an 11."

Is anybody going to have the good sense to promote him? Or is he an embarrassment and a threat to the idiots in charge?

WARNING: We don't know what we don't know
: After landing in tepid water for not introducing the right hand to the left hand on terror intelligence before September, you can bet that the feds will now cover their asses with every hint of trouble they hear:

American intelligence agencies have intercepted a vague yet troubling series of communications among Al Qaeda operatives over the last few months indicating that the terrorist organization is trying to carry out an operation as big as or bigger than the Sept. 11 attacks, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials.

But the Times says there's not much they can do about it except play terror geranimals.

Some officials say the government's new color-coded threat alert system is less useful than the system it replaced, because it is subject to political influences from appointees who are fearful of being criticized if they fail to pass on every possible threat, no matter how remote.
Yet even as the less credible threats have been widely publicized, the more worrisome and credible undercurrent of intercepted communications has not been made public.
In hindsight, analysts now view the pattern of intercepted communications they saw last May, June and July as a sign of the impending attacks. Those intercepts, coming after embassy bombings in Africa and the suicidal bombing of a Navy ship in an Arabian port, were sometimes alarming.

Rossi's back
: My favorite web journaler (not a word) is back after putting on her post-9.11 art show (I'm devastated I couldn't get there to see the show and meet Rossi but life got in the way). Anyway, she's back.

LINK | Comments (0)

Children of WWII... Kennedy... Vietnam... 9.11
: As I write this, I am watching Path to War on HBO. It is the story of Lyndon Johnson's reputedly reluctant escalation of the Vietnam War. I'm watching this as if it were fiction. I keep hoping it will turn out differently, that Johnson will stop and do the right thing, that he will pull back, pull out, end it before it's too late. Of course, he does not. And that changed the lives of my generation. Too many died. Many fought. And many of us fought against the war. I never had to make my hard decision between jail and Canada; going to war was not a choice. I was let off by my low age and high lottery number. Even so, Vietnam made me much of what I am today. It molded my morality. It threatened to tear into my family. It knocked the foundation out from under my respect for authority. It tainted my perspective on patriotism. It made me into a pacifist. It defined my age.

I was talking Friday with the best newspaper editor I know -- my boss now and again -- about children today and how 9.11 will affect them and mold their lives. My wise friend wasn't sure that this would define their age; he said the story is not over yet. I believe it will define them though I agree that it is certainly too soon for them or us to know how.

When John Kennedy was killed, I was in third grade. Of course, I remember the scene: A black minister worked as the custodian -- to earn enough to support his family and church -- in my school -- a Friends school, as it happens -- and we saw his face at our door, crying, telling the teacher what had happened as we were shuttled onto buses to go home. I knew this was important but I did not know what it meant, none of us did for decades, not for a generation. The same was true of Vietnam. The symptoms are too many and too obvious to list but it took a generation for them to become obvious. And this story, too, is not over.

I believe that today's children will be the generation of 9.11. Read the Washington Post on the "heirs to a nation's pain," the children of the victims. Read about our well-meaning outpouring of sympathy and respect that often makes the pain sharper for them.

Virtually nothing is more devastating for a child than a parent's death. How much greater the grief, though, when it seems on constant public display?

The pain is felt in each single heart.

All 4-year-old An Nguyen knows now is that his father is gone. It could take him years to grasp why.
Most mornings, he bounds happily into his preschool classroom, eager to write, draw, paint, sing. But if any of the other boys or girls do not show, his smiles and mood dissolve. An's father, Navy contractor Khang Nguyen, never came back. What if they don't either?

But for the future, this is but the first snowflake on the mountain. The avalanche is yet to come. I cannot predict what impact this will have on this generation, on their safety, politics, patriotism, religion, morality, their lives; these changes cannot be obvious today. But they will reach far, from the children of the victims, to the children of the survivors, to the children of the soldiers, to the children who witnessed this, to every child.

I look at my own son and daughter and wonder how they will remember this time, how they will interpret the impact on them and their family and nation. I don't know yet. I may never know.

Imagining evil
: Thomas Friedman says the press has the story -- as my father would say it -- bassackwards:

The failure to prevent Sept. 11 was not a failure of intelligence or coordination. It was a failure of imagination. Even if all the raw intelligence signals had been shared among the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the White House, I'm convinced that there was no one there who would have put them all together, who would have imagined evil on the scale Osama bin Laden did.
Osama bin Laden was (or is) a unique character. He's a combination of Charles Manson and Jack Welch — a truly evil, twisted personality, but with the organizational skills of a top corporate manager, who translated his evil into a global campaign that rocked a superpower. In some ways, I'm glad that America (outside Hollywood) is not full of people with bin Laden-like imaginations. One Timothy McVeigh is enough.
Imagining evil of this magnitude simply does not come naturally to the American character, which is why, even after we are repeatedly confronted with it, we keep reverting to our natural, naïvely optimistic selves.

Once launched with these well-thought words, Friedman pushes two agenda -- the need to enlist us all, especially the young, in a holy war of energy independence and the need to start an "office of evil," whose job it will be to take the intelligence and connect the dots to draw a picture of the hell these devils are building.

Alexa's abacus
: Richard Bennett writes today about the change in Alexa's rankings. The changes help, with the rather major exceptions Bennett points out.
I also note that my crisis.blogspot.com address is more up-to-date than my www.buzzmachine.com address, which I've been using for five months now.
Note also that this is only the rankings among people who've bothered to download the Alexa bar, an idiosyncratic demographic for sure.

Life happens
: Proving Locke's point (below): Read Dawn Olsen's story of d-i-v-o-r-c-e.

Blogboy
: Christopher "Rage Boy" "Gonzo Marketing" "Cluetrain" Locke on blogs and life:

We're talking about our lives. What they feel like from the inside. What really matters to us and what doesn't -- like whether business thinks the net is a failure. Talking about our lives. Writing as if our lives depended on it. And there was never a place to do that before.

[via Doc]

Whistle blown
: This is what I've been waiting for: The name of the one intelligent guy in FBI intelligence, the one who wrote the memo warning about Arabs in the cockpit. His name is Kenneth Williams. And he's a hero of the unsung variety.

But his former colleagues at the FBI said Friday that Williams' knowledge of terrorism alone should have been enough for superiors to immediately act on his suspicions.
"Nobody listened to him," said one top former FBI official who first learned about the memo several weeks before its existence surfaced publicly, creating a firestorm in Congress.
Other former colleagues of Williams, who refused to discuss the memo, offered high praise for the agent's work in the Phoenix counterterrorism unit.
"Anyone in FBI management who wouldn't take what Ken Williams said seriously is a fool," said Ronald Myers, who served for 31 years in the FBI before retiring in 2000. "If Ken says something, it's true."
Added Williams' former FBI swat team leader Roger Browning: "On a scale of 1 to 10, he's a 10. Maybe an 11."

Is anybody going to have the good sense to promote him? Or is he an embarrassment and a threat to the idiots in charge?

WARNING: We don't know what we don't know
: After landing in tepid water for not introducing the right hand to the left hand on terror intelligence before September, you can bet that the feds will now cover their asses with every hint of trouble they hear:

American intelligence agencies have intercepted a vague yet troubling series of communications among Al Qaeda operatives over the last few months indicating that the terrorist organization is trying to carry out an operation as big as or bigger than the Sept. 11 attacks, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials.

But the Times says there's not much they can do about it except play terror geranimals.

Some officials say the government's new color-coded threat alert system is less useful than the system it replaced, because it is subject to political influences from appointees who are fearful of being criticized if they fail to pass on every possible threat, no matter how remote.
Yet even as the less credible threats have been widely publicized, the more worrisome and credible undercurrent of intercepted communications has not been made public.
In hindsight, analysts now view the pattern of intercepted communications they saw last May, June and July as a sign of the impending attacks. Those intercepts, coming after embassy bombings in Africa and the suicidal bombing of a Navy ship in an Arabian port, were sometimes alarming.

Rossi's back
: My favorite web journaler (not a word) is back after putting on her post-9.11 art show (I'm devastated I couldn't get there to see the show and meet Rossi but life got in the way). Anyway, she's back.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 17, 2002

The view from here
: This is the view from my office in Jersey City (classy, eh?), a block away from the Al Salaam mosque, where the blind Egyptian cleric and his cronies plotted the first attack on the World Trade Center.
This week, Dish, the satellite TV service, put up a new billboard (which you can't see well enough to read but you couldn't read most of it anyway: it's in Farsi).
It's advertising all its Arab channels -- Al Jazeera, I assume: "From the Middle East to your living room in America."
Oh, good, just in case you're missing all those incendiary reports and secret messages from bin Laden.

What could have been done
: They used to call it "spin" in Washington. It's really just a meme. And the meme of the day -- heard from Air Fleisher (that's actually a typo but then I enjoyed it), Conde Rice, and most anybody on FoxNews -- is that nobody could have known that Arab hijackers would have "turned planes into missiles."
That may be true but it's also a bogus argument: What, if you knew that they were going to hijack but weren't going to try the suicide bomb thing you would not have tried to stop them? Of course, you would have. But you couldn't because you didn't -- to use the Democrat's meme -- "connect the dots."
What could have been done if the dots had been connected?
Well, if the FBI had listened to its own and if FBI and CIA intelligence had talked to each other -- try email, guys -- then they could have looked at the enrollment in flight schools throughout the country. They would have seen a pattern, a pattern that would have told them that these people were planning to turn jets into missiles. They didn't want to learn how to land, ferchrissake. They could have learned that by watching Zacarias Moussaoui. They also would have seen the names of people connected with bin Laden.
Could they have foiled the plot? Maybe.
But I do not blame the White House for not acting (see Andrew Sullivan's predicatable Bush defense du jour); they get warnings of all sorts all the time.
But I do blame the White House for not revealing the facts long ago (see Nick Denton's advice: "Hasn't Bush learned anything from Clinton: it's always the cover-up that gets you.").
But blame is beside the point now. What happened happened. What matters is that we cannot let it happen again. We cannot repeat these fatal errors. And the only way to prevent them is to thoroughly investigate who knew what when and what dots were not connected so the next time, we can connect them.

The party meme
: Stephen Green suggests: "Perhaps we should call being too pro-Bush the Sullivan Award."

LINK | Comments (0)

The view from here
: This is the view from my office in Jersey City (classy, eh?), a block away from the Al Salaam mosque, where the blind Egyptian cleric and his cronies plotted the first attack on the World Trade Center.
This week, Dish, the satellite TV service, put up a new billboard (which you can't see well enough to read but you couldn't read most of it anyway: it's in Farsi).
It's advertising all its Arab channels -- Al Jazeera, I assume: "From the Middle East to your living room in America."
Oh, good, just in case you're missing all those incendiary reports and secret messages from bin Laden.

What could have been done
: They used to call it "spin" in Washington. It's really just a meme. And the meme of the day -- heard from Air Fleisher (that's actually a typo but then I enjoyed it), Conde Rice, and most anybody on FoxNews -- is that nobody could have known that Arab hijackers would have "turned planes into missiles."
That may be true but it's also a bogus argument: What, if you knew that they were going to hijack but weren't going to try the suicide bomb thing you would not have tried to stop them? Of course, you would have. But you couldn't because you didn't -- to use the Democrat's meme -- "connect the dots."
What could have been done if the dots had been connected?
Well, if the FBI had listened to its own and if FBI and CIA intelligence had talked to each other -- try email, guys -- then they could have looked at the enrollment in flight schools throughout the country. They would have seen a pattern, a pattern that would have told them that these people were planning to turn jets into missiles. They didn't want to learn how to land, ferchrissake. They could have learned that by watching Zacarias Moussaoui. They also would have seen the names of people connected with bin Laden.
Could they have foiled the plot? Maybe.
But I do not blame the White House for not acting (see Andrew Sullivan's predicatable Bush defense du jour); they get warnings of all sorts all the time.
But I do blame the White House for not revealing the facts long ago (see Nick Denton's advice: "Hasn't Bush learned anything from Clinton: it's always the cover-up that gets you.").
But blame is beside the point now. What happened happened. What matters is that we cannot let it happen again. We cannot repeat these fatal errors. And the only way to prevent them is to thoroughly investigate who knew what when and what dots were not connected so the next time, we can connect them.

The party meme
: Stephen Green suggests: "Perhaps we should call being too pro-Bush the Sullivan Award."

LINK | Comments (0)

May 16, 2002

The Weblog Foundation
: Scroll down for reaction. Click here for the complete proposal.

bitterlemons.org
: BitterLemons.org is an interesting site I found via Die Zeit and I don't think it has bubbled up among blogs (at least according to Daypop, it has not) and so I pass it on.
The shtick:
Each week, they tackle another Israeli/Palestinian issue with two pieces written from one side and two from the other.
This week, the issue is Palestinian reform.
From their different angles, the pieces from both sides agree that reform is going to end up being a sham. They say that Sharon does not want reform but instead just wants any way to dilute Arafat. They say that Palestinian leaders who are in power don't want reform; they are using it to try to gain or maintain advantage following Arafat's detention. They say that free and open elections are needed. Agreement.
A piece from the Palestinian side concludes:

The litmus test for any calls for reforming the Palestinian political system and their significance or seriousness is whether they include calls for regular, free and democratic elections that will empower the public and enforce accountability, transparency and efficiency. Otherwise, any changes are going to be the flawed product of the same people that are responsible for the current situation.
The means of judging demands for reform, whether they emanate from Washington or Tel Aviv or come from Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza, is how they incorporate the Palestinian demand for comprehensive and free elections.

15 pixels of celebrity
: I think that John Hiler has been doing a great job at Microcontent News taking the pulse of this fibrillating medium. Today, go there to chortle about Nick Denton's caricature.

LINK | Comments (0)

The Weblog Foundation
: Scroll down for reaction. Click here for the complete proposal.

bitterlemons.org
: BitterLemons.org is an interesting site I found via Die Zeit and I don't think it has bubbled up among blogs (at least according to Daypop, it has not) and so I pass it on.
The shtick:
Each week, they tackle another Israeli/Palestinian issue with two pieces written from one side and two from the other.
This week, the issue is Palestinian reform.
From their different angles, the pieces from both sides agree that reform is going to end up being a sham. They say that Sharon does not want reform but instead just wants any way to dilute Arafat. They say that Palestinian leaders who are in power don't want reform; they are using it to try to gain or maintain advantage following Arafat's detention. They say that free and open elections are needed. Agreement.
A piece from the Palestinian side concludes:

The litmus test for any calls for reforming the Palestinian political system and their significance or seriousness is whether they include calls for regular, free and democratic elections that will empower the public and enforce accountability, transparency and efficiency. Otherwise, any changes are going to be the flawed product of the same people that are responsible for the current situation.
The means of judging demands for reform, whether they emanate from Washington or Tel Aviv or come from Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza, is how they incorporate the Palestinian demand for comprehensive and free elections.

15 pixels of celebrity
: I think that John Hiler has been doing a great job at Microcontent News taking the pulse of this fibrillating medium. Today, go there to chortle about Nick Denton's caricature.

LINK | Comments (0)

May 15, 2002

What didn't they know and when didn't they know it?
: Well, I won't call it Terrorgate. But the FBI's bungling of warnings about Sept. 11 terrorism bears thorough investigation.
First we found out that the FBI ignored a warning from one of its own agents that Arabs were taking flying lessons -- complete with speculation about ties to Osama bin Laden.
And now we learn that the White House had been warned about Arab hijackings before they occurred.

President George W. Bush was told by U.S. intelligence in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, the White House acknowledged Wednesday night.

Though the FBI's behavior -- its general lack of competence -- has been scandalous, this is not a scandal. Obviously, nobody tried to screw this up; nobody tried to hide anything.
Nonetheless, for our safety, for our future, this must be investigated so we can find the problem and fix it!
The FBI is planning a super squad against terror. How it is run should be run must be informed by complete, open, independent, and frank investigation of what was messed up by intelligence and law enforcement officials prior to September 11th. And the administration should ask whether it's the FBI that should be running this.
I'm not given confidence by this team and its disorganization: We have powerless, silent, wimpy bureaucrat Tom Ridge. We have bumbling Norm Minetta failing to give us security in the skies. We have dogmatic but -- let's be honest -- ineffectual John Ashcroft catching no one (remember anthrax?). And we have the FBI (stands for Friggin' Bungling Idiots) letting valuable intelligence get lost in its lack of a system.
And we have the sure prediction that the terrorists will try again.
Do you feel safe?
I don't.

Snark attack!
: More snarky words are being written about the Weblog Foundation. No surprise. It's the Internet. That's why we love it, eh?
But what does surprise me is that webloggers -- or at least some of them -- don't want money, don't like it, think it's a bad thing.
I thought we were past defending capitalism (except, perhaps, in Cuba).
But capitalism has able defense from Eric Olsen and Richard Bennett. They do it better than I could.

: More show-off snarkiness from elsewhere [a bozo who apparently doesn't know how to do permalinks]:

Heh. Excuse my mirth for a second. Bwahahahahahahahahahah! The carpetbloggers want to set up a Weblogging Chamber Of Commerce. This from a fragment of a subculture even more superredundant than indiekid bassists, budding fast bowlers and pop starlet wannabes. Ferfugsake, get a real job you lazy bums and stop whinging! Seriously, I've had cause to gather my thoughts on the issue of journalism and weblogging, so I'll probably splurt it out at some point.

Can't wait.

: If these guys don't want money, good. Leaves more for the rest of us.... Insert smug, irritating smiley face graphic here....

LINK | Comments (0)

What didn't they know and when didn't they know it?
: Well, I won't call it Terrorgate. But the FBI's bungling of warnings about Sept. 11 terrorism bears thorough investigation.
First we found out that the FBI ignored a warning from one of its own agents that Arabs were taking flying lessons -- complete with speculation about ties to Osama bin Laden.
And now we learn that the White House had been warned about Arab hijackings before they occurred.

President George W. Bush was told by U.S. intelligence in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, the White House acknowledged Wednesday night.

Though the FBI's behavior -- its general lack of competence -- has been scandalous, this is not a scandal. Obviously, nobody tried to screw this up; nobody tried to hide anything.
Nonetheless, for our safety, for our future, this must be investigated so we can find the problem and fix it!
The FBI is planning a super squad against terror. How it is run should be run must be informed by complete, open, independent, and frank investigation of what was messed up by intelligence and law enforcement officials prior to September 11th. And the administration should ask whether it's the FBI that should be running this.
I'm not given confidence by this team and its disorganization: We have powerless, silent, wimpy bureaucrat Tom Ridge. We have bumbling Norm Minetta failing to give us security in the skies. We have dogmatic but -- let's be honest -- ineffectual John Ashcroft catching no one (remember anthrax?). And we have the FBI (stands for Friggin' Bungling Idiots) letting valuable intelligence get lost in its lack of a system.
And we have the sure prediction that the terrorists will try again.
Do you feel safe?
I don't.

Snark attack!
: More snarky words are being written about the Weblog Foundation. No surprise. It's the Internet. That's why we love it, eh?
But what does surprise me is that webloggers -- or at least some of them -- don't want money, don't like it, think it's a bad thing.
I thought we were past defending capitalism (except, perhaps, in Cuba).
But capitalism has able defense from Eric Olsen and Richard Bennett. They do it better than I could.

: More show-off snarkiness from elsewhere [a bozo who apparently doesn't know how to do permalinks]:

Heh. Excuse my mirth for a second. Bwahahahahahahahahahah! The carpetbloggers want to set up a Weblogging Chamber Of Commerce. This from a fragment of a subculture even more superredundant than indiekid bassists, budding fast bowlers and pop starlet wannabes. Ferfugsake, get a real job you lazy bums and stop whinging! Seriously, I've had cause to gather my thoughts on the issue of journalism and weblogging, so I'll probably splurt it out at some point.

Can't wait.

: If these guys don't want money, good. Leaves more for the rest of us.... Insert smug, irritating smiley face graphic here....

LINK | Comments (0)

May 14, 2002

11th
On Sunday, I said that I had missed the fact that the day before was the 11th. It was the first 11th I had missed since September. I thought it might be a sign of healing.
I was wrong.
Sunday night, I watched Telling Nicholas on HBO, a documentary about a 7-year-old boy who lost his mother in the World Trade Center attacks and about his family's struggle to tell him that she was gone. We are brought into his family's home on Staten Island as they hopelessly hold onto hope, as the wacky sister feuds with her brothers-in-law, as the family gives DNA samples to try to identify their loved one, as the filmmaker befrien