September 30, 2002
Torch torched
: Robert Torricelli quits the race and manages to turn it into a bottomless egofest. The man ruins the the Democratic party and manages to act haughty about it. What a dickdork.
So who'll replace him on short notice? Former Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bill Bradley Rep. Bob Menendez are the names on the list so far.
I wonder what the residency requirement is in NJ. Can Bill Clinton run?
Or how about Bruce Springsteen?saliva unleashed rm
: The Republicans are becoming all too accustomed to winning elections in court, not at the polls. They're threatening to stop anyone from replacing Torch on the ballot. How undemocratic (small d) can you get? We voters in New Jersey deserve the right to vote for a candidate of our choice. This is not Florida!saliva unleashed rm
: Torch's opponent's TV commercials are still running in prime time. Kicking a horse after it's down.saliva unleashed rm
: Not that I'm suggesting this, but Torch would have done his Democrats a better service if he'd torched himself. We'd elect a dead man (a dead man defeated John Ashcroft, remember). But trying to find a live one is way harder.saliva unleashed rm
Another era bites...
: I walk by the famous Howard Johnson's on Times Square today and it's closed by order of the Health Department. Damn. An icon falls. And I didn't get to have that last taste of HoJo's fried clams.saliva unleashed rm
Let me kiss my diploma
: The MIT Open Courseware program is turbo cool. I thought I'd take a class at MIT using its open-source class materials. I now think better of it. I think I'm glad I graduated college when I did.
I was, for a brief while, a philosphy major. But it was nothing like this.
Here are notes from MIT's problems of philosopy class: II. The Problem of Evil
Remember, we're considering the existence of a certain kind of God, a God who is perfect in every way. By hypothesis, this God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good (I'll abbreviate these characteristics as "OOG").
1) If God exists, she'd be OOG. [By hypothesis]
Now surely if an OOG God exists, there ought to be no evil in the world. Here's why: Since God knows everything, she knows when there is going to be an earthquake, or terrorist attack, or a lynching. Since she is all-powerful, she could prevent it if she tried. But since she is wholly good, she does try. Thus the earthquake, terrorist attack, lynching, etc. is prevented. So:
2) If an OOG being exists, there would be no evil. [from 1]
Suppose, then, that:
3) God exists.
You should conclude that:
4) There is no evil. [From 1-3]
But the truth is that (as the Dostoevsky reading and current events make vividly clear):
5) There is evil.
But note that (4) and (5) are contradictory. You can't reasonably believe both that there is and there is not evil in the world. As a result, even many religious people have felt compelled to conclude:
6) [An OOG] God does not exist.
This is the problem of evil for theism. Unless there is a way around the problem, theists have reason to give up their belief, on pain of irrationality.
Note that the argument, as presented, has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.... Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute.... saliva unleashed rm
Torch torched
: Robert Torricelli quits the race and manages to turn it into a bottomless egofest. The man ruins the the Democratic party and manages to act haughty about it. What a dickdork.
So who'll replace him on short notice? Former Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bill Bradley Rep. Bob Menendez are the names on the list so far.
I wonder what the residency requirement is in NJ. Can Bill Clinton run?
Or how about Bruce Springsteen?saliva unleashed rm
: The Republicans are becoming all too accustomed to winning elections in court, not at the polls. They're threatening to stop anyone from replacing Torch on the ballot. How undemocratic (small d) can you get? We voters in New Jersey deserve the right to vote for a candidate of our choice. This is not Florida!saliva unleashed rm
: Torch's opponent's TV commercials are still running in prime time. Kicking a horse after it's down.saliva unleashed rm
: Not that I'm suggesting this, but Torch would have done his Democrats a better service if he'd torched himself. We'd elect a dead man (a dead man defeated John Ashcroft, remember). But trying to find a live one is way harder.saliva unleashed rm
Another era bites...
: I walk by the famous Howard Johnson's on Times Square today and it's closed by order of the Health Department. Damn. An icon falls. And I didn't get to have that last taste of HoJo's fried clams.saliva unleashed rm
Let me kiss my diploma
: The MIT Open Courseware program is turbo cool. I thought I'd take a class at MIT using its open-source class materials. I now think better of it. I think I'm glad I graduated college when I did.
I was, for a brief while, a philosphy major. But it was nothing like this.
Here are notes from MIT's problems of philosopy class: II. The Problem of Evil
Remember, we're considering the existence of a certain kind of God, a God who is perfect in every way. By hypothesis, this God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good (I'll abbreviate these characteristics as "OOG").
1) If God exists, she'd be OOG. [By hypothesis]
Now surely if an OOG God exists, there ought to be no evil in the world. Here's why: Since God knows everything, she knows when there is going to be an earthquake, or terrorist attack, or a lynching. Since she is all-powerful, she could prevent it if she tried. But since she is wholly good, she does try. Thus the earthquake, terrorist attack, lynching, etc. is prevented. So:
2) If an OOG being exists, there would be no evil. [from 1]
Suppose, then, that:
3) God exists.
You should conclude that:
4) There is no evil. [From 1-3]
But the truth is that (as the Dostoevsky reading and current events make vividly clear):
5) There is evil.
But note that (4) and (5) are contradictory. You can't reasonably believe both that there is and there is not evil in the world. As a result, even many religious people have felt compelled to conclude:
6) [An OOG] God does not exist.
This is the problem of evil for theism. Unless there is a way around the problem, theists have reason to give up their belief, on pain of irrationality.
Note that the argument, as presented, has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.... Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute.... saliva unleashed rm
September 29, 2002
Flash forward
: I'm having a bad flash forward right now, after watching tonight's premiere of American Dreams: I fear that 40 years from now. somebody will make a show about how everything in America changed not in November 1963 but in September 2001 and we--you and I, real people today--will be turned into period pieces, made quaint in our clothes and attitudes and lives, stereotypes in stereo.
The '60s were my time; I am their child. I was in third grade in 1963, when JFK was killed; I was in high school during Vietnam and the '68 elections; I marched in protest against that war; I was ready to risk jail or my citizenship to fight against the fight (and I was saved only by the luck of numbers: my birthday and lottery).
Now I'm looking at a show that is going to turn much of that time into a cliche.
But then, I get the exact same feeling when I watch protest marchers on the news today: anti-capitalism, anti-trade, anti-Americanism, anti-war, anti-meat. They mock a time of real protest worse than any TV show ever could.saliva unleashed rm
Flash forward
: I'm having a bad flash forward right now, after watching tonight's premiere of American Dreams: I fear that 40 years from now. somebody will make a show about how everything in America changed not in November 1963 but in September 2001 and we--you and I, real people today--will be turned into period pieces, made quaint in our clothes and attitudes and lives, stereotypes in stereo.
The '60s were my time; I am their child. I was in third grade in 1963, when JFK was killed; I was in high school during Vietnam and the '68 elections; I marched in protest against that war; I was ready to risk jail or my citizenship to fight against the fight (and I was saved only by the luck of numbers: my birthday and lottery).
Now I'm looking at a show that is going to turn much of that time into a cliche.
But then, I get the exact same feeling when I watch protest marchers on the news today: anti-capitalism, anti-trade, anti-Americanism, anti-war, anti-meat. They mock a time of real protest worse than any TV show ever could.saliva unleashed rm
September 28, 2002
Here was New York
: Note that Here Is New York has exhibitions in lots of cities around the world. But note also that the New York Prince Street gallery, the original, is closing at the end of this month and they will stop taking orders for prints. So order now. And get the amazing book, the best on 9.11 to date.saliva unleashed rm
Here was New York
: Note that Here Is New York has exhibitions in lots of cities around the world. But note also that the New York Prince Street gallery, the original, is closing at the end of this month and they will stop taking orders for prints. So order now. And get the amazing book, the best on 9.11 to date.saliva unleashed rm
September 27, 2002
Do not pass go
: Make your own, personalized Monopoly game.saliva unleashed rm
Mapping the 'sphere
: A pretty nice metasearch engine that places the results in a confusing yet intriguing map at Kartoo.saliva unleashed rm
Do not pass go
: Make your own, personalized Monopoly game.saliva unleashed rm
Mapping the 'sphere
: A pretty nice metasearch engine that places the results in a confusing yet intriguing map at Kartoo.saliva unleashed rm
September 26, 2002
Guns 'n' roses
: I think this is a little sick, though I can see Glenn Reynolds et al love it: In Toronto, a weekend-getaway travel company is pushing a Charley's Angels tour: The morning starts with a visit to a private gun club. Here you polish your gun shooting skills with personal, side-by-side firearm instruction. You learn basic gun safety and how to load your own magazine, then you fire-off 50 rounds of ammo at a paper target. The target is yours to take back as a souvenir.
Then off you go to Stillwater Spa, one of the hottest spas in Toronto, for a manicure. Relax in the whirlpool, have a cold drink and enjoy being pampered for a couple of hours.
After the manicure, trot back home, get dressed to the nines and get ready for a night on the town. Dance, meet new people and party the night away....
Program includes:
- Firearm instruction
- Use of protective eye and ear wear
- Use of handgun, ammunition and paper target
- Use of whirlpool, sauna and other Stillwater Spa facilities
- A manicure treatment at Stillwater Spa Will it be long before the girls on Sex & the City are armed? Is gun chic on the way? Please, no. saliva unleashed rm
Nick Denton fact-checks Google's ass
: Here.saliva unleashed rm
Just what we need: Four Saddams
: ZDF, the German TV network, says it has proof that Saddam uses doubles, long rumored. They analyzed hundreds of photos in their archives and determined that he has sent out at least three doubles lately, each surgically enhanced and each trained in Saddam's mannerisms. One source said that the real Saddam was not seen in public, on TV, from 1998 until last Saturday. Will W get the right one?
: Babelfish translation here.saliva unleashed rm
Blog the prom
: Metafilter points to a high-school student who's getting in trouble for blogging from school. I was in the office again today, balling my eyes out. Lets just say one of the options is to have me expelled from the school. I was gasping for air half the time I was in there. I had to write this affidavit telling them everything I knew about my blog, how long I had been posting from school, who else from my school had a blog and everything. I was crying the entire time. And don't you dare joke me for crying. I mean, you'd cry too if you had a PERFECT perm. record and then have it screwed up in high school and mess up your chances of getting into the college of your choice. If true, this is obnoxious and the kid should fight. He's cleary smart and eager and he should be encouraged to develop those talents, not called before HUAC and made to name names because of it.
Why, in my day, I brought the ACLU into my junior high to fight a dress code (I was defending the rights of girls to wear slacks, not my right to wear sandals and socks). Defending free speech is a much better cause. saliva unleashed rm
Enron
: The update from the auction this morning: Plastic Enron beer mugs sell for $14 each.
Infamy has a value.saliva unleashed rm
Guns 'n' roses
: I think this is a little sick, though I can see Glenn Reynolds et al love it: In Toronto, a weekend-getaway travel company is pushing a Charley's Angels tour: The morning starts with a visit to a private gun club. Here you polish your gun shooting skills with personal, side-by-side firearm instruction. You learn basic gun safety and how to load your own magazine, then you fire-off 50 rounds of ammo at a paper target. The target is yours to take back as a souvenir.
Then off you go to Stillwater Spa, one of the hottest spas in Toronto, for a manicure. Relax in the whirlpool, have a cold drink and enjoy being pampered for a couple of hours.
After the manicure, trot back home, get dressed to the nines and get ready for a night on the town. Dance, meet new people and party the night away....
Program includes:
- Firearm instruction
- Use of protective eye and ear wear
- Use of handgun, ammunition and paper target
- Use of whirlpool, sauna and other Stillwater Spa facilities
- A manicure treatment at Stillwater Spa Will it be long before the girls on Sex & the City are armed? Is gun chic on the way? Please, no. saliva unleashed rm
Nick Denton fact-checks Google's ass
: Here.saliva unleashed rm
Just what we need: Four Saddams
: ZDF, the German TV network, says it has proof that Saddam uses doubles, long rumored. They analyzed hundreds of photos in their archives and determined that he has sent out at least three doubles lately, each surgically enhanced and each trained in Saddam's mannerisms. One source said that the real Saddam was not seen in public, on TV, from 1998 until last Saturday. Will W get the right one?
: Babelfish translation here.saliva unleashed rm
Blog the prom
: Metafilter points to a high-school student who's getting in trouble for blogging from school. I was in the office again today, balling my eyes out. Lets just say one of the options is to have me expelled from the school. I was gasping for air half the time I was in there. I had to write this affidavit telling them everything I knew about my blog, how long I had been posting from school, who else from my school had a blog and everything. I was crying the entire time. And don't you dare joke me for crying. I mean, you'd cry too if you had a PERFECT perm. record and then have it screwed up in high school and mess up your chances of getting into the college of your choice. If true, this is obnoxious and the kid should fight. He's cleary smart and eager and he should be encouraged to develop those talents, not called before HUAC and made to name names because of it.
Why, in my day, I brought the ACLU into my junior high to fight a dress code (I was defending the rights of girls to wear slacks, not my right to wear sandals and socks). Defending free speech is a much better cause. saliva unleashed rm
Enron
: The update from the auction this morning: Plastic Enron beer mugs sell for $14 each.
Infamy has a value.saliva unleashed rm
September 25, 2002
The latest reality show: Selling off Enron
: You can listen to the Enron auction right now (midday Wednesday). Sony 27-inch TV just sold for $300.
: Thanks to Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers for pointing me to the auction. I've been listening off and on all day long (while doing more productive things, of course). It's riveting. This is what becomes of crooks. The loot is so telling: Not just the chairs, lined up like those Chinese clay soldiers in an archeological dig, but lots of Enron briefcases and balls and best of all, beer coolers with the Enron log and the slogan, "Ask why." Indeed.
I look forward to the auctions for not only the companies but also their executives.
I want to pitch this as a reality show for the Home Shopping Network.
: The show is going into overtime tonight and they're not nearly done unloading all the servers and laptops and chairs. It starts again Thursday morning. Tune in.
 saliva unleashed rm
The latest reality show: Selling off Enron
: You can listen to the Enron auction right now (midday Wednesday). Sony 27-inch TV just sold for $300.
: Thanks to Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers for pointing me to the auction. I've been listening off and on all day long (while doing more productive things, of course). It's riveting. This is what becomes of crooks. The loot is so telling: Not just the chairs, lined up like those Chinese clay soldiers in an archeological dig, but lots of Enron briefcases and balls and best of all, beer coolers with the Enron log and the slogan, "Ask why." Indeed.
I look forward to the auctions for not only the companies but also their executives.
I want to pitch this as a reality show for the Home Shopping Network.
: The show is going into overtime tonight and they're not nearly done unloading all the servers and laptops and chairs. It starts again Thursday morning. Tune in.
saliva unleashed rm
September 24, 2002
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
: Here is Tony Blair's paper detailing evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.saliva unleashed rm
Spam, another solution
: I'm sure someone will tell me what's wrong with this but I come to think we are all attacking spam from the wrong direction.
We are trying to make lists of spammers and their tricks so we can block them.
We should instead be trying to get ourselves off the lists of email addresses the spammers are using.
How?
I want someone to invent an email function that lets me easily and manually bounce email from spammers so they think I don't exist and so they don't want to waste time and money sending me spam and so they take me off their lists.
Surely, this can't be hard.
I mark a bunch of email in the morning and direct my email to send bounce messages to all of them.
The program sends a (faked) bounce message via my mail server.
The spammer counts this as a bounce and takes me off the list.
And that's one fewer spams I'll get the next morning. One by one, piece by piece, we kill the cockroaches.
Make sense?saliva unleashed rm
: Update. Gotta love this Internet. Within minutes, I got an email from Danny Jobe pointing me to Mailwasher, which does what I want and for free. The key description from their web site: MailWasher works directly with your email server, exactly like your email program does. But there is one important difference: you can tell MailWasher to delete a message at the server, without downloading it - or you can bounce an email back to the sender so that it looks as though your address is not valid. Bravo! saliva unleashed rm
So much for the future of journalism
: Here's the list of luminaries Columbia's president appointed to a commission to rethink the future of Columbia Journalism School and thus journalism itself.
Don't hold your breath for anything new to come from this.
Though there are unquestionably some smart and capable people on the list, the cast as a whole is quite predictable.
And you will not find any emissaries from the future of any weight, experience, or credibility. I could nominate people here in blogdom but that would take on the air of blogrolling for the sake of aw-shucks links back to me; you make the list. I could nominate people who have changed journalism and reporting and commentary using the tools of this new medium and the new relationship with the audience they create, but what's the point.
Too bad. Opportunity lost.saliva unleashed rm
: See also Columbia J's interim dean, David Klatell on Romenesko, responding to Michael Wolff's excellent column on the future of Columbia J and journalism. The guy completely misses the point and the point misses him. Wolff was writing about a new vision for journalism education and media study; the temp dean whines about Wolff not listing the school's name-brand alums. Forest, meet trees.saliva unleashed rm
Google news
: Google's automated news is cool but Nick Denton points out the fatal flaw in how it works.saliva unleashed rm
Missed opportunities
: Old blogging pal Thomas Nephew gives me the punchline I should have gotten myself (I'm so ashamed!) for the HAL Internet-connected refrigerator post below: You overlooked the chilling possibilities of a wired fridge: “Open the refrigerator door, HAL….” It's catching: Tony Blair has been hanging out with George Bush too much lately. He, too, now says "nuc-u-ler." saliva unleashed rm
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
: Here is Tony Blair's paper detailing evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.saliva unleashed rm
Spam, another solution
: I'm sure someone will tell me what's wrong with this but I come to think we are all attacking spam from the wrong direction.
We are trying to make lists of spammers and their tricks so we can block them.
We should instead be trying to get ourselves off the lists of email addresses the spammers are using.
How?
I want someone to invent an email function that lets me easily and manually bounce email from spammers so they think I don't exist and so they don't want to waste time and money sending me spam and so they take me off their lists.
Surely, this can't be hard.
I mark a bunch of email in the morning and direct my email to send bounce messages to all of them.
The program sends a (faked) bounce message via my mail server.
The spammer counts this as a bounce and takes me off the list.
And that's one fewer spams I'll get the next morning. One by one, piece by piece, we kill the cockroaches.
Make sense?saliva unleashed rm
: Update. Gotta love this Internet. Within minutes, I got an email from Danny Jobe pointing me to Mailwasher, which does what I want and for free. The key description from their web site: MailWasher works directly with your email server, exactly like your email program does. But there is one important difference: you can tell MailWasher to delete a message at the server, without downloading it - or you can bounce an email back to the sender so that it looks as though your address is not valid. Bravo! saliva unleashed rm
So much for the future of journalism
: Here's the list of luminaries Columbia's president appointed to a commission to rethink the future of Columbia Journalism School and thus journalism itself.
Don't hold your breath for anything new to come from this.
Though there are unquestionably some smart and capable people on the list, the cast as a whole is quite predictable.
And you will not find any emissaries from the future of any weight, experience, or credibility. I could nominate people here in blogdom but that would take on the air of blogrolling for the sake of aw-shucks links back to me; you make the list. I could nominate people who have changed journalism and reporting and commentary using the tools of this new medium and the new relationship with the audience they create, but what's the point.
Too bad. Opportunity lost.saliva unleashed rm
: See also Columbia J's interim dean, David Klatell on Romenesko, responding to Michael Wolff's excellent column on the future of Columbia J and journalism. The guy completely misses the point and the point misses him. Wolff was writing about a new vision for journalism education and media study; the temp dean whines about Wolff not listing the school's name-brand alums. Forest, meet trees.saliva unleashed rm
Google news
: Google's automated news is cool but Nick Denton points out the fatal flaw in how it works.saliva unleashed rm
Missed opportunities
: Old blogging pal Thomas Nephew gives me the punchline I should have gotten myself (I'm so ashamed!) for the HAL Internet-connected refrigerator post below: You overlooked the chilling possibilities of a wired fridge: “Open the refrigerator door, HAL….” It's catching: Tony Blair has been hanging out with George Bush too much lately. He, too, now says "nuc-u-ler." saliva unleashed rm
September 23, 2002
The morning after
: Forget the Emmys. People are talking about the Sopranos. And the best place to listen in is in the NJ.com Soprano's forum (full disclosure: one of my company's sites). It's great reading for true fans.saliva unleashed rm
The morning after
: Forget the Emmys. People are talking about the Sopranos. And the best place to listen in is in the NJ.com Soprano's forum (full disclosure: one of my company's sites). It's great reading for true fans.saliva unleashed rm
September 22, 2002
Meanwhile, in Germany
: The election is incredibly close. Bild speculates that the Greens are saving Schroeder. It appears that the Social Democrats and Greens will govern again even though the Conservatives won more than the Social Democrats. Note that the Greens are now almost 9 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, Yahoo offers you the change to build your own chancellor.
: Update: Schroeder and the Greens win. Note that they did this in part by opposing war in Iraq.saliva unleashed rm
Meanwhile, in Germany
: The election is incredibly close. Bild speculates that the Greens are saving Schroeder. It appears that the Social Democrats and Greens will govern again even though the Conservatives won more than the Social Democrats. Note that the Greens are now almost 9 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, Yahoo offers you the change to build your own chancellor.
: Update: Schroeder and the Greens win. Note that they did this in part by opposing war in Iraq.saliva unleashed rm
What's for dinner, HAL?
: The long-blathered-about Internet-connected refrigerator is here. LG is touting it not just on its web site but also spending money marketing it in magazines.
Now on the one hand, this may seem like an almost-forgotten hangover from a too-long brainstorming session in those go-go Internet years. But the simple summary of what you can do with this thing actually looks sensible:
Watch TV. Play MP3s (through four speakers). Leave messages for your family. Read email. Check your calendar. Look at screensaver family snapshots. And, of course, get recipes. saliva unleashed rm
: The one thing the spec doesn't list -- which, surely, it must -- is wireless networking. For that's what makes all this feasible. I'm now sitting on my couch with laptop literally on lap thanks to wireless. Wireless means the refrigerator wouldn't have to be cabled. High-speed wireless (802.11a) means the refrigerator can even play video.
Wireless networking is getting cheaper and cheaper and is spreading like West Nile.
Now Toshiba has announced wireless chips for TVs, stereos, and DVDs. LG, by the way, also has an Internet-connected microwave, washingt machine, and air conditioner for very remote remote control.
From a geek perspective, this is as fundamental a change as HTML: Just as HTML separated content from display, allowing any browser anywhere to display content, wireless networking separates content from devices, allowing any device anywhere in a network to play anything.So your refrigerator can play a song from the Internet or a show from your TiVo or a movie from your DVD or a voicemail from your email or a page from your PC (at home or at work).
It's really happening -- slowly, gradually, but that's the way these things are supposed to happen, at the speed of the market, not at the now-laughable "speed of the Internet." Even if slower and quieter, this is a revolution nonetheless.saliva unleashed rm
: And this, once again, is what makes AT&T Cable so incredibly stupid for trying to limit cable-modem customers to one IP -- that is, one device. They would stop you from using that refrigerator ar that Internet-ready TV. Old, dead companies just don't get it.saliva unleashed rm
What's for dinner, HAL?
: The long-blathered-about Internet-connected refrigerator is here. LG is touting it not just on its web site but also spending money marketing it in magazines.
Now on the one hand, this may seem like an almost-forgotten hangover from a too-long brainstorming session in those go-go Internet years. But the simple summary of what you can do with this thing actually looks sensible:
Watch TV. Play MP3s (through four speakers). Leave messages for your family. Read email. Check your calendar. Look at screensaver family snapshots. And, of course, get recipes. saliva unleashed rm
: The one thing the spec doesn't list -- which, surely, it must -- is wireless networking. For that's what makes all this feasible. I'm now sitting on my couch with laptop literally on lap thanks to wireless. Wireless means the refrigerator wouldn't have to be cabled. High-speed wireless (802.11a) means the refrigerator can even play video.
Wireless networking is getting cheaper and cheaper and is spreading like West Nile.
Now Toshiba has announced wireless chips for TVs, stereos, and DVDs. LG, by the way, also has an Internet-connected microwave, washingt machine, and air conditioner for very remote remote control.
From a geek perspective, this is as fundamental a change as HTML: Just as HTML separated content from display, allowing any browser anywhere to display content, wireless networking separates content from devices, allowing any device anywhere in a network to play anything.So your refrigerator can play a song from the Internet or a show from your TiVo or a movie from your DVD or a voicemail from your email or a page from your PC (at home or at work).
It's really happening -- slowly, gradually, but that's the way these things are supposed to happen, at the speed of the market, not at the now-laughable "speed of the Internet." Even if slower and quieter, this is a revolution nonetheless.saliva unleashed rm
: And this, once again, is what makes AT&T Cable so incredibly stupid for trying to limit cable-modem customers to one IP -- that is, one device. They would stop you from using that refrigerator ar that Internet-ready TV. Old, dead companies just don't get it.saliva unleashed rm
September 21, 2002
Heading for a blog primary
: I have new competition in my bid for president via Fox and the blogosphere. This guy has a platform already. But who ever believes a platform?saliva unleashed rm
Larry Summers, post-PC hero
: Harvard President Larry Summers is proving to be the hero of the post-PC era.
This week, he deftly, carefully, and even reluctantly asked whether all the anti-Israeli belching at Harvard and elsewhere in the academic left is a sign of a growing antisemitism. But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent....
And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion....
I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight, and conjured up images of Hitler’s Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel. Such views have always seemed to me alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to say that while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist in the world of today than they did a year ago.
I would like nothing more than to be wrong. It is my greatest hope and prayer that the idea of a rise of anti-Semitism proves to be a self-denying prophecy -- a prediction that carries the seeds of its own falsification. But this depends on all of us. Says Glenn Reynolds: "Harvard is lucky to have Larry Summers as its President at this important moment in its history. He may yet save its soul from the corrosive forces of hatred and irrationalism, despite the best efforts of some of its students and faculty."
I will take it a step further: This is the same man who was unafraid to spar with Cornel West over the quality of his scholarship, unafraid to say that criticism of a black man is not racist if it is academically honest and reasoned and not ill-willed; it is merely criticism.
Now he says that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic if it is shrill and tyrannical and ill-willed.
In each case, Summers has the courage to question PC orthodoxy, to put himself in the line of PC fire, to pit reason against mob emotion.
Some months back, I noted, hopefully, the end of the PC era. We're ready for it to end, to call bull bull and bullies bullies. But this new post-PC era needs a spokesman, a leader.
That is Larry Summers. saliva unleashed rm
Hello Mullah, Hello Fatwa
: Stephen Green has an f'ing brilliant fireside song for the upstate New York terrorist campers: Hello Mullah, hello Fatwa
Here I am at Camp al-Qaeda
Camp is very entertaining
But when I'm home I'll have to do some 'splaining
I went hiking with bin Laden,
He has got this kidney problem
You remember that guy Omar?
He got hit last night by some Air Force bomber.... Here comes the bandwagon: I get more support for my candidacy (below): Jeff: I never even heard of you before, and I think you're the best candidate for President (of whatever). Not telling your qualifications or policy positions is a giant plus in my book, because now you won't have to repudiate any of them after the election, plus, you can't be accused of waffling or flip-flopping.
You have my unswerving support in your run.
Dave Ivers
P.S. I teach American Government (among other things) at Eastern Michigan University I wish my professors had been so sensible. saliva unleashed rm
All work and no play makes Jack a dull goy
: The maker of the Christian veggie movies explains to Beliefnet why us goys are unfunny: For some reason, certain cultures seem to be funnier than others. Many of our funniest writers and performers come from the Jewish culture. The African-American culture also produces wildly funny people. White, middle-class Christian America doesn't. Canada manages to turn out some insanely funny white people, but we're not sure how they do it. We middle-American Christians tend to be insurance salesman and administrators. Very nice people, but not very funny people. : But at least we have more fun than Muslims, according to this.
: But, of course, PETA freaks have even a less of a sense of humor than Christians or Muslims.
: You see, the truth is, I should be Jewish. I look Jewish. I love Yiddish. I think Jewish. I hope I'm funny (or at least funnier than your average Congregationalist). And I think Jewsweek is one of the best sites on the Internet. saliva unleashed rm
The Friendship Calculator
: Matthew Yglesias gives a name to my friendship calculations, below, and also offers some good suggestions (while also making me feel like an old fart, which is very easy for him to do, that whippersnapper): Jeff Jarvis' friendship calculator is a fun exercize, but I think I'm noticing a generation gap in his scoring system. Jarvis says you give two points to a person if you have them on your IM buddy list, but only one if you have their home phone number. Speaking for myself and — I think — most of my friends, this is backwards. I've got a giant IM list including most of the Independent's editor's, Chuck Schumer's entire staff (well, everyone who was on his staff 18 months ago), folks from high school I haven't spoken to in hears, an ex-girlfriend, etc. By contrast I've only got the home telephone numbers written down (well, stored in my cell phone) of about a dozen people — that's less than my Chinese takeout master list! Maybe this is just a special circumstance of being at college where you can look up everyone's phone number with a simple UNIX command, but then again maybe I'll be like this forever. One way or another, IM is definitely primary, low-commitment, low-hassle — the telephone spells friendship gold. The HBO way: More on why HBO is so good (see my earlier post below). Ev summarizes a key point from a Fast Company story: It illustrates the advantages media companies who's customers are their audience, instead of advertisers, have in creating good stuff—and, therefore, getting the audience that everyone craves in the first place. A quote: "When it comes to creating hits, there's TV -- and then there's HBO. The difference is that the last thing HBO programmers think about is making a hit. At the networks, it's the first thing (and, some might argue, the only thing )." And the man in charge of original programming at HBO explains: That sensibility boils down to one principle, says Albrecht: "Ultimately, is it about something? By 'about something,' I mean not just about the subject, or the arena, or the location, but really about something that is deeply relevant to the human experience. Sopranos isn't about a Mob boss on Prozac. It's about a man searching for the meaning of his life. Six Feet Under isn't about a family of undertakers so much as it's about a group of people who have to deal with their feelings about death in order to get on with their own lives. The next question is, Is it the very best realization of that idea? Is it true to itself?" In short, it is art. But it also sells. saliva unleashed rm
Guvment
: Ken Layne has the kinds of tales of Government Time-Wasters and Random Idiocy that turn less-sensible people into libertarians.saliva unleashed rm
Heading for a blog primary
: I have new competition in my bid for president via Fox and the blogosphere. This guy has a platform already. But who ever believes a platform?saliva unleashed rm
Larry Summers, post-PC hero
: Harvard President Larry Summers is proving to be the hero of the post-PC era.
This week, he deftly, carefully, and even reluctantly asked whether all the anti-Israeli belching at Harvard and elsewhere in the academic left is a sign of a growing antisemitism. But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent....
And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion....
I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight, and conjured up images of Hitler’s Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel. Such views have always seemed to me alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to say that while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist in the world of today than they did a year ago.
I would like nothing more than to be wrong. It is my greatest hope and prayer that the idea of a rise of anti-Semitism proves to be a self-denying prophecy -- a prediction that carries the seeds of its own falsification. But this depends on all of us. Says Glenn Reynolds: "Harvard is lucky to have Larry Summers as its President at this important moment in its history. He may yet save its soul from the corrosive forces of hatred and irrationalism, despite the best efforts of some of its students and faculty."
I will take it a step further: This is the same man who was unafraid to spar with Cornel West over the quality of his scholarship, unafraid to say that criticism of a black man is not racist if it is academically honest and reasoned and not ill-willed; it is merely criticism.
Now he says that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic if it is shrill and tyrannical and ill-willed.
In each case, Summers has the courage to question PC orthodoxy, to put himself in the line of PC fire, to pit reason against mob emotion.
Some months back, I noted, hopefully, the end of the PC era. We're ready for it to end, to call bull bull and bullies bullies. But this new post-PC era needs a spokesman, a leader.
That is Larry Summers. saliva unleashed rm
Hello Mullah, Hello Fatwa
: Stephen Green has an f'ing brilliant fireside song for the upstate New York terrorist campers: Hello Mullah, hello Fatwa
Here I am at Camp al-Qaeda
Camp is very entertaining
But when I'm home I'll have to do some 'splaining
I went hiking with bin Laden,
He has got this kidney problem
You remember that guy Omar?
He got hit last night by some Air Force bomber.... Here comes the bandwagon: I get more support for my candidacy (below): Jeff: I never even heard of you before, and I think you're the best candidate for President (of whatever). Not telling your qualifications or policy positions is a giant plus in my book, because now you won't have to repudiate any of them after the election, plus, you can't be accused of waffling or flip-flopping.
You have my unswerving support in your run.
Dave Ivers
P.S. I teach American Government (among other things) at Eastern Michigan University I wish my professors had been so sensible. saliva unleashed rm
All work and no play makes Jack a dull goy
: The maker of the Christian veggie movies explains to Beliefnet why us goys are unfunny: For some reason, certain cultures seem to be funnier than others. Many of our funniest writers and performers come from the Jewish culture. The African-American culture also produces wildly funny people. White, middle-class Christian America doesn't. Canada manages to turn out some insanely funny white people, but we're not sure how they do it. We middle-American Christians tend to be insurance salesman and administrators. Very nice people, but not very funny people. : But at least we have more fun than Muslims, according to this.
: But, of course, PETA freaks have even a less of a sense of humor than Christians or Muslims.
: You see, the truth is, I should be Jewish. I look Jewish. I love Yiddish. I think Jewish. I hope I'm funny (or at least funnier than your average Congregationalist). And I think Jewsweek is one of the best sites on the Internet. saliva unleashed rm
The Friendship Calculator
: Matthew Yglesias gives a name to my friendship calculations, below, and also offers some good suggestions (while also making me feel like an old fart, which is very easy for him to do, that whippersnapper): Jeff Jarvis' friendship calculator is a fun exercize, but I think I'm noticing a generation gap in his scoring system. Jarvis says you give two points to a person if you have them on your IM buddy list, but only one if you have their home phone number. Speaking for myself and — I think — most of my friends, this is backwards. I've got a giant IM list including most of the Independent's editor's, Chuck Schumer's entire staff (well, everyone who was on his staff 18 months ago), folks from high school I haven't spoken to in hears, an ex-girlfriend, etc. By contrast I've only got the home telephone numbers written down (well, stored in my cell phone) of about a dozen people — that's less than my Chinese takeout master list! Maybe this is just a special circumstance of being at college where you can look up everyone's phone number with a simple UNIX command, but then again maybe I'll be like this forever. One way or another, IM is definitely primary, low-commitment, low-hassle — the telephone spells friendship gold. The HBO way: More on why HBO is so good (see my earlier post below). Ev summarizes a key point from a Fast Company story: It illustrates the advantages media companies who's customers are their audience, instead of advertisers, have in creating good stuff—and, therefore, getting the audience that everyone craves in the first place. A quote: "When it comes to creating hits, there's TV -- and then there's HBO. The difference is that the last thing HBO programmers think about is making a hit. At the networks, it's the first thing (and, some might argue, the only thing )." And the man in charge of original programming at HBO explains: That sensibility boils down to one principle, says Albrecht: "Ultimately, is it about something? By 'about something,' I mean not just about the subject, or the arena, or the location, but really about something that is deeply relevant to the human experience. Sopranos isn't about a Mob boss on Prozac. It's about a man searching for the meaning of his life. Six Feet Under isn't about a family of undertakers so much as it's about a group of people who have to deal with their feelings about death in order to get on with their own lives. The next question is, Is it the very best realization of that idea? Is it true to itself?" In short, it is art. But it also sells. saliva unleashed rm
Guvment
: Ken Layne has the kinds of tales of Government Time-Wasters and Random Idiocy that turn less-sensible people into libertarians.saliva unleashed rm
September 20, 2002
Friendship
: Nick Denton recommends Trillian -- the UberIM that handles AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and IRC all at once. I just started using it today and so far, I concur.
Nick also put up a screenshot of his chattin' buddies and I'm flattered to see my name there.
But I can't say anything about it. That would be tacky. Nick also says it's not Etiquiettely Correct (EC) to thank a blogger for a blogroll link (and so even though I'm honored to be part of his selective list, I won't say a thing, not a thing).
Wonder who's on his speed dial.saliva unleashed rm
: Which leads me to a whole new calculation of friendship in our modern age. Want to rank the people you really care about and vice versa? Add up these points:
- 1 point if the name is in your email address file.
- 2 points if the name is in your IM buddy list.
- 1 point if you gave them your secret, personal, nonwork email address.
- 1 point if you have what they tell you is their secret, personal, nonwork email address.
- 1 point if you bookmarked their blog.
- 2 points if you blogrolled their blog on your blog.
- 2 points if they blogrolled your blog on theirs.
- 1 point if you know their home phone number.
- 1 point if you gave them your home phone number.
- 3 points if you gave them your mobile phone number.
- 3 points if they gave you their mobile phone number.
- 10 bonus points if they ever sent you money on PayPal.
Now add it up and see who your true friends are.saliva unleashed rm
Vote for me!
: I'm announcing my candidacy for President.
I've been thinking about the post below (ever since I posted it, 2 minutes ago), about Fox' new reality show that will pick a presidential candidate.
And I've decided to run for your support as the candidate of the Blogosphere.
The rules say that I have to fill out questionnaires and submit a video and present the testimony of 50 members of my community who will support me.
Well, this is my community. Will you support me?
My qualifications? I'll fill you in later. My policies? Ditto. I'm media-savvy; that's what really counts to get started, right?
Vote for me!
(Or if you don't, I'll throw my support here or here or here or here but not here, cuz he's a ferner.)
: Here's one vote.saliva unleashed rm
The guy who eats the sheep testicles gets to rule the world
: Variety reports that Fox is going to create a reality show to pick a presidential candidate. "It's like a cross between 'The War Room' and 'American Idol,"' [producer R.J.] Cutler told Daily Variety. "We will be making available to every American who is qualified, by virtue of the Constitution, the opportunity to run for president."
Just as "American Idol" went searching for undiscovered musical talent, Cutler said "American Candidate" will be on the hunt for untapped political and leadership skill.
"We're trying to see if there's a young Abe Lincoln out there, somebody whose vision could turn on the public in an exciting way," he said.
The series will be seeking "the Jesse Venturas of the world, finding messages people want to hear," added Kevin Reilly, FX's president of entertainment. "Hopefully, we'll find some very qualified civil servant who lacks a power base and maybe also a plumber from Detroit who (tells) it like it is."
To land a slot on the show, applicants will have to fill out questionnaires, provide videotapes in which they explain why they would make a great president and put together a group of 50 supporters from their community who will serve as sponsors....
The number of semifinalists will be whittled down each week, based on a point system that will factor in competition results, live audience response and telephone/Internet voting. Each episode will originate from all-American locales such as Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty.
The final episode will be an "American Candidate" convention, held on the National Mall in Washington around July 4, 2004 -- about the same time the Republicans and Democrats will be prepping their conventions. In a live episode, viewers will then determine the winning candidate from among three finalists.
The winner will then decide whether to launch an official campaign. If he or she decides to make a run, a series of "War Room"-like specials will be produced following the candidate through Election Day. This is brilliant. No, really, it is frigging brilliant!
This will help set the agenda in the next presidential election. Every big-party candidate will be compared with the candidates here; every "issue" will be contrasted with the issues discussed by the real people on this reality show; every American who wants to vote for "none of the above" will now have a candidate running on that slate.
It makes a statement about democracy (and its openness) and our parties (and their failures).
It is truly democratic.
And it will surely be entertaining (especially when, yes, scandals and skeletons are found in the pasts of the TV candidates, too).
You'll hear pooh-poohing about this. Ignore it. This will be the best thing that could happen to democracy. saliva unleashed rm
The Digitallenium
: On NPR this morning, a guy who's trying to preserve artifacts and memories from an Indiana piano-turned-gramophone factory noted that the 19th century was the first that was photographed and the 20th was the first that was recorded.
And this leads to the obvious:
The 22nd century is the first to be digitized.
Nearly everything we do -- our media, our communication, our memories -- can be stored and searched and analyzed.
How this affects our lives will be the subject of NPR reports in about a hundred years.saliva unleashed rm
Wag nags: Mags' flags sag -- gag! -- as rags snag Dag bags, mailbags lag
: Here's an embarrassingly naive piece complaining about how magazine cover design has fallen.
There's one reason and one reason only: Newsstand sales. Yes, celebrities sell; that's why they're there. Yes, coverbillings sell; that's why they're there. It's marketing. It's business. This is the same sort of person who whines about movies being in color. Hey, progress hurts.
Nonetheless, the piece does give us a nice sampling of some beautiful old covers.
If you want to see (and buy) lots of great old covers (from my employer, Conde Nast), go to CondeNastArt.com. [via BoingBoing]saliva unleashed rm
Warspamming
: VNU reports that Nokia warns of a new trend -- warspamming: Another problem that has presented itself in recent weeks is that of 'warspamming'. Simply by logging into an unprotected wireless network and finding an open simple mail transfer protocol port, spammers can send their messages to 10 million names while remaining completely anonymous, as well as avoiding heavy bandwidth costs. [via Corante] saliva unleashed rm
Damn
: Wood s lot is doing off the air. No idea why. Maybe the amazing Woodman needs a life or a meal; he found phenomenal stuff, excerpted it wisely, and designed it beautifully. Damn. [via Follow me]saliva unleashed rm
Great moments in pop culture
: I can't tell apart their smokey, been-around-the-track voices but either Courtney Love or Houston the porn star just said on Howard Stern that her dog died from eating her sample breast implant.saliva unleashed rm
Friendship
: Nick Denton recommends Trillian -- the UberIM that handles AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and IRC all at once. I just started using it today and so far, I concur.
Nick also put up a screenshot of his chattin' buddies and I'm flattered to see my name there.
But I can't say anything about it. That would be tacky. Nick also says it's not Etiquiettely Correct (EC) to thank a blogger for a blogroll link (and so even though I'm honored to be part of his selective list, I won't say a thing, not a thing).
Wonder who's on his speed dial.saliva unleashed rm
: Which leads me to a whole new calculation of friendship in our modern age. Want to rank the people you really care about and vice versa? Add up these points:
- 1 point if the name is in your email address file.
- 2 points if the name is in your IM buddy list.
- 1 point if you gave them your secret, personal, nonwork email address.
- 1 point if you have what they tell you is their secret, personal, nonwork email address.
- 1 point if you bookmarked their blog.
- 2 points if you blogrolled their blog on your blog.
- 2 points if they blogrolled your blog on theirs.
- 1 point if you know their home phone number.
- 1 point if you gave them your home phone number.
- 3 points if you gave them your mobile phone number.
- 3 points if they gave you their mobile phone number.
- 10 bonus points if they ever sent you money on PayPal.
Now add it up and see who your true friends are.saliva unleashed rm
Vote for me!
: I'm announcing my candidacy for President.
I've been thinking about the post below (ever since I posted it, 2 minutes ago), about Fox' new reality show that will pick a presidential candidate.
And I've decided to run for your support as the candidate of the Blogosphere.
The rules say that I have to fill out questionnaires and submit a video and present the testimony of 50 members of my community who will support me.
Well, this is my community. Will you support me?
My qualifications? I'll fill you in later. My policies? Ditto. I'm media-savvy; that's what really counts to get started, right?
Vote for me!
(Or if you don't, I'll throw my support here or here or here or here but not here, cuz he's a ferner.)
: Here's one vote.saliva unleashed rm
The guy who eats the sheep testicles gets to rule the world
: Variety reports that Fox is going to create a reality show to pick a presidential candidate. "It's like a cross between 'The War Room' and 'American Idol,"' [producer R.J.] Cutler told Daily Variety. "We will be making available to every American who is qualified, by virtue of the Constitution, the opportunity to run for president."
Just as "American Idol" went searching for undiscovered musical talent, Cutler said "American Candidate" will be on the hunt for untapped political and leadership skill.
"We're trying to see if there's a young Abe Lincoln out there, somebody whose vision could turn on the public in an exciting way," he said.
The series will be seeking "the Jesse Venturas of the world, finding messages people want to hear," added Kevin Reilly, FX's president of entertainment. "Hopefully, we'll find some very qualified civil servant who lacks a power base and maybe also a plumber from Detroit who (tells) it like it is."
To land a slot on the show, applicants will have to fill out questionnaires, provide videotapes in which they explain why they would make a great president and put together a group of 50 supporters from their community who will serve as sponsors....
The number of semifinalists will be whittled down each week, based on a point system that will factor in competition results, live audience response and telephone/Internet voting. Each episode will originate from all-American locales such as Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty.
The final episode will be an "American Candidate" convention, held on the National Mall in Washington around July 4, 2004 -- about the same time the Republicans and Democrats will be prepping their conventions. In a live episode, viewers will then determine the winning candidate from among three finalists.
The winner will then decide whether to launch an official campaign. If he or she decides to make a run, a series of "War Room"-like specials will be produced following the candidate through Election Day. This is brilliant. No, really, it is frigging brilliant!
This will help set the agenda in the next presidential election. Every big-party candidate will be compared with the candidates here; every "issue" will be contrasted with the issues discussed by the real people on this reality show; every American who wants to vote for "none of the above" will now have a candidate running on that slate.
It makes a statement about democracy (and its openness) and our parties (and their failures).
It is truly democratic.
And it will surely be entertaining (especially when, yes, scandals and skeletons are found in the pasts of the TV candidates, too).
You'll hear pooh-poohing about this. Ignore it. This will be the best thing that could happen to democracy. saliva unleashed rm
The Digitallenium
: On NPR this morning, a guy who's trying to preserve artifacts and memories from an Indiana piano-turned-gramophone factory noted that the 19th century was the first that was photographed and the 20th was the first that was recorded.
And this leads to the obvious:
The 22nd century is the first to be digitized.
Nearly everything we do -- our media, our communication, our memories -- can be stored and searched and analyzed.
How this affects our lives will be the subject of NPR reports in about a hundred years.saliva unleashed rm
Wag nags: Mags' flags sag -- gag! -- as rags snag Dag bags, mailbags lag
: Here's an embarrassingly naive piece complaining about how magazine cover design has fallen.
There's one reason and one reason only: Newsstand sales. Yes, celebrities sell; that's why they're there. Yes, coverbillings sell; that's why they're there. It's marketing. It's business. This is the same sort of person who whines about movies being in color. Hey, progress hurts.
Nonetheless, the piece does give us a nice sampling of some beautiful old covers.
If you want to see (and buy) lots of great old covers (from my employer, Conde Nast), go to CondeNastArt.com. [via BoingBoing]saliva unleashed rm
Warspamming
: VNU reports that Nokia warns of a new trend -- warspamming: Another problem that has presented itself in recent weeks is that of 'warspamming'. Simply by logging into an unprotected wireless network and finding an open simple mail transfer protocol port, spammers can send their messages to 10 million names while remaining completely anonymous, as well as avoiding heavy bandwidth costs. [via Corante] saliva unleashed rm
Damn
: Wood s lot is doing off the air. No idea why. Maybe the amazing Woodman needs a life or a meal; he found phenomenal stuff, excerpted it wisely, and designed it beautifully. Damn. [via Follow me]saliva unleashed rm
Great moments in pop culture
: I can't tell apart their smokey, been-around-the-track voices but either Courtney Love or Houston the porn star just said on Howard Stern that her dog died from eating her sample breast implant.saliva unleashed rm
September 19, 2002
J-school OD
: Here's lots more about the Columbia J-school navel-mining, this from nearby NYU. [via Romenesko]saliva unleashed rm
J-school OD
: Here's lots more about the Columbia J-school navel-mining, this from nearby NYU. [via Romenesko]saliva unleashed rm
September 18, 2002
News: the new pornography
: A new study says that news is the No. 1 Corporate Timewaster online, beating porn and the other porn, shopping. 23 percent of surveyed workers said news is the most addictive online content. [via I Want Media]
: Nick Denton says IM is the root of all goofing off.saliva unleashed rm
I'm glad somebody's happy
: Everybody I know is grousing... about work, the economy, stocks, neighbors, even church.
But Ev is happy.saliva unleashed rm
Free speech loses something in the translation
: Emmanuelle (sporting a sporty new design) relays reports of a bizarre trial in bizarre France, accusing writer Michel Houellebecq of incitement to religious hatred for saying what he thought about Islam: Yesterday in court, Houellebecq denied inciting racism, but argued that “the Koran was inferior to the Bible as a literary work,” and that “he had the right to criticize religions as long as he doesn't attack followers of the faith.” His lawyer argues that the case effectively re-establishes the notion of blasphemy, despite the fact that France is a secular state and has no such law. Shucks: I have never liked a description of me better. Matt Welch calls me a "populist media executive."
Power from the people! saliva unleashed rm
A rabbi, a priest, and a...
: Nick Denton has two great punchlines ending posts here and here. saliva unleashed rm
Speak!
: Bill Quick starts a personal speaker's bureau. I'll bet he'd be good at speechifying and so would some other bloggers. I can name five.saliva unleashed rm
News: the new pornography
: A new study says that news is the No. 1 Corporate Timewaster online, beating porn and the other porn, shopping. 23 percent of surveyed workers said news is the most addictive online content. [via I Want Media]
: Nick Denton says IM is the root of all goofing off.saliva unleashed rm
I'm glad somebody's happy
: Everybody I know is grousing... about work, the economy, stocks, neighbors, even church.
But Ev is happy.saliva unleashed rm
Free speech loses something in the translation
: Emmanuelle (sporting a sporty new design) relays reports of a bizarre trial in bizarre France, accusing writer Michel Houellebecq of incitement to religious hatred for saying what he thought about Islam: Yesterday in court, Houellebecq denied inciting racism, but argued that “the Koran was inferior to the Bible as a literary work,” and that “he had the right to criticize religions as long as he doesn't attack followers of the faith.” His lawyer argues that the case effectively re-establishes the notion of blasphemy, despite the fact that France is a secular state and has no such law. Shucks: I have never liked a description of me better. Matt Welch calls me a "populist media executive."
Power from the people! saliva unleashed rm
A rabbi, a priest, and a...
: Nick Denton has two great punchlines ending posts here and here. saliva unleashed rm
Speak!
: Bill Quick starts a personal speaker's bureau. I'll bet he'd be good at speechifying and so would some other bloggers. I can name five.saliva unleashed rm
September 17, 2002
The United States of Amedia
: Study media and you will study America. saliva unleashed rm
You will study what America thinks and likes and watches and reads and says. Especially today -- in the era of the Internet, the first medium owned by its audience -- you will find us reflected in our media. We are what we watch. saliva unleashed rm
That is my advice for the Columbia Journalism School as it gazes at its navel, trying to decide its fate. saliva unleashed rm
That is the same advice Michael Wolff gives in a smart (as usual) column in New York this week about Columbia's School of Journalism. The university's new president recently halted the search for a new dean of the J-school and instead ordered a search of (or for) the soul of the school: What should a journalism school teach today? he asked. Wolff answers.saliva unleashed rm
Wolff advises that they study "media," not "journalism." It's good advice. saliva unleashed rm
"Journalism" is a synonym for "what editors think you should know." It is a deadening word. It is castor oil in dense, dark bottles of type. "Media," on the other hand, is a synonym for "what we the audience want." It is lively and colorful and provocative and entertaining and actually interesting.saliva unleashed rm
Journalism is inward looking; it's inside baseball; it's about us and how we do what we do in the business of journalism. Media is outward looking; it's about listening to the audience. saliva unleashed rm
Journalism is a craft, a trade, a skill. I went to J-school and I did learn things there (mostly from a sports writer who taught us how to write crime stories and also from actually working on newspapers). I learned how to write a lead and ask a question; I learned the tricks of my trade. But then I became a TV critic and started a magazine about media and now I oversee a bunch of eagerly interactive web sites, which is really just about playing host to the audience's party. I made the shift from journalism to media long ago and never regretted it.saliva unleashed rm
For media is the study of the people. Media reflects what the audience thinks (contrary to common assumption, media does not lead; media follows). To study media, you have to respect that audience; you have to care what the audience thinks; you must listen. And once you pass that barricade of snobbishness, you will see that we the audience have good taste (given half a chance to watch good shows, we will), and good sense (how many idiots have we voted out of office?), and even intelligence (note my screed on HBO, below). saliva unleashed rm
To study media, you will have to leave other prejudices behind -- for example, that TV is a cultural wasteland (rubbish; TV produces more quality entertainment than movies and books combined today); or that the mass audience has nothing to say (look at weblogs especially or at the forums on my site and you will eavesdrop on amazing conversations).saliva unleashed rm
If you study media, you will find yourself studying much more. You will get to the very core of democracy and how we as a nation come to decisions (whether that is electing presidents or starting wars or ending them). You will understand the very essence of commerce and capitalism and how we make choices and calculate value (read: brands). You will get a new window on our society and its every aspect (e.g., the state of the modern family and of religion and of education and of work).saliva unleashed rm
All this was true before, but it is truer now with the Internet. For now, at last, the audience itself has a medium and a voice. Now there is something worth studying.saliva unleashed rm
: And please don't send me email reminding me that "media" is/are plural. I used to be a copy editor, too. It just doesn't sound right to say "media are" in a discussion such as this.saliva unleashed rm
And the winner izzzzzzzz...
: The Online Journalism Awards finalists are announced. How boring, as the name indicates.saliva unleashed rm
My baby's new dad
: Entertainment Weekly has a new editor.saliva unleashed rm
The United States of Amedia
: Study media and you will study America. saliva unleashed rm
You will study what America thinks and likes and watches and reads and says. Especially today -- in the era of the Internet, the first medium owned by its audience -- you will find us reflected in our media. We are what we watch. saliva unleashed rm
That is my advice for the Columbia Journalism School as it gazes at its navel, trying to decide its fate. saliva unleashed rm
That is the same advice Michael Wolff gives in a smart (as usual) column in New York this week about Columbia's School of Journalism. The university's new president recently halted the search for a new dean of the J-school and instead ordered a search of (or for) the soul of the school: What should a journalism school teach today? he asked. Wolff answers.saliva unleashed rm
Wolff advises that they study "media," not "journalism." It's good advice. saliva unleashed rm
"Journalism" is a synonym for "what editors think you should know." It is a deadening word. It is castor oil in dense, dark bottles of type. "Media," on the other hand, is a synonym for "what we the audience want." It is lively and colorful and provocative and entertaining and actually interesting.saliva unleashed rm
Journalism is inward looking; it's inside baseball; it's about us and how we do what we do in the business of journalism. Media is outward looking; it's about listening to the audience. saliva unleashed rm
Journalism is a craft, a trade, a skill. I went to J-school and I did learn things there (mostly from a sports writer who taught us how to write crime stories and also from actually working on newspapers). I learned how to write a lead and ask a question; I learned the tricks of my trade. But then I became a TV critic and started a magazine about media and now I oversee a bunch of eagerly interactive web sites, which is really just about playing host to the audience's party. I made the shift from journalism to media long ago and never regretted it.saliva unleashed rm
For media is the study of the people. Media reflects what the audience thinks (contrary to common assumption, media does not lead; media follows). To study media, you have to respect that audience; you have to care what the audience thinks; you must listen. And once you pass that barricade of snobbishness, you will see that we the audience have good taste (given half a chance to watch good shows, we will), and good sense (how many idiots have we voted out of office?), and even intelligence (note my screed on HBO, below). saliva unleashed rm
To study media, you will have to leave other prejudices behind -- for example, that TV is a cultural wasteland (rubbish; TV produces more quality entertainment than movies and books combined today); or that the mass audience has nothing to say (look at weblogs especially or at the forums on my site and you will eavesdrop on amazing conversations).saliva unleashed rm
If you study media, you will find yourself studying much more. You will get to the very core of democracy and how we as a nation come to decisions (whether that is electing presidents or starting wars or ending them). You will understand the very essence of commerce and capitalism and how we make choices and calculate value (read: brands). You will get a new window on our society and its every aspect (e.g., the state of the modern family and of religion and of education and of work).saliva unleashed rm
All this was true before, but it is truer now with the Internet. For now, at last, the audience itself has a medium and a voice. Now there is something worth studying.saliva unleashed rm
: And please don't send me email reminding me that "media" is/are plural. I used to be a copy editor, too. It just doesn't sound right to say "media are" in a discussion such as this.saliva unleashed rm
And the winner izzzzzzzz...
: The Online Journalism Awards finalists are announced. How boring, as the name indicates.saliva unleashed rm
My baby's new dad
: Entertainment Weekly has a new editor.saliva unleashed rm
September 16, 2002
Dr. Blog
: Woods Lot (which finds no end of amazing stuff from all corners of the web world) points us to a sympathetic scholarly paper on bloggering from the University of Oslo. (I just discovered I'm in the bibliography. Mom would be so impressed.)saliva unleashed rm
The ratings that count
: Here is what the audience is saying about last night's Soprano's season premiere, on my NJ.com Soprano's forum. They're unenthusiastic.
: Update: But now the defenders of last night's episode are piping up.
: Soprano's, the Jersey bus tour.
: Something they could use on the Soprano's in this tight economy: do-it-yourself casket kits [via WSJ].saliva unleashed rm
The W Network
: Doesn't Fox go overboard broadcasting every single speech by George Bush that he makes? Are they all news? saliva unleashed rm
Death to paperwork
: The Palm Beach Post reports that copy paper stores in the mailroom of the anthrax-infected tabloid HQ in Florida spores and that copying machines then distributed them throughout the building: According to the FBI's reconstruction of events, AMI employees unwittingly distributed the clinging spores throughout the building when taking reams of copy paper to every department in the building, including AMI's library, executive offices and such publications as The National Enquirer, Weekly World News and National Examiner, which were published in the building.
When the copy paper was inserted into the machines and used to make copies, investigators believe, the spores dislodged and were "aerosolized" into the atmosphere by the whirring fans and other moving parts of the high-speed copiers. Blogcritics: I'm delighted to have my first piece included in Eric Olsen's Blogcritics.com. It's the piece about HBO and the Sopranos, below. It felt good to write about show biz again.
: Also, note the bad news: Eric is abandoning his other blog because he has a life; the good news: he's now devoting his considerable energies to Blogcritics. saliva unleashed rm
Dr. Blog
: Woods Lot (which finds no end of amazing stuff from all corners of the web world) points us to a sympathetic scholarly paper on bloggering from the University of Oslo. (I just discovered I'm in the bibliography. Mom would be so impressed.)saliva unleashed rm
The ratings that count
: Here is what the audience is saying about last night's Soprano's season premiere, on my NJ.com Soprano's forum. They're unenthusiastic.
: Update: But now the defenders of last night's episode are piping up.
: Soprano's, the Jersey bus tour.
: Something they could use on the Soprano's in this tight economy: do-it-yourself casket kits [via WSJ].saliva unleashed rm
The W Network
: Doesn't Fox go overboard broadcasting every single speech by George Bush that he makes? Are they all news? saliva unleashed rm
Death to paperwork
: The Palm Beach Post reports that copy paper stores in the mailroom of the anthrax-infected tabloid HQ in Florida spores and that copying machines then distributed them throughout the building: According to the FBI's reconstruction of events, AMI employees unwittingly distributed the clinging spores throughout the building when taking reams of copy paper to every department in the building, including AMI's library, executive offices and such publications as The National Enquirer, Weekly World News and National Examiner, which were published in the building.
When the copy paper was inserted into the machines and used to make copies, investigators believe, the spores dislodged and were "aerosolized" into the atmosphere by the whirring fans and other moving parts of the high-speed copiers. Blogcritics: I'm delighted to have my first piece included in Eric Olsen's Blogcritics.com. It's the piece about HBO and the Sopranos, below. It felt good to write about show biz again.
: Also, note the bad news: Eric is abandoning his other blog because he has a life; the good news: he's now devoting his considerable energies to Blogcritics. saliva unleashed rm
September 15, 2002
The HBO Weltanschauung - or - Why we love The Sopranos
: There's a reason the return of The Sopranos is getting so much hype and praise. There's a reason that HBO's original dramas and comedies get so many awards. There's a reason we as a nation are taking to these shows with enthusiasm, embracing them like oracles of the age. The reason:
Honesty.
HBO's Weltanschauung -- its world view -- is the most honest you can find on TV. And it's not a pretty view.
Analyze the lineup:
: The Sopranos is all about corruption, how a family, a business, a relationship can be corrupted by greed, power, sex, selfishness, evil.
: Six Feet Under is about family -- a family who might as well be dead, like the dead they care for
: Sex and the City says we're all terribly lonely -- and as if that's not bad enough, we're all terribly horny, too.
: Curb Your Enthusiasm tells the story of an everyman -- and says that every man can be an ass.
: Oz shows a world drained of any redeeming virtue; it invents hell.
: The Wire finds too many similarities between the means and motives of criminals and cops.
: Arli$$ says sports is show biz and show biz is bull.
: Project Greenlight took real show biz executives and exposed them for the obnoxious boors we always suspected they were.
: Taxicab Confessions brings grim, sad reality to reality TV.
: Mind of the Married Man makes Berman's view of marriage look like Mormon propaganda.
No, it's not pretty, not at all. Yet we love it -- because it speaks to us, it speaks for us, it reflects our view of life, it reflects a view you won't find elsewhere on TV or in movies. It's honest.
Compare this to the story in the Wall Street Journal on Friday about how ABC/Disney is trying desperately to appeal to middle America by rounding off every edge from every show. ABC is trying to pander to us. This is not creativity. This is corporate committee think, and committees always kill creativity. This has no voice, no vision. This is essentially insulting to every single one of us in the audience -- it says that we can't feel for ourselves, that we can't appreciate the message of art, that we want to be pandered to, that we're all just so much cultural tapioca, media mush. Says the Journal: It's the opposite of the strategy earning industry praise and envy for HBO, where writers and producers create shows such as "The Sopranos" without much corporate interference. Also, in managing by consensus, ABC runs the risk of turning out middle-of-the-road shows rife with compromises. Many breakout hits -- "Seinfeld," "Hill Street Blues" and ABC's own "NYPD Blue" -- don't test well or flout the conventions. You see, H.L. Mencken was dead wrong. He said: "No one in this world... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." But plenty of network executives have done just that.
HBO, on the other hand, is giving us, the great masses of plain people, the audience, credit for our considerable taste and intelligence by giving us quality shows (that are even worth paying for). But they aren't the first to do that; NBC, in its heyday, gave us lots of quality and smart shows; alonside all the reality kitsch now filling the air (an overdose that will fade away like all fads before) there are many good shows on TV now (and they rise to the top of the ratings because we, the people, we Americans, do, contrary to popular assumption, have good taste).
No, what's truly remarkable about HBO's lineup is that it has the courage to be so dark and often depressing.
And what's remarkable about America today is that we have responded to this so eagerly. We're eager to be depressed, eh?
That says much about our true national psyche.
On the outside, we're waving flags and fists; we're buying cars and homes and keeping the economy going; we're playing the strong, silent types.
But on the inside, we're pretty damned miserable, depressed, angry, lonely, and frustrated -- we're a mopey mess -- and watching HBO is our group therapy. We know the truth that HBO's show speak about corruption is fully realized in Enron, Anderson, Worldcom, Tyco, et al. We know that show biz is bull and reality can be sad. We as nation -- where too many of us are either posting personals online or searching for porn online or now getting divorces online -- are too often lonely. It all rings true.
That's why we love HBO.
Mind you, honesty doesn't have to be dark and depressing and sad and angry -- just some/much/most of the time. It's not the mood that matters; that's not what truly speaks to us. Instead, it is the willingness, the courage to be honest that grabs us.
That is the secret to Howard Stern's unprecedented popularity and success. He's honest, unflinchingly, bravely honest. And funny.
So there is a moral to this story: If you give us credit for our intelligence and if you give creative talent the room to create and if you don't try to lie to us, we the audience will respond and you will succeed. HBO is the proof. saliva unleashed rm
The HBO Weltanschauung - or - Why we love The Sopranos
: There's a reason the return of The Sopranos is getting so much hype and praise. There's a reason that HBO's original dramas and comedies get so many awards. There's a reason we as a nation are taking to these shows with enthusiasm, embracing them like oracles of the age. The reason:
Honesty.
HBO's Weltanschauung -- its world view -- is the most honest you can find on TV. And it's not a pretty view.
Analyze the lineup:
: The Sopranos is all about corruption, how a family, a business, a relationship can be corrupted by greed, power, sex, selfishness, evil.
: Six Feet Under is about family -- a family who might as well be dead, like the dead they care for
: Sex and the City says we're all terribly lonely -- and as if that's not bad enough, we're all terribly horny, too.
: Curb Your Enthusiasm tells the story of an everyman -- and says that every man can be an ass.
: Oz shows a world drained of any redeeming virtue; it invents hell.
: The Wire finds too many similarities between the means and motives of criminals and cops.
: Arli$$ says sports is show biz and show biz is bull.
: Project Greenlight took real show biz executives and exposed them for the obnoxious boors we always suspected they were.
: Taxicab Confessions brings grim, sad reality to reality TV.
: Mind of the Married Man makes Berman's view of marriage look like Mormon propaganda.
No, it's not pretty, not at all. Yet we love it -- because it speaks to us, it speaks for us, it reflects our view of life, it reflects a view you won't find elsewhere on TV or in movies. It's honest.
Compare this to the story in the Wall Street Journal on Friday about how ABC/Disney is trying desperately to appeal to middle America by rounding off every edge from every show. ABC is trying to pander to us. This is not creativity. This is corporate committee think, and committees always kill creativity. This has no voice, no vision. This is essentially insulting to every single one of us in the audience -- it says that we can't feel for ourselves, that we can't appreciate the message of art, that we want to be pandered to, that we're all just so much cultural tapioca, media mush. Says the Journal: It's the opposite of the strategy earning industry praise and envy for HBO, where writers and producers create shows such as "The Sopranos" without much corporate interference. Also, in managing by consensus, ABC runs the risk of turning out middle-of-the-road shows rife with compromises. Many breakout hits -- "Seinfeld," "Hill Street Blues" and ABC's own "NYPD Blue" -- don't test well or flout the conventions. You see, H.L. Mencken was dead wrong. He said: "No one in this world... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." But plenty of network executives have done just that.
HBO, on the other hand, is giving us, the great masses of plain people, the audience, credit for our considerable taste and intelligence by giving us quality shows (that are even worth paying for). But they aren't the first to do that; NBC, in its heyday, gave us lots of quality and smart shows; alonside all the reality kitsch now filling the air (an overdose that will fade away like all fads before) there are many good shows on TV now (and they rise to the top of the ratings because we, the people, we Americans, do, contrary to popular assumption, have good taste).
No, what's truly remarkable about HBO's lineup is that it has the courage to be so dark and often depressing.
And what's remarkable about America today is that we have responded to this so eagerly. We're eager to be depressed, eh?
That says much about our true national psyche.
On the outside, we're waving flags and fists; we're buying cars and homes and keeping the economy going; we're playing the strong, silent types.
But on the inside, we're pretty damned miserable, depressed, angry, lonely, and frustrated -- we're a mopey mess -- and watching HBO is our group therapy. We know the truth that HBO's show speak about corruption is fully realized in Enron, Anderson, Worldcom, Tyco, et al. We know that show biz is bull and reality can be sad. We as nation -- where too many of us are either posting personals online or searching for porn online or now getting divorces online -- are too often lonely. It all rings true.
That's why we love HBO.
Mind you, honesty doesn't have to be dark and depressing and sad and angry -- just some/much/most of the time. It's not the mood that matters; that's not what truly speaks to us. Instead, it is the willingness, the courage to be honest that grabs us.
That is the secret to Howard Stern's unprecedented popularity and success. He's honest, unflinchingly, bravely honest. And funny.
So there is a moral to this story: If you give us credit for our intelligence and if you give creative talent the room to create and if you don't try to lie to us, we the audience will respond and you will succeed. HBO is the proof. saliva unleashed rm
September 14, 2002
Society of 9.11 Survivors
: I wish someone -- I wish I -- had started a society of 9.11 survivors for one purpose: to thank the police and fire fighters and PATH and subway and World Trade Center workers who saved our lives, thousands and thousands of us.
I wish such a society existed for the anniversary so we could have gotten together to share our stories of that day and since and to share our gratitude and just to know that we're not alone.
I wish I had not thought of this too late. Is it too late?saliva unleashed rm
Take the point, blogger
: Matt Welch finds the blog of the times -- by soldiers in Afghanistan. saliva unleashed rm
Instapundit readers, take note
: The good idea to which the generous Mr. Reynolds links is below under the headline, "Go West, Old Men." Welch and Layne link likewise, for obvious reasons. It's about their L.A. paper.saliva unleashed rm
 Every picture is worth a thousand cheers
: From the arrest of terrorist scum in Pakistan. [via Focus]saliva unleashed rm
: Details of the arrest from a Pakistani paper: There were three raids between Sept. 9 and 11 in Pakistan. In one, a grenade and gun battle ensued. Sitting in a black sedan, four agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) watched intently as a posse of Pakistan military intelligence and police officials climbed a narrow staircase to enter a second floor apartment of a four-apartment building in Karachi's posh residential district of Defence Society early morning on September 11....
"The Pakistani was such a motivated extremist that he inscribed Allah o' Akbar with his blood on the wall before he died of bullet wounds on the chest and the neck," according to a police official who confessed that the scene disturbed him emotionally....
Karachi police and other security officials suspect that the eight Yemenis arrested during the recent anti al-Qaeda crackdown may include the two Yemenis who are believed to have aided Khalid Sheikh in the killing and subsequent decapitation of [murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel] Pearl's body. What he says: Reid Stott speaks the truth about Eunice Stone and the (young, male, Arab) bozos at Shoney's who thought that terrorism is is a joke and that Americans are the butt of that joke.
: See also Donald Sensing, whom Reid quotes: Listen up: If you are of Middle Eastern appearance and you talk or act in any way that makes me think you are a potential threat to my safety or that of my countrymen, be forewarned: I will profile your tail from here to Timbuktu. I will rat on you like the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Paper: The Blue Man Group produces a beautiful September 11th memorial (which I just found via Bear): a video montage of the papers that fell on one neighborhood -- far from the World Trade Center -- on September 11, singed remainders and reminders of the lives there. saliva unleashed rm
One life, one death
: I'm sure I was one of many bloggers to get email pointing us to a memorial site for one beautiful young woman named Shiri, one of too many victims of too many terrorist attacks in Israel. There are far too many Shiris.saliva unleashed rm
Beats Graceland
: Via Die Zeit, a link to a phenomenal site mapping the tombs of the pharoahs, the Theban Mapping Project. Launch the atlas and don't miss the 3D tomb.saliva unleashed rm
Reason No. 4,786,547 why AT&T is a dead empire
: AT&T screws its cable modem customers. Big time. saliva unleashed rm
Amen
: From one of my favorite blogs -- Holy Weblog -- comes a link to a parody of those obnoxious billboards that purport to speak for God (which is just as obnoxious as bumperstickers speaking for God; they're just as stupid but they're a lot bigger). At SaysGod.com, here are alternative billboards:
- I never said, "Thou shalt not think." —God
: You're not tracking those bloody footprints in here. —God
: I'm flattered you liked my book so much. Now why don't you read something new? —God
: I don't blame video games when my children start shooting each other. —God As Goober used to say: Surprise, surprise, surprise!: Andrew Sullivan is becoming a self-parodying cliche. Who can be surprised that he says today: "It seems clear to me in retrospect that Bush's summer strategy has been really, really smart."
: Or was it Gomer? saliva unleashed rm
Autobiography for short attention spans
: Clay Waters' 100 things about one blogger. 82. My parents say I learned to read and talk off Sesame Street when I was around 3, which means I grew up pretty much without a Southern accent. I sound like Grover instead. Cheaper and far more entertaining than therapy. saliva unleashed rm
Copeland's law
: Henry Copeland decrees: Site traffic multiplies in proportion to outbound links. Henry says he and I are thinking in parallel on how blogs work as a community-of-the-whole (below). Except his thoughts are smarter.
: As I think about it, Copeland's law stands in many other arenas: The more email you send, the more email you receive. Or simply put: The more you interact, the more you interact. saliva unleashed rm
Society of 9.11 Survivors
: I wish someone -- I wish I -- had started a society of 9.11 survivors for one purpose: to thank the police and fire fighters and PATH and subway and World Trade Center workers who saved our lives, thousands and thousands of us.
I wish such a society existed for the anniversary so we could have gotten together to share our stories of that day and since and to share our gratitude and just to know that we're not alone.
I wish I had not thought of this too late. Is it too late?saliva unleashed rm
Take the point, blogger
: Matt Welch finds the blog of the times -- by soldiers in Afghanistan. saliva unleashed rm
Instapundit readers, take note
: The good idea to which the generous Mr. Reynolds links is below under the headline, "Go West, Old Men." Welch and Layne link likewise, for obvious reasons. It's about their L.A. paper.saliva unleashed rm
Every picture is worth a thousand cheers
: From the arrest of terrorist scum in Pakistan. [via Focus]saliva unleashed rm
: Details of the arrest from a Pakistani paper: There were three raids between Sept. 9 and 11 in Pakistan. In one, a grenade and gun battle ensued. Sitting in a black sedan, four agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) watched intently as a posse of Pakistan military intelligence and police officials climbed a narrow staircase to enter a second floor apartment of a four-apartment building in Karachi's posh residential district of Defence Society early morning on September 11....
"The Pakistani was such a motivated extremist that he inscribed Allah o' Akbar with his blood on the wall before he died of bullet wounds on the chest and the neck," according to a police official who confessed that the scene disturbed him emotionally....
Karachi police and other security officials suspect that the eight Yemenis arrested during the recent anti al-Qaeda crackdown may include the two Yemenis who are believed to have aided Khalid Sheikh in the killing and subsequent decapitation of [murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel] Pearl's body. What he says: Reid Stott speaks the truth about Eunice Stone and the (young, male, Arab) bozos at Shoney's who thought that terrorism is is a joke and that Americans are the butt of that joke.
: See also Donald Sensing, whom Reid quotes: Listen up: If you are of Middle Eastern appearance and you talk or act in any way that makes me think you are a potential threat to my safety or that of my countrymen, be forewarned: I will profile your tail from here to Timbuktu. I will rat on you like the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Paper: The Blue Man Group produces a beautiful September 11th memorial (which I just found via Bear): a video montage of the papers that fell on one neighborhood -- far from the World Trade Center -- on September 11, singed remainders and reminders of the lives there. saliva unleashed rm
One life, one death
: I'm sure I was one of many bloggers to get email pointing us to a memorial site for one beautiful young woman named Shiri, one of too many victims of too many terrorist attacks in Israel. There are far too many Shiris.saliva unleashed rm
Beats Graceland
: Via Die Zeit, a link to a phenomenal site mapping the tombs of the pharoahs, the Theban Mapping Project. Launch the atlas and don't miss the 3D tomb.saliva unleashed rm
Reason No. 4,786,547 why AT&T is a dead empire
: AT&T screws its cable modem customers. Big time. saliva unleashed rm
Amen
: From one of my favorite blogs -- Holy Weblog -- comes a link to a parody of those obnoxious billboards that purport to speak for God (which is just as obnoxious as bumperstickers speaking for God; they're just as stupid but they're a lot bigger). At SaysGod.com, here are alternative billboards:
- I never said, "Thou shalt not think." —God
: You're not tracking those bloody footprints in here. —God
: I'm flattered you liked my book so much. Now why don't you read something new? —God
: I don't blame video games when my children start shooting each other. —God As Goober used to say: Surprise, surprise, surprise!: Andrew Sullivan is becoming a self-parodying cliche. Who can be surprised that he says today: "It seems clear to me in retrospect that Bush's summer strategy has been really, really smart."
: Or was it Gomer? saliva unleashed rm
Autobiography for short attention spans
: Clay Waters' 100 things about one blogger. 82. My parents say I learned to read and talk off Sesame Street when I was around 3, which means I grew up pretty much without a Southern accent. I sound like Grover instead. Cheaper and far more entertaining than therapy. saliva unleashed rm
Copeland's law
: Henry Copeland decrees: Site traffic multiplies in proportion to outbound links. Henry says he and I are thinking in parallel on how blogs work as a community-of-the-whole (below). Except his thoughts are smarter.
: As I think about it, Copeland's law stands in many other arenas: The more email you send, the more email you receive. Or simply put: The more you interact, the more you interact. saliva unleashed rm
September 13, 2002
Go West, old men
: The Chicago Tribune is considering starting a tabloid aimed at the "MTV generation" (an unfortunately condescending label but let's get past that).
A decent if ironic idea. I used to work on a tabloid in Chicago owned by Tribune: Chicago Today, the paper that had no tomorrow. Tribune Company (never say "The Tribune Company") folded the paper in 1974.
I have a different idea for Tribune: Start this tabloid in L.A. It's a city that could use another paper (as opposed to Chicago, which already has another). It's the entertainment capital of the world (these people make the stuff the MTV generation watches). Don't do it out of your recently acquired LA Times; that would be a disaster and too expensive. Instead, find a couple of smart, eager, iconoclastic journalists to do it independently; fund the venture; add a dash of synergy (in terms of ad sales and distribution); enjoy the intramural competition; enjoy, too, the extended reach into the market.
Of course, I can nominate just the two guys for the job. You can see their work here. They already have a plan. Just set them loose. saliva unleashed rm
: Note, too that this beats the hell out of former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan's plan to start an L.A. version of the NY Observer, a very good paper that, nonetheless, loses money.saliva unleashed rm
Life in verse
: Will Warren has a truly startling poem today about the malignancy that terrorism is and illustrating it with a cancer diagnosis in verse. Amazing. He concludes: On that day we awoke, and this we know:
The man of malice poses the greatest threat.
If his way be clear, our doom, and his, are met.
Our best will block his way, and each will go
As a surgeon, not exchanging eye for eye:
Excising malignity, dispatching the lie. True American heroine: Eunice Stone.
: Miami.com now reports: Federal sources involved in the investigation said they believe the three men - all U.S. citizens - were playing a stupid joke on another restaurant patron who gave them a suspicious look. Not surprising. But Eunice still did the right thing and these three "jokers" will learn a lesson.
Terrorism is no joke. saliva unleashed rm
What every man needs
: A lead-lined cup in his pants.saliva unleashed rm
:-(
: A Microsoft researcher finds what is purported to be the first :-).
Disappointing: It wasn't a punchline. It was a boring geek bulletin-board post proposing a new and open standard for irritatingly cute uses of punctuation. [via News.com]saliva unleashed rm
Saloon.com
: Tim Blair gives it to Salon as only he can.saliva unleashed rm
Go West, old men
: The Chicago Tribune is considering starting a tabloid aimed at the "MTV generation" (an unfortunately condescending label but let's get past that).
A decent if ironic idea. I used to work on a tabloid in Chicago owned by Tribune: Chicago Today, the paper that had no tomorrow. Tribune Company (never say "The Tribune Company") folded the paper in 1974.
I have a different idea for Tribune: Start this tabloid in L.A. It's a city that could use another paper (as opposed to Chicago, which already has another). It's the entertainment capital of the world (these people make the stuff the MTV generation watches). Don't do it out of your recently acquired LA Times; that would be a disaster and too expensive. Instead, find a couple of smart, eager, iconoclastic journalists to do it independently; fund the venture; add a dash of synergy (in terms of ad sales and distribution); enjoy the intramural competition; enjoy, too, the extended reach into the market.
Of course, I can nominate just the two guys for the job. You can see their work here. They already have a plan. Just set them loose. saliva unleashed rm
: Note, too that this beats the hell out of former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan's plan to start an L.A. version of the NY Observer, a very good paper that, nonetheless, loses money.saliva unleashed rm
Life in verse
: Will Warren has a truly startling poem today about the malignancy that terrorism is and illustrating it with a cancer diagnosis in verse. Amazing. He concludes: On that day we awoke, and this we know:
The man of malice poses the greatest threat.
If his way be clear, our doom, and his, are met.
Our best will block his way, and each will go
As a surgeon, not exchanging eye for eye:
Excising malignity, dispatching the lie. True American heroine: Eunice Stone.
: Miami.com now reports: Federal sources involved in the investigation said they believe the three men - all U.S. citizens - were playing a stupid joke on another restaurant patron who gave them a suspicious look. Not surprising. But Eunice still did the right thing and these three "jokers" will learn a lesson.
Terrorism is no joke. saliva unleashed rm
What every man needs
: A lead-lined cup in his pants.saliva unleashed rm
:-(
: A Microsoft researcher finds what is purported to be the first :-).
Disappointing: It wasn't a punchline. It was a boring geek bulletin-board post proposing a new and open standard for irritatingly cute uses of punctuation. [via News.com]saliva unleashed rm
Saloon.com
: Tim Blair gives it to Salon as only he can.saliva unleashed rm
September 12, 2002
The Church of Blog
: Four times as many people have read my sermon online as heard it in church last night. saliva unleashed rm
Geobigot
: Was I making fun of California. Oh, sorry, I should have been making fun of Florida, the state filled with moldy-brained doofi.saliva unleashed rm
Community, care and feeding of
: Clay Shirky has wise things to say about community (speaking to a bunch from the BBC): The order of things in broadcast is "filter, then publish." The order in communities is "publish, then filter." If you go to a dinner party, you don't submit your potential comments to the hosts, so that they can tell you which ones are good enough to air before the group, but this is how broadcast works every day. Writers submit their stories in advance, to be edited or rejected before the public ever sees them. Participants in a community, by contrast, say what they have to say, and the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact.
Media people often criticize the content on the internet for being unedited, because everywhere one looks, there is low quality -- bad writing, ugly images, poor design. What they fail to understand is that the internet is strongly edited, but the editorial judgment is applied at the edges, not the center, and it is applied after the fact, not in advance. Google edits web pages by aggregating user judgment about them, Slashdot edits posts by letting readers rate them, and of course users edit all the time, by choosing what (and who) to read. He goes on to say that weblogs aren't really community because there isn't, in a weblog, a lot of community communication. They're publishing. And he's right.
But what has fascinated me about this world of weblogs is that as a group, they are a community. There is, to use the jargon, "intercast" communications between and among webloggers: I link to and comment on somebody, publicly; they do likewise; others join in; zap: community.
And there is also the sort of after-the-fact editing-by-community that Shirky describes above: The best (or most controversial or bombastic) get links; links beget links; Blogdex quantifies the links; that, in turn, begets links and traffic (for a day, anyway). Cream rises. (Then it quickly curdles.... This is the online equivalent of the old newspaper fishwrap metaphor: Hot today, history tomorrow.) saliva unleashed rm
A vente connection
: When I left the memorial services in Manhattan yesterday, I wanted to sit down and write -- and blog -- just then, so I found the nearest Starbucks and, voila, I was online. I have to say, T-mobile has this working like a charm: easy and slick if too expensive. If I were still a travelin' man, I'd be using this all the time. It almost makes me like Starbucks. Almost.saliva unleashed rm
Go out of business? That assumes they ever had a business...
: A truly stupid, bit-wasting debate going on over Salon and its tasteless publication of tasteless comments on September 11th (and what was I saying about Californians and September 11th?). Damian Perry says they should go out of business, then wimps out and says he doesn't really mean it, and then Scott Rosenberg of Salon blathers on, as only a Salonite can, about all this.
Meanwhile, Salon glub-glubs under its debt and lack of profit. Fate will take its course. saliva unleashed rm
On lighter notes...
: Can't someone take the President aside and teach him how to say "nuclear?"
: So I'm walking down Sixth Avenue today, downtown of midtown, and there are two young Greenpeace geeks wearing yellow (is it too obvious if they wear green? and by the way, why does that trucking company Yellow have an orange logo, but I digress) hitting up everyone walking by like a couple of sidewalk spammers. I walk by them twice. They hit everyone.
But they don't hit me.
I'm wearing a gray suit and white shirt.
A colleague of mine calls that my protective coloration for my job. Works for the street, too: "Don't bother the guy in the suit. Obviously, a greedy, earth-killing ass."
: I'm glad September 11th is over.
: I wasn't going to say anything about September 11th today. But here I am because I have to: Read Lileks today; even better than yesterday.
: And here I go again: A radioactive ship caught off the Jersey coast. Just when I thought it was safe...saliva unleashed rm
The Church of Blog
: Four times as many people have read my sermon online as heard it in church last night. saliva unleashed rm
Geobigot
: Was I making fun of California. Oh, sorry, I should have been making fun of Florida, the state filled with moldy-brained doofi.saliva unleashed rm
Community, care and feeding of
: Clay Shirky has wise things to say about community (speaking to a bunch from the BBC): The order of things in broadcast is "filter, then publish." The order in communities is "publish, then filter." If you go to a dinner party, you don't submit your potential comments to the hosts, so that they can tell you which ones are good enough to air before the group, but this is how broadcast works every day. Writers submit their stories in advance, to be edited or rejected before the public ever sees them. Participants in a community, by contrast, say what they have to say, and the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact.
Media people often criticize the content on the internet for being unedited, because everywhere one looks, there is low quality -- bad writing, ugly images, poor design. What they fail to understand is that the internet is strongly edited, but the editorial judgment is applied at the edges, not the center, and it is applied after the fact, not in advance. Google edits web pages by aggregating user judgment about them, Slashdot edits posts by letting readers rate them, and of course users edit all the time, by choosing what (and who) to read. He goes on to say that weblogs aren't really community because there isn't, in a weblog, a lot of community communication. They're publishing. And he's right.
But what has fascinated me about this world of weblogs is that as a group, they are a community. There is, to use the jargon, "intercast" communications between and among webloggers: I link to and comment on somebody, publicly; they do likewise; others join in; zap: community.
And there is also the sort of after-the-fact editing-by-community that Shirky describes above: The best (or most controversial or bombastic) get links; links beget links; Blogdex quantifies the links; that, in turn, begets links and traffic (for a day, anyway). Cream rises. (Then it quickly curdles.... This is the online equivalent of the old newspaper fishwrap metaphor: Hot today, history tomorrow.) saliva unleashed rm
A vente connection
: When I left the memorial services in Manhattan yesterday, I wanted to sit down and write -- and blog -- just then, so I found the nearest Starbucks and, voila, I was online. I have to say, T-mobile has this working like a charm: easy and slick if too expensive. If I were still a travelin' man, I'd be using this all the time. It almost makes me like Starbucks. Almost.saliva unleashed rm
Go out of business? That assumes they ever had a business...
: A truly stupid, bit-wasting debate going on over Salon and its tasteless publication of tasteless comments on September 11th (and what was I saying about Californians and September 11th?). Damian Perry says they should go out of business, then wimps out and says he doesn't really mean it, and then Scott Rosenberg of Salon blathers on, as only a Salonite can, about all this.
Meanwhile, Salon glub-glubs under its debt and lack of profit. Fate will take its course. saliva unleashed rm
On lighter notes...
: Can't someone take the President aside and teach him how to say "nuclear?"
: So I'm walking down Sixth Avenue today, downtown of midtown, and there are two young Greenpeace geeks wearing yellow (is it too obvious if they wear green? and by the way, why does that trucking company Yellow have an orange logo, but I digress) hitting up everyone walking by like a couple of sidewalk spammers. I walk by them twice. They hit everyone.
But they don't hit me.
I'm wearing a gray suit and white shirt.
A colleague of mine calls that my protective coloration for my job. Works for the street, too: "Don't bother the guy in the suit. Obviously, a greedy, earth-killing ass."
: I'm glad September 11th is over.
: I wasn't going to say anything about September 11th today. But here I am because I have to: Read Lileks today; even better than yesterday.
: And here I go again: A radioactive ship caught off the Jersey coast. Just when I thought it was safe...saliva unleashed rm
September 11, 2002
Today...
...I came up out of the subway at the World Trade Center not long before 8 o'clock -- one hour short of a year after I came up out of the PATH train here.
In front of me were family members waiting to get into the memorial service, some carrying, many wearing the pictures of their loved ones, gone.
A parade of pain.
...The doors of St. Peter's Catholic Church were open and people were wandering in. I did, too, and found a line had formed for communion. I debated and then decided there was no reason to debate. I got in line. "Body of Christ." I took communion and its comfort.
...An army of volunteers from some Bible church on Staten Island was on the streets handing out small Bibles: the Gospel According to John and St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. "God still cares," it said inside the cover. There were "prayer stations" set up here and there and there were certifiable religious nuts muttering and yelling and carrying crosses.
...The other times I've returned to lower Manhattan, I was put off by the tourists taking pictures of what was not there. Today was different. Today, I could begrudge no one here, no matter what they were wearing or doing.
Thousands upon thousands of people jammed the streets and sidewalks. They should have closed the streets down here to let the people own the city today, but they didn't; Mayor Bloomberg doesn't understand such gestures. So we were crowded and herded along. But even so, all were solemn, all respectful.
The streets are a sanctuary today.
...I came to the spot where I stood when I came out of the World Trade Center a year ago, the spot where I saw the second jet hit the second tower, and where I saw more that I still cannot talk about.
The wind shifted and a few bars of bagpipe music came our way. But mostly, we couldn't hear anything, other than rumbling trucks. Still, by the thousands, we stood and stared, stared at nothing.
...I had brought my radio so I could listen to the ceremony. George Pataki read the Gettysburg Address, then Mayor Guliani started reading the names, YoYo Ma playing the cello behind him.
It was hard to listen to the names. It was hard to listen to each name, and then hard to listen to so many of them. The list would not end.
Each name was over in less than a second. But the sum of the names lasted hours.
A list of pain.
On the PATH train in this morning, I was standing, looking at the New York Times, not willing to dive into it yet, just turning the pages. And then I came upon what almost seemed to be an afterthought by the paper but was, of course, what today was all about: the names. But the Times ran the names with pictures, tiny little pictures of the victims filling pages, huge pages. I could not bear the sight.
A view of pain.
...I retraced my steps that day, along Broadway and Nassau and then to Liberty Street, where I was standing when the south tower fell. To this day, I cannot figure out exactly where I went once destruction and darkness fell. I looked in the window of the office building that gave me haven, grateful. And then I kept walking.
Trinity Church had guards searching bags and police carrying guns you just don't see on the streets of America, and certainly not in front of a church. Yes, it has come to this.
I walked down to Wall Street. The traders were sitting outside on the steps of Federal Hall, waiting for the exchange to open. Photographers were shooting them. You'll see them in tomorrow's papers.
I skirted the southern edge of the site, onto West Street, by the World Financial Center and the piece of a bridge that still goes there, from nowhere, and the just-rebuilt Winter Garden, clean and sparkling.
Here and only here, we could hear the ceremony. Across the wide street, on the platform, I could see the people reading the names and a young woman playing her violin.
The names continued.
My God, they are only up to F.
I stood and listened.
I heard the bell ring when the first tower fell. A year ago right now, I lived.
I heard the name of my neighbor, who died.
...I also listened to Howard Stern on my radio. He rebroadcast his show as it occurred a year ago. I had not heard radio or seen TV for most that day; I didn't know what the world knew and thought just then.
The show was absolutely amazing. It brought me back the immediacy and terror and fear and anger and uncertainty. As always, Howard said what we think.
...I walked around behind the World Financial Center to the ferries to New Jersey. Every ferry was in the water, facing Manhattan, still.
At the moment that the second tower fell, every boat blew its horn in a huge and mournful chorus, their requim on the water.
Everyone brought their tribute to the World Trade Center today, even the boats.
...The wind was amazing, blowing up dust from all around, beating the flags hung everywhere. And it brought clouds in over the World Trade Center. On this beautiful, sunny day -- a day very much like that a year ago -- there was only one dark cloud in the sky and as I rode the ferry across the river, I saw that cloud float over the World Trade Center at the very moment that the second tower fell and the horns blew today. It gave them shade.
...And now I am back in Jersey City, writing this. Today, this town is dedicating a fountain in Journal Square, which my office window faces, to the memory of its dead from September 11. This morning, on the way to New York, I walked around the fountain and read and counted the names engraved there: Thirty-seven people died, thirty-seven just from this town. Even here, the list is long, the pain endless
...I'm going to go home now and wait for my children to come back from school. A year ago, they had to wait for me. Today, I will wait for them and play with them and cherish them today especially.
And tonight, I will go to yet another church and read my meditation.
And tomorrow, I will awake to face September 12th... again.
saliva unleashed rm
And...
: Read James Lileks today (not that you don't every day, eh?). He writes a letter to himself a year ago, taking the wisdom he has now and sharing it with the him of then.
It's just like a weblog, really: You start reading today, knowing what the author knows, and as you read down, going back in time, you know progressively more than the author; you are the wiser one.
Read Ken Layne's only post today: the true voice of California.
: Glenn Reynolds does today what a fine news organization should always do, no matter what's happening: He keeps reporting the news. And I'm grateful for it.
: Nick Denton reminds the President of what he promised a year ago.
: I just turned on the TV. Tom Brokaw talked to a mother of six wonderful children and it was too much for him and Anna Quindlan. He didn't show off his moment of choking up; he hid it. But he has a true heart.
: A fine idea from Solly Ezekial: Designate September 11th a day to appreciate police and firefighters.
: Amazon created a lovely home page today.saliva unleashed rm
Today...
...I came up out of the subway at the World Trade Center not long before 8 o'clock -- one hour short of a year after I came up out of the PATH train here.
In front of me were family members waiting to get into the memorial service, some carrying, many wearing the pictures of their loved ones, gone.
A parade of pain.
...The doors of St. Peter's Catholic Church were open and people were wandering in. I did, too, and found a line had formed for communion. I debated and then decided there was no reason to debate. I got in line. "Body of Christ." I took communion and its comfort.
...An army of volunteers from some Bible church on Staten Island was on the streets handing out small Bibles: the Gospel According to John and St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. "God still cares," it said inside the cover. There were "prayer stations" set up here and there and there were certifiable religious nuts muttering and yelling and carrying crosses.
...The other times I've returned to lower Manhattan, I was put off by the tourists taking pictures of what was not there. Today was different. Today, I could begrudge no one here, no matter what they were wearing or doing.
Thousands upon thousands of people jammed the streets and sidewalks. They should have closed the streets down here to let the people own the city today, but they didn't; Mayor Bloomberg doesn't understand such gestures. So we were crowded and herded along. But even so, all were solemn, all respectful.
The streets are a sanctuary today.
...I came to the spot where I stood when I came out of the World Trade Center a year ago, the spot where I saw the second jet hit the second tower, and where I saw more that I still cannot talk about.
The wind shifted and a few bars of bagpipe music came our way. But mostly, we couldn't hear anything, other than rumbling trucks. Still, by the thousands, we stood and stared, stared at nothing.
...I had brought my radio so I could listen to the ceremony. George Pataki read the Gettysburg Address, then Mayor Guliani started reading the names, YoYo Ma playing the cello behind him.
It was hard to listen to the names. It was hard to listen to each name, and then hard to listen to so many of them. The list would not end.
Each name was over in less than a second. But the sum of the names lasted hours.
A list of pain.
On the PATH train in this morning, I was standing, looking at the New York Times, not willing to dive into it yet, just turning the pages. And then I came upon what almost seemed to be an afterthought by the paper but was, of course, what today was all about: the names. But the Times ran the names with pictures, tiny little pictures of the victims filling pages, huge pages. I could not bear the sight.
A view of pain.
...I retraced my steps that day, along Broadway and Nassau and then to Liberty Street, where I was standing when the south tower fell. To this day, I cannot figure out exactly where I went once destruction and darkness fell. I looked in the window of the office building that gave me haven, grateful. And then I kept walking.
Trinity Church had guards searching bags and police carrying guns you just don't see on the streets of America, and certainly not in front of a church. Yes, it has come to this.
I walked down to Wall Street. The traders were sitting outside on the steps of Federal Hall, waiting for the exchange to open. Photographers were shooting them. You'll see them in tomorrow's papers.
I skirted the southern edge of the site, onto West Street, by the World Financial Center and the piece of a bridge that still goes there, from nowhere, and the just-rebuilt Winter Garden, clean and sparkling.
Here and only here, we could hear the ceremony. Across the wide street, on the platform, I could see the people reading the names and a young woman playing her violin.
The names continued.
My God, they are only up to F.
I stood and listened.
I heard the bell ring when the first tower fell. A year ago right now, I lived.
I heard the name of my neighbor, who died.
...I also listened to Howard Stern on my radio. He rebroadcast his show as it occurred a year ago. I had not heard radio or seen TV for most that day; I didn't know what the world knew and thought just then.
The show was absolutely amazing. It brought me back the immediacy and terror and fear and anger and uncertainty. As always, Howard said what we think.
...I walked around behind the World Financial Center to the ferries to New Jersey. Every ferry was in the water, facing Manhattan, still.
At the moment that the second tower fell, every boat blew its horn in a huge and mournful chorus, their requim on the water.
Everyone brought their tribute to the World Trade Center today, even the boats.
...The wind was amazing, blowing up dust from all around, beating the flags hung everywhere. And it brought clouds in over the World Trade Center. On this beautiful, sunny day -- a day very much like that a year ago -- there was only one dark cloud in the sky and as I rode the ferry across the river, I saw that cloud float over the World Trade Center at the very moment that the second tower fell and the horns blew today. It gave them shade.
...And now I am back in Jersey City, writing this. Today, this town is dedicating a fountain in Journal Square, which my office window faces, to the memory of its dead from September 11. This morning, on the way to New York, I walked around the fountain and read and counted the names engraved there: Thirty-seven people died, thirty-seven just from this town. Even here, the list is long, the pain endless
...I'm going to go home now and wait for my children to come back from school. A year ago, they had to wait for me. Today, I will wait for them and play with them and cherish them today especially.
And tonight, I will go to yet another church and read my meditation.
And tomorrow, I will awake to face September 12th... again.
saliva unleashed rm
And...
: Read James Lileks today (not that you don't every day, eh?). He writes a letter to himself a year ago, taking the wisdom he has now and sharing it with the him of then.
It's just like a weblog, really: You start reading today, knowing what the author knows, and as you read down, going back in time, you know progressively more than the author; you are the wiser one.
Read Ken Layne's only post today: the true voice of California.
: Glenn Reynolds does today what a fine news organization should always do, no matter what's happening: He keeps reporting the news. And I'm grateful for it.
: Nick Denton reminds the President of what he promised a year ago.
: I just turned on the TV. Tom Brokaw talked to a mother of six wonderful children and it was too much for him and Anna Quindlan. He didn't show off his moment of choking up; he hid it. But he has a true heart.
: A fine idea from Solly Ezekial: Designate September 11th a day to appreciate police and firefighters.
: Amazon created a lovely home page today.saliva unleashed rm
September 10, 2002
Other memories
: There are some things my wife and I did not talk about, until now, until the anniversary. This is probably fault. I made Sept. 11 too much about me, about witnessing, about surviving. But you didn't have to be in the shadow of the towers and in the cloud of their destruction to be affected.
A year ago, I called her after the first plane hit and left a message on the answering machine saying I was fine and I was staying to report on the attacks for the paper. That was about 9am. She didn't hear from me until many hours later in the afternoon.
Now she tells me that when she picked up our daughter at nursery school a year ago, she told people that I was "missing."
She wanted to go pick up our son at elementary school but didn't because "I didn't know what to tell him."
I was missing.
I came back.
So many didn't.
So many people. So many lives. So many memories. Tomorrow.saliva unleashed rm
A second chance
: Rossi has good advice for tomorrow (at her brand new address, www.rossirant.com): Feel this moment.
This moment is a gift.
This day is a miracle.
You are here.
You are alive.
You have a capacity to love that is so vast you could never reach its limits....
Some of you, may have relived that day a thousand times and told yourself all the things you would do differently if you could go back in time.
Maybe you would have tried to help.
Maybe you would have been kinder to the people around you.
Maybe you would have remembered to tell the person lying next to you that you love them.
Well it’s September 11th again.
It is today.
It is now.
So what are you waiting for? Orange is the color of the day: Office of Homeland Security raising us to orange (read: high) alert. What does this mean we should do? F if I know. saliva unleashed rm
Californians aren't the only asses
: Salon found loads of them. And they're flocking to kuro5hin, folks such as the one who says this: I remember watching the plane crash into the second tower and I felt absolutely nothing. I don't mean numbness, I really mean nothing.
And as a person who knows absolutely no one in those towers I think that is the appropriate response. Meanwhile, Megan McArdle challenges Jill Stewart (the woman with the cold, dead soul below) to fisticuffs. saliva unleashed rm
Other memories
: There are some things my wife and I did not talk about, until now, until the anniversary. This is probably fault. I made Sept. 11 too much about me, about witnessing, about surviving. But you didn't have to be in the shadow of the towers and in the cloud of their destruction to be affected.
A year ago, I called her after the first plane hit and left a message on the answering machine saying I was fine and I was staying to report on the attacks for the paper. That was about 9am. She didn't hear from me until many hours later in the afternoon.
Now she tells me that when she picked up our daughter at nursery school a year ago, she told people that I was "missing."
She wanted to go pick up our son at elementary school but didn't because "I didn't know what to tell him."
I was missing.
I came back.
So many didn't.
So many people. So many lives. So many memories. Tomorrow.saliva unleashed rm
A second chance
: Rossi has good advice for tomorrow (at her brand new address, www.rossirant.com): Feel this moment.
This moment is a gift.
This day is a miracle.
You are here.
You are alive.
You have a capacity to love that is so vast you could never reach its limits....
Some of you, may have relived that day a thousand times and told yourself all the things you would do differently if you could go back in time.
Maybe you would have tried to help.
Maybe you would have been kinder to the people around you.
Maybe you would have remembered to tell the person lying next to you that you love them.
Well it’s September 11th again.
It is today.
It is now.
So what are you waiting for? Orange is the color of the day: Office of Homeland Security raising us to orange (read: high) alert. What does this mean we should do? F if I know. saliva unleashed rm
Californians aren't the only asses
: Salon found loads of them. And they're flocking to kuro5hin, folks such as the one who says this: I remember watching the plane crash into the second tower and I felt absolutely nothing. I don't mean numbness, I really mean nothing.
And as a person who knows absolutely no one in those towers I think that is the appropriate response. Meanwhile, Megan McArdle challenges Jill Stewart (the woman with the cold, dead soul below) to fisticuffs. saliva unleashed rm
September 09, 2002
Wednesday
: I dread the anniversary, yet I look forward to it, for then it will be over. Wednesday, I will leave home early to be in Manhattan by 8am as the bagpipers march to the World Trade Center and as the names of the dead are read. I will retrace my steps and stop to remember and be thankful. I will come home early to be with my kids when they get home from school. I will go to church by 8pm and deliver my sermon, light a candle, and read Kaddish for the dead of September 11. And then I will go to sleep, knowing this year that September 12th will be no different from the 11th or the 13th. That will be my day.saliva unleashed rm
Californians
: RIchard Bennett delivers a cogent defense of California. Glenn Reynolds reminds of us two Californians who do get it -- Ken Layne and Matt Welch, of course. Obviously, there are Californians of good sense; clearly my brush does not paint everyone. Can we pronounce "hyperbole"? I am making a point about a way of thinking. But you have to admit that there is a trend here. Scroll on.saliva unleashed rm
: This page is No. 1 on Blogdex. Amazing what a little coast-bashing hyperbole can do.saliva unleashed rm
Wednesday
: I dread the anniversary, yet I look forward to it, for then it will be over. Wednesday, I will leave home early to be in Manhattan by 8am as the bagpipers march to the World Trade Center and as the names of the dead are read. I will retrace my steps and stop to remember and be thankful. I will come home early to be with my kids when they get home from school. I will go to church by 8pm and deliver my sermon, light a candle, and read Kaddish for the dead of September 11. And then I will go to sleep, knowing this year that September 12th will be no different from the 11th or the 13th. That will be my day.saliva unleashed rm
Californians
: RIchard Bennett delivers a cogent defense of California. Glenn Reynolds reminds of us two Californians who do get it -- Ken Layne and Matt Welch, of course. Obviously, there are Californians of good sense; clearly my brush does not paint everyone. Can we pronounce "hyperbole"? I am making a point about a way of thinking. But you have to admit that there is a trend here. Scroll on.saliva unleashed rm
: This page is No. 1 on Blogdex. Amazing what a little coast-bashing hyperbole can do.saliva unleashed rm
September 08, 2002
It has been a year... A meditation
: This Wednesday at 8pm, I will be delivering a meditation at my church's memorial service (all welcome; none proseltyzed; address and directions in New Jersey here; click on map).
Here is my near-finished draft of my sermon: The impact of 9.11, a year later. I'll be eager to hear any reaction from those who dare to read this much; just email me.
Thanks.saliva unleashed rm
California state of mind
: Greg Beato send me email pointing out that Norah Vincent is a New Yorker. Doesn't change anything I have to say below. It's the LA Times that chose to publisher her drivel. Besides, California is just a state of mind.saliva unleashed rm
: Sarah Navarro (aka Rhesa) sends me a nice email disavowing the opinions of other Californians.
Her blog also points us to a story at the California Patriot (no, I've not heard of it either and I will refrain from the obvious oxymoron gags) saying that Berkeley has banned The Star-Spangled Banner and God Bless America from 9.11 observances. Reality or parody? Always hard to tell in California -- especially, of course, in Berkeley. The "Star Spangled Banner" is too patriotic, divisive and political, so organizers of UC Berkeley's day-long tribute to the victims and heroes of 9-11 are excluding it. "God Bless America" is doubly excluded. Not only is it patriotic, but it also mentions God, something else that is taboo next Wednesday.
The Sept. 11 Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Chancellor's office, the student body government and the Graduate Assembly, will also feature student leaders distributing white ribbons, instead of the red, white and blue ones they had originally planned.
"We thought that may be just too political, too patriotic," said Hazel Wong, chief organizer for the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). "We didn't want anything too centered on nationalism-anything that is 'Go U.S.A.'"
Wong said the event organizers are "trying to steer away" from anything political, and that, she said, includes singing the National Anthem and displaying the red, white, and blue. She said they don't want politics disrupting mourning and grieving. Not political? You dolts. This is all about politics. This is all about patriotism. Jerks. saliva unleashed rm
: This UC Berkeley idiocy only gets funnier (and more pathetic). The Daily Californian, the university paper, reports that they will now distribute red-white-and-blue ribbons. While the university has planned numerous events to commemorate the first anniversary of Sept. 11, Chancellor Robert Berdahl overruled a decision by student leaders to distribute white ribbons to students during the memorial....
He added the student leaders had initially chosen white ribbons because multicolored ribbons were too costly.
But student leaders said the decision was not based on financial concerns.
"It's true that (white ribbons) are cheaper," said Graduate Assembly President Jessica Quindel. "But I was at the meetings, and the decisions had nothing to do with the prices."...
"Jessica does not speak for the university. I speak for the university," Berdahl said. "(Red, white and blue) ribbons don't offend anyone." : See also Karl Martino on a key difference between the coasts on 9.11: The East Coast lived this trauma live; on the West Coast, it was a TV show, already packaged and "punditized." saliva unleashed rm
: By the way, I used to live in and love California. But I left many years ago. And since then, I have come to see that, despite appearances, California is small. It's the me state. In the north, it's about small societies and correct politics. In the south, it's about the oddities of an industry.
Unfair? Of course. Gross generalizations? Naturally. Only to illustrate a point, my friends.saliva unleashed rm
It has been a year... A meditation
: This Wednesday at 8pm, I will be delivering a meditation at my church's memorial service (all welcome; none proseltyzed; address and directions in New Jersey here; click on map).
Here is my near-finished draft of my sermon: The impact of 9.11, a year later. I'll be eager to hear any reaction from those who dare to read this much; just email me.
Thanks.saliva unleashed rm
California state of mind
: Greg Beato send me email pointing out that Norah Vincent is a New Yorker. Doesn't change anything I have to say below. It's the LA Times that chose to publisher her drivel. Besides, California is just a state of mind.saliva unleashed rm
: Sarah Navarro (aka Rhesa) sends me a nice email disavowing the opinions of other Californians.
Her blog also points us to a story at the California Patriot (no, I've not heard of it either and I will refrain from the obvious oxymoron gags) saying that Berkeley has banned The Star-Spangled Banner and God Bless America from 9.11 observances. Reality or parody? Always hard to tell in California -- especially, of course, in Berkeley. The "Star Spangled Banner" is too patriotic, divisive and political, so organizers of UC Berkeley's day-long tribute to the victims and heroes of 9-11 are excluding it. "God Bless America" is doubly excluded. Not only is it patriotic, but it also mentions God, something else that is taboo next Wednesday.
The Sept. 11 Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Chancellor's office, the student body government and the Graduate Assembly, will also feature student leaders distributing white ribbons, instead of the red, white and blue ones they had originally planned.
"We thought that may be just too political, too patriotic," said Hazel Wong, chief organizer for the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). "We didn't want anything too centered on nationalism-anything that is 'Go U.S.A.'"
Wong said the event organizers are "trying to steer away" from anything political, and that, she said, includes singing the National Anthem and displaying the red, white, and blue. She said they don't want politics disrupting mourning and grieving. Not political? You dolts. This is all about politics. This is all about patriotism. Jerks. saliva unleashed rm
: This UC Berkeley idiocy only gets funnier (and more pathetic). The Daily Californian, the university paper, reports that they will now distribute red-white-and-blue ribbons. While the university has planned numerous events to commemorate the first anniversary of Sept. 11, Chancellor Robert Berdahl overruled a decision by student leaders to distribute white ribbons to students during the memorial....
He added the student leaders had initially chosen white ribbons because multicolored ribbons were too costly.
But student leaders said the decision was not based on financial concerns.
"It's true that (white ribbons) are cheaper," said Graduate Assembly President Jessica Quindel. "But I was at the meetings, and the decisions had nothing to do with the prices."...
"Jessica does not speak for the university. I speak for the university," Berdahl said. "(Red, white and blue) ribbons don't offend anyone." : See also Karl Martino on a key difference between the coasts on 9.11: The East Coast lived this trauma live; on the West Coast, it was a TV show, already packaged and "punditized." saliva unleashed rm
: By the way, I used to live in and love California. But I left many years ago. And since then, I have come to see that, despite appearances, California is small. It's the me state. In the north, it's about small societies and correct politics. In the south, it's about the oddities of an industry.
Unfair? Of course. Gross generalizations? Naturally. Only to illustrate a point, my friends.saliva unleashed rm
September 07, 2002
California: The other America
: I see a divide in this country over September 11. It cuts north-and-south right at the California line.
Californians don't get September 11 -- because it's not about them.
And isn't everything supposed to be about them?
Here are two pieces printed in LA, each with its own cynical, sick, disgusting, and wrong take on this week's anniversary.
First, here is Norah Vincent in the LA Times: Scratch most Americans these days and you'll find that many of them have made a big change in their lives in the last 12 months, something not obviously attributable to Sept. 11 but a response to it nonetheless.
It might be something as outwardly trivial as finally sticking to the Atkins diet, quitting smoking or taking up yoga. Then again, it might be something monumental like ending a decades-old bad marriage or quitting a cushy job to pursue a life in the arts. But whatever it is, the impetus behind the changes we made is essentially the same for everyone.
Deep down we all did it because we knew that it might have been us in those towers. What horrid, self-absorbed Californiathink that is! Mass murder becomes an excuse to pamper yourself with a diet or a divorce or a yoga class! Arrrrrrgh! Can't she hear herself? Can't she hear what a California cliche she is? And they wonder why the rest of us laugh at them out there.
If anything, September 11 should perhaps motivate you to try to better the world rather than yourself. saliva unleashed rm
Now move to this hateful blob of bile from Jill Stewart in LA's New Times.
She complains -- with typical left-coast knee-jerk (or just jerky) PC logic -- that because we have not mourned enough over victims of earthquakes in India or floods in Nigeria, we have no right to mourn our American victims of September 11. I would have loved to have read what she would have written in 1946 about the Holocaust: You can't mourn the Jews if you don't mourn the comrades, eh?
She complains about the families of the victims suing the Saudi government. I say again: arrrrgh! I can imagine no better legal cause to root for today.
She complains that the rescue effort of New York's police and fire departments wasn't good enough. Well, lady, they saved thousands of people... including me. And I shall forever be grateful for their effort and for their sacrifice.
She would begrudge us even a year's mourning. Indeed, I say without shame to America's ever-growing, increasingly troubling and loudly throbbing Cult of Nine Eleven, "For God sakes, get a grip!"
Get a grip, people, before this unholy rapture gets its grip on you. And she complains about Lisa Beamer getting TV time. I note a small, cruel, and truly offensive trend in Beamer backlash and even Beamer bashing here; I saw something attacking her as a mother in a blog last week; my computer mercifully died in the meantime and I can't find the link again, so I can't prove that this, too, came from a Californian. Stewart just has something against widows and orphans; she doesn't like the widows and orphans of New York cops and firefighters getting sympathy, either. Heartless bitch. (And yes, I know that's unPC. I don't give an S or an F.)
Stewart's advice: So, on September 11, I suggest that you not light a candle for the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Plenty of others will do so for you. Perhaps we should instead light a candle for the cold, dead soul of Jill Stewart. saliva unleashed rm
: Matt Welch notes the contrast between Stewart's California claptrap and James Lilek's heartland heart, exhibited in this simple, brilliant piece about the death of a little girl -- the same age as his own Gnat -- at the hands of those evil terrorists: Little Christine was Gnat’s age, give or take a month; bin Laden’s lackeys killed her - and did so to ensure that other fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as well, preferably by the tens of thousands. This little girl’s death wasn’t even a comma in the manifesto they hoped to write. They made sure that her last moments alive were filled with horror and blood, screams and fear; they made sure that the last thing she saw was the desperate faces of her parents, insisting that everything was okay, we’re going to see Mickey, holding out a favorite toy with numb hands, making up a happy lie. And then she was fire and then she was ash.
I feel the same anger I did on 9/11; I feel the same overwhelming grief. Nothing in my heart has changed, and God forbid it ever does. Remember. saliva unleashed rm
: Jill Stewart: Read this by Bryan Doyle and tell me we should not care: A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped....
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.
Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.... : And let's not forget Dave Winer's contribution to this chapter of Great California Thinkers Try To Understand Tragedy If It Does Not Affect Them.
When I first read this a few days ago, I was speechless; I couldn't bring myself to blog about it without simply sputtering. But now that we have a theme going on California thinkers, let's have at it. Winer said: A common theme -- what kind of God lets this happen? I answer that with another question. What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn't see that 9-11 was tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS?
They wonder at the spiritual vision of a person who jumps from the World Trade Center to certain death, but don't wonder about the millions of people who do the same thing with tobacco? It's out of balance. We're out of balance.
9-11 was, imho, a small upheaval in getting to some kind of equilibrium in how the US participates in the world, both from the US perspective, and the world's perspective....
So what were the lessons of 9-11 that the US has failed to learn? I think it's that God doesn't think we're as important as we do.... This is a sick variant of the Europeans' and far left's moral relativism: tragic relativism. Did more people die on 9.11 than in this flood or that epidemic? If not, then you should not make a big deal of it. Not allowed. Not PC. Not the party line. Shut your trap, comrade.
This is intellectual and moral tyranny: "I will tell you what you're allowed to mourn and how much based on (a) how many died vs. othe tragedies and (b) whether the dead were downtrodden enough."
This thinking, if you want to call it that, is bereft of a sense of compassion or morality or history or even news value. Hello: 9.11 was an attack on the civilians of a country not at war with anyone; it changed the face of world politics and war and security; it was our homeland (about which we are allowed to care); it was a horrid act of mass murder. And we're supposed to put this on the same plane as tobacco? Worse than anything, such thinking is intellectually bankrupt, AKA stupid. See, I'm sputtering. Can't help it. Idiocy does that to me.
And, yes, this comes from... California. saliva unleashed rm
: Richard Bennet gives Winer what-for. So does Reid Stott. So does Andrea Harris. So does The Fat Guy. So does Ipse Dixit. saliva unleashed rm
Clinton speaks
: The former president's prescription for peace.saliva unleashed rm
Media on a diet
: Henry Copeland coins and new and very accurate description for this new world: thin media.saliva unleashed rm
Thing envy
: I have been reading Nick Denton's brainchild, the gadget blog Gizmodo every day and it keeps getting better and better. I also curse it every day, for I'm getting nose grease on my LCD screen as I put my nose up against the window of this wonderful shop of toys... and I stop myself from buying any of them.
Nick should add Amazon-like wishlists for I want this and this and this and this and especially this, just to name a few.saliva unleashed rm
California: The other America
: I see a divide in this country over September 11. It cuts north-and-south right at the California line.
Californians don't get September 11 -- because it's not about them.
And isn't everything supposed to be about them?
Here are two pieces printed in LA, each with its own cynical, sick, disgusting, and wrong take on this week's anniversary.
First, here is Norah Vincent in the LA Times: Scratch most Americans these days and you'll find that many of them have made a big change in their lives in the last 12 months, something not obviously attributable to Sept. 11 but a response to it nonetheless.
It might be something as outwardly trivial as finally sticking to the Atkins diet, quitting smoking or taking up yoga. Then again, it might be something monumental like ending a decades-old bad marriage or quitting a cushy job to pursue a life in the arts. But whatever it is, the impetus behind the changes we made is essentially the same for everyone.
Deep down we all did it because we knew that it might have been us in those towers. What horrid, self-absorbed Californiathink that is! Mass murder becomes an excuse to pamper yourself with a diet or a divorce or a yoga class! Arrrrrrgh! Can't she hear herself? Can't she hear what a California cliche she is? And they wonder why the rest of us laugh at them out there.
If anything, September 11 should perhaps motivate you to try to better the world rather than yourself. saliva unleashed rm
Now move to this hateful blob of bile from Jill Stewart in LA's New Times.
She complains -- with typical left-coast knee-jerk (or just jerky) PC logic -- that because we have not mourned enough over victims of earthquakes in India or floods in Nigeria, we have no right to mourn our American victims of September 11. I would have loved to have read what she would have written in 1946 about the Holocaust: You can't mourn the Jews if you don't mourn the comrades, eh?
She complains about the families of the victims suing the Saudi government. I say again: arrrrgh! I can imagine no better legal cause to root for today.
She complains that the rescue effort of New York's police and fire departments wasn't good enough. Well, lady, they saved thousands of people... including me. And I shall forever be grateful for their effort and for their sacrifice.
She would begrudge us even a year's mourning. Indeed, I say without shame to America's ever-growing, increasingly troubling and loudly throbbing Cult of Nine Eleven, "For God sakes, get a grip!"
Get a grip, people, before this unholy rapture gets its grip on you. And she complains about Lisa Beamer getting TV time. I note a small, cruel, and truly offensive trend in Beamer backlash and even Beamer bashing here; I saw something attacking her as a mother in a blog last week; my computer mercifully died in the meantime and I can't find the link again, so I can't prove that this, too, came from a Californian. Stewart just has something against widows and orphans; she doesn't like the widows and orphans of New York cops and firefighters getting sympathy, either. Heartless bitch. (And yes, I know that's unPC. I don't give an S or an F.)
Stewart's advice: So, on September 11, I suggest that you not light a candle for the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Plenty of others will do so for you. Perhaps we should instead light a candle for the cold, dead soul of Jill Stewart. saliva unleashed rm
: Matt Welch notes the contrast between Stewart's California claptrap and James Lilek's heartland heart, exhibited in this simple, brilliant piece about the death of a little girl -- the same age as his own Gnat -- at the hands of those evil terrorists: Little Christine was Gnat’s age, give or take a month; bin Laden’s lackeys killed her - and did so to ensure that other fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as well, preferably by the tens of thousands. This little girl’s death wasn’t even a comma in the manifesto they hoped to write. They made sure that her last moments alive were filled with horror and blood, screams and fear; they made sure that the last thing she saw was the desperate faces of her parents, insisting that everything was okay, we’re going to see Mickey, holding out a favorite toy with numb hands, making up a happy lie. And then she was fire and then she was ash.
I feel the same anger I did on 9/11; I feel the same overwhelming grief. Nothing in my heart has changed, and God forbid it ever does. Remember. saliva unleashed rm
: Jill Stewart: Read this by Bryan Doyle and tell me we should not care: A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped....
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.
Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.... : And let's not forget Dave Winer's contribution to this chapter of Great California Thinkers Try To Understand Tragedy If It Does Not Affect Them.
When I first read this a few days ago, I was speechless; I couldn't bring myself to blog about it without simply sputtering. But now that we have a theme going on California thinkers, let's have at it. Winer said: A common theme -- what kind of God lets this happen? I answer that with another question. What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn't see that 9-11 was tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS?
They wonder at the spiritual vision of a person who jumps from the World Trade Center to certain death, but don't wonder about the millions of people who do the same thing with tobacco? It's out of balance. We're out of balance.
9-11 was, imho, a small upheaval in getting to some kind of equilibrium in how the US participates in the world, both from the US perspective, and the world's perspective....
So what were the lessons of 9-11 that the US has failed to learn? I think it's that God doesn't think we're as important as we do.... This is a sick variant of the Europeans' and far left's moral relativism: tragic relativism. Did more people die on 9.11 than in this flood or that epidemic? If not, then you should not make a big deal of it. Not allowed. Not PC. Not the party line. Shut your trap, comrade.
This is intellectual and moral tyranny: "I will tell you what you're allowed to mourn and how much based on (a) how many died vs. othe tragedies and (b) whether the dead were downtrodden enough."
This thinking, if you want to call it that, is bereft of a sense of compassion or morality or history or even news value. Hello: 9.11 was an attack on the civilians of a country not at war with anyone; it changed the face of world politics and war and security; it was our homeland (about which we are allowed to care); it was a horrid act of mass murder. And we're supposed to put this on the same plane as tobacco? Worse than anything, such thinking is intellectually bankrupt, AKA stupid. See, I'm sputtering. Can't help it. Idiocy does that to me.
And, yes, this comes from... California. saliva unleashed rm
: Richard Bennet gives Winer what-for. So does Reid Stott. So does Andrea Harris. So does The Fat Guy. So does Ipse Dixit. saliva unleashed rm
Clinton speaks
: The former president's prescription for peace.saliva unleashed rm
Media on a diet
: Henry Copeland coins and new and very accurate description for this new world: thin media.saliva unleashed rm
Thing envy
: I have been reading Nick Denton's brainchild, the gadget blog Gizmodo every day and it keeps getting better and better. I also curse it every day, for I'm getting nose grease on my LCD screen as I put my nose up against the window of this wonderful shop of toys... and I stop myself from buying any of them.
Nick should add Amazon-like wishlists for I want this and this and this and this and especially this, just to name a few.saliva unleashed rm
September 06, 2002
Just desserts
: So the Daily Mirror is suffering plummeting circulation. They say it's because they got serious after 9.11. Could it be, instead, that they printed a bunch bilge from the likes of Pilger?saliva unleashed rm
For a three-hour cruise...
: To heck bringing back The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres with real people. The sitcom they should revive as a reality show is Gilligan's Island: Take real people; trap them on an island with nothing but cameras; make them figure out a way to get off. It's better than Survivor because they'll actually have a goal and won't have any dumb pagan rituals; it has all the drama of Cast Away; this is a real challenge.saliva unleashed rm
Just desserts
: So the Daily Mirror is suffering plummeting circulation. They say it's because they got serious after 9.11. Could it be, instead, that they printed a bunch bilge from the likes of Pilger?saliva unleashed rm
For a three-hour cruise...
: To heck bringing back The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres with real people. The sitcom they should revive as a reality show is Gilligan's Island: Take real people; trap them on an island with nothing but cameras; make them figure out a way to get off. It's better than Survivor because they'll actually have a goal and won't have any dumb pagan rituals; it has all the drama of Cast Away; this is a real challenge.saliva unleashed rm
September 05, 2002
The dog ate my email
: Netscape just ate all my email. Anil Dash says he thought we'd already settled this; Netscape is evil. But I signed a pact with the old devil AOL/Netscape/Time/Warner/Turner/et/al and had my work and personal email in there and it just ate it. So if you sent me anything of note in the last two weeks, you would have to rely on my memory... and that's not reliable. saliva unleashed rm
Business not as normal
: One company's plans to do no business the morning of September 11th, from Contentblog.saliva unleashed rm
Killer ap
: Sprint gives us Doppler weather radar on phones. Now, finally, I start to see a need for those color screens.saliva unleashed rm
Well, duh
: The FBI finally admits that the July 4 shooting at LAX may be terrorism, says the Forward.saliva unleashed rm
The dog ate my email
: Netscape just ate all my email. Anil Dash says he thought we'd already settled this; Netscape is evil. But I signed a pact with the old devil AOL/Netscape/Time/Warner/Turner/et/al and had my work and personal email in there and it just ate it. So if you sent me anything of note in the last two weeks, you would have to rely on my memory... and that's not reliable. saliva unleashed rm
Business not as normal
: One company's plans to do no business the morning of September 11th, from Contentblog.saliva unleashed rm
Killer ap
: Sprint gives us Doppler weather radar on phones. Now, finally, I start to see a need for those color screens.saliva unleashed rm
Well, duh
: The FBI finally admits that the July 4 shooting at LAX may be terrorism, says the Forward.saliva unleashed rm
September 04, 2002
Jahrzeit
: Rossi writes about the observance of the year's anniversary of our national loss and she points us to a fine package on the Jahrzeit at Jewsweek.
There, Rabbi Benjamin Blech asks and answers the most nagging question facing the religious:
Can we ever forgive?
No. God's great gift to us is a heavenly pardon. But his present is predicated on a condition. What he asks us to do before He grants us forgiveness is to acknowledge that we were wrong and that we renounce our sinful behavior.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:7)
Forgiveness is willing to overlook the sins of the past for the sake of an altered future. It is ready to pardon the most terrible wrongs for the price of remorse, regret and the desire for a new beginning. But the one thing God's forgiveness is unwilling to do is to condone vicious crimes by simply accepting them. An unrepentant sinner mistakes God's mercy for permission to continue in his ways. To forgive such a person isn't kindness; its cruelty to all those who’ll be hurt by the evil that wasn't stopped before it could do more harm....
Forgiving people who aren’t sorry for what they did makes a statement: Repentance isn't really necessary. No matter what you did, you don't have to change. Can anything be more immoral than encouraging evil by refraining from any condemnation of those who commit it?
The day after the Columbine High School massacre, a group of students announced that they forgave the killers. A short while after the Oklahoma bombing, some people put out a call to forgive Timothy McVeigh. And, on September 12th, on several American campuses, colleges groups pleaded for forgiveness for the terrorists responsible for the horrific events of the previous day.
These weren't just misguided gestures of compassion. They were serious sins with potentially tragic consequences. Evil unchallenged is evil condoned. To forgive and forget, as Arthur Schopenhauer so well put it, “means to throw valuable experience out the window.” And without the benefit of experience’s lessons we are almost certain to be doomed to repeat them.
The terrorists who piloted the planes into the twin towers never asked us to be forgiven. They expressed not the slightest remorse as they went to their deaths together with their victims. Those who sent them, those who financed them, and those who applauded their mission never for a moment regretted what happened. Forgiving them is no less than giving them license to murder 4000 more innocent people. That's why to forgive in a case like this is to become an accomplice to future crimes. Amen. saliva unleashed rm
: And by the way, when you search the Bible for the phrase "forgive and forget," you won't find it.saliva unleashed rm
F Euro
: A poll of Europeans has too frigging many of them trying to blame 9.11 on our foreign policy... As if anything -- anything -- would justify what happened on 9.11.
Foreign policy? This from the peoples who thought colonialism was their God-given right. Aren't they the ones who F'ed up the world?
And this from the continent that made moral squishyness famous. Let's take a census of those who created Nazism, allied with it, laid down in its path, or continued its work afterwards. The obvious rejoinder? You bet it is. And we can't use it enough. saliva unleashed rm
Building
: Natalija Radic agrees with me on the need to rebuild life into the site of the World Trade Center and not turn it into a giant grave. Croatia has not turned all of Vukovar into a memorial to what was done to the people there. Rebuild and move on. It is a sign of strength not heartlessness. saliva unleashed rm
Jahrzeit
: Rossi writes about the observance of the year's anniversary of our national loss and she points us to a fine package on the Jahrzeit at Jewsweek.
There, Rabbi Benjamin Blech asks and answers the most nagging question facing the religious:
Can we ever forgive?
No. God's great gift to us is a heavenly pardon. But his present is predicated on a condition. What he asks us to do before He grants us forgiveness is to acknowledge that we were wrong and that we renounce our sinful behavior.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:7)
Forgiveness is willing to overlook the sins of the past for the sake of an altered future. It is ready to pardon the most terrible wrongs for the price of remorse, regret and the desire for a new beginning. But the one thing God's forgiveness is unwilling to do is to condone vicious crimes by simply accepting them. An unrepentant sinner mistakes God's mercy for permission to continue in his ways. To forgive such a person isn't kindness; its cruelty to all those who’ll be hurt by the evil that wasn't stopped before it could do more harm....
Forgiving people who aren’t sorry for what they did makes a statement: Repentance isn't really necessary. No matter what you did, you don't have to change. Can anything be more immoral than encouraging evil by refraining from any condemnation of those who commit it?
The day after the Columbine High School massacre, a group of students announced that they forgave the killers. A short while after the Oklahoma bombing, some people put out a call to forgive Timothy McVeigh. And, on September 12th, on several American campuses, colleges groups pleaded for forgiveness for the terrorists responsible for the horrific events of the previous day.
These weren't just misguided gestures of compassion. They were serious sins with potentially tragic consequences. Evil unchallenged is evil condoned. To forgive and forget, as Arthur Schopenhauer so well put it, “means to throw valuable experience out the window.” And without the benefit of experience’s lessons we are almost certain to be doomed to repeat them.
The terrorists who piloted the planes into the twin towers never asked us to be forgiven. They expressed not the slightest remorse as they went to their deaths together with their victims. Those who sent them, those who financed them, and those who applauded their mission never for a moment regretted what happened. Forgiving them is no less than giving them license to murder 4000 more innocent people. That's why to forgive in a case like this is to become an accomplice to future crimes. Amen. saliva unleashed rm
: And by the way, when you search the Bible for the phrase "forgive and forget," you won't find it.saliva unleashed rm
F Euro
: A poll of Europeans has too frigging many of them trying to blame 9.11 on our foreign policy... As if anything -- anything -- would justify what happened on 9.11.
Foreign policy? This from the peoples who thought colonialism was their God-given right. Aren't they the ones who F'ed up the world?
And this from the continent that made moral squishyness famous. Let's take a census of those who created Nazism, allied with it, laid down in its path, or continued its work afterwards. The obvious rejoinder? You bet it is. And we can't use it enough. saliva unleashed rm
Building
: Natalija Radic agrees with me on the need to rebuild life into the site of the World Trade Center and not turn it into a giant grave. Croatia has not turned all of Vukovar into a memorial to what was done to the people there. Rebuild and move on. It is a sign of strength not heartlessness. saliva unleashed rm
September 02, 2002
Forecast
: The weather on this September 11th will be very much like the weather on last September 11th.saliva unleashed rm
The hole
: An excellent suggestion for the 9.11 memorial at the World Trade Center on kuro5hin: My idea is to focus on the "bathtub" in which the World Trade Center was constructed, the seven-story deep pit which covers most of the site (about 70%, on the Western side). As a result of the recovery efforts, the bathtub is now exposed, and it is visually striking. As one visitor commented, "The very vacantness of this space is a memorial in itself. The nothingness memorializes the people lost."... To my eye, the walls of the bathtub are a more vivid reminder of the tragedy than any park could be. Therefore, I think the edge of the bathtub should remain visible in whatever redevelopment is done.... at least one full wall should remain open to the full depth, and there should be at least a one- or two-story drop around the rest of the edge. Access to any buildings on the site would be on short bridges from the perimeter.... What is beautiful about this idea is that from the bottom of the hole, you are forced to look up -- just as we were forced to look up at the Trade Center towers. Only now, we look up at what is not there.
Yes, one could say that hole-in-the-ground memorials were done with the Vietnam memorial in Washington, but that does not bother me.
Our 9.11 memorial needs this kind of vision. saliva unleashed rm
Rudy is wrong
: I became a big admirer of Rudy Guliani but I have to say that I think he is wrong about the 9.11 memorial. He says in Time that "Ground Zero is a cemetery.... If it were up to me, I'd devote the entire 16 acres to the memorial."
But Ground Zero is more than Ground Zero. It is the World Trade Center. It is a place where people not only died but lived. It is a part of a city that lives on.
We must remember. We must remember with a fitting memorial. But we should not turn this key part of the city into a scar. Israel does not turn every corner where there has been an attack into a dead place. Russia did not turn Leningrad into full-city memorial to its dead. An appropriate memorial is not just about death and victimhood; it is about carrying on; it is about life, too.saliva unleashed rm
Forecast
: The weather on this September 11th will be very much like the weather on last September 11th.saliva unleashed rm
The hole
: An excellent suggestion for the 9.11 memorial at the World Trade Center on kuro5hin: My idea is to focus on the "bathtub" in which the World Trade Center was constructed, the seven-story deep pit which covers most of the site (about 70%, on the Western side). As a result of the recovery efforts, the bathtub is now exposed, and it is visually striking. As one visitor commented, "The very vacantness of this space is a memorial in itself. The nothingness memorializes the people lost."... To my eye, the walls of the bathtub are a more vivid reminder of the tragedy than any park could be. Therefore, I think the edge of the bathtub should remain visible in whatever redevelopment is done.... at least one full wall should remain open to the full depth, and there should be at least a one- or two-story drop around the rest of the edge. Access to any buildings on the site would be on short bridges from the perimeter.... What is beautiful about this idea is that from the bottom of the hole, you are forced to look up -- just as we were forced to look up at the Trade Center towers. Only now, we look up at what is not there.
Yes, one could say that hole-in-the-ground memorials were done with the Vietnam memorial in Washington, but that does not bother me.
Our 9.11 memorial needs this kind of vision. saliva unleashed rm
Rudy is wrong
: I became a big admirer of Rudy Guliani but I have to say that I think he is wrong about the 9.11 memorial. He says in Time that "Ground Zero is a cemetery.... If it were up to me, I'd devote the entire 16 acres to the memorial."
But Ground Zero is more than Ground Zero. It is the World Trade Center. It is a place where people not only died but lived. It is a part of a city that lives on.
We must remember. We must remember with a fitting memorial. But we should not turn this key part of the city into a scar. Israel does not turn every corner where there has been an attack into a dead place. Russia did not turn Leningrad into full-city memorial to its dead. An appropriate memorial is not just about death and victimhood; it is about carrying on; it is about life, too.saliva unleashed rm
September 01, 2002
Jahrzeit
: I have been working all day on my meditation (read: short sermon) for our 9.11 service.
I've just decided to have my Congregational congreational say Kaddish.saliva unleashed rm
 
New York, New York
: Two very different views of NY from the two German newsmagazines. Der Spiegel gives us the city of the twin towers, burning. Focus gives us New York alive!, with a guide to restaurants and nightlife.saliva unleashed rm
Septembers
: Lynn remembers a different kind of September.saliva unleashed rm
Snap
: Photos are the next big thing. Tony Pierce proves itsaliva unleashed rm
Jahrzeit
: I have been working all day on my meditation (read: short sermon) for our 9.11 service.
I've just decided to have my Congregational congreational say Kaddish.saliva unleashed rm
New York, New York
: Two very different views of NY from the two German newsmagazines. Der Spiegel gives us the city of the twin towers, burning. Focus gives us New York alive!, with a guide to restaurants and nightlife.saliva unleashed rm
Septembers
: Lynn remembers a different kind of September.saliva unleashed rm
Snap
: Photos are the next big thing. Tony Pierce proves itsaliva unleashed rm
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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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