BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis

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. frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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. frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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. frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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. frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.............frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.............frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

: 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."frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

: 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."frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro


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.frozen throne intro
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.frozen throne intro

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?frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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] frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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?frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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] frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

May 23, 2002

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

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro


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.frozen throne intro


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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro


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.frozen throne intro


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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

May 21, 2002

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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

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.frozen throne intro

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!frozen throne intro

: 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!frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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

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.frozen throne intro

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!frozen throne intro

: 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!frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro
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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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).frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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).frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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. frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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]frozen throne intro

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?frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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. frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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]frozen throne intro

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?frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro
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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

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

May 16, 2002

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

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.frozen throne intro

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

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.frozen throne intro
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. frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

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

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. frozen throne intro

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.frozen throne intro

: 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.frozen throne intro

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

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 befriends the son of a Muslim victim of the attacks, as the grandmother goes into her dead daughter's apartment for the first time after the attacks and faints.
I couldn't believe where this was heading; I couldn't believe what they did:
They recorded the moments when Nicholas' father told him that his mother was dead. They recorded this dear little boy crying his life out. They recorded him telling his family that "my Mommy is dead."
I was enraged at the filmmaker and at HBO for this sinful theft of privacy, for this shameful lack of respect, for exploiting this child's unspeakable pain to make its point.
Point made: The pain is not over. The fear is not over. This crime wounded all of us. It especially wounded the young. It wounded the future. The pain is unspeakable. It could have been any of us. It could have been our children.
They did not need to use this poor little boy to say that.
God, it hurt.
I had not cried once since September 11, not once, no matter what, not from my own memories of surviving the attack, not even from seeing other families devastated, not from the nightmares.
Sunday night, I cried.frozen throne intro

A question
: Can any and all of you who know of newspaper people who maintain blogs please send me addresses (email at right)? Thanks much!frozen throne intro

Mirror, mirror, on the Web....
: It's no surprise that the Weblog Foundation idea is No. 2 on blogdex and No. 3 with a bullet on Daypop. Face it: It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in this self-referential world to write about blogs and then wait for blogs to link to something about blogs. Jane, stop this crazy thing!frozen throne intro

: Also predictably -- and properly -- thoughtful counter thinking and concens are bubbling up.
From Olivier Travers: "I personally don't see the problem Jeff Jarvis is trying to solve..."
And W6Daily says: "From the Too Much Time On His Hands department: Jeff Jarvis has an idea that he thinks might change everything for weblogs. The Weblog Foundation seems to be an idea balanced on the edge of a knife. It has the potential to be something good, and a perhaps-equal potential to be a self-serving ego trip for the select few bloggers that are able to take advantage of it, the 'in crowd.' "frozen throne intro

: If you wonder why I thought a foundation was needed, hear these tin cups rattling.frozen throne intro

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 befriends the son of a Muslim victim of the attacks, as the grandmother goes into her dead daughter's apartment for the first time after the attacks and faints.
I couldn't believe where this was heading; I couldn't believe what they did:
They recorded the moments when Nicholas' father told him that his mother was dead. They recorded this dear little boy crying his life out. They recorded him telling his family that "my Mommy is dead."
I was enraged at the filmmaker and at HBO for this sinful theft of privacy, for this shameful lack of respect, for exploiting this child's unspeakable pain to make its point.
Point made: The pain is not over. The fear is not over. This crime wounded all of us. It especially wounded the young. It wounded the future. The pain is unspeakable. It could have been any of us. It could have been our children.
They did not need to use this poor little boy to say that.
God, it hurt.
I had not cried once since September 11, not once, no matter what, not from my own memories of surviving the attack, not even from seeing other families devastated, not from the nightmares.
Sunday night, I cried.frozen throne intro

A question
: Can any and all of you who know of newspaper people who maintain blogs please send me addresses (email at right)? Thanks much!frozen throne intro

Mirror, mirror, on the Web....
: It's no surprise that the Weblog Foundation idea is No. 2 on blogdex and No. 3 with a bullet on Daypop. Face it: It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in this self-referential world to write about blogs and then wait for blogs to link to something about blogs. Jane, stop this crazy thing!frozen throne intro

: Also predictably -- and properly -- thoughtful counter thinking and concens are bubbling up.
From Olivier Travers: "I personally don't see the problem Jeff Jarvis is trying to solve..."
And W6Daily says: "From the Too Much Time On His Hands department: Jeff Jarvis has an idea that he thinks might change everything for weblogs. The Weblog Foundation seems to be an idea balanced on the edge of a knife. It has the potential to be something good, and a perhaps-equal potential to be a self-serving ego trip for the select few bloggers that are able to take advantage of it, the 'in crowd.' "frozen throne intro

: If you wonder why I thought a foundation was needed, hear these tin cups rattling.frozen throne intro

May 13, 2002

Weblog Foundation: Reaction
: Thanks, everybody, for links to the Weblog Foundation idea today (scroll down or click here).
I got what I hoped for from the Blogosphere: lots of support, lots of questions, a little good argument. And I got lots of email. I will not answer it all; I'm holding onto it as I let the idea ripen and we see what's next. Let's call this a week's comment period. Among the reaction:
: Nick Denton called it "brilliantly obvious." I was hoping for "obviously brilliant," but I'll take what I can get.
: Metafilter has an active thread. Some folks object to any advertising on weblogs. Some say money ruins weblogs: "money taints." Others say it's no different from giving grants to artists. Then again, others say this is hardly an art form.
: Matt Welch frets about organizations that "create 'standards' or prattle on about 'ethics.' " Amen. I don't want to see us start some dutiful, PC PBS/NPR/NEA quota club.
: Esteemed pioneer Meg Hourihan posted and emailed encouraging notes.
: Glenn Reynolds offered links and support before anyone. Ditto Eric Olsen.
: Reid Stott wisely says he hopes that various visions for weblogs' future come together. I agree. If a strong commercial venture emerges, this should recede; this idea is only meant to pave ways, fill gaps.
: Dr. Frank says it's "so crazy it might just work."
: Richard Bennett says: "I used to joke that we made a mistake in the design of the Internet by making the 'money' module a sub-class of 'porn;' let's do a redesign where it's a subclass of 'publishing.' "
: Howard Owens fears that ads would distract from blogger content.
: John Scalzi asks: "Why? Why must Weblogs be profitable at all? One of their attractions is that there is no moderating influence on their content: No editors, no advertisers to piss off, no rules other than what the 'blogger imposes on him or herself...."
: Ken Layne fears that he has financial coodies: "When it comes to making money, it's best to leave out the likes of me and Welch. We'll be there with sweat and labor and writing once the operation is safe for money-making." But he likes it anyway.
A start... We'll see how this ferments.frozen throne intro

Proposal: The Weblog Foundation

: I propose the creation of The Weblog Foundation for the advancement of weblogs and online media. frozen throne intro

The foundation would support weblogs with hosting, software, and honorariums for a wide array of selected webloggers. It would raise money from sponsor/underwriters, who would receive advertising on selected weblogs, as well as from technology underwriters, readers' contributions, and other activities. frozen throne intro

I'm inspired to suggest this by the considerable discussion lately about the financial prospects of blogging. See Eric Olsen (multiple posts); Reid Stott on the difficulty of selling to advertisers; Nick Denton, who will help bring commerce to weblogs; Glenn Reynolds; Mickey Kaus, now making money on Slate); Christopher "Gonzo Marketing" Locke, who inspired part of this idea; Steven Johnson; Jason Kottke; Andrew Sullivan, who's actually getting money for his weblog; Richard Bennett; Doc Searls, and me and me again, -- not to mention recent Oliver Twist "please, suh, may I have some more" posts from the great Matt Welch, Ken Layne, and Charles Johnson.frozen throne intro

I'm not waving the white flag of financial surrender and declaring weblogs to be unprofitable. Quite to the contrary, I believe that we need to take action such as this to prove that weblogs can be profitable. We need to demontrate their value to the Web, to media, to advertisers, and to society. We need to bring business discipline to the world of weblogging so we can show advertisers (aka sponsors or underwriters) how to use weblog to reach influencers and give them the responsiveness they demand. I had at first thought of this as a for-profit company, a weblog ad agency. But based on experience on the Internet, that's getting ahead of ourselves. This is too new, too strange to advertisers (as Stott makes clear). We must prove our value first.frozen throne intro

If we do not do this, then I fear that many great weblogs will disappear as life and its bills get in the way. But if we do this, I believe we can support (and not compete with) commercial ventures from Denton, Henry Copeland, other entrepreneurs and individual webloggers.frozen throne intro

Thus, the foundation. If you like the idea and would support it -- with effort, with promotion on your own weblog, with contributions -- then email me. frozen throne intro

Here is the complete proposal with more details on how it would work...frozen throne intro

Weblog Foundation: Reaction
: Thanks, everybody, for links to the Weblog Foundation idea today (scroll down or click here).
I got what I hoped for from the Blogosphere: lots of support, lots of questions, a little good argument. And I got lots of email. I will not answer it all; I'm holding onto it as I let the idea ripen and we see what's next. Let's call this a week's comment period. Among the reaction:
: Nick Denton called it "brilliantly obvious." I was hoping for "obviously brilliant," but I'll take what I can get.
: Metafilter has an active thread. Some folks object to any advertising on weblogs. Some say money ruins weblogs: "money taints." Others say it's no different from giving grants to artists. Then again, others say this is hardly an art form.
: Matt Welch frets about organizations that "create 'standards' or prattle on about 'ethics.' " Amen. I don't want to see us start some dutiful, PC PBS/NPR/NEA quota club.
: Esteemed pioneer Meg Hourihan posted and emailed encouraging notes.
: Glenn Reynolds offered links and support before anyone. Ditto Eric Olsen.
: Reid Stott wisely says he hopes that various visions for weblogs' future come together. I agree. If a strong commercial venture emerges, this should recede; this idea is only meant to pave ways, fill gaps.
: Dr. Frank says it's "so crazy it might just work."
: Richard Bennett says: "I used to joke that we made a mistake in the design of the Internet by making the 'money' module a sub-class of 'porn;' let's do a redesign where it's a subclass of 'publishing.' "
: Howard Owens fears that ads would distract from blogger content.
: John Scalzi asks: "Why? Why must Weblogs be profitable at all? One of their attractions is that there is no moderating influence on their content: No editors, no advertisers to piss off, no rules other than what the 'blogger imposes on him or herself...."
: Ken Layne fears that he has financial coodies: "When it comes to making money, it's best to leave out the likes of me and Welch. We'll be there with sweat and labor and writing once the operation is safe for money-making." But he likes it anyway.
A start... We'll see how this ferments.frozen throne intro

Proposal: The Weblog Foundation

: I propose the creation of The Weblog Foundation for the advancement of weblogs and online media. frozen throne intro

The foundation would support weblogs with hosting, software, and honorariums for a wide array of selected webloggers. It would raise money from sponsor/underwriters, who would receive advertising on selected weblogs, as well as from technology underwriters, readers' contributions, and other activities. frozen throne intro

I'm inspired to suggest this by the considerable discussion lately about the financial prospects of blogging. See Eric Olsen (multiple posts); Reid Stott on the difficulty of selling to advertisers; Nick Denton, who will help bring commerce to weblogs; Glenn Reynolds; Mickey Kaus, now making money on Slate); Christopher "Gonzo Marketing" Locke, who inspired part of this idea; Steven Johnson; Jason Kottke; Andrew Sullivan, who's actually getting money for his weblog; Richard Bennett; Doc Searls, and me and me again, -- not to mention recent Oliver Twist "please, suh, may I have some more" posts from the great Matt Welch, Ken Layne, and Charles Johnson.frozen throne intro

I'm not waving the white flag of financial surrender and declaring weblogs to be unprofitable. Quite to the contrary, I believe that we need to take action such as this to prove that weblogs can be profitable. We need to demontrate their value to the Web, to media, to advertisers, and to society. We need to bring business discipline to the world of weblogging so we can show advertisers (aka sponsors or underwriters) how to use weblog to reach influencers and give them the responsiveness they demand. I had at first thought of this as a for-profit company, a weblog ad agency. But based on experience on the Internet, that's getting ahead of ourselves. This is too new, too strange to advertisers (as Stott makes clear). We must prove our value first.frozen throne intro

If we do not do this, then I fear that many great weblogs will disappear as life and its bills get in the way. But if we do this, I believe we can support (and not compete with) commercial ventures from Denton, Henry Copeland, other entrepreneurs and individual webloggers.frozen throne intro

Thus, the foundation. If you like the idea and would support it -- with effort, with promotion on your own weblog, with contributions -- then email me. frozen throne intro

Here is the complete proposal with more details on how it would work...frozen throne intro

May 12, 2002

Good Web, Bad Web
: Compare and contrast Bjørn Stærk and Thomas Friedman on the good or bad side of the the imperialistic Internet.
Friedman frets:

At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information.
Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes.
But Stærk wishes that more of the Web were in English to break down barriers, to spread information:
I once wrote that nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, and while I'm more willing to compromise now, the difficulty of digging up info on Fortuyn that doesn't come from foreign newspapers, and is in a language I can read, has again illustrated to me why english-language websites are so important. What is written in a minor language stays behind borders. What is written in a major language creates bridges across them, and allows a global exchange of opinions and facts. I'm not about to launch a crusade on small languages, but I don't mourn the prospect of them going out of use, at least on the web.
Hey, in whatever medium -- books, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV -- there are good guys and bad guys, there are facts and lies. Fascism spread without the Internet. So did democracy. The message is not the medium. The medium carries a message.frozen throne intro

Stands for Friggin' Bungling Idiots
: Not only did the FBI ignore the agent who warned that Arabs were taking a lot of flying lessons but now this: Congressional investigators believe there are more embarrassing documents to come.

Time passes
: I've noted every 11th since September but only today -- when the Sunday papers arrived, filled with monthly anniversary stories -- did I notice that yesterday was the 11th. I think this is part of recovery.frozen throne intro

Good Web, Bad Web
: Compare and contrast Bjørn Stærk and Thomas Friedman on the good or bad side of the the imperialistic Internet.
Friedman frets:

At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information.
Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes.
But Stærk wishes that more of the Web were in English to break down barriers, to spread information:
I once wrote that nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, and while I'm more willing to compromise now, the difficulty of digging up info on Fortuyn that doesn't come from foreign newspapers, and is in a language I can read, has again illustrated to me why english-language websites are so important. What is written in a minor language stays behind borders. What is written in a major language creates bridges across them, and allows a global exchange of opinions and facts. I'm not about to launch a crusade on small languages, but I don't mourn the prospect of them going out of use, at least on the web.
Hey, in whatever medium -- books, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV -- there are good guys and bad guys, there are facts and lies. Fascism spread without the Internet. So did democracy. The message is not the medium. The medium carries a message.frozen throne intro

Stands for Friggin' Bungling Idiots
: Not only did the FBI ignore the agent who warned that Arabs were taking a lot of flying lessons but now this: Congressional investigators believe there are more embarrassing documents to come. Time passes
: I've noted every 11th since September but only today -- when the Sunday papers arrived, filled with monthly anniversary stories -- did I notice that yesterday was the 11th. I think this is part of recovery.frozen throne intro

May 11, 2002

It's about time
: Cats closes.frozen throne intro

Adam Pepper
: Do not miss Dawn Olsen's [other half of power blogging couple with Eric Olsen] takedown of Adam "I'd vote for Pim" Curry:

What was Glenn Reynolds thinking when he resurrected this relic from the 80's, who in his heyday was an uncool - disconnected from anything remotely cool, without one fucking ounce of coolness in him - helplessly rejected, bad-hair-life-having, sphincter-plug? It just brings back horrible, terrifying, nightmarish thoughts of '80s hairmetal and all the cliches that go with it.
If you haven't guessed who I am talking about, let me help you out: Adam Curry. He was the 80's Carson Daly minus any semblance of a sense of humor and with less charm. Just because the guy lives in Amsterdam, was once a celebrity, and has an opinion (which I couldn't give two rat hairs about) regarding Pim Fortuyn doesn't make him any more newsworthy than any other useless, washed-up has-been.
I went to his site just to be sure I wasn't missing something that more intelligent people may have picked up on, and guess what: I am not missing a damn thing. I did discover he is still a pompous, ego-inflated, wholly uninteresting dwid with worse grammar and spelling than mine. Can someone tell me why this abomination has been dragged back into the spotlight? Is it so he could be cruelly and maliciously ridiculed? Is it to give us an example of what NOT to aspire to? Or is Glenn just being subversively funny and I didn't get the joke?
Go, girl.frozen throne intro

Roblog
: Now Richard Bennett weighs in on the commercial future of blogs, arguing that technology will replace Instapundit et al.
That's a technologists view of things.
It misses one crucial, human element: Opinion. Voice. Personality. That is what weblogs bring to the party. Steven Johnson and Richard Bennett are right that weblogs do a good job of pointing to the most notable stories, by the weight of their linking. But that's not the only reason I read [pardon me for not linking these; I'm lazy sated with red wine] Reynolds, Welch, Layne, Denton, Johnson, et al. I read them because they're readable. They have something to say. They're human. They're not just a search engine. That's still a virtue.
All this talk has inspired a Big Idea in me. More soon.frozen throne intro

Phone mail jail via Kafka
: Hilarous post from Nick Denton today on the perils of technology.frozen throne intro

It's about time
: Cats closes.frozen throne intro

Adam Pepper
: Do not miss Dawn Olsen's [other half of power blogging couple with Eric Olsen] takedown of Adam "I'd vote for Pim" Curry:

What was Glenn Reynolds thinking when he resurrected this relic from the 80's, who in his heyday was an uncool - disconnected from anything remotely cool, without one fucking ounce of coolness in him - helplessly rejected, bad-hair-life-having, sphincter-plug? It just brings back horrible, terrifying, nightmarish thoughts of '80s hairmetal and all the cliches that go with it.
If you haven't guessed who I am talking about, let me help you out: Adam Curry. He was the 80's Carson Daly minus any semblance of a sense of humor and with less charm. Just because the guy lives in Amsterdam, was once a celebrity, and has an opinion (which I couldn't give two rat hairs about) regarding Pim Fortuyn doesn't make him any more newsworthy than any other useless, washed-up has-been.
I went to his site just to be sure I wasn't missing something that more intelligent people may have picked up on, and guess what: I am not missing a damn thing. I did discover he is still a pompous, ego-inflated, wholly uninteresting dwid with worse grammar and spelling than mine. Can someone tell me why this abomination has been dragged back into the spotlight? Is it so he could be cruelly and maliciously ridiculed? Is it to give us an example of what NOT to aspire to? Or is Glenn just being subversively funny and I didn't get the joke?
Go, girl.frozen throne intro

Roblog
: Now Richard Bennett weighs in on the commercial future of blogs, arguing that technology will replace Instapundit et al.
That's a technologists view of things.
It misses one crucial, human element: Opinion. Voice. Personality. That is what weblogs bring to the party. Steven Johnson and Richard Bennett are right that weblogs do a good job of pointing to the most notable stories, by the weight of their linking. But that's not the only reason I read [pardon me for not linking these; I'm lazy sated with red wine] Reynolds, Welch, Layne, Denton, Johnson, et al. I read them because they're readable. They have something to say. They're human. They're not just a search engine. That's still a virtue.
All this talk has inspired a Big Idea in me. More soon.frozen throne intro

Phone mail jail via Kafka
: Hilarous post from Nick Denton today on the perils of technology.frozen throne intro

May 10, 2002

The meaning of blog
: NIck Denton has been doing a lot of good thinking and talking about the future of the blogbiz lately, because he's starting one. And he points today to somebody else smart who knows blogs and is thinking about them: Steven Johnson, cofounder of Feed and Plastic.com (full disclosure: where I served on the board of directors). Very wise words:

The true revolution promised by the rise of bloggerdom is not about journalism. It's about information management. The bloggers have the potential to do something far more original than offer up packaged opinions on the news of the day; they can actually help organize the Web in ways tailored to your minute-by-minute needs. Often dismissed as self-obsessed "vanity sites," the bloggers actually have an important collective role to play on the Web. But they're not challengers to the throne of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They're challengers to the throne of Google.
And then Jason Kottke weighs in with the technical ways to make this happen. (To which I will add one comment: It is unwieldy to expect disorganized bloggers to reliably tag their content for reliable searching but it is not impossible to do some contextual analysis of the content of blogs to aid the process; that's actually how the ill-fated Excite started when it was Architext; it could summarize the content and direction of a story with surprising clarity).
Anyway, I want to have lunch with these guys. At the Conde Nast cafeteria. On me. I'll enjoy listing to smart people talking about a subject I love.frozen throne intro

I sold my soul to the company store...
: Reid Stott has a wise response to my post below on marketing via blogs, saying that ad agencies will stare at us like confused German Shepherds if we try to sell them on community marketing in blogs. The conversation goes like this: "So, you want me to sponsor this forum, er, community thing. What'd you call it? A Blorg? OK, whatever, they're talking about my market, I can see these are people I want to reach. How many ads do I get for my money, and how prominently will they be located?" In other words: Where's my banner? And what's my clickthrough? And what kind of discount do I get?
Reid's absolutely right; that is just what would happen.
I have a small answer to him first, though: I have talked to a few marketers myself about this and for very little money (small to the marketers; to the bloggers, it'd be enough to buy plenty of Fat Burgers) these smart folks could sell their products to a targeted audience in a quality product and measure and test the results. One person wants to sell subscriptions this way. The real barrier: Getting the right collection of blogs (which is my next business... but that's another story for another day).
Still, these are high barriers indeed. So Reid's absolutely right that we'd better speak in neon-obvious terms and we'd better give the marketers -- the advertisrs -- just what they want if we ever have the slightest hope of making a penny.
Reid brings up an even more important point, though: Depending on ad agencies to support something new is dangerous. No, it's deadly. For that's what happened to the Internet, folks.
No matter what you read on f'dcompany or what I hear from my very wise wife, it's not necessarily so that we were all dumb to give away our content. Take many a high-gloss magazine; by the time you acquire the subscriber (upwards of $30 per) and pay for the printing and postage (upwards of $60 per year) and then take in only $1 per issue (which you share with the sales agent), you are losing something like $75 per subscriber. But clearly, you make money because that audience is valuable to advertisers who want to speak to them and who want to be associated with this magazine's gloss. That's the way the biz works (at least in the U.S.).
On the Internet, we weren't going to spend a fortune on paper and postage and subscriber acquisition marketing but we were going to have a valuable relationship with our audience and we were going to make lots of money from advertising because we could target and measure our performance better than any medium before.
Didn't work. At all. Why?
Ad agencies didn't buy it.
They often said that this is not a "branding medium" -- that gloss does not rub off on a computer screen. They're wrong about that but then, they're the ones with the checkbooks.
They said that we weren't giving them sufficient measurement or, when we were, we weren't giving them sufficient return on investment. They're wrong there, too, because we are efficient and can prove it. But they have the checkbooks.
They treated us as a fringe or niche medium when, in fact, we are now mass; lots of online media properties are as big as or bigger than their print and audio and video forebears; the audience is online bigtime. But again, they have the checkbooks.
And the truth is, I can't blame the agencies too much. It's not their job to develop new media and I wouldn't want it to be (anymore than I would want ad agencies to decide what a good TV show is or how it should be written or who should star in it). Ad agencies have a job to do: They sell products. We, on the media side (even this, the amateur end of media) have our job to do: We deliver a quality product and a devoted audience. If we can do that well and simply, as Reid counsels, I think we could actually make something out of this. But it will take a great deal of work and selling (not begging) ... and praying.frozen throne intro

: So I think I'm just going to prostitute myself and go for the ultimate in advertising, full product placement, a plug a day. I like Cosi sandwiches and coffee in New York (even if they are a bit high-priced) and so I'm going to hope that this will get me a free sandwich, at least. Grilled chicken, cheddar, and dijon, please. I expect to see Sullivan holding up his favorite antacid, Reynolds his favorite firearm, Lileks his favorite cookie...

frozen throne intro

: Eric Jacobson writes: "your comment on German Shepherds reminded me of an obituary of David Eggers' Might magazine: 'Advertisers regarded the magazine the same way you might look at a retarded kitten.' (don't remember the source, sorry)"
I'm glad it wasn't any of my magazines. Or I hope it wasn't.frozen throne intro

: And the alleged Eric A. Blair nya-nyas bloggers for being poor. Patron of the arts that he is.frozen throne intro

: Blogs are, as Oliver Willis predicted, at least leading to books; a list of current titles on Microcontent News.frozen throne intro

: All of which makes me wonder: If I were writing a business plan for blogging (oxymoronic as that would be), I wonder what it would look like -- infrastructure, audience, cost, revenue....frozen throne intro

Bang, bang
: I'm starting to get the response one would expect after criticizing guns. Gunner20 is preparing a response. Just to be clear, here's what I just emailed to him: "it's not that i say owning a gun is a sign of imbalance (though i do confess to not understanding the appeal); it's unwillingness to try to license them that strikes me as a loose string on the mandolin."frozen throne intro

The path to the future has potholes
: The first Segway accident. [via Shift]frozen throne intro

Deep think
: Ralph Nader takes on Belo for its policy against deep linking.frozen throne intro

The meaning of blog
: NIck Denton has been doing a lot of good thinking and talking about the future of the blogbiz lately, because he's starting one. And he points today to somebody else smart who knows blogs and is thinking about them: Steven Johnson, cofounder of Feed and Plastic.com (full disclosure: where I served on the board of directors). Very wise words:

The true revolution promised by the rise of bloggerdom is not about journalism. It's about information management. The bloggers have the potential to do something far more original than offer up packaged opinions on the news of the day; they can actually help organize the Web in ways tailored to your minute-by-minute needs. Often dismissed as self-obsessed "vanity sites," the bloggers actually have an important collective role to play on the Web. But they're not challengers to the throne of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They're challengers to the throne of Google.
And then Jason Kottke weighs in with the technical ways to make this happen. (To which I will add one comment: It is unwieldy to expect disorganized bloggers to reliably tag their content for reliable searching but it is not impossible to do some contextual analysis of the content of blogs to aid the process; that's actually how the ill-fated Excite started when it was Architext; it could summarize the content and direction of a story with surprising clarity).
Anyway, I want to have lunch with these guys. At the Conde Nast cafeteria. On me. I'll enjoy listing to smart people talking about a subject I love.frozen throne intro

I sold my soul to the company store...
: Reid Stott has a wise response to my post below on marketing via blogs, saying that ad agencies will stare at us like confused German Shepherds if we try to sell them on community marketing in blogs. The conversation goes like this: "So, you want me to sponsor this forum, er, community thing. What'd you call it? A Blorg? OK, whatever, they're talking about my market, I can see these are people I want to reach. How many ads do I get for my money, and how prominently will they be located?" In other words: Where's my banner? And what's my clickthrough? And what kind of discount do I get?
Reid's absolutely right; that is just what would happen.
I have a small answer to him first, though: I have talked to a few marketers myself about this and for very little money (small to the marketers; to the bloggers, it'd be enough to buy plenty of Fat Burgers) these smart folks could sell their products to a targeted audience in a quality product and measure and test the results. One person wants to sell subscriptions this way. The real barrier: Getting the right collection of blogs (which is my next business... but that's another story for another day).
Still, these are high barriers indeed. So Reid's absolutely right that we'd better speak in neon-obvious terms and we'd better give the marketers -- the advertisrs -- just what they want if we ever have the slightest hope of making a penny.
Reid brings up an even more important point, though: Depending on ad agencies to support something new is dangerous. No, it's deadly. For that's what happened to the Internet, folks.
No matter what you read on f'dcompany or what I hear from my very wise wife, it's not necessarily so that we were all dumb to give away our content. Take many a high-gloss magazine; by the time you acquire the subscriber (upwards of $30 per) and pay for the printing and postage (upwards of $60 per year) and then take in only $1 per issue (which you share with the sales agent), you are losing something like $75 per subscriber. But clearly, you make money because that audience is valuable to advertisers who want to speak to them and who want to be associated with this magazine's gloss. That's the way the biz works (at least in the U.S.).
On the Internet, we weren't going to spend a fortune on paper and postage and subscriber acquisition marketing but we were going to have a valuable relationship with our audience and we were going to make lots of money from advertising because we could target and measure our performance better than any medium before.
Didn't work. At all. Why?
Ad agencies didn't buy it.
They often said that this is not a "branding medium" -- that gloss does not rub off on a computer screen. They're wrong about that but then, they're the ones with the checkbooks.
They said that we weren't giving them sufficient measurement or, when we were, we weren't giving them sufficient return on investment. They're wrong there, too, because we are efficient and can prove it. But they have the checkbooks.
They treated us as a fringe or niche medium when, in fact, we are now mass; lots of online media properties are as big as or bigger than their print and audio and video forebears; the audience is online bigtime. But again, they have the checkbooks.
And the truth is, I can't blame the agencies too much. It's not their job to develop new media and I wouldn't want it to be (anymore than I would want ad agencies to decide what a good TV show is or how it should be written or who should star in it). Ad agencies have a job to do: They sell products. We, on the media side (even this, the amateur end of media) have our job to do: We deliver a quality product and a devoted audience. If we can do that well and simply, as Reid counsels, I think we could actually make something out of this. But it will take a great deal of work and selling (not begging) ... and praying.frozen throne intro

: So I think I'm just going to prostitute myself and go for the ultimate in advertising, full product placement, a plug a day. I like Cosi sandwiches and coffee in New York (even if they are a bit high-priced) and so I'm going to hope that this will get me a free sandwich, at least. Grilled chicken, cheddar, and dijon, please. I expect to see Sullivan holding up his favorite antacid, Reynolds his favorite firearm, Lileks his favorite cookie...

frozen throne intro

: Eric Jacobson writes: "your comment on German Shepherds reminded me of an obituary of David Eggers' Might magazine: 'Advertisers regarded the magazine the same way you might look at a retarded kitten.' (don't remember the source, sorry)"
I'm glad it wasn't any of my magazines. Or I hope it wasn't.frozen throne intro

: And the alleged Eric A. Blair nya-nyas bloggers for being poor. Patron of the arts that he is.frozen throne intro

: Blogs are, as Oliver Willis predicted, at least leading to books; a list of current titles on Microcontent News.frozen throne intro

: All of which makes me wonder: If I were writing a business plan for blogging (oxymoronic as that would be), I wonder what it would look like -- infrastructure, audience, cost, revenue....frozen throne intro

Bang, bang
: I'm starting to get the response one would expect after criticizing guns. Gunner20 is preparing a response. Just to be clear, here's what I just emailed to him: "it's not that i say owning a gun is a sign of imbalance (though i do confess to not understanding the appeal); it's unwillingness to try to license them that strikes me as a loose string on the mandolin."frozen throne intro

The path to the future has potholes
: The first Segway accident. [via Shift]frozen throne intro

Deep think
: Ralph Nader takes on Belo for its policy against deep linking.frozen throne intro

May 09, 2002

This blog is brought to you by...
: Eric Olsen quotes Christopher Locke on his view of blogs and so-called gonzo marketing. I read his book and it didn't click with me until I got to one word: "underwriting." Locke's idea -- which I've been pitching to most anybody who'll listen -- is that instead of intrustive advertising, the wise marketer will recognize the power of blogs and join that power by joining the community. Instead of buying ads on blogs (which we'd all love, but which would not work even if it happened... witness other failed Internet ad movements; we will be spared that humiliation thanks to timing) the wise marketer will recognize a community of shared interest and will underwrite that community, will help make it possible, will say by that act "we share an interest and affection for this community." Thus the marketer joins with the audience and stays on the edge of buzz. If this works, it will start with special-interest blogs. And if it works, it will spread. It won't be a way to get rich, but it will be a new layer of advertising and marketing that has not been discovered yet. It will be a new way to build a relationship of true value with the audience, the consumers, us. Would I look kindly on a company that helps bring us Layne, Welch, Johnson, Denton, et al? Yes... even moreso than a company that helps bring us palaver about poetry on NPR. I buy it.
: Note, too, Wired.com's story on Macromedia experimenting with employee blogs. [Note as well that the story gives credit where credit is due, to William Quick, on the coining of Blogosphere.]frozen throne intro

Bang
: So John Ashcroft now says that owning a gun is a God-given or at least Constitution-given right.
And now our various well-armed professors in Blogdom -- Reynolds and Volokh to name two -- are grinning and gloating.
I dare to disagree.
And that realization struck me like a wet slap in the face -- or more like a pistol butt to the skull.
Now that I had become a hawk, I was wondering -- fearing -- just how far my rightward transformation would go. Would I start admiring Ronald Reagan? Would I schedule my nights around watching Bill O'Reilly? Would I vote down school budgets for sport? Would I start wearing short-sleeved shirts? Would I get a gun?
No.
To me, guns are a fundamental dividing line of civilization.
I don't understand why anyone would want to own a gun. Guns are not fun; they are not macho; they are dangerous. I spent too many years as a reporter watching what guns did. I was glad when my gun-toting next-door-neighbor moved and took his arsenel with him for I always dreaded an accident. I fear guns.
I will never own one. If you want to, well, I may not understand but I can't stop you.
But I don't see why you would be against licensing and basic government control -- until you are either (a) a criminal or murderer or Robert Blake or (b) an anti-government nut in the lineage of McVeigh and now Helder. Especially now, in the age of terrorism -- imported and domestic -- and violent crime, it all the more important for us to gain any control we can over guns and to try to keep them out of the hands of all the dangerous nuts on our streets: the next McVeigh or Helder, the next assassin of Reagan or Brady or Lennon. It is a matter of safety. It is a matter of civilization.frozen throne intro

Stating the obvious
: Chomsky is such a dork.frozen throne intro

Hobo
: I've been mean, angry, and grumpy the last couple of days; spared you the mood. Don't say I never did nothing for you.frozen throne intro

This blog is brought to you by...
: Eric Olsen quotes Christopher Locke on his view of blogs and so-called gonzo marketing. I read his book and it didn't click with me until I got to one word: "underwriting." Locke's idea -- which I've been pitching to most anybody who'll listen -- is that instead of intrustive advertising, the wise marketer will recognize the power of blogs and join that power by joining the community. Instead of buying ads on blogs (which we'd all love, but which would not work even if it happened... witness other failed Internet ad movements; we will be spared that humiliation thanks to timing) the wise marketer will recognize a community of shared interest and will underwrite that community, will help make it possible, will say by that act "we share an interest and affection for this community." Thus the marketer joins with the audience and stays on the edge of buzz. If this works, it will start with special-interest blogs. And if it works, it will spread. It won't be a way to get rich, but it will be a new layer of advertising and marketing that has not been discovered yet. It will be a new way to build a relationship of true value with the audience, the consumers, us. Would I look kindly on a company that helps bring us Layne, Welch, Johnson, Denton, et al? Yes... even moreso than a company that helps bring us palaver about poetry on NPR. I buy it.
: Note, too, Wired.com's story on Macromedia experimenting with employee blogs. [Note as well that the story gives credit where credit is due, to William Quick, on the coining of Blogosphere.]frozen throne intro

Bang
: So John Ashcroft now says that owning a gun is a God-given or at least Constitution-given right.
And now our various well-armed professors in Blogdom -- Reynolds and Volokh to name two -- are grinning and gloating.
I dare to disagree.
And that realization struck me like a wet slap in the face -- or more like a pistol butt to the skull.
Now that I had become a hawk, I was wondering -- fearing -- just how far my rightward transformation would go. Would I start admiring Ronald Reagan? Would I schedule my nights around watching Bill O'Reilly? Would I vote down school budgets for sport? Would I start wearing short-sleeved shirts? Would I get a gun?
No.
To me, guns are a fundamental dividing line of civilization.
I don't understand why anyone would want to own a gun. Guns are not fun; they are not macho; they are dangerous. I spent too many years as a reporter watching what guns did. I was glad when my gun-toting next-door-neighbor moved and took his arsenel with him for I always dreaded an accident. I fear guns.
I will never own one. If you want to, well, I may not understand but I can't stop you.
But I don't see why you would be against licensing and basic government control -- until you are either (a) a criminal or murderer or Robert Blake or (b) an anti-government nut in the lineage of McVeigh and now Helder. Especially now, in the age of terrorism -- imported and domestic -- and violent crime, it all the more important for us to gain any control we can over guns and to try to keep them out of the hands of all the dangerous nuts on our streets: the next McVeigh or Helder, the next assassin of Reagan or Brady or Lennon. It is a matter of safety. It is a matter of civilization.frozen throne intro

Stating the obvious
: Chomsky is such a dork.frozen throne intro

Hobo
: I've been mean, angry, and grumpy the last couple of days; spared you the mood. Don't say I never did nothing for you.frozen throne intro

May 07, 2002

EGOogling
: This morning I heard Howard Stern et al talking about searching the Internet to find out what people are saying about them. Artie Lang, the new guy, is still looking for anything nice said about him (I like you, Artie). Gary is still amazed at the cruel tooth jokes about his teeth. Howard looks. They all do.
Of course, they do. We bloggers look for ourselves: We go to Blogdex to look up who's linking to us; we search our names in Daypop. We ego surf. We EGOogle.
And then it occurred to me that, of course, the famous, the stars, and the powerful do the same thing. If Howard's posse does it, then surely Rosie and Rosanne and Madonna and Bubba Clinton and Al Gore and Bill Gates and Steve Case (if he dares) and the casts of Survivor and Bachelor all do it.
Whenever I write about Howard Stern here, I get more traffic. It's the power of celebrity; I learned that working at People.
But the difference in this medium is that you can speak directly to the celebrities. You never know whether you are. But I'd bet on it. What if Arafat is reading the blogs? Or Tom Ridge? Or Michael Moore? It adds a new layer of fun.frozen throne intro

From sea to shining sea
: I took homeless Nick Denton to lunch in the Conde Nast cafeteria yesterday. He was amazed that we have a food stylist. It's Conde Nast. Life is style.
Substance is such a bother.
Nick is wide-eyed anew at things American. The other day, I told him that we had a hurricane watch in New York. He screeched: "Hurricane? Here?" Yes, Dorothy.
Now he has written a good column about his trip across America to get to New York (he complains about the edits in the piece as it appears at Management Today; that's why he prints the whole thing on his blog; Nick is the one who said that the great thing about blogging is that there are "no editors").
Anyway, Nick sees some differences across the country. But I, protoAmerican -- midWest-bred, still serving the heartland in my businesses -- have to disagree. What's comforting (and boring) about America is its Holiday Inn no surprises ethos. Once you leave the city-states, as Nick calls them, of Manhattan or San Francisco and live where most Americans live -- in the great suburbs, in the real America -- there is very little that separates us and much, economically, that joins us: homes, lawns, mortgages, real estate taxes, Burger Kings, Taco Bells, Starbucks, Targets, Home Depots, food courts, warehouse stores, auto dealers, kids' soccer games, parent-teacher conferences, malls, Houlihans, Fridays, candle stores, Gaps, and mostly cable TV. Besides the accents (and politics that tend to go with them) and in spite of the ethnic reach (my kids' playmates are Arab, Indian, French, even Canadian) we are pretty much as homogonized as our milk.frozen throne intro

Mail bomb bozo
: The suspect in the mailbox bombings had a web site. It's down already, of course. But here it is in Google's cache.
: Their CD: "Sacks of People." I'd say that shows his attitude toward people.frozen throne intro

Pim
: Adam Curry from Amsterdam [via Instapundit] says he would have voted for Pim, if he were Dutch.frozen throne intro

EGOogling
: This morning I heard Howard Stern et al talking about searching the Internet to find out what people are saying about them. Artie Lang, the new guy, is still looking for anything nice said about him (I like you, Artie). Gary is still amazed at the cruel tooth jokes about his teeth. Howard looks. They all do.
Of course, they do. We bloggers look for ourselves: We go to Blogdex to look up who's linking to us; we search our names in Daypop. We ego surf. We EGOogle.
And then it occurred to me that, of course, the famous, the stars, and the powerful do the same thing. If Howard's posse does it, then surely Rosie and Rosanne and Madonna and Bubba Clinton and Al Gore and Bill Gates and Steve Case (if he dares) and the casts of Survivor and Bachelor all do it.
Whenever I write about Howard Stern here, I get more traffic. It's the power of celebrity; I learned that working at People.
But the difference in this medium is that you can speak directly to the celebrities. You never know whether you are. But I'd bet on it. What if Arafat is reading the blogs? Or Tom Ridge? Or Michael Moore? It adds a new layer of fun.frozen throne intro

From sea to shining sea
: I took homeless Nick Denton to lunch in the Conde Nast cafeteria yesterday. He was amazed that we have a food stylist. It's Conde Nast. Life is style.
Substance is such a bother.
Nick is wide-eyed anew at things American. The other day, I told him that we had a hurricane watch in New York. He screeched: "Hurricane? Here?" Yes, Dorothy.
Now he has written a good column about his trip across America to get to New York (he complains about the edits in the piece as it appears at Management Today; that's why he prints the whole thing on his blog; Nick is the one who said that the great thing about blogging is that there are "no editors").
Anyway, Nick sees some differences across the country. But I, protoAmerican -- midWest-bred, still serving the heartland in my businesses -- have to disagree. What's comforting (and boring) about America is its Holiday Inn no surprises ethos. Once you leave the city-states, as Nick calls them, of Manhattan or San Francisco and live where most Americans live -- in the great suburbs, in the real America -- there is very little that separates us and much, economically, that joins us: homes, lawns, mortgages, real estate taxes, Burger Kings, Taco Bells, Starbucks, Targets, Home Depots, food courts, warehouse stores, auto dealers, kids' soccer games, parent-teacher conferences, malls, Houlihans, Fridays, candle stores, Gaps, and mostly cable TV. Besides the accents (and politics that tend to go with them) and in spite of the ethnic reach (my kids' playmates are Arab, Indian, French, even Canadian) we are pretty much as homogonized as our milk.frozen throne intro

Mail bomb bozo
: The suspect in the mailbox bombings had a web site. It's down already, of course. But here it is in Google's cache.
: Their CD: "Sacks of People." I'd say that shows his attitude toward people.frozen throne intro

Pim
: Adam Curry from Amsterdam [via Instapundit] says he would have voted for Pim, if he were Dutch.frozen throne intro

May 06, 2002

Europe's war of the right
: The Netherlands' Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing, anti-immigrant, and gay political leader, has been assassinated. The coverage of De Volkskrant is here. You don't need to read Dutch to see what a shattering event an assassination is in any country.
I don't assume this is an act of political conspiracy. I remember the murders of my friends Harvey Milk and George Moscone in San Francisco. That was not the act of a conspiracy or politics; it was the act of one dangerous political freak and twerp, Dan White, who later got off with the infamous Twinkie defense and then killed himself. Unless government-sponsored, assassins are as a rule lone lunatics.
Still, this act only adds to the right-wing BTUs heating up Europe. Add Le Pen in France. Add right-wingers scaring the electorate in local elections in Britain. Add more in Hungary. And elsewhere.
It all makes me all the happier with our two-party system in America. Our system is often frustrating and certainly imperfect and frequently maligned. But this system assures greater stability. It assures moderation. It assures the closest any political body can come to consensus. To state the obvious: Because we elect our chief executive directly -- and not via any coalition of parties that often have to do deals with devils to add up a majority to run the government -- and because only two parties can truly afford to run major races and because our government's cannot collapse on one lost parliamentary vote, we are left with two parties that each must find ways to bring their edges to the middle, for that is their only hope of winning. Sanity lives in the middle. Of course, we have our third parties as well but whether it's Nader or Perot or Buchanan or Anderson, they tend to spoil elections and pump already overinflated would-be politicians' egoes more than add to the debate or give us true choice. And because those third-parties do not succeed, it means that fourth or fifth or sixth parties -- the ones that live in the extremes, the ones that are getting upwards of 15 to 20 percent of the votes in Europe -- cannot possibly grow here; they cannot gain a position to blackmail coalition-partner parties; they cannot win; they stay on the fringe, where they belong and the government stays in the mainstream.
God Bless those Founding Fathers. frozen throne intro

: The Times says:

...his main target was Islam. After an imam in his native city of Rotterdam described gays as being worse than pigs, Mr Fortuyn attacked almost every aspect of Islamic culture. His central argument was that The Netherlands had to defend its open and tolerant values against a flood of Muslims who were intolerant. Islam, he said, was a “backward culture”.
: The BBC on the tilt right in Europe:
Then there is the French system of two rounds of polling: this encourages people to cast votes for a protest candidate on the first round in the usual expectation that he or she will not in fact be elected.
But the result also reflects unmistakeable trends across Europe as a whole: a general move to the right and the rise of new populist parties with an anti-immigrant and anti-crime message.
This latter phenomenon has appeared even in traditionally liberal societies like Denmark and the Netherlands.
Two years ago, in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party of the erratic populist Joerg Haider entered the government....
The story notes rightward trends in Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium.frozen throne intro

Wheels
: Forget measly tip jars. Here's what I want for Christmas. Start saving now.frozen throne intro

EU unclean
: The Israeli government says EU money has indirectly funded suicide bombers:

...documents seized during last month’s military raids across the West Bank provided “damning evidence” that European Union money was indirectly funding suicide-bombing missions.
The European Union provides ten million euros (£6.25 million) each month towards the salaries of staff at Mr Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.
Much of that money comes from British taxpayers. According to the Israeli authorities, “vast sums” have been covertly channelled from the monthly EU grants to Fatah gunmen and members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
And the revelations are causing more strain between Israel and the EU.frozen throne intro

Permalink tip
: Matt Welch was nice enough to link to me for doing nothing more than inspiring a fascinating post about the entrepreneur/blogger/New World gene.
He also warned that my permalinks weren't working. They are now. Tip to other Blogger users: If your archives and, thus, permalinks don't work, go into your archive settings; switch to no archive and save that setting, then switch back to your preferred archive setting, then republish all your archives. Pain ends quickly.frozen throne intro

Europe's war of the right
: The Netherlands' Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing, anti-immigrant, and gay political leader, has been assassinated. The coverage of De Volkskrant is here. You don't need to read Dutch to see what a shattering event an assassination is in any country.
I don't assume this is an act of political conspiracy. I remember the murders of my friends Harvey Milk and George Moscone in San Francisco. That was not the act of a conspiracy or politics; it was the act of one dangerous political freak and twerp, Dan White, who later got off with the infamous Twinkie defense and then killed himself. Unless government-sponsored, assassins are as a rule lone lunatics.
Still, this act only adds to the right-wing BTUs heating up Europe. Add Le Pen in France. Add right-wingers scaring the electorate in local elections in Britain. Add more in Hungary. And elsewhere.
It all makes me all the happier with our two-party system in America. Our system is often frustrating and certainly imperfect and frequently maligned. But this system assures greater stability. It assures moderation. It assures the closest any political body can come to consensus. To state the obvious: Because we elect our chief executive directly -- and not via any coalition of parties that often have to do deals with devils to add up a majority to run the government -- and because only two parties can truly afford to run major races and because our government's cannot collapse on one lost parliamentary vote, we are left with two parties that each must find ways to bring their edges to the middle, for that is their only hope of winning. Sanity lives in the middle. Of course, we have our third parties as well but whether it's Nader or Perot or Buchanan or Anderson, they tend to spoil elections and pump already overinflated would-be politicians' egoes more than add to the debate or give us true choice. And because those third-parties do not succeed, it means that fourth or fifth or sixth parties -- the ones that live in the extremes, the ones that are getting upwards of 15 to 20 percent of the votes in Europe -- cannot possibly grow here; they cannot gain a position to blackmail coalition-partner parties; they cannot win; they stay on the fringe, where they belong and the government stays in the mainstream.
God Bless those Founding Fathers. frozen throne intro

: The Times says:

...his main target was Islam. After an imam in his native city of Rotterdam described gays as being worse than pigs, Mr Fortuyn attacked almost every aspect of Islamic culture. His central argument was that The Netherlands had to defend its open and tolerant values against a flood of Muslims who were intolerant. Islam, he said, was a “backward culture”.
: The BBC on the tilt right in Europe:
Then there is the French system of two rounds of polling: this encourages people to cast votes for a protest candidate on the first round in the usual expectation that he or she will not in fact be elected.
But the result also reflects unmistakeable trends across Europe as a whole: a general move to the right and the rise of new populist parties with an anti-immigrant and anti-crime message.
This latter phenomenon has appeared even in traditionally liberal societies like Denmark and the Netherlands.
Two years ago, in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party of the erratic populist Joerg Haider entered the government....
The story notes rightward trends in Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium.frozen throne intro

Wheels
: Forget measly tip jars. Here's what I want for Christmas. Start saving now.frozen throne intro

EU unclean
: The Israeli government says EU money has indirectly funded suicide bombers:

...documents seized during last month’s military raids across the West Bank provided “damning evidence” that European Union money was indirectly funding suicide-bombing missions.
The European Union provides ten million euros (£6.25 million) each month towards the salaries of staff at Mr Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.
Much of that money comes from British taxpayers. According to the Israeli authorities, “vast sums” have been covertly channelled from the monthly EU grants to Fatah gunmen and members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
And the revelations are causing more strain between Israel and the EU.frozen throne intro

Permalink tip
: Matt Welch was nice enough to link to me for doing nothing more than inspiring a fascinating post about the entrepreneur/blogger/New World gene.
He also warned that my permalinks weren't working. They are now. Tip to other Blogger users: If your archives and, thus, permalinks don't work, go into your archive settings; switch to no archive and save that setting, then switch back to your preferred archive setting, then republish all your archives. Pain ends quickly.frozen throne intro

May 05, 2002

Blog Nation
: Here's the best reason to publish the blog book, Blog Nation, and hope it is a success: Noam Chomsky's 9.11 rant has shipped more than 100k copies. frozen throne intro

Blog biz
: Blogs, I'm coming to see, are bringing together the best and the brightest (well, at least the better and the bright) of our era.
These people are not only good writers with intelligent curiosity and independent minds.
They are also business people.
: Note Nick Denton -- one of the best and brightest, truly -- starting a new blog business. I sit on the board of one of the other companies he started, Moreover, and my company invested in it. He introduced me to Blogger/Pyra and my company invested in it, too. (I'm proud to see that both Internet companies are still alive. The Internet, as things turn out, will not be won by First-Mover advantage. It will be won by Last-Standing Advantage.) Now Nick is working on a new company and I'm quite enthusiastic about it. It will be small and smart and ahead of its time (but not too much). I'm having lunch with Nick on Monday and we'll play oneupsmanship on new ideas.
: Matt Welch, Ken Layne, and Tim Blair are working hard to start a new newspaper. I've talked to the guys about the project and I'm excited about this, too.
: Last week, Henry Copeland stopped by (while I was on the phone to Matt and right after I got off the phone with Nick... blogs are my new clique) and told me about an exciting new business he's working on. I'll let him tell you about it when I'm ready.
: Max Power and Eric Olsen are putting together Blog Nation (I like the title, even if they don't), a book with the best of this fraternity(sorority) of bloggers.
Smell the trend?
Bloggers are also entrepreneurs. It makes perfect sense: All these people are independent thinkers and energetic and smart and dedicated. I'm tempted to say that this is what made America great (except two of these are Aussies and one's a Brit and one's living in Paris). So this is what makes the Blogosphere great.frozen throne intro

The Week
: Jim Treacher discovers The Week (or he will once he actually buys one). I'm surprised to say that it has turned into one of my favorite magazines, for it freeze-dries some of the value of the Web and weblogs.
The Week (and webloggers) browse and read so we don't have to; they find the best of what's out there and summarize it for us. No, this is not the Reader's Digest of the new millenium; that's pablum. Both weblogs and The Week have perspective and opinion
My colleague and friend Joe pointed me to The Week; I made fun of him but then admitted I was a wrong snot. frozen throne intro

The other Jewish homeland
: In an otherwise odd excuse to criticize Israel and Russian support of it, Al-Ahram nevertheless tells me something I didn't know about an "other Jewish homeland:"

The passions and pains of the Middle East conflict have drawn a bloody curtain over the fact that, ever since 1934, Jews have had a homeland in the Russian Far East. The Jewish Autonomous Region, popularly known as Birobidzhan, is an uninviting, mostly marshy territory, twice the size of New Jersey, that was earmarked to be Soviet Jewry's home. It was conceived as a brave social experiment that would score propaganda points in the international arena and be hailed as a viable alternative to Palestine, courtesy of Joseph Stalin.
The Jewish Autonomous Region is still there and alive, notwithstanding the massive exodus that has occurred in the past 15 years to the alleged "historic homeland" that is present-day Israel. Those who decided to pack up and leave did it for economic rather than ideological purposes.
Note the "alleged." Nevermind that.
I went looking for more on Birobidzhan and found it in a good Swarthmore online exhibition (move through its 35 fascinating pages by clicking on the page number; the directional arrows sometimes don't appear). The purges of the 30s and then Stalin did in the settlement. The exhibit concludes:
Of the current population of over 200,000 in the Jewish Autonomous Region, no more than a few thousand are Jewish. In addition, hundreds are leaving the region every year for Israel and other places.
Here's a book on the topic.
And here's another good story about the last Jews leaving Birobidzhan; it says they are practically gone.
So how about giving it to the Palestinians, an even swap: The West Bank for Birobidzhan. frozen throne intro

France v. Israel
: Andrew Sullivan tries to explain to Britain why Americans are siding more strongly with Israel and sneering more snidely at the French:

In almost two decades of living in America, I’m still amazed at the contempt most Americans hold for France. That doesn’t mean a basic alliance with France is in question. But popular culture still tilts against Paris. Last weekend, the popular Saturday Night Live sketch comedy show ran a spoof tourism commercial for France. “France, home to the world’s greatest painters, chefs and anti-semites. The French, cowardly yet opinionated, arrogant yet foul-smelling, anti-Israel, anti-American, and of course, as always, Jew-hating,” ran the voice-over.
“Paris, the city of whores, dog faeces on every corner and effete men yelling anti-semitic remarks at children. The real crème de la crème of world culture. With all that’s going on in the world, isn’t it time we got back to hating . . . the French?” The contrast with Israel couldn’t be more stark. While most Europeans have experienced the horror of the past few weeks as grist for their hostility to the Jewish state, Americans have bonded deeply to their Israeli allies. A recent Gallup poll found that 47% of Americans sided with Israel in the conflict against a mere 13% with the Palestinians (40% registered no preference).
The more Americans tilt to the right, the more pronounced their pro-Israeli sympathies. But even among professed liberals, 45% favour the Israelis compared with 24% who back the Palestinians. And among the strongest supporters of Israel have been Democrats, such as Senators Dianne Feinstein and Joe Lieberman.
I'm sick and tired of the assumption that liberals would or should side with the Palestinians as the alleged underdog. First, we liberals don't; witness Sullivan's stats. Second, liberals are not ruled by their emotions -- as this underdog theory supposes -- but by their intellect. And the simple truth of it is that we Americans and sensible American iberals side with the Israelis because (a) they are a democracy, (b) they deserve a state, (c) we all share in the world's guilt regarding what was done to Jews in the Holocaust, (d) they are under terroristic attack by people who would destroy them and their nation, and (e) Israelis are not attacking us. Arabs are.
As for the French? Anybody who attacks McDonald's is no friend of mine. frozen throne intro

Arafat's next moves
: Debka (quoted less these days) says this is what's next from Arafat; the headline:

Arafat Is Plotting Release of Saadat and Shobaki in Jericho by Attacking US-British Guards
He Will Attempt Dramatic Terrorist Action to
Torpedo Sharon-Bush Talks in Washington Tuesday and
Fix World Attention on Palestinian Problem
How smart are we?
: First, Britain gave us Weakest Link. Is this next? On TV and the Internet, thousands of Brits will take a simultaneous national IQ test:
Some 300 people will undergo tests in a television studio, while thousands more will participate at home and via the internet.
If you have ever wondered whether short people are cleverer than tall ones, whether the posh are dim, or blondes really are dumb, you could be about to have your prejudices reinforced or overturned.
The studio audience for the experiment, being run by the BBC, has been artfully selected from groups of identical twins, students, builders, publicans, teachers and blondes. The online participants will also be asked to supply personal details about themselves as well as answers to the IQ questions.
The plan, at least in part, is to try to correlate contestants’ scores with personal qualities such as height, eye or hair colour and even support for a football team, to determine whether any such factors are linked to intelligence. Millwall fans could prove interesting.
Imagine the fun if we can test our prejudices here: Who's smart and who's not? South v. North. East v. West. City v. farm. Blonde v. redhead. Man v. woman. Tall v. short. Jock v. nerd. Everybody v. fast-food employee.frozen throne intro

Stoned Scots: Oxymoron?
: Scots are opening Amsterdam-like cannibas cafes. That's a straightline dying for a punchline.frozen throne intro

Deep linking thinking
: Mac Thomason suggests I comment on Belo's effort to outlaw or otherwise coodyize deep-linking to a site (rather than just to its homepage).
Easy.
Deep linking is what the Web is all about; it is the essence of the invention.
It is a far better service to take the reader directly to what he or she wants; if you don't, you will lose that reader; we have proven it on our sites in traffic statistics and in focus groups. The shortest path to what a reader wants is the shortest path to greater traffic and happier readers. The days of surfing are long, long over. The Web is now all about purpose:
Second, if you force all people to go through your homepage and then find what they want, you'd better have the world's best navigation and site search and even then, you'll still lose many or most of them on the way. People don't want to go on scavenger hunts for content.
Third, you simply have to recognize that people will go where they want to go when they want to go there and if you want them to see your home page -- to give them a better idea of what your service has today, to push your classifieds, to expose them to your premier advertisers -- then you need to entice them a good reason to go there. We found that many of our readers go directly to their favorite parts of our sites and so we just decided to bring our message to them. If you go to nj.com (one of my sites) during the week and during the day -- our prime time -- and then click on, say, sports, you will see a pop-up (not an ad, an editorial pop-up) bringing you the main promotion from the home page. We deliver the home page to you. It's a small way to tackle the fact that readers deep link all on their own; they bookmark their favorites.
In short: It doesn't matter whether we like deep linking or don't; it doesn't matter whether we like that people go straight into the depths of our services. It's what they do. To try to change that is to swim upstream under a broken dam.frozen throne intro

Round and round
: The Lifecycle of Your Blog [via Holy Weblog].frozen throne intro

Higher
: A reader with no name asks via email:

As both someone who worked in lower Manhattan at the time of the Sept. 11 attack and covered the television industry, I was wondering you thought about this proposal to erect a 2,000 foot television antnna on Governor's Island, complete with a restaurant and observation area on top and shopping at the bottom.
While a high tower is needed for those people who either do not have access, cannot afford or just don't want to subscribe to cable TV, my own feeling is putting up a tower six times the height of the Statue of Liberty directly across the Upper New York bay will skewer the vision one sees looking out over the bay either from Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights or traveling on the Staten Island Ferry. The TV tower would become the dominant landmark you would see from the bay, and would probably have an effect similar to the one
shown in the artists' rendition of the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge in Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, "The Power Broker" -- just a dominating, totally out-of-place image.
Since you asked... I think a tower somehwere is a good idea (though I wouldn't eat at the restaurant at the top of it). Should it be in lower Manhattan? I fear that makes the neighborhood a target again. Should it be on the island? I think my reader makes a good point about detracting from the Statue of Liberty. Or should it be, as I've seen suggested, in New Jersey? I vote for that. New Jersey needs an icon, besides Jimmy Hoffa in cement.frozen throne intro

: A couple who met at Ground Zero wants to get married there.
Too soon for joy, I'd say.frozen throne intro

Mail bombs
: Reid Stott on the midwestern mail bombs:

This is what 9-11 has done to me.
I don't hate Muslims. I don't hate Arabs. I hate those who use terror to promote their cause, and I hate them with an anger I've only felt once before, when a cowardly bomber made it very personal for me, right where I live. Well, September 11 made all terror attacks very personal for me. I'm a non-violent person, who believes in justice and hopes for peace, but right now, were I to catch this supposed American red handed placing a pipe bomb in a mailbox, they'd never lay eyes on a law enforcement officer.
But they might pray they would.
This is what 9-11 has done to me.
Rat
: How the remote-control rat works, in graphics.frozen throne intro

Blog Nation
: Here's the best reason to publish the blog book, Blog Nation, and hope it is a success: Noam Chomsky's 9.11 rant has shipped more than 100k copies. frozen throne intro

Blog biz
: Blogs, I'm coming to see, are bringing together the best and the brightest (well, at least the better and the bright) of our era.
These people are not only good writers with intelligent curiosity and independent minds.
They are also business people.
: Note Nick Denton -- one of the best and brightest, truly -- starting a new blog business. I sit on the board of one of the other companies he started, Moreover, and my company invested in it. He introduced me to Blogger/Pyra and my company invested in it, too. (I'm proud to see that both Internet companies are still alive. The Internet, as things turn out, will not be won by First-Mover advantage. It will be won by Last-Standing Advantage.) Now Nick is working on a new company and I'm quite enthusiastic about it. It will be small and smart and ahead of its time (but not too much). I'm having lunch with Nick on Monday and we'll play oneupsmanship on new ideas.
: Matt Welch, Ken Layne, and Tim Blair are working hard to start a new newspaper. I've talked to the guys about the project and I'm excited about this, too.
: Last week, Henry Copeland stopped by (while I was on the phone to Matt and right after I got off the phone with Nick... blogs are my new clique) and told me about an exciting new business he's working on. I'll let him tell you about it when I'm ready.
: Max Power and Eric Olsen are putting together Blog Nation (I like the title, even if they don't), a book with the best of this fraternity(sorority) of bloggers.
Smell the trend?
Bloggers are also entrepreneurs. It makes perfect sense: All these people are independent thinkers and energetic and smart and dedicated. I'm tempted to say that this is what made America great (except two of these are Aussies and one's a Brit and one's living in Paris). So this is what makes the Blogosphere great.frozen throne intro

The Week
: Jim Treacher discovers The Week (or he will once he actually buys one). I'm surprised to say that it has turned into one of my favorite magazines, for it freeze-dries some of the value of the Web and weblogs.
The Week (and webloggers) browse and read so we don't have to; they find the best of what's out there and summarize it for us. No, this is not the Reader's Digest of the new millenium; that's pablum. Both weblogs and The Week have perspective and opinion
My colleague and friend Joe pointed me to The Week; I made fun of him but then admitted I was a wrong snot. frozen throne intro

The other Jewish homeland
: In an otherwise odd excuse to criticize Israel and Russian support of it, Al-Ahram nevertheless tells me something I didn't know about an "other Jewish homeland:"

The passions and pains of the Middle East conflict have drawn a bloody curtain over the fact that, ever since 1934, Jews have had a homeland in the Russian Far East. The Jewish Autonomous Region, popularly known as Birobidzhan, is an uninviting, mostly marshy territory, twice the size of New Jersey, that was earmarked to be Soviet Jewry's home. It was conceived as a brave social experiment that would score propaganda points in the international arena and be hailed as a viable alternative to Palestine, courtesy of Joseph Stalin.
The Jewish Autonomous Region is still there and alive, notwithstanding the massive exodus that has occurred in the past 15 years to the alleged "historic homeland" that is present-day Israel. Those who decided to pack up and leave did it for economic rather than ideological purposes.
Note the "alleged." Nevermind that.
I went looking for more on Birobidzhan and found it in a good Swarthmore online exhibition (move through its 35 fascinating pages by clicking on the page number; the directional arrows sometimes don't appear). The purges of the 30s and then Stalin did in the settlement. The exhibit concludes:
Of the current population of over 200,000 in the Jewish Autonomous Region, no more than a few thousand are Jewish. In addition, hundreds are leaving the region every year for Israel and other places.
Here's a book on the topic.
And here's another good story about the last Jews leaving Birobidzhan; it says they are practically gone.
So how about giving it to the Palestinians, an even swap: The West Bank for Birobidzhan. frozen throne intro

France v. Israel
: Andrew Sullivan tries to explain to Britain why Americans are siding more strongly with Israel and sneering more snidely at the French:

In almost two decades of living in America, I’m still amazed at the contempt most Americans hold for France. That doesn’t mean a basic alliance with France is in question. But popular culture still tilts against Paris. Last weekend, the popular Saturday Night Live sketch comedy show ran a spoof tourism commercial for France. “France, home to the world’s greatest painters, chefs and anti-semites. The French, cowardly yet opinionated, arrogant yet foul-smelling, anti-Israel, anti-American, and of course, as always, Jew-hating,” ran the voice-over.
“Paris, the city of whores, dog faeces on every corner and effete men yelling anti-semitic remarks at children. The real crème de la crème of world culture. With all that’s going on in the world, isn’t it time we got back to hating . . . the French?” The contrast with Israel couldn’t be more stark. While most Europeans have experienced the horror of the past few weeks as grist for their hostility to the Jewish state, Americans have bonded deeply to their Israeli allies. A recent Gallup poll found that 47% of Americans sided with Israel in the conflict against a mere 13% with the Palestinians (40% registered no preference).
The more Americans tilt to the right, the more pronounced their pro-Israeli sympathies. But even among professed liberals, 45% favour the Israelis compared with 24% who back the Palestinians. And among the strongest supporters of Israel have been Democrats, such as Senators Dianne Feinstein and Joe Lieberman.
I'm sick and tired of the assumption that liberals would or should side with the Palestinians as the alleged underdog. First, we liberals don't; witness Sullivan's stats. Second, liberals are not ruled by their emotions -- as this underdog theory supposes -- but by their intellect. And the simple truth of it is that we Americans and sensible American iberals side with the Israelis because (a) they are a democracy, (b) they deserve a state, (c) we all share in the world's guilt regarding what was done to Jews in the Holocaust, (d) they are under terroristic attack by people who would destroy them and their nation, and (e) Israelis are not attacking us. Arabs are.
As for the French? Anybody who attacks McDonald's is no friend of mine. frozen throne intro

Arafat's next moves
: Debka (quoted less these days) says this is what's next from Arafat; the headline:

Arafat Is Plotting Release of Saadat and Shobaki in Jericho by Attacking US-British Guards
He Will Attempt Dramatic Terrorist Action to
Torpedo Sharon-Bush Talks in Washington Tuesday and
Fix World Attention on Palestinian Problem
How smart are we?
: First, Britain gave us Weakest Link. Is this next? On TV and the Internet, thousands of Brits will take a simultaneous national IQ test:
Some 300 people will undergo tests in a television studio, while thousands more will participate at home and via the internet.
If you have ever wondered whether short people are cleverer than tall ones, whether the posh are dim, or blondes really are dumb, you could be about to have your prejudices reinforced or overturned.
The studio audience for the experiment, being run by the BBC, has been artfully selected from groups of identical twins, students, builders, publicans, teachers and blondes. The online participants will also be asked to supply personal details about themselves as well as answers to the IQ questions.
The plan, at least in part, is to try to correlate contestants’ scores with personal qualities such as height, eye or hair colour and even support for a football team, to determine whether any such factors are linked to intelligence. Millwall fans could prove interesting.
Imagine the fun if we can test our prejudices here: Who's smart and who's not? South v. North. East v. West. City v. farm. Blonde v. redhead. Man v. woman. Tall v. short. Jock v. nerd. Everybody v. fast-food employee.frozen throne intro

Stoned Scots: Oxymoron?
: Scots are opening Amsterdam-like cannibas cafes. That's a straightline dying for a punchline.frozen throne intro

Deep linking thinking
: Mac Thomason suggests I comment on Belo's effort to outlaw or otherwise coodyize deep-linking to a site (rather than just to its homepage).
Easy.
Deep linking is what the Web is all about; it is the essence of the invention.
It is a far better service to take the reader directly to what he or she wants; if you don't, you will lose that reader; we have proven it on our sites in traffic statistics and in focus groups. The shortest path to what a reader wants is the shortest path to greater traffic and happier readers. The days of surfing are long, long over. The Web is now all about purpose:
Second, if you force all people to go through your homepage and then find what they want, you'd better have the world's best navigation and site search and even then, you'll still lose many or most of them on the way. People don't want to go on scavenger hunts for content.
Third, you simply have to recognize that people will go where they want to go when they want to go there and if you want them to see your home page -- to give them a better idea of what your service has today, to push your classifieds, to expose them to your premier advertisers -- then you need to entice them a good reason to go there. We found that many of our readers go directly to their favorite parts of our sites and so we just decided to bring our message to them. If you go to nj.com (one of my sites) during the week and during the day -- our prime time -- and then click on, say, sports, you will see a pop-up (not an ad, an editorial pop-up) bringing you the main promotion from the home page. We deliver the home page to you. It's a small way to tackle the fact that readers deep link all on their own; they bookmark their favorites.
In short: It doesn't matter whether we like deep linking or don't; it doesn't matter whether we like that people go straight into the depths of our services. It's what they do. To try to change that is to swim upstream under a broken dam.frozen throne intro

Round and round
: The Lifecycle of Your Blog [via Holy Weblog].frozen throne intro

Higher
: A reader with no name asks via email:

As both someone who worked in lower Manhattan at the time of the Sept. 11 attack and covered the television industry, I was wondering you thought about this proposal to erect a 2,000 foot television antnna on Governor's Island, complete with a restaurant and observation area on top and shopping at the bottom.
While a high tower is needed for those people who either do not have access, cannot afford or just don't want to subscribe to cable TV, my own feeling is putting up a tower six times the height of the Statue of Liberty directly across the Upper New York bay will skewer the vision one sees looking out over the bay either from Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights or traveling on the Staten Island Ferry. The TV tower would become the dominant landmark you would see from the bay, and would probably have an effect similar to the one
shown in the artists' rendition of the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge in Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, "The Power Broker" -- just a dominating, totally out-of-place image.
Since you asked... I think a tower somehwere is a good idea (though I wouldn't eat at the restaurant at the top of it). Should it be in lower Manhattan? I fear that makes the neighborhood a target again. Should it be on the island? I think my reader makes a good point about detracting from the Statue of Liberty. Or should it be, as I've seen suggested, in New Jersey? I vote for that. New Jersey needs an icon, besides Jimmy Hoffa in cement.frozen throne intro

: A couple who met at Ground Zero wants to get married there.
Too soon for joy, I'd say.frozen throne intro

Mail bombs
: Reid Stott on the midwestern mail bombs:

This is what 9-11 has done to me.
I don't hate Muslims. I don't hate Arabs. I hate those who use terror to promote their cause, and I hate them with an anger I've only felt once before, when a cowardly bomber made it very personal for me, right where I live. Well, September 11 made all terror attacks very personal for me. I'm a non-violent person, who believes in justice and hopes for peace, but right now, were I to catch this supposed American red handed placing a pipe bomb in a mailbox, they'd never lay eyes on a law enforcement officer.
But they might pray they would.
This is what 9-11 has done to me.
Rat
: How the remote-control rat works, in graphics.frozen throne intro
May 04, 2002

A. Welch
: I told Matt Welch that I thought he was the mysterious A. Beam. My forensic blogging:
: He knows the whole L.A. clique well.
: Both of them say "anyways."
Good enough for me.
Welch denies it.
So did Joe Klein.
: Jim Treacher thought it's Welch, too. Welch says he thought it was Treacher or Blair.
: Emmanuelle adds:

we're about to go to another L.A. party/barbecue where everybody accuses each other of being a.beam! It's like an Agatha Christie novel: every body is a suspect. It's fun! I suspect that a.beam writes from New York and has a lot of ideas.
All those L.A. people ever do is party.frozen throne intro

Spidey
: Spiderman on track to smash records with a $105-million weekend. [via Drudge]frozen throne intro

World's worst job
: Mailman.frozen throne intro

Allah's shame
: The other day, I quoted Elie Wiesel calling on Muslim clerics to issue a fatwa against suicide-murderers.
Instead, they are issuing fatwas encouraging hate and murder.
At Islam Online, a nonMuslim writes in that he heard hateful incantations in Mosques in Arab countries:

“O Allah, perish America, Christians and all their allies! O Allah, destroy their homes, widow their women and make their children orphans! O Allah, destroy all the Jews and Christians!”
Any self-respecting man of God would say, What reprehensible slime! We have nothing to do with that!
But, no, instead, at the "Islam Online Fatwa Editing Desk", they justify this hate, this call for murder:
Regarding this, it is to be stated that every occasion dictates a special way of behaving. At times of peace, it is better to supplicate Allah to guide disbelievers. But at wartime, the reality dictates supplicating Allah to grant Muslims victory over warring disbelievers, just as they themselves would normally do, seeking victory in the war they launch on Muslims. This is the normal course of war. On supplicating Allah to turn their wives into widows and their children into orphans is no more than a supplication for their defeat. It involves supplicating Allah to humiliate the arrogant people and help us vanquish the oppressors.
These are not men of Allah. This is not religion. This is a cult of hate, a cult of murder. Slime.frozen throne intro

A. Welch
: I told Matt Welch that I thought he was the mysterious A. Beam. My forensic blogging:
: He knows the whole L.A. clique well.
: Both of them say "anyways."
Good enough for me.
Welch denies it.
So did Joe Klein.
: Jim Treacher thought it's Welch, too. Welch says he thought it was Treacher or Blair.
: Emmanuelle adds:

we're about to go to another L.A. party/barbecue where everybody accuses each other of being a.beam! It's like an Agatha Christie novel: every body is a suspect. It's fun! I suspect that a.beam writes from New York and has a lot of ideas.
All those L.A. people ever do is party.frozen throne intro

Spidey
: Spiderman on track to smash records with a $105-million weekend. [via Drudge]frozen throne intro

World's worst job
: Mailman.frozen throne intro

Allah's shame
: The other day, I quoted Elie Wiesel calling on Muslim clerics to issue a fatwa against suicide-murderers.
Instead, they are issuing fatwas encouraging hate and murder.
At Islam Online, a nonMuslim writes in that he heard hateful incantations in Mosques in Arab countries:

“O Allah, perish America, Christians and all their allies! O Allah, destroy their homes, widow their women and make their children orphans! O Allah, destroy all the Jews and Christians!”
Any self-respecting man of God would say, What reprehensible slime! We have nothing to do with that!
But, no, instead, at the "Islam Online Fatwa Editing Desk", they justify this hate, this call for murder:
Regarding this, it is to be stated that every occasion dictates a special way of behaving. At times of peace, it is better to supplicate Allah to guide disbelievers. But at wartime, the reality dictates supplicating Allah to grant Muslims victory over warring disbelievers, just as they themselves would normally do, seeking victory in the war they launch on Muslims. This is the normal course of war. On supplicating Allah to turn their wives into widows and their children into orphans is no more than a supplication for their defeat. It involves supplicating Allah to humiliate the arrogant people and help us vanquish the oppressors.
These are not men of Allah. This is not religion. This is a cult of hate, a cult of murder. Slime.frozen throne intro
May 03, 2002

The weight
: They have almost finished removing 1.6 million tons of debris from the World Trade Center. By the end of the month, the Times reports, it will all be gone. All that will be left will be the hole.
And the memory.
I fear the memory is beginning to fade. I fear it in me.
I went walking to the bookstore the other day; I do that when I need to get out and think. There, I found the book collection of the New York Times' profiles of the victims of September -- Portraits: 9/11/01.
I was shocked at the size of it and the weight of it. The dimensions of the book are big: every page is large and there are more than 500 pages. And this is not even a complete memorial to the victims; it is only the portraits published before February. There are even more to be written, which will be included in the next edition, an even bigger book.
I don't know why I was so shocked at the size. Somehow, in my mind's scale, I thought this book would be smaller. I wonder whether this is a symptom of my memory, fading.
Of course, the book is huge. The loss is huge. Thousands of lives gone. Thousands upon thousands of lives scarred.
I bought the book and finally read the portrait of my neighbor who died. It returned me to September.
If you, too, feel your memory fading, if 9.11 starts to look smaller behind you, I urge you to go to the bookstore and pick up the Times' book, just pick it up.
Feel the weight of the grief.frozen throne intro

Stands for F'ing Bloody Idiots
: I haven't had a fresh reason to be mad at the FBI in, oh, at least a week. But here's a new reason:

Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying, law enforcement officials said.
The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told The Associated Press.
frozen throne intro

: Ditto airport security screeners: idiots. From Cleveland Live:

A screening machine detected explosives in a carry-on bag at a security checkpoint at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Friday, and authorities closed two concourses for 2 1/2 hours, officials said.
Airport Commissioner Fred Szabo said screeners were unable to find the bag and he could not rule out the possibility that the bag and the person carrying it got on a departing flight before the concourses were closed.
WAKE UP!frozen throne intro

Unchallenged
: First the NY Times killed its Nation Challenged post-9.11 section, but they said they'd keep updating the section online. Now, quietly, they've stopped updating.frozen throne intro

The weight
: They have almost finished removing 1.6 million tons of debris from the World Trade Center. By the end of the month, the Times reports, it will all be gone. All that will be left will be the hole.
And the memory.
I fear the memory is beginning to fade. I fear it in me.
I went walking to the bookstore the other day; I do that when I need to get out and think. There, I found the book collection of the New York Times' profiles of the victims of September -- Portraits: 9/11/01.
I was shocked at the size of it and the weight of it. The dimensions of the book are big: every page is large and there are more than 500 pages. And this is not even a complete memorial to the victims; it is only the portraits published before February. There are even more to be written, which will be included in the next edition, an even bigger book.
I don't know why I was so shocked at the size. Somehow, in my mind's scale, I thought this book would be smaller. I wonder whether this is a symptom of my memory, fading.
Of course, the book is huge. The loss is huge. Thousands of lives gone. Thousands upon thousands of lives scarred.
I bought the book and finally read the portrait of my neighbor who died. It returned me to September.
If you, too, feel your memory fading, if 9.11 starts to look smaller behind you, I urge you to go to the bookstore and pick up the Times' book, just pick it up.
Feel the weight of the grief.frozen throne intro

Stands for F'ing Bloody Idiots
: I haven't had a fresh reason to be mad at the FBI in, oh, at least a week. But here's a new reason:

Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying, law enforcement officials said.
The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told The Associated Press.
frozen throne intro

: Ditto airport security screeners: idiots. From Cleveland Live:

A screening machine detected explosives in a carry-on bag at a security checkpoint at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Friday, and authorities closed two concourses for 2 1/2 hours, officials said.
Airport Commissioner Fred Szabo said screeners were unable to find the bag and he could not rule out the possibility that the bag and the person carrying it got on a departing flight before the concourses were closed.
WAKE UP!frozen throne intro

Unchallenged
: First the NY Times killed its Nation Challenged post-9.11 section, but they said they'd keep updating the section online. Now, quietly, they've stopped updating.frozen throne intro

May 02, 2002

Vanity
: So many states are starting to use their license plates as bumper stickers, allowing groups to make political statements there. Virginia will have confederate flags on its tags. Florida has an antiabortion -- uh, I mean, prolife -- plate (and, I believe, Louisiana -- though I can't find that one). Nevada has a nuclear plate.
This is stupid. There will be no stopping it now: PETA plates, gun plates, clone plates, antiKrugman plates.
And here is the one I want:

frozen throne intro

Long time no siege
: Arafat is sprung and the Independent says he got no heroe's welcome-home; he got a shrug, perhaps for the wrong reasons, but it's nice to see him dissed for any reason:

Yasser Arafat had the air of an ageing thespian stepping out of the wings to savour a curtain call and drink in the warmth of his fans before taking a triumphant bow. But, as he strutted anew on the world stage, the applause was patchy and so were the crowds....
But as the Palestinian leader – the "president" of an unborn and increasingly unlikely state – travelled around Ramallah with his entourage of Palestinian Authority officials, he received no hero's welcome. There was ambivalence and weariness, uncertainty – and even resentment.
Worn down by weeks of living under an Israeli military curfew, and depressed by the scale of the destruction the Israeli army left behind, this West Bank town of 40,000 did not cheer much at Mr Arafat's sudden appearance. His popularity, which blossomed during his months of confinement, seemed to have faded, blighted by the public's view that he has made a murky and dishonourable deal in return for his release.
Heeeeeeeere's Bill!
: Now the report is that Bill Clinton wants a talk show.
There's much poo-pooing of this in the LA Times story, saying Bill wouldn't want to work at this grind (what, like it tougher than being President?) and says an oft-quoted prof at Syracuse U:
"The price he could pay is so much higher than the potential payoff," said Robert Thompson, a professor of media and pop culture at Syracuse University. "Clinton is obsessed with his legacy, and a talk show is not the best way to erase Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment and reposition himself in high school history books for his positive achievements. How does he maintain his dignity if he cashes in on his 'Animal House' presidency?"
I couldn't disagree more.
This misses the essential appeal of this idea to Clinton, the thing he understands better than anyone: Power. Public power.
There is no better soap box than TV. From that electronic platform, Clinton can influence public opinion. He can shape his own image and legacy. He can get back into the thick of the public debate, where he loves being; surely, he misses it.
Clinton is a populist. TV is the ultimate populist medium (the Web would be if only it were bigger). This is a natural.
And I repeat: He'd be good at it. He is made for TV. He is entertaining. He is charming. He is provocative.
Besides, the gossip that swirls around him like dust around PigPen can only improve the ratings. We'll watch half the time because we wonder what he's really up to now. Clinton leads the life Howard Stern wishes he could lead.
This would be a brilliant move for a broadcast network or syndicator (and it would likely land on broadcast rather than cable because that's where the biggest audience and the biggest bucks are). It would be just the kind of surprise I'd expect from Clinton.
I hope it happens. That'll be enough to get me to buy a TiVo.frozen throne intro

Takes one to know one
: It's not as if Yasser Arafat can get any more offensive than he already is but he is trying. He got out of his house arrest (nothing so nice as a Sotheby's house arrest) and promptly called Israeli's Nazis.
It's hard to imagine anything more offensive than that. But if anyone will top that, it's Yasser.frozen throne intro

Vanity
: So many states are starting to use their license plates as bumper stickers, allowing groups to make political statements there. Virginia will have confederate flags on its tags. Florida has an antiabortion -- uh, I mean, prolife -- plate (and, I believe, Louisiana -- though I can't find that one). Nevada has a nuclear plate.
This is stupid. There will be no stopping it now: PETA plates, gun plates, clone plates, antiKrugman plates.
And here is the one I want:

frozen throne intro

Long time no siege
: Arafat is sprung and the Independent says he got no heroe's welcome-home; he got a shrug, perhaps for the wrong reasons, but it's nice to see him dissed for any reason:

Yasser Arafat had the air of an ageing thespian stepping out of the wings to savour a curtain call and drink in the warmth of his fans before taking a triumphant bow. But, as he strutted anew on the world stage, the applause was patchy and so were the crowds....
But as the Palestinian leader – the "president" of an unborn and increasingly unlikely state – travelled around Ramallah with his entourage of Palestinian Authority officials, he received no hero's welcome. There was ambivalence and weariness, uncertainty – and even resentment.
Worn down by weeks of living under an Israeli military curfew, and depressed by the scale of the destruction the Israeli army left behind, this West Bank town of 40,000 did not cheer much at Mr Arafat's sudden appearance. His popularity, which blossomed during his months of confinement, seemed to have faded, blighted by the public's view that he has made a murky and dishonourable deal in return for his release.
Heeeeeeeere's Bill!
: Now the report is that Bill Clinton wants a talk show.
There's much poo-pooing of this in the LA Times story, saying Bill wouldn't want to work at this grind (what, like it tougher than being President?) and says an oft-quoted prof at Syracuse U:
"The price he could pay is so much higher than the potential payoff," said Robert Thompson, a professor of media and pop culture at Syracuse University. "Clinton is obsessed with his legacy, and a talk show is not the best way to erase Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment and reposition himself in high school history books for his positive achievements. How does he maintain his dignity if he cashes in on his 'Animal House' presidency?"
I couldn't disagree more.
This misses the essential appeal of this idea to Clinton, the thing he understands better than anyone: Power. Public power.
There is no better soap box than TV. From that electronic platform, Clinton can influence public opinion. He can shape his own image and legacy. He can get back into the thick of the public debate, where he loves being; surely, he misses it.
Clinton is a populist. TV is the ultimate populist medium (the Web would be if only it were bigger). This is a natural.
And I repeat: He'd be good at it. He is made for TV. He is entertaining. He is charming. He is provocative.
Besides, the gossip that swirls around him like dust around PigPen can only improve the ratings. We'll watch half the time because we wonder what he's really up to now. Clinton leads the life Howard Stern wishes he could lead.
This would be a brilliant move for a broadcast network or syndicator (and it would likely land on broadcast rather than cable because that's where the biggest audience and the biggest bucks are). It would be just the kind of surprise I'd expect from Clinton.
I hope it happens. That'll be enough to get me to buy a TiVo.frozen throne intro

Takes one to know one
: It's not as if Yasser Arafat can get any more offensive than he already is but he is trying. He got out of his house arrest (nothing so nice as a Sotheby's house arrest) and promptly called Israeli's Nazis.
It's hard to imagine anything more offensive than that. But if anyone will top that, it's Yasser.frozen throne intro

May 01, 2002

Announcing The... Warries!
: Dan Hartung corrects me on my Webby whine (below), sending me email:

Well, blogs were around for the 1999, 2000, and 2001 Webbys, and didn't have a category then either. But some of them still won; the "Personal Web Site" category was added for 2000, and the winner was http://www.cockybastard.com/ (John 'Halcyon' Styn). That year, Slashdot (which fits the broad definition of a group weblog), won as a Community Site. Jim Romenesko's Media News, often cited as a seminal single-topic weblog, won as a "Media" site. And Stile Project, a prototypical (now a sell-out) E/N site, won under the Weird category. The record in '01 wasn't as good -- Plastic and LiveJournal being the only blog-related winners.... Bottom line? They're dominated by Bay-area granola libs...
I guess my real complaint was that this was the year of the -- pardon me, but I don't really mind the title, considering the title of this very blog -- Warloggers. And we don't find them there. No surprise, really, for the reason Dan puts forth.
So what should we do: start our own self-serving awards?
The Warries?
I can already hear somebody complain: Why not the Peacies?
The Anti-Idiotarianies just doesn't sing.
Categories? News & comment (nominees start with who else?). Foreign reporting & comment (Blair, Johnson...). Just comment (Layne, Welch and just about everybody).frozen throne intro

: By the way, don't believe the nice things Layne said about me. He's easily bought -- for the price of a book or even just a cheap paper.frozen throne intro

New York, New York
: You can tell that New York has twice the energy in its air that either California or Europe. The measure? Nick Denton has been posting five times as much in the last week -- since he moved to New York -- as I've seen from him in months. Coincidence?frozen throne intro

Promoting fertility
: If you thought you never wanted a kid, you'll change your mind after watching this. Lileks will cause a population explosion.frozen throne intro

Elie's fatwah
: Elie Wiesel on NPR last night said two wise things (of course).
Asked whether and how Israel could come to peace with the Palestinians, Wiesel said that if Israel could come to peace with Germany, of all nations, it could do this, too.
He also called on Muslim clerics to issue a fatwah against what is happening now.
What a spectacular thought. Rather than relying on calls for Muslim clerics and leaders to merely "condemn" the 9.11 attacks and the suicide bombings in Israel, how much better it is to have them put their words where they matter. This is a religion that believes in following the dictates of their holy writings and of clerical interpretations. A fatwah means something; it has the authority of law.
We hear Muslims on TV saying again and again that the Quoran forbids suicide.
It's time to mean it. It's time for them to issue an order, a fatwah against suicide and suicide-murder.
So that is the challenge, that is the test, for Muslim clerics everywhere: Either you are willing to issue a fatwah against suicide and suicide-murder... or you support it. Either you are a person of Allah... or you are not.frozen throne intro

Announcing The... Warries!
: Dan Hartung corrects me on my Webby whine (below), sending me email:

Well, blogs were around for the 1999, 2000, and 2001 Webbys, and didn't have a category then either. But some of them still won; the "Personal Web Site" category was added for 2000, and the winner was http://www.cockybastard.com/ (John 'Halcyon' Styn). That year, Slashdot (which fits the broad definition of a group weblog), won as a Community Site. Jim Romenesko's Media News, often cited as a seminal single-topic weblog, won as a "Media" site. And Stile Project, a prototypical (now a sell-out) E/N site, won under the Weird category. The record in '01 wasn't as good -- Plastic and LiveJournal being the only blog-related winners.... Bottom line? They're dominated by Bay-area granola libs...
I guess my real complaint was that this was the year of the -- pardon me, but I don't really mind the title, considering the title of this very blog -- Warloggers. And we don't find them there. No surprise, really, for the reason Dan puts forth.
So what should we do: start our own self-serving awards?
The Warries?
I can already hear somebody complain: Why not the Peacies?
The Anti-Idiotarianies just doesn't sing.
Categories? News & comment (nominees start with who else?). Foreign reporting & comment (Blair, Johnson...). Just comment (Layne, Welch and just about everybody).frozen throne intro

: By the way, don't believe the nice things Layne said about me. He's easily bought -- for the price of a book or even just a cheap paper.frozen throne intro

New York, New York
: You can tell that New York has twice the energy in its air that either California or Europe. The measure? Nick Denton has been posting five times as much in the last week -- since he moved to New York -- as I've seen from him in months. Coincidence?frozen throne intro

Promoting fertility
: If you thought you never wanted a kid, you'll change your mind after watching this. Lileks will cause a population explosion.frozen throne intro

Elie's fatwah
: Elie Wiesel on NPR last night said two wise things (of course).
Asked whether and how Israel could come to peace with the Palestinians, Wiesel said that if Israel could come to peace with Germany, of all nations, it could do this, too.
He also called on Muslim clerics to issue a fatwah against what is happening now.
What a spectacular thought. Rather than relying on calls for Muslim clerics and leaders to merely "condemn" the 9.11 attacks and the suicide bombings in Israel, how much better it is to have them put their words where they matter. This is a religion that believes in following the dictates of their holy writings and of clerical interpretations. A fatwah means something; it has the authority of law.
We hear Muslims on TV saying again and again that the Quoran forbids suicide.
It's time to mean it. It's time for them to issue an order, a fatwah against suicide and suicide-murder.
So that is the challenge, that is the test, for Muslim clerics everywhere: Either you are willing to issue a fatwah against suicide and suicide-murder... or you support it. Either you are a person of Allah... or you are not.frozen throne intro

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9.11: My story
: My audio narrative of Sept. 11
: My story of Sept. 11

Recent posts of note
: The me in media
: We won't have to explain when...
: Super-duper reporting machine
: Weblogs and big media
: A new Iraqi blogger
: Link to a story on hyperlocal blogs
: Interview with a dinosaur
: Fisking Andy Rooney
: Blogs as buzzmachines
: Jay Rosen, Part I
: Jay Rosen, Part II
: The post-Internet newspaper
: 9.11 registry
: Online News Association
: 9.11 2003 morning ... afternoon
: PBSification of 9.11
... NY Post column
: Free content

Stuff
: Hyperlocal blog on Bernards NJ
: Confess ions of a warblogger

Video weblogs:
: Vlogs - video weblogs: State of the art.
: The start of vlogs
: Watch vlogs
: VLOG showcase

B-Roll: Hourly
: Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit
: Cory Doctorow: BoingBoing
: Gawker

B-Roll: Daily
: Glenn Reynolds.com on MSNBC.com
: James Lileks
: Jay Rosen's PressThink
: Elizabeth Spiers/NY Mag's Kicker
: A Small Victory
: Nick Denton
: Dan Gillmor
: Josh Marshall
: Atrios
: Matt Welch
: Dave Winer
: Doc Searls
: Richard Bennett
: Metafilter
: MSNBC Weblog Central

B-Roll: New
: David Isenberg
: Jay Rosen's PressThink
: Zeyad's Healing Iraq
: Om Malik
: Daniel Drezner
: Winds of Change
: Dead Parrots Society
: Fred Wilson's A VC
: Adam Curry
: Everything in Moderation
: Venture Blog
: Ed Sim's Beyond VC
: Pejman
: AKMA Adam
: Halley's Comment
: Au Currant
: Begging to Differ
: Ben Hammersley
: Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary
: John Scalzi on AOL
: Scalzi off AOL
: Daily Kos
: Dean Esmay
: Greg Allen
: Harry Hatchett et al
: Marketing Wonk
: Joi Ito
: Michael Totten
: Donald Sensing
: Outside the Beltway
: Radio Free Blogistan
: Scobelizer
: Kaye Trammell
: Norman Geras
: Dong Resin

B-Roll: Presidential
: Howard Dean
: Wesley Clark
: Unofficial Clark
: John Edwards
: Bush
: DNC's Kicking Ass

B-Roll: Middle East
: Zeyad's Healing Iraq
: Hoder's Editor: Myself
: Hoder: Persian
: The Eyeranian
: View From Iran
: Blue Bird Escape
: Persian Version
: Salam Pax
: Iranian.com
: Iranian Girl
: Astigma
: Steppenwolf
: Kaveh
: Me and Sassan
: Kandahar Chronicles
: Baghdad Burning
: Tehran Avenue
: Baghdad Bulletin

B-Roll: Frequently
: Command Post
: Steven Johnson
: Textism
: Aaron Bailey's 601AM
: Quarlo photos
: Howard Sherman
: Misanthropyst
: Joi Ito
: Reason's Hit & Run
: Paul Frankenstein
: David Galbraith
: Clay Shirky
: Fimoculous
: Howard Rheingold
: Henry Copeland
: Shifted Librarian"
: The Presurfer
: Ross Mayfield
: Jimmy Guterman
: Sebastian Paquet
: City Cynic
: Chris Pirillo
: Justin Katz
: Dean Allen: Textism
: Elizabeth Spiers
: Rossi Rant
: Lawrence Lessig
: Ken Layne
: Mickey Kaus
: David Weinberger
: Solly Ezekiel
: Meg Hourihan
: Jason Kottke
: Tony Pierce
: Dan Hon
: Karl Martino
: Law Meme
: Matt Webb
: Matthew Yglesias
: Morning News
: Scott Rosenberg
: Saltire
: Matt Haughey
: Evan Williams
: Little Green Footballs
: Patio Pundit
: Oliver Willis
: Tim Blair
: Andrea Harris
: John Ellis
: Moxie
: Phil Wolff
: Marc Weisblott
: Truth Laid Bear
: Patrick Nielsen Hayden: Electrolite
: The Fat Guy
: Shiloh Bucher
: Bjørn Stærk
: Emmanuelle Richard
: Reductio ad Absurdum
: Kevin Whited
: Rantburg
: Eugene Volokh et al
: Photodude
: ReadJacobs
: Amy Langfield
: Relapsed Catholic
: Holy Weblog
: Moira Breen
: Tom Coates
: Blogs of War
: Natalie Solent
: Kathy Kinsley
: Greg Beato
: Fritz Schranck
: Justin Slotman
: Libertarian Samizdata
: Follow Me Here
: Hypergene
: Ken Goldstein
: Rand Simberg
: William Quick
: Damian Penny
: Brian Linse
: Jay Zilber
: Sgt. Stryker
: Ted Barlow
: Megan McArdle
: Charles Dodgson
: Amygdala
: Dane Carlson
: Tom Tomorrow
: Stephen Green Vodkapundit
: Daniel Taylor
: Asparagirl
: Jim Treacher
: Frederik Norman
: Oxblog
: Anil Dash
: Woods Lot
: Virginia Postrel

B-Roll: Media/Tech
: Jim Romenesko
: I Want Media
: New Media Tidbits
: Corante
: Ad Rants
: Guardian Online Blog
: Lost Remote
: Marketing Fix
: Olivier Travers
: JD Lasica
: Rick Bruner I
: Marketing Wonk
: Tim Porter
: Always On nonblog
: Fast Company
: JD on MX
: Mike Wendland
: Kevin Werbach's Werblog
: Ed Cone
: Media Life
: WSJ Marketing & Media
: Media Guardian
: Chris Gulker

B-Roll: Blogs
: Movable Type's Six Apart
: Blogroots
: Corante on Blogging
: My Social Network explorer
: My Technorati Link Cosmos

B-Roll: Deutsch
: Schockwellenreiter
: Thomas Burg's Randgaenge
: Industrial Technology & Witchcraft
: David Kaspar's Medienkritik
: Ein Blog
: Heiko Hebig>
: Haiko Hebig>
: Papa Scott
: World Wide Klein
: Now Europe
: Martin Roell
: Monoklon
: Stefan Smalla
: Blog Haus
: Generation NeXt
: Tzwaen's Brain
: Le Sofa Blogger
: Kunstspaziergänge
: Meine Kleine Stadt (photos)
: eDings
: Netzeitung (web-only paper auf Deutsch)
: A ja!
: Sofia Sideshow (OK, it's Bulgarian)
: Netzeitung on this blog

Family
: My son's!
: My sister

JEFF JARVIS is former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He was until recently president & creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Now he is working with The New York Times Company at About.com on content development and strategy and consulting for Advance, Fairchild, and the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, where he lead the creation of the curriculum for the new media program. He says he is at work on a book.
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